"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." - H. G. Wells
***
What Terrorists Really Want / Max Abrahms:
"The strategic model—the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies—posits that terrorists are rational actors who attack civilians for political ends. According to this view, terrorists are political utility maximizers; people use terrorism when the expected political gains minus the expected costs outweigh the net expected benefits of alternative forms of protest. The strategic model has widespread currency in the policy community; extant counter-terrorism strategies are designed to defeat terrorism by reducing its political utility. The most common strategies are to mitigate terrorism by decreasing its political benefits via a strict no concessions policy; decreasing its prospective political benefits via appeasement; or decreasing its political benefits relative to nonviolence via democracy promotion...
Despite its policy relevance, the strategic model has not been tested... Does the terrorist’s decisionmaking process conform to the strategic model? The answer appears to be no...
The argument is not that terrorists are crazy or irrational; as Louise Richardson notes, psychiatric profiles of terrorists are “virtually unanimous” that their “primary shared, characteristic is their normalcy.” Rather, I contend that the strategic model misspecifies terrorists’ incentive structure; the preponderance of empirical and theoretical evidence reveals that terrorists are rational people who use terrorism primarily to develop strong affective ties with fellow terrorists...
Seven empirical puzzles vitiate the strategic model’s premise that terrorists are rational people who are motivated mainly to achieve their organization’s stated political goals. The seven puzzles contradicting the strategic model are (1) terrorist organizations do not achieve their stated political goals by a (tacking civilians; (2) terrorist organizations never use terrorism as a last resort and seldom seize opportunities to become productive nonviolent political parties; (3) terrorist organizations reflexively reject compromise proposals offering significant policy concessions by the target government; (4) terrorist organizations have protean political platforms; (5) terrorist organizations generally carry out anonymous attacks, precluding target countries from making policy concessions; (6) terrorist organizations with identical political platforms routinely attack each other more than their mutually professed enemy; and (7) terrorist organizations resist disbanding when they consistently fail to achieve their political platforms or when their stated political grievances have been resolved and hence are moot...
Crenshaw remarked at the time that terrorist organizations do not obtain “the long-term ideological objectives they claim to seek, and therefore one must conclude that terrorism is objectively a failure.” Thomas Schelling reached the same conclusion in the 1990s, noting that terrorist attacks “never appear to accomplish anything politically significant.” In a study assessing terrorism’s coercive effectiveness, I found that in a sample of twenty-eight well-known terrorist campaigns, the terrorist organizations accomplished their stated poiicy goals zero percent of the time by attacking civilians...
Polls show, for example, that after the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacked the British public, the British people became significantly less likely to favor withdrawing from Northern Ireland. Similar trends in public opinion have been registered after groups attacked civilians in Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, the Philippines, and Russia. Although the international community frequently appeals for target countries to appease terrorists, terrorist attacks on civilians have historically empowered hard-liners who oppose, as a matter of principle, accommodating thc perpetrators...
Terrorist groups never lack political alternatives. Large-n studies show, first, that only the most oppressive totalitarian states have been immune from terrorism, and second, that the number of terrorist organizations operating in a country is positively associated with its freedom of expression, assembly, and association—conditions conducive to effecting peaceful political change. The “paradox of terrorism” is that terrorist groups tend to target societies with the greatest number of political alternatives, not the fewest...
Terrorist organizations are characterized by “an intransigent refusal to compromise.” It is far more common for them to derail negotiations by ramping up their attacks. In fact, no peace process has transformed a major terrorist organization into a completely nonviolent political party...
Terrorism is an extremism of means, not ends. Many terrorist organizations profess surprisingly moderate political positions. Russian terrorist groups of the mid-nineteenth century were known as “liberals with a bomb” because they sought a constitution with elementary civil freedoms. The expressed goal of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is to achieve a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—a policy preference held by most of the international community. Robert Pape points out that even in his sample of contemporary suicide terrorist organizations, “the terrorists’ political aims, if not their methods, are often more mainstream than observers realize; they generally reflect quite common, straightforward nationalist self-determination claims of their community. . . goals that are typically much like those of other nationalists within their comrnunity.’ Yet terrorist organizations rarely commit to negotiations, even when these would satisfy a significant portion of their stated political grievances. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, for example, responded with an unprecedented wave of terror to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s January 2001 offer of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank.
The marked fluidity of al-Qaida’s political rationale is reflected in the fatwas Osama bin Laden issued throughout the 1990s, which contain a litany of disparate grievances against Muslims. Only in his fourth call to arms on October 7, 2001, did he emphasize the Israeli occupation, which is known in policy circles as his “belated concern.” Al-Qaida members have frequently criticized the inconsistency of their organization’s jihadi message...
Some of the most important terrorist organizations in modern history have pursued policy goals that are not only unstable but also contradictory The Basque separatist group ETA, for example, is criticized for failing to produce “a consistent ideology,” as its political goals have wavered from fighting to overturn the Franco dictatorship in Spain to targeting the emergent democratic government—a progression similar to that of the Shining Path, Peru’s most notorious terrorist organization. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party— Turkey’s most dangerous contemporary terrorist group (known by the Kurdish acronym PKK)—has likewise vacillated between advocating jihad, a Marxist revolution, and a Kurdish homeland governed without Islamist or Marxist principles. The Abu Nidal Organization staged countless attacks against Syria in the 1980s and then “almost overnight switched allegiance” by becoming a Syrian proxy. According to Leonard Weinberg, the most feared mternahonal terrorist group of the 1980s was willing to carry out a terrorist attack “on behalf of any cause,” even conflicting ones. Similarly, Laqueur points out that many well-known groups that began on the extreme right— such as the Argentine Montoneros, Colombian M-19, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—ended up on the left as far as their phraseology was concerned. Hoffman has likewise noted that in the 1980s, right-wing terrorist groups in West Germany temporarily adopted left-wing rhetoric and began attacking targets that are the traditional choice of left-wing groups. Predictably, the police initially suspected that dozens of their attacks were the work of communist groups."
(To be continued)
L'origine de Bert
Monday, April 13, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
"It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead." - Dame Rose Macaulay
***
Amusing REACH discussion topic:
Are Government Campaigns Necessarily Boring?
"When we hear the words 'Government campaign', certain thoughts immediately come to mind. Dull, another propaganda, no creativity.
The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) recently won a Gold award for its family commercial at the local MediaCorp Viewers' Choice Awards. It broke away from the conventional “government campaign” style by creating a deep impression on viewers with its strong emotive storyline of a single father and his strong-willed teenage daughter.
The MCYS has recently rolled out a new television commercial (TVC) which is part of a $1.25 million campaign to encourage Singaporeans to get married. The advertisement, set at a funeral, depicts an interracial marriage where a wife pays tribute to her dead husband by sharing fond memories of his less than endearing habits. It aims to celebrate the beauty of imperfections that make a relationship perfect.
The TVC has been received warmly since its debut last Sunday, with many saying that they were touched by the powerful storyline."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Someone up there is getting cheeky! Tsk tsk.
In any case, it's not just government campaigns.
The quality of advertising in Singapore in general is often low. Many seem to think viewers can't appreciate intelligent, subtle and/or amusing advertisements.
Perhaps one day we will have Superbowl-quality ads (or government campaigns, if you like).
(Incidentally, I haven't seen the first ad referenced yet. Is it on YouTube?)
***
Amusing REACH discussion topic:
Are Government Campaigns Necessarily Boring?
"When we hear the words 'Government campaign', certain thoughts immediately come to mind. Dull, another propaganda, no creativity.
The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) recently won a Gold award for its family commercial at the local MediaCorp Viewers' Choice Awards. It broke away from the conventional “government campaign” style by creating a deep impression on viewers with its strong emotive storyline of a single father and his strong-willed teenage daughter.
The MCYS has recently rolled out a new television commercial (TVC) which is part of a $1.25 million campaign to encourage Singaporeans to get married. The advertisement, set at a funeral, depicts an interracial marriage where a wife pays tribute to her dead husband by sharing fond memories of his less than endearing habits. It aims to celebrate the beauty of imperfections that make a relationship perfect.
The TVC has been received warmly since its debut last Sunday, with many saying that they were touched by the powerful storyline."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Someone up there is getting cheeky! Tsk tsk.
In any case, it's not just government campaigns.
The quality of advertising in Singapore in general is often low. Many seem to think viewers can't appreciate intelligent, subtle and/or amusing advertisements.
Perhaps one day we will have Superbowl-quality ads (or government campaigns, if you like).
(Incidentally, I haven't seen the first ad referenced yet. Is it on YouTube?)
Post ID: 6349002077668431715
"Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." - Don Marquis
***
"Who are they, these people we call ‘characters’? Let’s be frank: from a medical point of view, they are all neurotics, psychotics, paranoiacs, melancholics, schizophrenics: in short, sick people. As literature, sure, they are enthralling; but in reality, they would be in urgent need of medical attention. Characters in plays are sick people: this generalisarion we can make without fear of error. And it is for this single reason that we go to the theatre. I have seen Hamlet dozens of times, I love the play and its eponymous protagonist, but I am not sure if I would want to invite him round to dinner every Saturday, along with other friends, to spend the evening chatting about being or not being.
Take the following scenario. Who would want to go out to go and see a piece of theatre like this? A young man and a young woman, both good-looking and in good health, in love with each other, watch their children getting ready for school, where they are by far the best pupils. They accompany them to the school gate. Then they cross a flower-filled garden under the admiring and sympathetic gaze of their friendly neighbours, when, all of a sudden — here comes the postman! Hold onto your hats... he is the bearer of glad tidings — both mothers-in-law are in perfect health, and they are on a cruise around the Greek islands, and the weather is good...
Who would happily sit through such a play? No one! Not even Doris Day would perform in such a play. The only audience in such a theatre would be flies. The thing that prompts us to go to the theatre is conflict, combat; we want to see mad people and fanatics, thieves and murderers. And, I accept, a smattering of good souls, iust enough to set off the evil in all its glory. We hunger for the strange, the abnormal.
And so our actor — of sound mind — must play a sick character."
--- The rainbow of desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy / Augusto Boal, Adrian Jackson
I think this explains why people who study or write literature all have issues.
***
"Who are they, these people we call ‘characters’? Let’s be frank: from a medical point of view, they are all neurotics, psychotics, paranoiacs, melancholics, schizophrenics: in short, sick people. As literature, sure, they are enthralling; but in reality, they would be in urgent need of medical attention. Characters in plays are sick people: this generalisarion we can make without fear of error. And it is for this single reason that we go to the theatre. I have seen Hamlet dozens of times, I love the play and its eponymous protagonist, but I am not sure if I would want to invite him round to dinner every Saturday, along with other friends, to spend the evening chatting about being or not being.
Take the following scenario. Who would want to go out to go and see a piece of theatre like this? A young man and a young woman, both good-looking and in good health, in love with each other, watch their children getting ready for school, where they are by far the best pupils. They accompany them to the school gate. Then they cross a flower-filled garden under the admiring and sympathetic gaze of their friendly neighbours, when, all of a sudden — here comes the postman! Hold onto your hats... he is the bearer of glad tidings — both mothers-in-law are in perfect health, and they are on a cruise around the Greek islands, and the weather is good...
Who would happily sit through such a play? No one! Not even Doris Day would perform in such a play. The only audience in such a theatre would be flies. The thing that prompts us to go to the theatre is conflict, combat; we want to see mad people and fanatics, thieves and murderers. And, I accept, a smattering of good souls, iust enough to set off the evil in all its glory. We hunger for the strange, the abnormal.
And so our actor — of sound mind — must play a sick character."
--- The rainbow of desire: the Boal method of theatre and therapy / Augusto Boal, Adrian Jackson
I think this explains why people who study or write literature all have issues.
Post ID: 3257239773434105236
Saturday, April 11, 2009
How to get A+ in SMU:
"Week 2: Keep participating. Doesn't matter if your comments make sense or not. Just As long as you can hog airtime
Week 3: Pay people for past assignment answers. And projects from last semester.
Week 4: Spread nasty rumours. So peer evaluation ↓
Week 6: Suck up to prof
Week 7: Give fake tips
Week 8: Disappear [so others do your part]
Week 10: Sabo other group's presentation
Week 11: Steal notes from the muggers
Week 14: Pretend you're stupid
Week 15: Steal calculators before exams. Then dump them"
"Week 2: Keep participating. Doesn't matter if your comments make sense or not. Just As long as you can hog airtime
Week 3: Pay people for past assignment answers. And projects from last semester.
Week 4: Spread nasty rumours. So peer evaluation ↓
Week 6: Suck up to prof
Week 7: Give fake tips
Week 8: Disappear [so others do your part]
Week 10: Sabo other group's presentation
Week 11: Steal notes from the muggers
Week 14: Pretend you're stupid
Week 15: Steal calculators before exams. Then dump them"
Post ID: 2169539445377144423
"A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece." - Ludwig Erhard
***
An email forward I got:
"July 22nd 2009 another Tsumani...
Prevention is always better than cure ..Please be more cautious as the warnings has been given.
Attached a photo for u.
I just received this message from a colleague. I don’t know the source of the message; I also don’t know the credibility of the content, but just beware.
Below is the content on the message:
“Hello there. I just wanted 2 let you know that please stay away from the beaches all around in the month of July. There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami hitting on July 22nd. It is also when there will be sun eclipse. Predicted that it is going 2 be really bad and countries like Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Si Lanka, India, Indonesia, Philippines are going 2 be badly hit. Please try and stay away from the beaches in July. Better 2 be safe than sorry. Please pass the word around. Please also pray for all beings.”"
I Reply All-ed and said if there was really a Tsunami on that day, I would buy all of them lunch (even the people I didn't know).
I was surprised to find out that there really will be a solar eclipse on that day. And not too surprised to discover that the official-looking picture illustrating the email is modified from NASA's eclipse path diagram.
I was just surprised a mystical spin wasn't explicitly put on this (with the path of the eclipse opening the door to the Astral Plane and causing negative energy to radiate forth) but then, even in our gullible age, talking about all the planets being in alignment will lose you credibility among many (while, contrawise, mentioning other superstitions will gain you more).
More digging reveals the source of this misinformation. Ironically, it's a blog post mocking the pseudo-scientific thinking responsible for the above (irony, thou art dead!).
Disappointingly, all 238 of the people who resposted this online (or at least the first 10 who popped up on the first page of Google search results) either credulously believed it, took the "better safe than sorry" approach and urged caution or asked readers to make up their minds themselves. And the Malaysians are even better, holding "a Silent prayer... to calm down the sea's anger".
Now, while it's good for people to make up their own minds, there's no harm in calling out bullshit or nonsense when you see it. Respecting people's rights to hold beliefs is not the same as respecting all beliefs - the latter proposition opens the door to more balderdash than you can shake a finger at.
It's so easy to trick people. No wonder people keep crafting new chain mails to mislead and misinform.
Maybe I should write one about how white rice has been found to be carcinogenic, and in so doing foment the collapse of the Thai economy as naive Southeast Asians stop eating Thai rice.
I can even reuse this picture and claim it's what Thai rice looks like before they polish it:
Then Thaksin can fly back, depose the Prime Minister and install me as the new King of Thailand so I can use lèse majesté laws to screw anyone I don't like.
Meanwhile Vietnam will pay me handsomely for promoting their rice exports.
***
An email forward I got:
"July 22nd 2009 another Tsumani...
Prevention is always better than cure ..Please be more cautious as the warnings has been given.
Attached a photo for u.
I just received this message from a colleague. I don’t know the source of the message; I also don’t know the credibility of the content, but just beware.
Below is the content on the message:
“Hello there. I just wanted 2 let you know that please stay away from the beaches all around in the month of July. There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami hitting on July 22nd. It is also when there will be sun eclipse. Predicted that it is going 2 be really bad and countries like Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Si Lanka, India, Indonesia, Philippines are going 2 be badly hit. Please try and stay away from the beaches in July. Better 2 be safe than sorry. Please pass the word around. Please also pray for all beings.”"
I Reply All-ed and said if there was really a Tsunami on that day, I would buy all of them lunch (even the people I didn't know).
I was surprised to find out that there really will be a solar eclipse on that day. And not too surprised to discover that the official-looking picture illustrating the email is modified from NASA's eclipse path diagram.
I was just surprised a mystical spin wasn't explicitly put on this (with the path of the eclipse opening the door to the Astral Plane and causing negative energy to radiate forth) but then, even in our gullible age, talking about all the planets being in alignment will lose you credibility among many (while, contrawise, mentioning other superstitions will gain you more).
More digging reveals the source of this misinformation. Ironically, it's a blog post mocking the pseudo-scientific thinking responsible for the above (irony, thou art dead!).
Disappointingly, all 238 of the people who resposted this online (or at least the first 10 who popped up on the first page of Google search results) either credulously believed it, took the "better safe than sorry" approach and urged caution or asked readers to make up their minds themselves. And the Malaysians are even better, holding "a Silent prayer... to calm down the sea's anger".
Now, while it's good for people to make up their own minds, there's no harm in calling out bullshit or nonsense when you see it. Respecting people's rights to hold beliefs is not the same as respecting all beliefs - the latter proposition opens the door to more balderdash than you can shake a finger at.
It's so easy to trick people. No wonder people keep crafting new chain mails to mislead and misinform.
Maybe I should write one about how white rice has been found to be carcinogenic, and in so doing foment the collapse of the Thai economy as naive Southeast Asians stop eating Thai rice.
I can even reuse this picture and claim it's what Thai rice looks like before they polish it:
Then Thaksin can fly back, depose the Prime Minister and install me as the new King of Thailand so I can use lèse majesté laws to screw anyone I don't like.
Meanwhile Vietnam will pay me handsomely for promoting their rice exports.
Post ID: 4601356546329891774
"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." - Laurence J. Peter
***
Someone: about the verrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyy doubtful christian who wants to get the hardcore christian girl
feel like slapping him
Me: haha
the only folly of man is woman
Someone: i was once sucked in the same way and two years of life were spent in darkness
a bigger folly of man is a very devout christian woman
Me: someone was saying why travelling with women is bad:
1) indecisive
2) complain a lot
3) cannot take physical exertion
Someone else: 3) bad at directions
yeah
Me: 4) shop a lot (I'll add this myself)
directions are ok if you let someone else navigate
Someone else: btw, i like travelling with guys cos
1) they're not indecisive
2) they dun shop alot
3) they are good at navigating
4) they generally "take care" of me
5) they're less calculative and fussy
Me: why should you marry a smarter woman?
Someone: less conflict there
if you're the giving-way type
Me: gah
like that might as well marry a dumber women
less conflict also :P
Someone: i rather have a woman who's smarter rather than dumber honestly
more intellectually stimulating
no point having a dumb woman around
might as well get a blow up doll
Me: then look at it from the female POV
why have a dumb guy
Someone: a warm penis is better than a cold plastic one
Me: ........................
logic that privileges women never gets turned around
Someone else: tt dae *** was just toking to mi how some pple are turned on by shit n all
n she thinks tt maeb cos those are abjects
urine and faeces are the abject
neither object nor subject
because its what once used to be me, but its sth i expel to define myself
inner/outer dichotomy breaks down
i think sicko americans luv such sicko stuffs
like hafing sex w horses n rats etc
Me: haha
why you think it's an american thing
rats?!
can fit ah
Someone else: i think last time got some wat.. hamster or sth
died
duno urban legend or sth
i think it's an.. american thing!
Me: oh! the gerbils!
Someone else: cos in aisan culture.. duno abt japan la.. usu we haf suppressed women.. n if need sex men can just luk for women can settle alr..
but i think those places.. where women got more sae.. maeb.. harder to find victims.. so. uhh. turn to animals
Me: the japanese can be quite sick also lor
Someone: Like God, dogs only see the good in humankind.
Me: eh
shouldn't that be the reverse
see only the bad
that's why you have eternal damnation for sin
Someone: Mmmm?
God doesn't see the bad, if you accept his amnesty deal.
He still loves you whether you accept the deal or not, but a crime still must be punished, otherwise that's not justice.
anyway i came up with this because i was thinking of abused animals
especially dogs
why do they stick with their masters
even though sometimes these masters mistreat them
abuse them
starve them and force them to do horrible things.
Me: it's not justice if you write the draconian ['code']
err
there're mad dogs also
Someone: It is justice, we are born sinful.
Me: so you're being punished for something that isn't your fault
Someone: Of course there are mad dogs, how the heck do you tell if they're mad :)
Are you human?
Me: how do you tell if gods are mad?
Someone: You have to be a God yourself to know if they are.
However, if He was mad, we shouldn't even be able to scratch out a marginal existence in this world
Me: you can apply the same logic to the Fuhrer
(though at least you know the Fuhrer is real)
then again Big Brother wasn't
and Big Brother was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient
Someone: we would be clad in nothing but our skin and be sucking each other's dicks while attempting to crawl away with vestigal limbs from predators that like to torture their prey and devour it alive.
Me: that sounds like the human condition
Someone: Now that, would be a world of madness.
Sounds like , but isn't.
If you look at it less cynically, have you suffered a stroke yet?
Me: *** has
Someone: have you?
Me: no
Someone: mmmm
then i guess that's something to be thankful for
friend of mine had a pretty serious one :(
hospital ridden now
Me: in that case the abused dog which is tied up and left in the sun should be thankful that its master did not also amputate its limbs, cut out its tongue and put out its eyes
Someone: Ah yes, but if you are referring to the human condition in the metaphor, the dog's abuse is self-afllicted, and it is not tied up, but refuses to accept its master's food and shelter.
and most importantly love.
Me: well
the best description I've seen is:
"It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority punishment or reward.
In a nutshell, God had to kill Himself to appease Himself so that He would not have to roast us, His beloved creations, in HELL forever.
He loves us more than we can ever comprehend, but if we don't return His affections, He will make us regret it for eternity.
Now that is AMAZING GRACE!"
Someone: The description left out the part where the primordial representatives of the human race openly defied God and spat in His face literally by disobeying Him and choosing some fucking fruit over the Garden of Eden and unhindered....ability to talk to Him, everyday....anytime.
That's like describing the justice system without admitting to the crime.
Me: that's like describing justice in Ancient China
condemning all the relatives for one person's fault
and exterminating the whole clan
Someone: That makes sense, doesn't it?
A thief, will always breed thieves.
Me: luckily our modern conceptions of justice have evolved beyond that
Someone: Genetic predisposition does seem to be the reason the ancient chinese based their justice on.
Luckily, or unfortunately.
Me: err
Someone: Should a rapist or pedophile's children be allowed to live, because they are gentically predisposed to rape and or molest little children?
Me: that's
1) if you assume they are genetically predisposed to rape or molest little children
2) if you take the view of genetic determinism
however, even if we cloned Hitler (i.e. 100% DNA the same), there's no guarantee the clone would do the same things
modern justice systems allow for the possibility of parole (most of the time) - even for a criminal who has committed crimes
to say nothing of those predisposed to commit crimes
Someone: -sigh- the american justice system is fucked up
how many more victims occur
[because] they parole these evil people =(
Me: hello
even singapore has parole
even china has parole
Someone: oh dear.
Me: since you're of the "once a criminal, always a criminal" school you might wish to advocate the death penalty for all crimes
since criminals cannot be reformed
Someone: not all.
certain crimes.
drug related people, murderers, pedophiles, rapists.
***
Someone: about the verrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyy doubtful christian who wants to get the hardcore christian girl
feel like slapping him
Me: haha
the only folly of man is woman
Someone: i was once sucked in the same way and two years of life were spent in darkness
a bigger folly of man is a very devout christian woman
Me: someone was saying why travelling with women is bad:
1) indecisive
2) complain a lot
3) cannot take physical exertion
Someone else: 3) bad at directions
yeah
Me: 4) shop a lot (I'll add this myself)
directions are ok if you let someone else navigate
Someone else: btw, i like travelling with guys cos
1) they're not indecisive
2) they dun shop alot
3) they are good at navigating
4) they generally "take care" of me
5) they're less calculative and fussy
Me: why should you marry a smarter woman?
Someone: less conflict there
if you're the giving-way type
Me: gah
like that might as well marry a dumber women
less conflict also :P
Someone: i rather have a woman who's smarter rather than dumber honestly
more intellectually stimulating
no point having a dumb woman around
might as well get a blow up doll
Me: then look at it from the female POV
why have a dumb guy
Someone: a warm penis is better than a cold plastic one
Me: ........................
logic that privileges women never gets turned around
Someone else: tt dae *** was just toking to mi how some pple are turned on by shit n all
n she thinks tt maeb cos those are abjects
urine and faeces are the abject
neither object nor subject
because its what once used to be me, but its sth i expel to define myself
inner/outer dichotomy breaks down
i think sicko americans luv such sicko stuffs
like hafing sex w horses n rats etc
Me: haha
why you think it's an american thing
rats?!
can fit ah
Someone else: i think last time got some wat.. hamster or sth
died
duno urban legend or sth
i think it's an.. american thing!
Me: oh! the gerbils!
Someone else: cos in aisan culture.. duno abt japan la.. usu we haf suppressed women.. n if need sex men can just luk for women can settle alr..
but i think those places.. where women got more sae.. maeb.. harder to find victims.. so. uhh. turn to animals
Me: the japanese can be quite sick also lor
Someone: Like God, dogs only see the good in humankind.
Me: eh
shouldn't that be the reverse
see only the bad
that's why you have eternal damnation for sin
Someone: Mmmm?
God doesn't see the bad, if you accept his amnesty deal.
He still loves you whether you accept the deal or not, but a crime still must be punished, otherwise that's not justice.
anyway i came up with this because i was thinking of abused animals
especially dogs
why do they stick with their masters
even though sometimes these masters mistreat them
abuse them
starve them and force them to do horrible things.
Me: it's not justice if you write the draconian ['code']
err
there're mad dogs also
Someone: It is justice, we are born sinful.
Me: so you're being punished for something that isn't your fault
Someone: Of course there are mad dogs, how the heck do you tell if they're mad :)
Are you human?
Me: how do you tell if gods are mad?
Someone: You have to be a God yourself to know if they are.
However, if He was mad, we shouldn't even be able to scratch out a marginal existence in this world
Me: you can apply the same logic to the Fuhrer
(though at least you know the Fuhrer is real)
then again Big Brother wasn't
and Big Brother was omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient
Someone: we would be clad in nothing but our skin and be sucking each other's dicks while attempting to crawl away with vestigal limbs from predators that like to torture their prey and devour it alive.
Me: that sounds like the human condition
Someone: Now that, would be a world of madness.
Sounds like , but isn't.
If you look at it less cynically, have you suffered a stroke yet?
Me: *** has
Someone: have you?
Me: no
Someone: mmmm
then i guess that's something to be thankful for
friend of mine had a pretty serious one :(
hospital ridden now
Me: in that case the abused dog which is tied up and left in the sun should be thankful that its master did not also amputate its limbs, cut out its tongue and put out its eyes
Someone: Ah yes, but if you are referring to the human condition in the metaphor, the dog's abuse is self-afllicted, and it is not tied up, but refuses to accept its master's food and shelter.
and most importantly love.
Me: well
the best description I've seen is:
"It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority punishment or reward.
In a nutshell, God had to kill Himself to appease Himself so that He would not have to roast us, His beloved creations, in HELL forever.
He loves us more than we can ever comprehend, but if we don't return His affections, He will make us regret it for eternity.
Now that is AMAZING GRACE!"
Someone: The description left out the part where the primordial representatives of the human race openly defied God and spat in His face literally by disobeying Him and choosing some fucking fruit over the Garden of Eden and unhindered....ability to talk to Him, everyday....anytime.
That's like describing the justice system without admitting to the crime.
Me: that's like describing justice in Ancient China
condemning all the relatives for one person's fault
and exterminating the whole clan
Someone: That makes sense, doesn't it?
A thief, will always breed thieves.
Me: luckily our modern conceptions of justice have evolved beyond that
Someone: Genetic predisposition does seem to be the reason the ancient chinese based their justice on.
Luckily, or unfortunately.
Me: err
Someone: Should a rapist or pedophile's children be allowed to live, because they are gentically predisposed to rape and or molest little children?
Me: that's
1) if you assume they are genetically predisposed to rape or molest little children
2) if you take the view of genetic determinism
however, even if we cloned Hitler (i.e. 100% DNA the same), there's no guarantee the clone would do the same things
modern justice systems allow for the possibility of parole (most of the time) - even for a criminal who has committed crimes
to say nothing of those predisposed to commit crimes
Someone: -sigh- the american justice system is fucked up
how many more victims occur
[because] they parole these evil people =(
Me: hello
even singapore has parole
even china has parole
Someone: oh dear.
Me: since you're of the "once a criminal, always a criminal" school you might wish to advocate the death penalty for all crimes
since criminals cannot be reformed
Someone: not all.
certain crimes.
drug related people, murderers, pedophiles, rapists.
Post ID: 7341610822261497479
Friday, April 10, 2009
zulzul:
"I love Singapore. Harmless streakers fined. Minister who let MAS SELAMAT escaped still in office. Was he ever reprimanded ?"
Not to mention the other harmless streakers case.
"I love Singapore. Harmless streakers fined. Minister who let MAS SELAMAT escaped still in office. Was he ever reprimanded ?"
Not to mention the other harmless streakers case.
Post ID: 989641593208163147
Thursday, April 09, 2009
HWMNBN on why we use "Basis points" rather than "percentage points":
Two main reasons
a) To avoid relative vs absolute confusion.
Let's say a given interest rate is 20%. If we say it's increased by 2%, you can interpret it as: either 20% -> 22% (absolute), or 20% -> 20.4% (relative)
Saying 200bps makes it very clear it's an absolute increase in the rate from 20% -> 22%
b) Granularity.
Most times interest rates increase by tiny increments. eg 4.5% -> 4.52%, etc. However these granular increases can have large effects on exposure (because we're usually
talking about million or billion dollar impacts here). It's mentally easier to visualise 10-15bps as having a large effect vs 0.1%
Same reason why we have cents, rather than denominating everything in dollars (eg 0.5 dollars, 0.65 dollars) - it's just more convenient
Two main reasons
a) To avoid relative vs absolute confusion.
Let's say a given interest rate is 20%. If we say it's increased by 2%, you can interpret it as: either 20% -> 22% (absolute), or 20% -> 20.4% (relative)
Saying 200bps makes it very clear it's an absolute increase in the rate from 20% -> 22%
b) Granularity.
Most times interest rates increase by tiny increments. eg 4.5% -> 4.52%, etc. However these granular increases can have large effects on exposure (because we're usually
talking about million or billion dollar impacts here). It's mentally easier to visualise 10-15bps as having a large effect vs 0.1%
Same reason why we have cents, rather than denominating everything in dollars (eg 0.5 dollars, 0.65 dollars) - it's just more convenient
Post ID: 1800283740908991984
"Anything too stupid to be said is sung." - Voltaire
***
Random posts from gamebooks mailing lists:
"i just bought a book in Ebay, thinking it was an unknow "branching-plot-novel ", here what it say in the back cover :
"lost at the train station station ? to buy a ticket, turn to page 40. To find a hotel, go to 55. hot day, blue sky ? to hit the beach, turn to page 141. To meet the local, open page 93. Take this phrasebook and choose your own adventure ! "
well, so nothing to do with a choose your own adventure, it is a phrasebook, to help you translate croatian in english...
the book name are "craotian" phrasebooks, lonely planet editor, written by Gordana & Ivan Ivetac .
just wanted to warn you, to avoid the same mistake i've done ^^"
"Regarding genres, it must be noticed that fantasy doesn't necessarily need elves and trolls to be fantasy. Modern fantasy is deeply rooted in medieval Europe, a complex setting that did exist in the real world and whose appeal on today's Western people is obvious - after all, it's our past. And it is a past that not only offers many elements of wonder and much food for thought, but can also be represented fairly easily by just anyone who has studied it in his or her schoolyears. On the other hand, the future depicted in sci-fi is only too often a lazy speculation that inexorably tends to project current social problems in a stainless-steel, uber-technological world that is way too square and clean to be fascinating and too advanced to possibly pose all the problems we see depicted in sci-fi books and movies. Combat in a futuristic setting is also incredibly boring - you hit the target and zap!, battle's over. It's not physical nor spectacular, and it's no wonder that lightsaber duels are among the most exciting sequences in Star Wars. What made the original Star Wars great is exactly its fantasy elements: decadent towns and civilizations, space rogues, an evil empire, supernatural powers and myths, weapons that are more advanced than anything we have today but still are considered ancient at the time of the story. These elements are all mutuated from the classic medieval background of fantasy, and they're interesting because they existed in the past in some other form, and also because they can pose problems and help people solve those problems. Let's face it, a future where all disease is curable, where people needn't walk, cook nor work, where everything is clean and pure and everyone speak the same language just isn't interesting. And most sci-fi gamebooks fail to be interesting because they offer the usual generic "save the world" mission in a setting that features futuristic looks, but it's just our good ol' everyday Earth deep inside."
***
Random posts from gamebooks mailing lists:
"i just bought a book in Ebay, thinking it was an unknow "branching-plot-novel ", here what it say in the back cover :
"lost at the train station station ? to buy a ticket, turn to page 40. To find a hotel, go to 55. hot day, blue sky ? to hit the beach, turn to page 141. To meet the local, open page 93. Take this phrasebook and choose your own adventure ! "
well, so nothing to do with a choose your own adventure, it is a phrasebook, to help you translate croatian in english...
the book name are "craotian" phrasebooks, lonely planet editor, written by Gordana & Ivan Ivetac .
just wanted to warn you, to avoid the same mistake i've done ^^"
"Regarding genres, it must be noticed that fantasy doesn't necessarily need elves and trolls to be fantasy. Modern fantasy is deeply rooted in medieval Europe, a complex setting that did exist in the real world and whose appeal on today's Western people is obvious - after all, it's our past. And it is a past that not only offers many elements of wonder and much food for thought, but can also be represented fairly easily by just anyone who has studied it in his or her schoolyears. On the other hand, the future depicted in sci-fi is only too often a lazy speculation that inexorably tends to project current social problems in a stainless-steel, uber-technological world that is way too square and clean to be fascinating and too advanced to possibly pose all the problems we see depicted in sci-fi books and movies. Combat in a futuristic setting is also incredibly boring - you hit the target and zap!, battle's over. It's not physical nor spectacular, and it's no wonder that lightsaber duels are among the most exciting sequences in Star Wars. What made the original Star Wars great is exactly its fantasy elements: decadent towns and civilizations, space rogues, an evil empire, supernatural powers and myths, weapons that are more advanced than anything we have today but still are considered ancient at the time of the story. These elements are all mutuated from the classic medieval background of fantasy, and they're interesting because they existed in the past in some other form, and also because they can pose problems and help people solve those problems. Let's face it, a future where all disease is curable, where people needn't walk, cook nor work, where everything is clean and pure and everyone speak the same language just isn't interesting. And most sci-fi gamebooks fail to be interesting because they offer the usual generic "save the world" mission in a setting that features futuristic looks, but it's just our good ol' everyday Earth deep inside."
Post ID: 1334873738150626064
"The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
***
4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet - "The most powerful people on the Internet don't work for Microsoft, Google or the government. Rather, they're a bunch of antisocial, foul-mouthed, clever nerds who congregate at a largely unknown Web site called 4chan.org."
The pleasures and sorrows of work | The Economist - "Even the most soulless of offices has its vital part to play. The “start of work means an end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires... How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been, and now never will be.” This last observation seems so heartfelt, so poignantly rendered, that one can only advise Mr de Botton himself to cease his solitary endeavours and take the plunge into the pleasures of office life."
Human psychology and the economy | An economic bestiary | The Economist - "Messrs Akerlof and Shiller list eight questions which, they say, cannot be well explained without an appeal to animal spirits—but can be tackled with them. These range from why markets for housing and shares swing wildly (a combination of confidence, stories and bad faith) to why, contrary to standard theory, there appears to be a long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (mainly, a mix of money illusion and fairness)... How much do animal spirits help? Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these—even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations."
The ballot and the bottom billion | Democracy in difficult places | The Economist - "He shows unambiguously what observers of elections in poor countries have long suspected: that on their own, unless they are held in the context of a functioning democracy, elections can retard rather than advance a country’s progress. “If democracy means little more than elections, it is damaging to the reform process,” he writes... elections begin to pay dividends to society only when they occur in a system of checks and balances, with a functioning rule of law"
Will’s Maid Café Visit - "After a bit of a wait we had another maid (I think she was different) bring us our order. She didn’t just give it to us though, no way. First she knelt down on her knees and held up to us a container for us to pick our favourite colour straw out of. If choose pink as I am the epitome of masculinity while Shigeki opted for green. She then stirred my ice coffee (on her knees in front of me) and put the straw in our drinks. I thought we would get our items now, but no, there is more. She placed the tray in front of her and said “もえ、もえ、胸、きゅう！” (moe, moe, mune kyuu!) in a cute little voice accompanied by some hand actions. And we had to do the same thing if we were to receive our order. My dignity was annulled, but it was fun."
Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex - "Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts. This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
What will the feminists say?!
The world according to Kishore Mahbubani - "Ostensibly a book about the rise of Asia – there is quite a bit favourable to India – it is a long litany of complaints against America and a eulogy to China. While America is criticized on various issues from the Iraq war to the torture of prisoners, there is just one reference to Taiwan and none to Tibet; I checked the index... when he talks about the domination of the Western media, he should have asked himself who made it so. The fact is Asians read Western publications such as Time, Newsweek and the Economist and Asian newspapers use Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg because Asian media coverage is either inadequate or not sufficiently informative... Mahbubani sees what he calls “the irresistible shift of global power to the East” as a reversion to the old order of things. Asia was far richer than the West until the early 19th century... But what did Asia do with those riches? Where were the Asian Gutenbergs, Leonardo da Vincis, Shakespeares, Galileos? Why did democracy develop in the West while despotism seemed to be the rule in the East? Maybe those questions are for others to answer. Mahbubani's focus is on power and prosperity."
Corri Fetman Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit - "Corri Fetman, the Chicago divorce attorney who worked on the principle that it is better to divorce now so you can marry your trophy husband/wife, and who appeared in a nude Playboy spread, has alleged that she was sexually harassed by a former executive at the magazine. She said that Thomas Hagopian of the digital branch of Playboy Enterprises sent her sexually explicit emails and phone calls, touched her and then revoked her column when she refused to play into his advances... Fetman filed her lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and sought more than $4.5 million in damages for a number of charges, including, “gender violence” and emotional stress"
The fact that she's abusing the term "gender violence" (legally, the term is actually defined much more loosely than how Progressives use it) is telling.
Roseville couple, state settle suit over marriage license wording - "Attorney Steven Wood on Wednesday called it a clear victory for the Coddings and common sense... "The state's previous rejection of the marriage license caused the Coddings considerable anguish, as well as financial harm," said Wood. "That has now been remedied."... The couple claimed the state of California did not have the right to replace the terms "bride" and "groom" with "Party A" and "Party B" on state marriage documents."
Anguish and financial harm?! Then again some people might call the terms "Bride" and "Groom" homophobic."The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
***
4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet - "The most powerful people on the Internet don't work for Microsoft, Google or the government. Rather, they're a bunch of antisocial, foul-mouthed, clever nerds who congregate at a largely unknown Web site called 4chan.org."
The pleasures and sorrows of work | The Economist - "Even the most soulless of offices has its vital part to play. The “start of work means an end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires... How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been, and now never will be.” This last observation seems so heartfelt, so poignantly rendered, that one can only advise Mr de Botton himself to cease his solitary endeavours and take the plunge into the pleasures of office life."
Human psychology and the economy | An economic bestiary | The Economist - "Messrs Akerlof and Shiller list eight questions which, they say, cannot be well explained without an appeal to animal spirits—but can be tackled with them. These range from why markets for housing and shares swing wildly (a combination of confidence, stories and bad faith) to why, contrary to standard theory, there appears to be a long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (mainly, a mix of money illusion and fairness)... How much do animal spirits help? Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these—even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations."
The ballot and the bottom billion | Democracy in difficult places | The Economist - "He shows unambiguously what observers of elections in poor countries have long suspected: that on their own, unless they are held in the context of a functioning democracy, elections can retard rather than advance a country’s progress. “If democracy means little more than elections, it is damaging to the reform process,” he writes... elections begin to pay dividends to society only when they occur in a system of checks and balances, with a functioning rule of law"
Will’s Maid Café Visit - "After a bit of a wait we had another maid (I think she was different) bring us our order. She didn’t just give it to us though, no way. First she knelt down on her knees and held up to us a container for us to pick our favourite colour straw out of. If choose pink as I am the epitome of masculinity while Shigeki opted for green. She then stirred my ice coffee (on her knees in front of me) and put the straw in our drinks. I thought we would get our items now, but no, there is more. She placed the tray in front of her and said “もえ、もえ、胸、きゅう！” (moe, moe, mune kyuu!) in a cute little voice accompanied by some hand actions. And we had to do the same thing if we were to receive our order. My dignity was annulled, but it was fun."
Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex - "Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts. This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
What will the feminists say?!
The world according to Kishore Mahbubani - "Ostensibly a book about the rise of Asia – there is quite a bit favourable to India – it is a long litany of complaints against America and a eulogy to China. While America is criticized on various issues from the Iraq war to the torture of prisoners, there is just one reference to Taiwan and none to Tibet; I checked the index... when he talks about the domination of the Western media, he should have asked himself who made it so. The fact is Asians read Western publications such as Time, Newsweek and the Economist and Asian newspapers use Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg because Asian media coverage is either inadequate or not sufficiently informative... Mahbubani sees what he calls “the irresistible shift of global power to the East” as a reversion to the old order of things. Asia was far richer than the West until the early 19th century... But what did Asia do with those riches? Where were the Asian Gutenbergs, Leonardo da Vincis, Shakespeares, Galileos? Why did democracy develop in the West while despotism seemed to be the rule in the East? Maybe those questions are for others to answer. Mahbubani's focus is on power and prosperity."
Corri Fetman Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit - "Corri Fetman, the Chicago divorce attorney who worked on the principle that it is better to divorce now so you can marry your trophy husband/wife, and who appeared in a nude Playboy spread, has alleged that she was sexually harassed by a former executive at the magazine. She said that Thomas Hagopian of the digital branch of Playboy Enterprises sent her sexually explicit emails and phone calls, touched her and then revoked her column when she refused to play into his advances... Fetman filed her lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and sought more than $4.5 million in damages for a number of charges, including, “gender violence” and emotional stress"
The fact that she's abusing the term "gender violence" (legally, the term is actually defined much more loosely than how Progressives use it) is telling.
Roseville couple, state settle suit over marriage license wording - "Attorney Steven Wood on Wednesday called it a clear victory for the Coddings and common sense... "The state's previous rejection of the marriage license caused the Coddings considerable anguish, as well as financial harm," said Wood. "That has now been remedied."... The couple claimed the state of California did not have the right to replace the terms "bride" and "groom" with "Party A" and "Party B" on state marriage documents."
Anguish and financial harm?! Then again some people might call the terms "Bride" and "Groom" homophobic."The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
Post ID: 4826819173879148031
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Random tidbit:
"Auspicium melioris aevi" does NOT translate as "Hope for a better age" but "Omen of a better age"
"Auspicium melioris aevi" does NOT translate as "Hope for a better age" but "Omen of a better age"
Post ID: 9180147986113491408
Monday, April 06, 2009
"I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing." - Johnny Carson
***
Aiding is Abetting
"Dambisa Moyo's prescription for economic sustainability in Africa—which includes cutting off all aid within five years—might seem insane if the statistics weren't so grim: despite one trillion dollars in western aid over the past sixty years, the economic lot of the average African has only gotten worse...
Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren't accountable to their citizens: since they don't depend on tax revenue, leaders don't think they owe their people anything—and the people don't expect anything from their leaders...
Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship... We have centuries of evidence that [capitalism] generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we're ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
I think the whole aid model is couched in pity [rather than] logic and evidence... [the] whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it's based largely on emotion and pity...
In Madagascar, some aid money had been cut and the government was not investing in the domestic citizenry or even paying the army. So the army staged a coup...
A friend of mine had a great quote: "Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA."... The Chinese have created jobs; they've built roads. The West has failed to do that in sixty years in Africa...
Aside from the corrupt leaders, aid supports over five hundred thousand people (mainly in the West) working in the aid industry and virtually none of it reaches the people for whom it was intended."
This is another tragic tale of what happens when you think with your heart instead of your head.
Comment elsewhere:
"[No Western politicians or Economists] draw an outright battle line between logic and pity. Oh, there are plenty of demagogues who claim the evidence is on their side, but they won't be so outright condemning of emotion... Moyo says she's gotten a better reception in Africa than in the West. Maybe you need to see your whole continent wrecked by emotion and pity before "logic and evidence" start to sound appealing."
***
Aiding is Abetting
"Dambisa Moyo's prescription for economic sustainability in Africa—which includes cutting off all aid within five years—might seem insane if the statistics weren't so grim: despite one trillion dollars in western aid over the past sixty years, the economic lot of the average African has only gotten worse...
Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren't accountable to their citizens: since they don't depend on tax revenue, leaders don't think they owe their people anything—and the people don't expect anything from their leaders...
Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship... We have centuries of evidence that [capitalism] generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we're ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
I think the whole aid model is couched in pity [rather than] logic and evidence... [the] whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it's based largely on emotion and pity...
In Madagascar, some aid money had been cut and the government was not investing in the domestic citizenry or even paying the army. So the army staged a coup...
A friend of mine had a great quote: "Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA."... The Chinese have created jobs; they've built roads. The West has failed to do that in sixty years in Africa...
Aside from the corrupt leaders, aid supports over five hundred thousand people (mainly in the West) working in the aid industry and virtually none of it reaches the people for whom it was intended."
This is another tragic tale of what happens when you think with your heart instead of your head.
Comment elsewhere:
"[No Western politicians or Economists] draw an outright battle line between logic and pity. Oh, there are plenty of demagogues who claim the evidence is on their side, but they won't be so outright condemning of emotion... Moyo says she's gotten a better reception in Africa than in the West. Maybe you need to see your whole continent wrecked by emotion and pity before "logic and evidence" start to sound appealing."
Post ID: 6588032913250169343
"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." - Bob Thaves
***
Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders - "Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force... Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. “They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”... “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”"
AXED GALS TAKE POLE POSITIONS - "The economy's gone bust, and so have they. Scores of professional New York women stripped of their six-figure jobs are now working as "gentlemen's club entertainers" at upscale Manhattan jiggle joints. Former Wall Streeters, fashion executives and real-estate agents are pole dancing and stripping for as much as $1,500 a night -- but also because they like the flexible hours... "These places give men hope," Langdan said. "Even in the worst of times, for us it's the breast of times.""
Chinese Word List - CantoDict - "CantoDict v1.3.16 is a collaborative Chinese Dictionary project started in November 2003. Entries are added and mistakes corrected by a team of kind volunteers from around the world."
Bouncers face charges in beating of patron at Muskego bar - "The bouncers held his arms, kicked Hummer in the side and struck him in the face. The bouncers then picked up Hummer, already bloody and bruised, pushed him toward the door and then outside and to the ground. As he fell, Hummer's head struck a jagged stone pillar... The bartender told police he asked the bouncers to remove the men from the bar because Hummer refused to put a coaster under his beer, the report says."
The Straight Dope: Can playing the bongos make you piss blood? - "Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle."
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink - "• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters
Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!""
Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 Attempts - "When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children."
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center - "Languages are categorized from I (easiest) to IV (hardest), based on the difficulty native speakers of American English may have in learning a foreign language... Category I: English, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian (DLPT III)
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean"
"This is a joke, isn't it?" My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News - ""You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?" My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.
"No, it's not satire. Why are you asking?" I said.
"Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it's Nazi talk.""
Akihabara Cafe: Miko-san Cafe - "In Akihabara, the Miko-san also have a new duty. To perform popular JPop songs, while serving you fruit juice and rice balls. The Miko-san Cafe has opened on Chuo Street, near Dragon Ice Cream for those of you actually in Japan. Their traditional Shrine attire has received a makeover… well really it was just raised like 2 feet turning it into almost a mini-skirt."
Damn Japs.
Five hurt as mop-wielding woman runs amok - "One report claimed she was laughing uncontrollably as she struck an elderly woman several times during her 30-minute spree."
This was posted on April Fool's but it seems genuine enough.
The Women's Movement - "Cooking a meal could only be "dogwork," and to claim any pleasure from it was evidence of craven acquiescence in one's own forced labor. Small children could only be odious mechanisms for the spilling and digesting of food, for robbing women of their "freedom." It was a long way from Simone de Beauvoir's grave and awesome recognition of woman's role as "the Other" to the notion that the first step in changing that role was Alix Kates Shulman's marriage contract ("wife strips beds, husband remakes them") reproduced in Ms; but it was toward just such trivialization that the women's movement seemed to be heading... This ubiquitous construct was everyone's victim but her own. She was persecuted even by her gynecologist, who made her beg in vain for contraceptives. She particularly needed contraceptives because she was raped on every date, raped by her husband, and raped finally on the abortionist's table... Increasingly it seemed that the aversion was to adult sexual life itself: how much cleaner to stay forever children... I suspect, that the women's movement is no longer a cause but a symptom."
Virgin Atlantic cabin crew ad 'is sexist and offensive to women', claim viewers - "Today the advertising watchdog dismissed complaints that the TV ad is sexist and offensive to women. The ASA has decided that there were no grounds for a formal investigation and said that it 'considered that the ad was unlikely to be seen as sexist or derogatory towards women or to cause serious or widespread offence.' The advert plays upon stereo types of advertising in the 1980s when Virgin Atlantic was first launched."
***
Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders - "Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force... Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. “They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”... “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”"
AXED GALS TAKE POLE POSITIONS - "The economy's gone bust, and so have they. Scores of professional New York women stripped of their six-figure jobs are now working as "gentlemen's club entertainers" at upscale Manhattan jiggle joints. Former Wall Streeters, fashion executives and real-estate agents are pole dancing and stripping for as much as $1,500 a night -- but also because they like the flexible hours... "These places give men hope," Langdan said. "Even in the worst of times, for us it's the breast of times.""
Chinese Word List - CantoDict - "CantoDict v1.3.16 is a collaborative Chinese Dictionary project started in November 2003. Entries are added and mistakes corrected by a team of kind volunteers from around the world."
Bouncers face charges in beating of patron at Muskego bar - "The bouncers held his arms, kicked Hummer in the side and struck him in the face. The bouncers then picked up Hummer, already bloody and bruised, pushed him toward the door and then outside and to the ground. As he fell, Hummer's head struck a jagged stone pillar... The bartender told police he asked the bouncers to remove the men from the bar because Hummer refused to put a coaster under his beer, the report says."
The Straight Dope: Can playing the bongos make you piss blood? - "Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle."
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink - "• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters
Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!""
Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 Attempts - "When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children."
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center - "Languages are categorized from I (easiest) to IV (hardest), based on the difficulty native speakers of American English may have in learning a foreign language... Category I: English, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian (DLPT III)
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean"
"This is a joke, isn't it?" My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News - ""You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?" My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.
"No, it's not satire. Why are you asking?" I said.
"Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it's Nazi talk.""
Akihabara Cafe: Miko-san Cafe - "In Akihabara, the Miko-san also have a new duty. To perform popular JPop songs, while serving you fruit juice and rice balls. The Miko-san Cafe has opened on Chuo Street, near Dragon Ice Cream for those of you actually in Japan. Their traditional Shrine attire has received a makeover… well really it was just raised like 2 feet turning it into almost a mini-skirt."
Damn Japs.
Five hurt as mop-wielding woman runs amok - "One report claimed she was laughing uncontrollably as she struck an elderly woman several times during her 30-minute spree."
This was posted on April Fool's but it seems genuine enough.
The Women's Movement - "Cooking a meal could only be "dogwork," and to claim any pleasure from it was evidence of craven acquiescence in one's own forced labor. Small children could only be odious mechanisms for the spilling and digesting of food, for robbing women of their "freedom." It was a long way from Simone de Beauvoir's grave and awesome recognition of woman's role as "the Other" to the notion that the first step in changing that role was Alix Kates Shulman's marriage contract ("wife strips beds, husband remakes them") reproduced in Ms; but it was toward just such trivialization that the women's movement seemed to be heading... This ubiquitous construct was everyone's victim but her own. She was persecuted even by her gynecologist, who made her beg in vain for contraceptives. She particularly needed contraceptives because she was raped on every date, raped by her husband, and raped finally on the abortionist's table... Increasingly it seemed that the aversion was to adult sexual life itself: how much cleaner to stay forever children... I suspect, that the women's movement is no longer a cause but a symptom."
Virgin Atlantic cabin crew ad 'is sexist and offensive to women', claim viewers - "Today the advertising watchdog dismissed complaints that the TV ad is sexist and offensive to women. The ASA has decided that there were no grounds for a formal investigation and said that it 'considered that the ad was unlikely to be seen as sexist or derogatory towards women or to cause serious or widespread offence.' The advert plays upon stereo types of advertising in the 1980s when Virgin Atlantic was first launched."
Post ID: 7131714959220529291
Sunday, April 05, 2009
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Anonymous
***
A case not so different from what you find in some religious texts (as the people quoted here agree):
Death Opens Doors on Group
"Answering to a leader called Queen Antoinette, they denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say "Amen" at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring...
Ramkissoon, 22, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.
Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs, in part because they were shared by those around her.
"She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors' psychiatric evaluation...
Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.
"At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion," said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. "It's a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system."...
According to charging documents, in December 2006, Javon stopped saying "Amen" at mealtimes. Queen Antoinette told members the boy had developed a demonic spirit and needed to be cleansed through fasting and by being denied water, law enforcement officials said...
The group came to believe there had been no resurrection because someone among them was not a true believer, according to an attorney for one of the other defendants, Marcus Cobbs. With that person no longer part of the group, they headed north out of Baltimore with the suitcase, believing Javon could be raised at a future date, according to Cobbs's attorney, Maureen Rowland."
If you talk to God, you're religious.
If God talks to you, you're psychotic
***
A case not so different from what you find in some religious texts (as the people quoted here agree):
Death Opens Doors on Group
"Answering to a leader called Queen Antoinette, they denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say "Amen" at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring...
Ramkissoon, 22, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.
Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs, in part because they were shared by those around her.
"She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors' psychiatric evaluation...
Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.
"At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion," said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. "It's a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system."...
According to charging documents, in December 2006, Javon stopped saying "Amen" at mealtimes. Queen Antoinette told members the boy had developed a demonic spirit and needed to be cleansed through fasting and by being denied water, law enforcement officials said...
The group came to believe there had been no resurrection because someone among them was not a true believer, according to an attorney for one of the other defendants, Marcus Cobbs. With that person no longer part of the group, they headed north out of Baltimore with the suitcase, believing Javon could be raised at a future date, according to Cobbs's attorney, Maureen Rowland."
If you talk to God, you're religious.
If God talks to you, you're psychotic
Post ID: 5567691141509349904
"Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are." - Henry Fielding
***
From the hilarious (for so many reasons, but now-deleted) CNA forum thread: GOVT SHOULD BAN "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST"
Huatuatua: I have never started a thread here, but I feel anger and compelled to write about this. Let me explain.
My daughter and her Junior College schoolmates (male and females) attended the play "The importance of being earnest" by Glenn Goei and Ivan Heng (the two well known effeminate threatre actors.) At first I was uncertain to let her go, but since she and her schoolmates wanted to get some ideas for her drama plays, I decided to let her, especially after I saw it featured on Prime Time Morning Show on Channel News Asia.
What she told me after the play shocked me.
The play has male actors playing the roles of females but dressing in Men's suits. There were enough compromising scenes among the male actors to suggest that this is a play meant for the gays! But this is not more disgusting part.
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows. They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots. Her male schoolmates even saw some kissing scenes in the male toilets!!
This is rtaher disgusting. I felt that this is a play that is solely targeted for gay gathering and should not be allowed for public viewing. It should be a close door event, with school children banned from the show..
Since our dear PM has endorsed the gay movement in singapore, these people are getting bolder and bolder. Please be careful with your children attending such shows!!
Alot of parents really don't know what their children are doing outside in the public!! You got to stop your children from being gay as early as possible. Not all children are born gay, many are influenced by their gay peers. Many are influenced by what they saw outside. If they think that males holding hands with males, or males embacing males are okay, they will think it is a okay trend and do likewise. Evenutally they will become gay.
No wonder 35 percent of the males do not want to get married!!!
desert moon: Morals are sure degrading fast in Singapore, thats for sure. Even the PM was dragged down.
samseng: Screw all the chow ah Kuas. If brave, show your face, name, ic, address publicly, Why must always hide behind closed doors?
Joshing: Don't need to hide. I hope you will have a lesbian daughter or a gay son. You can screw them yourself at home and hide behind the closed doors.
schroeder: There were no “compromising scenes” – in fact, there was nothing more “compromising” than a peck on the cheek!
As for the event being “disgusting”, I don’t recall observing any young couples in the audience being publicly affectionate. I also used the male toilet during the intermission and after the play, and I’m sure I didn’t see any kissing there.
Mei Mui Bee: Huatuatua made ths post only to annoy people.
Thats why you can find it 11 times here:
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
Guess you have never watched the Rocky Horror Picture show.
They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots.
Go to little India and you can see that every Saturday and Sunday. No they are no gays, they are Banglas doing that.
Besides girls also ofetn hold hands or hug....girls can and guys can not?
dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
It cant be that so many are suddenly gay. That would defy any statistics.
Huatuatua: I annoy people? Only the gays will think that way!!! If you are so confident about your views, why asked the Admin to remove the remarks and comments made by non-gays??!!
I got the right to inform normal parents, what is happening in such plays! That they should be careful that their normal children would not be recruited into this "special community". I got the same right as you gay people. Period.
Mei Mui Bee: Well, if you dont call it annoying to make 11 times the same post.
Thats reckless...
You can start worrying about gay or not when your kids are mid 20ies and then they still display strange behaviour.
Some theatre piece make no one gay.
little_gecko: Btw, watching a gay play does not make one gay. If that is possible, gays can watch a normal play and become normal people too, rite? Kaoz, that's not how things work...
I did not feel uncomfortable, It is my daughter and her schoolmates who felt uncomfortable. The play would have been good if they get the females to play as females. What is so difficult?
Even back in the olden days, whether the Japanese Kabuki or Shakespearean plays, no females were allowed and males played the roles of females. So what good old fashion values are you promoting?? Shocked
This is my favourite comment:
trucky: 1) Unlike you've suggested, The Importance of Being Earnest is NOT a 'gay' play. In fact it is an approved 'O' level literature text that has been studied by millions of people over the years. And for this production, the actors are NOT playing female roles. The roles have been MODIFIED for an all-male cast. Therefore there are references to homosexuality but the play does not promote homosexuality. (Fallacy of division: Part of it containing 'gay' content does not make the whole of it a 'gay' play)
2) I went to watch Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (a Wild Rice musical) last December. They stage annual musicals targeted for children and the family (hence fairy tales as storylines). The musical contains ZERO content suggesting homosexuality. But among audiences I saw grown men wearing pink shirts, holding hands and acting effeminately. Does this mean we have to ban children from watching theatre with such audiences? Or do we have to ban supposed-gays from enjoying theatre so that our 'normal' children can enjoy plays? Or even better, ban men from wearing pink and force every male in our society to be burly and muscular to suggest they are 'normal' men?
...
4) Clearly you are against the play simply because you fear that the younger generation (whose sexual identities are supposedly not fully-formed) will be influenced by its 'gay' agenda(s). However I'm quite sure that no 'normal' student will turn 'gay' because of a play. Students are more easily influenced by real people (ie. friends and family) than fictional characters. I watched tons of children's TV shows growing up. But I do not have pink slime for lunch just because the Teletubbies do. Neither do I talk to goldfish or dye my hair red because Elmo has such characteristics.
[Ed: Emphasis mine. This can also be used to counter feminist (or other Progressive) nonsense. See also Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size]
... We won't be influenced or compelled to become a homosexual because of a play. If students were really that easily influenced, there would be no teen-smokers nor teen pregnancies!
(For the record, I am a girl, and I am straight. So no 'gay' accusations!)
samseng: joshing chow ah kua, you are losing the plot already. All the ah Kuas are the same. Lose only, use threats, curse people. You see that in Bangkok, you heard that in Orchard Tower. Why don't you do like one of those Shakespearean heros, go take a knife and plunge it into your heart? That would be very stylo.
Joshing: Losing? You mean there's a prize for winning?
If you win, do you get $10million SGD from me or the ah kua association?
rainbow 999: Too many beliefs is not the point
Just like COE, ERP, Road tax, Fuel tax, Insurance
Just fancy names which serve only One purpose
We are being imposed by some exceptional indivualds
No need to understand why or know why
Sun always up from the east
Just need to know these are exceptional perverts
which are the toxic asset of economic growth
i passed my PSLE english: Please stop discussing this type of sensitive topic here, we're a multi-racial and multi-religious society here. There're people of all faiths here including Muslims. Homosexuals is disallowed in Islam.
STOP talking nonsense in this forum regarding Ah Quas. Period.
MFTTW on the above: WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
you should start a new tag for your blogposts
"Singaporeans are full of shit"
***
From the hilarious (for so many reasons, but now-deleted) CNA forum thread: GOVT SHOULD BAN "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST"
Huatuatua: I have never started a thread here, but I feel anger and compelled to write about this. Let me explain.
My daughter and her Junior College schoolmates (male and females) attended the play "The importance of being earnest" by Glenn Goei and Ivan Heng (the two well known effeminate threatre actors.) At first I was uncertain to let her go, but since she and her schoolmates wanted to get some ideas for her drama plays, I decided to let her, especially after I saw it featured on Prime Time Morning Show on Channel News Asia.
What she told me after the play shocked me.
The play has male actors playing the roles of females but dressing in Men's suits. There were enough compromising scenes among the male actors to suggest that this is a play meant for the gays! But this is not more disgusting part.
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows. They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots. Her male schoolmates even saw some kissing scenes in the male toilets!!
This is rtaher disgusting. I felt that this is a play that is solely targeted for gay gathering and should not be allowed for public viewing. It should be a close door event, with school children banned from the show..
Since our dear PM has endorsed the gay movement in singapore, these people are getting bolder and bolder. Please be careful with your children attending such shows!!
Alot of parents really don't know what their children are doing outside in the public!! You got to stop your children from being gay as early as possible. Not all children are born gay, many are influenced by their gay peers. Many are influenced by what they saw outside. If they think that males holding hands with males, or males embacing males are okay, they will think it is a okay trend and do likewise. Evenutally they will become gay.
No wonder 35 percent of the males do not want to get married!!!
desert moon: Morals are sure degrading fast in Singapore, thats for sure. Even the PM was dragged down.
samseng: Screw all the chow ah Kuas. If brave, show your face, name, ic, address publicly, Why must always hide behind closed doors?
Joshing: Don't need to hide. I hope you will have a lesbian daughter or a gay son. You can screw them yourself at home and hide behind the closed doors.
schroeder: There were no “compromising scenes” – in fact, there was nothing more “compromising” than a peck on the cheek!
As for the event being “disgusting”, I don’t recall observing any young couples in the audience being publicly affectionate. I also used the male toilet during the intermission and after the play, and I’m sure I didn’t see any kissing there.
Mei Mui Bee: Huatuatua made ths post only to annoy people.
Thats why you can find it 11 times here:
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
Guess you have never watched the Rocky Horror Picture show.
They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots.
Go to little India and you can see that every Saturday and Sunday. No they are no gays, they are Banglas doing that.
Besides girls also ofetn hold hands or hug....girls can and guys can not?
dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
It cant be that so many are suddenly gay. That would defy any statistics.
Huatuatua: I annoy people? Only the gays will think that way!!! If you are so confident about your views, why asked the Admin to remove the remarks and comments made by non-gays??!!
I got the right to inform normal parents, what is happening in such plays! That they should be careful that their normal children would not be recruited into this "special community". I got the same right as you gay people. Period.
Mei Mui Bee: Well, if you dont call it annoying to make 11 times the same post.
Thats reckless...
You can start worrying about gay or not when your kids are mid 20ies and then they still display strange behaviour.
Some theatre piece make no one gay.
little_gecko: Btw, watching a gay play does not make one gay. If that is possible, gays can watch a normal play and become normal people too, rite? Kaoz, that's not how things work...
I did not feel uncomfortable, It is my daughter and her schoolmates who felt uncomfortable. The play would have been good if they get the females to play as females. What is so difficult?
Even back in the olden days, whether the Japanese Kabuki or Shakespearean plays, no females were allowed and males played the roles of females. So what good old fashion values are you promoting?? Shocked
This is my favourite comment:
trucky: 1) Unlike you've suggested, The Importance of Being Earnest is NOT a 'gay' play. In fact it is an approved 'O' level literature text that has been studied by millions of people over the years. And for this production, the actors are NOT playing female roles. The roles have been MODIFIED for an all-male cast. Therefore there are references to homosexuality but the play does not promote homosexuality. (Fallacy of division: Part of it containing 'gay' content does not make the whole of it a 'gay' play)
2) I went to watch Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (a Wild Rice musical) last December. They stage annual musicals targeted for children and the family (hence fairy tales as storylines). The musical contains ZERO content suggesting homosexuality. But among audiences I saw grown men wearing pink shirts, holding hands and acting effeminately. Does this mean we have to ban children from watching theatre with such audiences? Or do we have to ban supposed-gays from enjoying theatre so that our 'normal' children can enjoy plays? Or even better, ban men from wearing pink and force every male in our society to be burly and muscular to suggest they are 'normal' men?
...
4) Clearly you are against the play simply because you fear that the younger generation (whose sexual identities are supposedly not fully-formed) will be influenced by its 'gay' agenda(s). However I'm quite sure that no 'normal' student will turn 'gay' because of a play. Students are more easily influenced by real people (ie. friends and family) than fictional characters. I watched tons of children's TV shows growing up. But I do not have pink slime for lunch just because the Teletubbies do. Neither do I talk to goldfish or dye my hair red because Elmo has such characteristics.
[Ed: Emphasis mine. This can also be used to counter feminist (or other Progressive) nonsense. See also Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size]
... We won't be influenced or compelled to become a homosexual because of a play. If students were really that easily influenced, there would be no teen-smokers nor teen pregnancies!
(For the record, I am a girl, and I am straight. So no 'gay' accusations!)
samseng: joshing chow ah kua, you are losing the plot already. All the ah Kuas are the same. Lose only, use threats, curse people. You see that in Bangkok, you heard that in Orchard Tower. Why don't you do like one of those Shakespearean heros, go take a knife and plunge it into your heart? That would be very stylo.
Joshing: Losing? You mean there's a prize for winning?
If you win, do you get $10million SGD from me or the ah kua association?
rainbow 999: Too many beliefs is not the point
Just like COE, ERP, Road tax, Fuel tax, Insurance
Just fancy names which serve only One purpose
We are being imposed by some exceptional indivualds
No need to understand why or know why
Sun always up from the east
Just need to know these are exceptional perverts
which are the toxic asset of economic growth
i passed my PSLE english: Please stop discussing this type of sensitive topic here, we're a multi-racial and multi-religious society here. There're people of all faiths here including Muslims. Homosexuals is disallowed in Islam.
STOP talking nonsense in this forum regarding Ah Quas. Period.
MFTTW on the above: WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
you should start a new tag for your blogposts
"Singaporeans are full of shit"
Post ID: 3670446753939456662
Saturday, April 04, 2009
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." - Charles Bukowski
***
"Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons"
"Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25"
"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds"
"Get 50% off or half price, whichever is less."
"One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers"
"What constitutes a millionaire?"
"A millionaire is someone who has $1 million"
"Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum"
"A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman."
"Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison"
"Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks"
"A caller reported... someone was on a porch yelling "help"... the person was calling a cat that is named "Help.""
"Police were called... about a "suspicious coin." Investigating officer reported it was a quarter."
"A woman... reported that someone must have stolen her mail, because she did not receive birthday cards from some of her friends."
"Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a tash can. Upon investigation, officers discover it was only a burrito."
"1995 NISSAN Maxima, green, leather, loaded, CD, auto start, sunroof, 4-door, good condition, $4500. Not for sale."
"Police checked the area and found an open door in the back of the building. An officer went inside and called out, "Marco."
The man's name was not Marco... "the officer was trying to inject some humor into the situation."
Police found the suspect after he responded, "Polo.""
"TOMBSTONE: Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady"
***
"Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons"
"Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25"
"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds"
"Get 50% off or half price, whichever is less."
"One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers"
"What constitutes a millionaire?"
"A millionaire is someone who has $1 million"
"Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum"
"A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman."
"Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison"
"Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks"
"A caller reported... someone was on a porch yelling "help"... the person was calling a cat that is named "Help.""
"Police were called... about a "suspicious coin." Investigating officer reported it was a quarter."
"A woman... reported that someone must have stolen her mail, because she did not receive birthday cards from some of her friends."
"Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a tash can. Upon investigation, officers discover it was only a burrito."
"1995 NISSAN Maxima, green, leather, loaded, CD, auto start, sunroof, 4-door, good condition, $4500. Not for sale."
"Police checked the area and found an open door in the back of the building. An officer went inside and called out, "Marco."
The man's name was not Marco... "the officer was trying to inject some humor into the situation."
Police found the suspect after he responded, "Polo.""
"TOMBSTONE: Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady"
Post ID: 5914571014407566368
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong
***
Feedback I got on Improve Your English (wow, people actually read it!):
"You have a lot of great phrases to help others in catching mistakes. However, one phrase in the "Misspelled/Odd/Funny/Erroneous Signs" section is actually correct, but marked wrong:
- There are also news and traffic updates to make that drive home even smoother. (is)
To say, "There is also news and traffic updates" is a common MISTAKE that many native English speakers make. However, since the goal of your page is to help people speak English correctly, the subject and verb should agree. To see if they do, use this rule: simplify the sentence.
If the word "updates" is the subject you can simplify to "There are updates."
"Are" goes with the plural noun "updates".
If the words "news and traffic" are the subject of the sentence simplify to "There are news and traffic". You still use the verb "are" because the two things "news" and "traffic" combine to form a plural subject.
If you say "is" it sounds okay, unless you restructure the sentence. "Updates is there." is clearly wrong, just like "There is updates."
Enjoy the English language!"
Gosh, that entry is very old.
I'd like to think my kungfu has improved since then.
***
Feedback I got on Improve Your English (wow, people actually read it!):
"You have a lot of great phrases to help others in catching mistakes. However, one phrase in the "Misspelled/Odd/Funny/Erroneous Signs" section is actually correct, but marked wrong:
- There are also news and traffic updates to make that drive home even smoother. (is)
To say, "There is also news and traffic updates" is a common MISTAKE that many native English speakers make. However, since the goal of your page is to help people speak English correctly, the subject and verb should agree. To see if they do, use this rule: simplify the sentence.
If the word "updates" is the subject you can simplify to "There are updates."
"Are" goes with the plural noun "updates".
If the words "news and traffic" are the subject of the sentence simplify to "There are news and traffic". You still use the verb "are" because the two things "news" and "traffic" combine to form a plural subject.
If you say "is" it sounds okay, unless you restructure the sentence. "Updates is there." is clearly wrong, just like "There is updates."
Enjoy the English language!"
Gosh, that entry is very old.
I'd like to think my kungfu has improved since then.
Post ID: 1083035799477486249
"America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up." - Oscar Wilde
***
For sale: nagging wife, very high maintenance - "A British man fed up with his wife's complaints advertised her for sale -- and got a number of offers... Bates said his 40-year-old wife -- whom he advertised in the magazine's Free to Collect section, along with some of his fishing tackle -- initially gave him "a bit of an ear-bashing." But he said: "She's seen the funny side of it now though!""
KFC willing to fill potholes if company can brand its work - "Why did the fried-chicken maker cross the road? To fill the potholes, of course. The folks at KFC recently cooked up an appetizing offer for cash-strapped cities: The restaurant chain will fix crater-ridden streets for free if they're allowed to brand repairs with a chalked-on message saying that the road has been "Re-Freshed by KFC.""
YouTube - Mario: Game Over
American expat in S'pore in top 16 for "best job in the world" - ""(The caller) went, 'Hi Greg, this is Minister from Queensland Tourism Board. Congratulations!' I said yes! Whoo!"... Fulfilling an earlier promise should he make it to the final stage of the contest, he will he shaving his head and painting the colours of the Singapore flag on it on Friday. He will then run down Orchard Road in his flippers and snorkel."
I'm not surprised it's not a local.
Facebook | Famous Bishan Gay! - "Affiliation: Gay
Location: Bishan KFC, Singapore"
Five Geek Social Fallacies - "Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive... GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong... GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend. Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier."
Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study - "The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not. Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said "workplace Internet leisure browsing," or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration. "People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration"... "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity," said Coker. "That's not always the case." However, Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office."
Men spend more time gossiping than women, poll finds - "Men spend an average 76 minutes a day tittle-tattling with their friends or work colleagues, compared to just 52 minutes for women... Women also love to talk about news, but rather than focusing on politics or government issues, news about soap operas and celebrities are more likely to cause a debate.
MEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Drunken friends
2. News
3. Old school friends
4. Female colleagues at work
5. The sexiest girl at work
6. Spreading rumours
7. Promotions
8. Sexual relationships
9. Salaries
10. The boss
WOMEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Other women
2. News
3. Relationship problems
4. Other people's relationships
5. Sexual relationships
6. Friend's weight gain
7. Soap operas
8. Other women's boyfriends / husbands
9. The mother-in-law
10. Celebrities"
Product Fail - "Love bacon and all its goodness? Want to spice things up in the bedroom? Well, you’re sure to love this new product, baconlube™ . baconlube is a delicious personal lubricant designed to “keep it sizzlin’”. Now you can have your cake and eat it too."
Facebook | The Final Solution - "What if Science discovered a genetic cure for the moral defects of mankind? Sin would no longer be an option.
The world would be a better place. Or so it seems.
Will this be the "Final Solution" to all the problems in society?
In this Easter drama, view your world through the eyes of the new "Messiah" as faith, science, love and choice collide ...
You're invited to join us as we discover the true meaning of Easter. See you there!"
Why am I not surprised that this FAIL event name was from City Harvest?
Professor Sues Students for "Anti-intellectualism" - "Venkatesan is the author of a book called Molecular biology in Narrative form., which is also the title of her Ph.D. thesis. At least one reviewer thought the book was a joke... Professor Venkatesan taught a freshman course on "Science, Technology and Society" at Dartmouth where she expounded at length on various post-modern ideas and the concept that, "scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct." During one of those lectures some of her students challenged her and attempted to refute her post-modernist views. Some students applauded the dissidents. The result was traumatic for Professor Venkatesan and she ended up quitting her job at Dartmouth. She also launched a lawsuit against her students for violating her civil rights... There are too many universities these days whose faculties subscribe to the gibberish of these post-modernist pseudo-intellectuals. This may be a bigger threat to university students than creationism."
Squeez Bacon® - "A fully cooked 100% bacon paste that could be squeezed from a tube... Vilhelm Lillefläsk's Squeez Bacon® is fully cooked 100% bacon... If it's edible, it's better with Squeez Bacon®. In the immortal words of Vilhelm Lillefläsk, "Aldrig kommer att ge dig upp!" Once you get a taste of Squeez Bacon®, you'll know exactly what he meant."
Does Having Children Make You Unhappy? - "Children do not bring happiness. In fact more often they seem to bring unhappiness. That is the conclusion of one academic study after the next — and there are so many that it makes one wonder if researchers kept trying, hoping for a different result."
Viagra reduces hamster 'jet lag'
Facebook discipline may be illegal: expert - "Firms who discipline or sack staff for comments made on Facebook and Twitter could be acting illegally, says a veteran lawyer... She said she wrote something along the lines of "he's such an anally retentive asshole", without naming any individuals or the company. A manager at the company thought the comments were referring to him and refused to back down on giving her an official warning, so she quit her job... Penning said most employment contracts and policies had rules against speaking to media, but these were different from posting comments on social networking sites... A reader responding to yesterday's story about the NSW prison officers said he was fired from his job at a "large corporate bank" for using the word "recession" in his Facebook profile. "Ended up being reprimanded by both my boss and the head of our division, despite not using the company name or having either of them on my friends list. I lost my job shortly after," the reader wrote."
5 Things That Didn’t Kill Gaming As We Know It, Just Like Wii Fit Won’t - "Yanking a gamer from the fantasy adventure worlds of our imaginations back into the mundane, cyclical day-to-day rituals of reality is like getting punched in the face in the middle of a wet dream. The Sims managed to take everything we had built as the visionary standard of our beloved art-form and brutally ravage it. Casual gamers came out in droves to purchase the title, which momentarily gave them a break from things like going to the bathroom and ignoring their nagging mother in the real world so they could replicate similar acts of boredom in the game. The push for reality based games has always baffled my inner connection with video games as a trip through escapism. Mimicking the daily boredom of the average American suburbanite should never, ever be confused with ingenious game design, and a world taken over by Sims games would’ve done nothing but constantly echo the banality of our own lives. Plus the graphics sucked."
***
For sale: nagging wife, very high maintenance - "A British man fed up with his wife's complaints advertised her for sale -- and got a number of offers... Bates said his 40-year-old wife -- whom he advertised in the magazine's Free to Collect section, along with some of his fishing tackle -- initially gave him "a bit of an ear-bashing." But he said: "She's seen the funny side of it now though!""
KFC willing to fill potholes if company can brand its work - "Why did the fried-chicken maker cross the road? To fill the potholes, of course. The folks at KFC recently cooked up an appetizing offer for cash-strapped cities: The restaurant chain will fix crater-ridden streets for free if they're allowed to brand repairs with a chalked-on message saying that the road has been "Re-Freshed by KFC.""
YouTube - Mario: Game Over
American expat in S'pore in top 16 for "best job in the world" - ""(The caller) went, 'Hi Greg, this is Minister from Queensland Tourism Board. Congratulations!' I said yes! Whoo!"... Fulfilling an earlier promise should he make it to the final stage of the contest, he will he shaving his head and painting the colours of the Singapore flag on it on Friday. He will then run down Orchard Road in his flippers and snorkel."
I'm not surprised it's not a local.
Facebook | Famous Bishan Gay! - "Affiliation: Gay
Location: Bishan KFC, Singapore"
Five Geek Social Fallacies - "Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive... GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong... GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend. Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier."
Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study - "The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not. Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said "workplace Internet leisure browsing," or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration. "People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration"... "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity," said Coker. "That's not always the case." However, Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office."
Men spend more time gossiping than women, poll finds - "Men spend an average 76 minutes a day tittle-tattling with their friends or work colleagues, compared to just 52 minutes for women... Women also love to talk about news, but rather than focusing on politics or government issues, news about soap operas and celebrities are more likely to cause a debate.
MEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Drunken friends
2. News
3. Old school friends
4. Female colleagues at work
5. The sexiest girl at work
6. Spreading rumours
7. Promotions
8. Sexual relationships
9. Salaries
10. The boss
WOMEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Other women
2. News
3. Relationship problems
4. Other people's relationships
5. Sexual relationships
6. Friend's weight gain
7. Soap operas
8. Other women's boyfriends / husbands
9. The mother-in-law
10. Celebrities"
Product Fail - "Love bacon and all its goodness? Want to spice things up in the bedroom? Well, you’re sure to love this new product, baconlube™ . baconlube is a delicious personal lubricant designed to “keep it sizzlin’”. Now you can have your cake and eat it too."
Facebook | The Final Solution - "What if Science discovered a genetic cure for the moral defects of mankind? Sin would no longer be an option.
The world would be a better place. Or so it seems.
Will this be the "Final Solution" to all the problems in society?
In this Easter drama, view your world through the eyes of the new "Messiah" as faith, science, love and choice collide ...
You're invited to join us as we discover the true meaning of Easter. See you there!"
Why am I not surprised that this FAIL event name was from City Harvest?
Professor Sues Students for "Anti-intellectualism" - "Venkatesan is the author of a book called Molecular biology in Narrative form., which is also the title of her Ph.D. thesis. At least one reviewer thought the book was a joke... Professor Venkatesan taught a freshman course on "Science, Technology and Society" at Dartmouth where she expounded at length on various post-modern ideas and the concept that, "scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct." During one of those lectures some of her students challenged her and attempted to refute her post-modernist views. Some students applauded the dissidents. The result was traumatic for Professor Venkatesan and she ended up quitting her job at Dartmouth. She also launched a lawsuit against her students for violating her civil rights... There are too many universities these days whose faculties subscribe to the gibberish of these post-modernist pseudo-intellectuals. This may be a bigger threat to university students than creationism."
Squeez Bacon® - "A fully cooked 100% bacon paste that could be squeezed from a tube... Vilhelm Lillefläsk's Squeez Bacon® is fully cooked 100% bacon... If it's edible, it's better with Squeez Bacon®. In the immortal words of Vilhelm Lillefläsk, "Aldrig kommer att ge dig upp!" Once you get a taste of Squeez Bacon®, you'll know exactly what he meant."
Does Having Children Make You Unhappy? - "Children do not bring happiness. In fact more often they seem to bring unhappiness. That is the conclusion of one academic study after the next — and there are so many that it makes one wonder if researchers kept trying, hoping for a different result."
Viagra reduces hamster 'jet lag'
Facebook discipline may be illegal: expert - "Firms who discipline or sack staff for comments made on Facebook and Twitter could be acting illegally, says a veteran lawyer... She said she wrote something along the lines of "he's such an anally retentive asshole", without naming any individuals or the company. A manager at the company thought the comments were referring to him and refused to back down on giving her an official warning, so she quit her job... Penning said most employment contracts and policies had rules against speaking to media, but these were different from posting comments on social networking sites... A reader responding to yesterday's story about the NSW prison officers said he was fired from his job at a "large corporate bank" for using the word "recession" in his Facebook profile. "Ended up being reprimanded by both my boss and the head of our division, despite not using the company name or having either of them on my friends list. I lost my job shortly after," the reader wrote."
5 Things That Didn’t Kill Gaming As We Know It, Just Like Wii Fit Won’t - "Yanking a gamer from the fantasy adventure worlds of our imaginations back into the mundane, cyclical day-to-day rituals of reality is like getting punched in the face in the middle of a wet dream. The Sims managed to take everything we had built as the visionary standard of our beloved art-form and brutally ravage it. Casual gamers came out in droves to purchase the title, which momentarily gave them a break from things like going to the bathroom and ignoring their nagging mother in the real world so they could replicate similar acts of boredom in the game. The push for reality based games has always baffled my inner connection with video games as a trip through escapism. Mimicking the daily boredom of the average American suburbanite should never, ever be confused with ingenious game design, and a world taken over by Sims games would’ve done nothing but constantly echo the banality of our own lives. Plus the graphics sucked."
Post ID: 7584730585876195814
Friday, April 03, 2009
On the utility of labels:
"The nice thing about labels is that they allow you to have a discussion about something where everyone involved knows what's being discussed. Like, when you ask someone if they want a cookie, obviously you're not fully describing the infinite variety of cookies in the universe, but at least they know you're not offering a ham...
I completely agree that labels can cause a lot of problems. That's the problem with everything: it's not perfect."
"The nice thing about labels is that they allow you to have a discussion about something where everyone involved knows what's being discussed. Like, when you ask someone if they want a cookie, obviously you're not fully describing the infinite variety of cookies in the universe, but at least they know you're not offering a ham...
I completely agree that labels can cause a lot of problems. That's the problem with everything: it's not perfect."
Post ID: 2040651141139509600
"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right." - Arthur Schopenhauer
***
Pinker on some reasons why people think violence has increased in recent decades and years, though it has instead fallen precipitiously (and that "we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence"):
"There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets. No one ever attracted advocates and donors by saying 'things just seems to be getting better and better'.
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life. An unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture."
More from him about Pax Modernitatis:
"In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
... The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood"). But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler...
The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century...
According to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent."
***
Pinker on some reasons why people think violence has increased in recent decades and years, though it has instead fallen precipitiously (and that "we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence"):
"There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets. No one ever attracted advocates and donors by saying 'things just seems to be getting better and better'.
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life. An unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture."
More from him about Pax Modernitatis:
"In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
... The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood"). But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler...
The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century...
According to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent."
Post ID: 1176254953792409273
Thursday, April 02, 2009
"None are so busy as the fool and knave." - John Dryden
***
PIRAMUS.
Pyramus was the most beautiful youth in the East and lived in Babylon. He fell in love with his neighbor Thisbe, but their parents refused consent to their marriage. They planned to escape together; first, they would meet at King Ninus's tomb, near which grew a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first but, frightened by a lioness, she fled into the tomb, leaving her cloak behind. The lioness tore the cloak with her bloody jaws, then went off. When Pyramus arrived and saw the bloody cloak, he presumed that Thisbe had been slain. He drew his sword and killed himself, and as his blood spurted upwards, it changed the white fruit of the mulberry tree to deep purple. Arriving soon afterwards, Thisbe found Pyramus dead and slew herself with his sword (Met IV.55-166; OM IV.229-1169). The story is also told in an Anglo-Norman poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Pyrame et Tisbé, in an Old French poem, Piramus et Tisbé (c. 1170), and in Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Navarre, 3171-3212.
Sounds familiar?
***
PIRAMUS.
Pyramus was the most beautiful youth in the East and lived in Babylon. He fell in love with his neighbor Thisbe, but their parents refused consent to their marriage. They planned to escape together; first, they would meet at King Ninus's tomb, near which grew a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first but, frightened by a lioness, she fled into the tomb, leaving her cloak behind. The lioness tore the cloak with her bloody jaws, then went off. When Pyramus arrived and saw the bloody cloak, he presumed that Thisbe had been slain. He drew his sword and killed himself, and as his blood spurted upwards, it changed the white fruit of the mulberry tree to deep purple. Arriving soon afterwards, Thisbe found Pyramus dead and slew herself with his sword (Met IV.55-166; OM IV.229-1169). The story is also told in an Anglo-Norman poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Pyrame et Tisbé, in an Old French poem, Piramus et Tisbé (c. 1170), and in Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Navarre, 3171-3212.
Sounds familiar?
Post ID: 8422525846002241622
"I was the kid next door's imaginary friend." - Emo Phillips
***
A dozen a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Is nine squared and not a bit more!
(12 + 144 + 20 + (3 x (4^.5)))/7 + 5 x 11 = (9 ^2) + 0
Credit: Sunflower
The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
From 1 to the cube root of 3,
Times the cosine,
Of 3 pi by 9,
Is the log of the cube root of e.
(I haven't done integration in almost a decade, so I don't know if this is right)
***
A dozen a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Is nine squared and not a bit more!
(12 + 144 + 20 + (3 x (4^.5)))/7 + 5 x 11 = (9 ^2) + 0
Credit: Sunflower
The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
From 1 to the cube root of 3,
Times the cosine,
Of 3 pi by 9,
Is the log of the cube root of e.
(I haven't done integration in almost a decade, so I don't know if this is right)
Post ID: 1588835935618050872
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?" - Jay Leno
***
On women in Cambodia:
"An employee of local NGO Gender and Development for Cambodia commented in 2002 that ‘20 people can rape a woman at the same time, and consider this a fun, bonding experience between males’ (PPP 2002: 14). Perhaps the most bizarre commentary on the role of women in post-revolutionary Cambodia is to he found on the Cambodian People’s Party list of important events in Cambodia’s history: ‘20 June 1999 — Royal palace denies rumour of evil god demanding thousands of long-haired virgin girls’ (CPP 2000)"
--- Women's Political Participation and Representation in Asia: Obstacles and Challenges / Kazuki Iwanaga
And, from Lost goddesses: the denial of female power in Cambodian history / Trudy Jacobsen:
"The presence of a pervasive sex industry was also perceived as being a result of female immorality, vanity, and lack of willingness to engage in 'real work'...
It continues to be the prerogative of elite men to demonstrate their potency and superiority over other men through sexual access to large numbers of women. If these women are virgins, the higher the prowess of the man involved, because virginity is an expensive commodity. High-level business agreements are ‘ratified by deflowering virgins procured for the purpose, in order to demonstrate mutual high regard. A Western parallel might be the decanting of a 30-year-old single malt in order to toast the business agreement. Virginity carries with it the assurance that there will he no ill-effects from the encounter (for the man, at least) and some believe that taking the virginity of a girl will remove bad luck, rejuvenate a flagging libido, or cure HIV/AIDS. This is why so many sex workers are young teenagers. Their value is diminished once their virginity has been sold, but they will not physically show the toll that the sex industry takes on their bodies for some years. Another attractive characteristic in young sex workers is that they are socially constrained to be obedient. Most Cambodian men expect their sexual partners, including sex workers, to be submissive and are disconcerted when their expectations are not met. It was extremely difficult to convince any Cambodian man to speak openly about why Cambodian women should not enjoy sex. Many seemed to think that it was an inherent aspect of Cambodian femininity. One moto driver said 'If wanted a srei rijoh rilenh [wriggly woman) I would go to a Vietnamese.’ Ly Ly, a sex worker, told me that she had been surprised at first when her Western clients 'told me to make noise, to move around, to sit on top ... . If I did this with a Cambodian man, he would be shocked and afraid'.
The majority of Cambodian men believe that Cambodian women are naturally timid, docile, and less capable than they are...
I have seen women agreeing to have sex with men in exchange for the price of the moto ride to her own home afterwards (around 50 US cents).
Foreign men come to Cambodia and find their every fantasy can be easily facilitated while not earning any disapproval from society at large because it is acceptable for Cambodian men to do the same. A popular ‘gentleman’s bar’ in Phnom Penh offers a particular service combining the exoticism of the east with the pleasures of the local pub. As soon as they walk in, men are given a complimentary beer. Shortly afterward, a hostess will appear and fellate them against the wall while they wait their turn at the pool table. Disapproval of this and other exploitative practices is portrayed as jealousy on the part of Western women who secretly desire the attention lavished upon their ostensibly more attractive counterparts. A cartoon in a locally. produced English-language magazine showed a Western man dancing with four young, slim, sexily dressed Cambodian women while at a nearby table four overweight older Western ladies voiced their disapproval over their colleague’s contribution to the exploitation of women. In the next frame, each woman had a thought-bubble over her head expressing sentiments such as ‘I wonder how much liposuction costs’ and ‘Can I get out to Bangkok for a facelift before New Year” Criticism is dismissed as jealousy."
Perhaps all this is due to Cambodian history:
"Sexual autonomy seems to have been exercised by women to a high degree, at least amongst women who were not born into the royal family. Zhou Daguan was told that Cambodian women were not likely to remain faithful in the absence of their husbands:
This is at odds with the inscriptions, which stress the importance of fidelity of women after marriage. Virginity is also the subject of conflicting views. One inscription speaks of a king’s infatuation with a woman ‘of perfect body, of irreproachable face’ waning when he realised that she was ‘already deflowered.' Jayavarman VII was pleasurably aroused by ‘a virginal and enchanting wife, awkward in revealing her charms: According to Zhou Daguan, however, brides and grooms often had pre-nuptial intercourse without social reprisal.” There was one rule for the elite and another for the rest of society."
Or maybe the Cambodians Zhou Daguan talked to pulled a Margaret Mead on him.
And finally, on sex workers in Southeast Asia:
"As highlighted throughout this book. women in the sex industry do not identify with representations that place them as victims of political economy, sex tourists or HIV/AIDS. Indeed. they perceive a negotiated tension between their free will to enter prostitution and the constraints that make this particular type of employment an opportunity for them. Moreover, sex workers do not conceive their encounters with foreign men in strictly oppressive terms. Dichotomous models of power—whether based on the colonizer/colonized or oppressor/subordinate binaries of nationalist and feminist discourse—are necessarily more complex, situated and strategic. Furthermore, the subjects of these models are capable of power and resistance in complex and unanticipated ways. In go-go bars throughout Southeast Asia the differences between white, Western men and Southeast Asian women are worked out, but this negotiation is not based on a clear relation of domination...
This approach to understanding the relationship between sex workers and their customers has much affinity with postcolonial perspectives which seek to disrupt the nationalist ideologies that set up a binary relation between Third World/First World... While the relationship between sex workers and their customers is the most detailed example given here, a similar argument is made about the relationship between Australian NGOs and their Filipino NGO ‘partners’. To define peer education as a purely colonizing discourse, for example, would be at the expense of understanding the Filipino translation and use of the concept.
As this study shows, organizations with specific political agendas utilize dichotomous notions of power which are incommensurable with the lives of women employed in the sex industry. Due to the global concern with HIV/ AIDS, these organizations include an increasingly complex web of international agencies (i.e. the United Nations, aid organizations from the West, etc.), national and local governments, and NOOs carrying out community—based WV/AIDS education projects. Furthermore, the advent of WV/AIDS has brought new voices to these debates, including those from the Western—based prostitutes’ rights movement. Through examining the perspectives of local, national and foreign organizations—as well as the uneasy processes of social and cultural identification between them—it becomes clear that representations of prostitute victims/sex worker agents are also articulations of organizational identity. Because the images the produced by government and non-government organizations are as much about their own positions within debates about sex work and AIDS. it could be argued these images are politically strategic stereotypes—and are therefore fragile and ambivalent. While they might deny the lived experience of sex work, they can also be considered the foundation upon which new identities might be constituted."
--- Sex work in Southeast Asia: the place of desire in a time of AIDS / Lisa Law
***
On women in Cambodia:
"An employee of local NGO Gender and Development for Cambodia commented in 2002 that ‘20 people can rape a woman at the same time, and consider this a fun, bonding experience between males’ (PPP 2002: 14). Perhaps the most bizarre commentary on the role of women in post-revolutionary Cambodia is to he found on the Cambodian People’s Party list of important events in Cambodia’s history: ‘20 June 1999 — Royal palace denies rumour of evil god demanding thousands of long-haired virgin girls’ (CPP 2000)"
--- Women's Political Participation and Representation in Asia: Obstacles and Challenges / Kazuki Iwanaga
And, from Lost goddesses: the denial of female power in Cambodian history / Trudy Jacobsen:
"The presence of a pervasive sex industry was also perceived as being a result of female immorality, vanity, and lack of willingness to engage in 'real work'...
It continues to be the prerogative of elite men to demonstrate their potency and superiority over other men through sexual access to large numbers of women. If these women are virgins, the higher the prowess of the man involved, because virginity is an expensive commodity. High-level business agreements are ‘ratified by deflowering virgins procured for the purpose, in order to demonstrate mutual high regard. A Western parallel might be the decanting of a 30-year-old single malt in order to toast the business agreement. Virginity carries with it the assurance that there will he no ill-effects from the encounter (for the man, at least) and some believe that taking the virginity of a girl will remove bad luck, rejuvenate a flagging libido, or cure HIV/AIDS. This is why so many sex workers are young teenagers. Their value is diminished once their virginity has been sold, but they will not physically show the toll that the sex industry takes on their bodies for some years. Another attractive characteristic in young sex workers is that they are socially constrained to be obedient. Most Cambodian men expect their sexual partners, including sex workers, to be submissive and are disconcerted when their expectations are not met. It was extremely difficult to convince any Cambodian man to speak openly about why Cambodian women should not enjoy sex. Many seemed to think that it was an inherent aspect of Cambodian femininity. One moto driver said 'If wanted a srei rijoh rilenh [wriggly woman) I would go to a Vietnamese.’ Ly Ly, a sex worker, told me that she had been surprised at first when her Western clients 'told me to make noise, to move around, to sit on top ... . If I did this with a Cambodian man, he would be shocked and afraid'.
The majority of Cambodian men believe that Cambodian women are naturally timid, docile, and less capable than they are...
I have seen women agreeing to have sex with men in exchange for the price of the moto ride to her own home afterwards (around 50 US cents).
Foreign men come to Cambodia and find their every fantasy can be easily facilitated while not earning any disapproval from society at large because it is acceptable for Cambodian men to do the same. A popular ‘gentleman’s bar’ in Phnom Penh offers a particular service combining the exoticism of the east with the pleasures of the local pub. As soon as they walk in, men are given a complimentary beer. Shortly afterward, a hostess will appear and fellate them against the wall while they wait their turn at the pool table. Disapproval of this and other exploitative practices is portrayed as jealousy on the part of Western women who secretly desire the attention lavished upon their ostensibly more attractive counterparts. A cartoon in a locally. produced English-language magazine showed a Western man dancing with four young, slim, sexily dressed Cambodian women while at a nearby table four overweight older Western ladies voiced their disapproval over their colleague’s contribution to the exploitation of women. In the next frame, each woman had a thought-bubble over her head expressing sentiments such as ‘I wonder how much liposuction costs’ and ‘Can I get out to Bangkok for a facelift before New Year” Criticism is dismissed as jealousy."
Perhaps all this is due to Cambodian history:
"Sexual autonomy seems to have been exercised by women to a high degree, at least amongst women who were not born into the royal family. Zhou Daguan was told that Cambodian women were not likely to remain faithful in the absence of their husbands:
Everyone with whom I talked said that the Cambodian women are highly sexed. One or two days after giving birth to a child they are ready for intercourse: if a husband is not responsive he will be discarded. When a husband is called away on matters of business, they endure his absence for a while; but if he is gone as much as ten days, the wife is apt to say, ‘I am no ghost; how can I be expected to sleep alone?’ Though their sexual impulses are very strong,, it is said some of them remain faithful.’
This is at odds with the inscriptions, which stress the importance of fidelity of women after marriage. Virginity is also the subject of conflicting views. One inscription speaks of a king’s infatuation with a woman ‘of perfect body, of irreproachable face’ waning when he realised that she was ‘already deflowered.' Jayavarman VII was pleasurably aroused by ‘a virginal and enchanting wife, awkward in revealing her charms: According to Zhou Daguan, however, brides and grooms often had pre-nuptial intercourse without social reprisal.” There was one rule for the elite and another for the rest of society."
Or maybe the Cambodians Zhou Daguan talked to pulled a Margaret Mead on him.
And finally, on sex workers in Southeast Asia:
"As highlighted throughout this book. women in the sex industry do not identify with representations that place them as victims of political economy, sex tourists or HIV/AIDS. Indeed. they perceive a negotiated tension between their free will to enter prostitution and the constraints that make this particular type of employment an opportunity for them. Moreover, sex workers do not conceive their encounters with foreign men in strictly oppressive terms. Dichotomous models of power—whether based on the colonizer/colonized or oppressor/subordinate binaries of nationalist and feminist discourse—are necessarily more complex, situated and strategic. Furthermore, the subjects of these models are capable of power and resistance in complex and unanticipated ways. In go-go bars throughout Southeast Asia the differences between white, Western men and Southeast Asian women are worked out, but this negotiation is not based on a clear relation of domination...
This approach to understanding the relationship between sex workers and their customers has much affinity with postcolonial perspectives which seek to disrupt the nationalist ideologies that set up a binary relation between Third World/First World... While the relationship between sex workers and their customers is the most detailed example given here, a similar argument is made about the relationship between Australian NGOs and their Filipino NGO ‘partners’. To define peer education as a purely colonizing discourse, for example, would be at the expense of understanding the Filipino translation and use of the concept.
As this study shows, organizations with specific political agendas utilize dichotomous notions of power which are incommensurable with the lives of women employed in the sex industry. Due to the global concern with HIV/ AIDS, these organizations include an increasingly complex web of international agencies (i.e. the United Nations, aid organizations from the West, etc.), national and local governments, and NOOs carrying out community—based WV/AIDS education projects. Furthermore, the advent of WV/AIDS has brought new voices to these debates, including those from the Western—based prostitutes’ rights movement. Through examining the perspectives of local, national and foreign organizations—as well as the uneasy processes of social and cultural identification between them—it becomes clear that representations of prostitute victims/sex worker agents are also articulations of organizational identity. Because the images the produced by government and non-government organizations are as much about their own positions within debates about sex work and AIDS. it could be argued these images are politically strategic stereotypes—and are therefore fragile and ambivalent. While they might deny the lived experience of sex work, they can also be considered the foundation upon which new identities might be constituted."
--- Sex work in Southeast Asia: the place of desire in a time of AIDS / Lisa Law
Post ID: 6060769679278207432
"So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work." - Peter Drucker
***
From the Jain University,
6.5 Important Features of Jain Food
"At night any insect may fall in a food-dish, without one's knowledge. Thus at night food might be infested with minor invisible insects. Even by mistake, swallowing the insects cause several diseases. At night the cook might not notice the poisonous organisms mixed with cooking material or boiled, and there are chances the poison might have effect on ones’ health.
Food consumed before sunset mostly gets digested though bodily movement and activities. Indian Science of health has formulated a rule that after having taken food, one should drink little-little water may times taking food before sunset allows this practice naturally.
Obviously night time eating causes more violence then day time eating. Likewise from health point of view day five eating is more advantageous than night time eating as a gate-way to hell...
Jainism, being a scientific religion, it has dealt with [other culinary proscriptions]...
Jainism believes in non-violence any food which involves wholes some violence should be avoided non vegetarian food (eggs, fish) involve such wholes one violence on large scale and therefore should always he abandoned by all. Even from Health point of view such food are considered unhealthy, poisonous and healthful. Such food should be totally abandoned.
Yes, even vegetable plans have subtle life but it is hard that we cannot but depend are then for our food. Besides they are natural substance and the do not contain filthy things...
Among vegetables also, root vegetable (Potatoes, Onion, Carrot, Multi etc. etc.) We also totally forbidden. They contain a lot of bacteria one can see with microscope and find the living insects in them. That is why consumption of root vegetable is strictly forbidden.
Likewise Sadharm plant beings have one common plant body. These plant bodies exist together with infinite other in a common plant body they are called 'Anantkay'. Use of such 'Anantkay' is also. prohibited in Jainism There are 32 such 'Anantkay'"
If all this were true, non-Jains would've died out long ago.
This is almost as bad as the nonsense on the health risks of having blood present in your food someone inserted into the Halal article Wikipedia.
Someone: actually most jains eat potatoes, onions, garlic and such. Trust me, I used to reside in the jain community.
Yes they do eat at night, especially in India where people keep very very late hours like dinner at 9-10pm. In Singapore however, just because its the done thing, people do eat slightly earlier.These are all things which are "preferable". Hence there is one week in the year dedicated to not eating green leafy veggies, tuber roots, fasting, eating before sunset.. etc. because there is a realisation of the impossibility of this sort of stricture.
See the thing about that is, its total theory. No one follows that unless they are "shamanji's or shamaniji's" who are people who have committed to that lifestyle, which generally are like 1-2% of the population (with that number i might even be over-restimating. In the 500 strong singaporean community there isn't even one.)
PS: Btw, even in religious school no one preaches the renunciation of honey.
Oh don't worry, alot of the sources are terribly ill-informed. I had to read the scriptures though, straight from the horses mouth ;)
***
From the Jain University,
6.5 Important Features of Jain Food
"At night any insect may fall in a food-dish, without one's knowledge. Thus at night food might be infested with minor invisible insects. Even by mistake, swallowing the insects cause several diseases. At night the cook might not notice the poisonous organisms mixed with cooking material or boiled, and there are chances the poison might have effect on ones’ health.
Food consumed before sunset mostly gets digested though bodily movement and activities. Indian Science of health has formulated a rule that after having taken food, one should drink little-little water may times taking food before sunset allows this practice naturally.
Obviously night time eating causes more violence then day time eating. Likewise from health point of view day five eating is more advantageous than night time eating as a gate-way to hell...
Jainism, being a scientific religion, it has dealt with [other culinary proscriptions]...
Jainism believes in non-violence any food which involves wholes some violence should be avoided non vegetarian food (eggs, fish) involve such wholes one violence on large scale and therefore should always he abandoned by all. Even from Health point of view such food are considered unhealthy, poisonous and healthful. Such food should be totally abandoned.
Yes, even vegetable plans have subtle life but it is hard that we cannot but depend are then for our food. Besides they are natural substance and the do not contain filthy things...
Among vegetables also, root vegetable (Potatoes, Onion, Carrot, Multi etc. etc.) We also totally forbidden. They contain a lot of bacteria one can see with microscope and find the living insects in them. That is why consumption of root vegetable is strictly forbidden.
Likewise Sadharm plant beings have one common plant body. These plant bodies exist together with infinite other in a common plant body they are called 'Anantkay'. Use of such 'Anantkay' is also. prohibited in Jainism There are 32 such 'Anantkay'"
If all this were true, non-Jains would've died out long ago.
This is almost as bad as the nonsense on the health risks of having blood present in your food someone inserted into the Halal article Wikipedia.
Someone: actually most jains eat potatoes, onions, garlic and such. Trust me, I used to reside in the jain community.
Yes they do eat at night, especially in India where people keep very very late hours like dinner at 9-10pm. In Singapore however, just because its the done thing, people do eat slightly earlier.These are all things which are "preferable". Hence there is one week in the year dedicated to not eating green leafy veggies, tuber roots, fasting, eating before sunset.. etc. because there is a realisation of the impossibility of this sort of stricture.
See the thing about that is, its total theory. No one follows that unless they are "shamanji's or shamaniji's" who are people who have committed to that lifestyle, which generally are like 1-2% of the population (with that number i might even be over-restimating. In the 500 strong singaporean community there isn't even one.)
PS: Btw, even in religious school no one preaches the renunciation of honey.
Oh don't worry, alot of the sources are terribly ill-informed. I had to read the scriptures though, straight from the horses mouth ;)
Post ID: 4421489470972801131
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson
***
Japanese Government Banning Used School Girl Pantie Vending Machines - "The Japanese Government is trying to outlaw the sale of Japanese used school girl panties"
I'd be surprised if even half were genuine.
Religion, medicine and evading death | But not yet, Lord - "Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker"
rearranging words - "I guess it is not rare to come across those "rearranging words" exercises during language lesson... The so-called correct answer should be: Kucing saya suka minum susu (my cat likes to drink milk). [Try] Saya suka minum susu kucing (I like to drink cat milk) or Kucing suka minum susu saya (Cat likes to drink my milk)"
Pandemonium breaks out at Taipei Zoo - "Taiwan-China relations were dealt a severe setback yesterday when it was found that Taipei Zoo’s “pandas” are not what they seem. Zookeepers discovered at feeding time yesterday that the two pandas are in fact Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed... “Let’s just say Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan would tuan yuan at every chance,” said Liu, referring to the combination of the panda’s names, which means “to reunite” in Mandarin. “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”... “Whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose ’em down with cold water,” he said. “After a while, parts of the animals’ black-and-white patches started to turn brown.”... “They told me pandas at the zoo in Washington, DC, get lethargic and sometimes lie in their own feces because they can’t tolerate hot weather, so it didn’t surprise them at all that their fur was turning brown since Taipei’s hotter on average than Washington,” he said... critics continue to decry what they see as an attempt by Beijing to bribe Taiwanese with cute, cuddly furballs in lieu of a more meaningful gesture of goodwill such as removing some of the 1,500 missiles China has pointed at Taiwan"
I like this one
Top 10 Worst Space Foods - "1. Brussels Sprouts. Children and future astronauts, have hope: If there's one food that's not worth the trouble of flying into space, it's Brussels sprouts. "To be perfectly honest, I don't think we'll ever fly them," Kloeris said. "We try to pick products that have high demand, and Brussels sprouts aren't the most popular vegetable in the world.""
"The Little Nyonya" stars charm international photographers - Notice it didn't charm the critics.
Easy economics through the eyes of nurse Helga - ""Sister Helga. You maximise my happiness" is German author Thomas Hoenscheid's latest novel and an eccentric attempt at teaching struggling students the basics of supply and demand... the surgeon of her dreams is not the moral and humane doctor he appears to be. Instead he is a money-driven businessman, only interested in maximizing his profits and minimizing costs. Devastated, Helga plunges into the world of microeconomics in a desperate attempt to learn what goes on inside his head... Abandoning her former bubble-headed self, the nurse becomes a die-hard fan of the free market. A family outing turns into an "afternoon of Pareto optimality," sending her into a simplified state of perfect well-being... despite the kitschy style, the theories are indeed all rather complex, consisting of difficult mathematical explanations and technical passages."
Women's shopping habits linked to periods - "In the ten days before their periods begin women are more likely to make extravagant impulse buys, according to researchers. Psychologists believe that shopping sprees could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes... "If women are worried about their spending behaviour then they should avoid going shopping at the end of their menstrual cycle.""
Eco-friendly bra doubles as shopping bag - "Lingerie manufacturer Triumph International Japan has unveiled a new type of brassiere that can be converted into a shopping bag. Called the “No! Shopping Bag Bra” (NO! reji-bukuro bra), the environmentally-friendly lingerie is designed to promote the reduction of plastic bag consumption, a key objective of the revised Containers and Packaging Recycling Law hammered out by Japanese lawmakers in June."
Damn Japs. Who also have a bra you can slot chopsticks in - “the chopsticks on the sides help add a little extra volume to your bust.”
Lingerie firm offers women "liberating" loincloths - "Loincloths, called "fundoshi" in Japanese, were worn by adult men in the past, but they are now a rarity. Kyoto-based lingerie firm Wacoal, however, has brought them back into fashion, this time for women seeking "emancipation" from the tightness of conventional underwear."
***
Japanese Government Banning Used School Girl Pantie Vending Machines - "The Japanese Government is trying to outlaw the sale of Japanese used school girl panties"
I'd be surprised if even half were genuine.
Religion, medicine and evading death | But not yet, Lord - "Religious people seem curiously reluctant to meet their maker"
rearranging words - "I guess it is not rare to come across those "rearranging words" exercises during language lesson... The so-called correct answer should be: Kucing saya suka minum susu (my cat likes to drink milk). [Try] Saya suka minum susu kucing (I like to drink cat milk) or Kucing suka minum susu saya (Cat likes to drink my milk)"
Pandemonium breaks out at Taipei Zoo - "Taiwan-China relations were dealt a severe setback yesterday when it was found that Taipei Zoo’s “pandas” are not what they seem. Zookeepers discovered at feeding time yesterday that the two pandas are in fact Wenzhou brown forest bears that had been dyed... “Let’s just say Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan would tuan yuan at every chance,” said Liu, referring to the combination of the panda’s names, which means “to reunite” in Mandarin. “They would do it doggy-style and every armchair zoologist knows that pandas favor the missionary position — when they do it at all. Their behavior caused chaos. Children screamed and parents became irate.”... “Whenever the moaning from the panda enclosure gets too loud we gotta go in there and hose ’em down with cold water,” he said. “After a while, parts of the animals’ black-and-white patches started to turn brown.”... “They told me pandas at the zoo in Washington, DC, get lethargic and sometimes lie in their own feces because they can’t tolerate hot weather, so it didn’t surprise them at all that their fur was turning brown since Taipei’s hotter on average than Washington,” he said... critics continue to decry what they see as an attempt by Beijing to bribe Taiwanese with cute, cuddly furballs in lieu of a more meaningful gesture of goodwill such as removing some of the 1,500 missiles China has pointed at Taiwan"
I like this one
Top 10 Worst Space Foods - "1. Brussels Sprouts. Children and future astronauts, have hope: If there's one food that's not worth the trouble of flying into space, it's Brussels sprouts. "To be perfectly honest, I don't think we'll ever fly them," Kloeris said. "We try to pick products that have high demand, and Brussels sprouts aren't the most popular vegetable in the world.""
"The Little Nyonya" stars charm international photographers - Notice it didn't charm the critics.
Easy economics through the eyes of nurse Helga - ""Sister Helga. You maximise my happiness" is German author Thomas Hoenscheid's latest novel and an eccentric attempt at teaching struggling students the basics of supply and demand... the surgeon of her dreams is not the moral and humane doctor he appears to be. Instead he is a money-driven businessman, only interested in maximizing his profits and minimizing costs. Devastated, Helga plunges into the world of microeconomics in a desperate attempt to learn what goes on inside his head... Abandoning her former bubble-headed self, the nurse becomes a die-hard fan of the free market. A family outing turns into an "afternoon of Pareto optimality," sending her into a simplified state of perfect well-being... despite the kitschy style, the theories are indeed all rather complex, consisting of difficult mathematical explanations and technical passages."
Women's shopping habits linked to periods - "In the ten days before their periods begin women are more likely to make extravagant impulse buys, according to researchers. Psychologists believe that shopping sprees could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes... "If women are worried about their spending behaviour then they should avoid going shopping at the end of their menstrual cycle.""
Eco-friendly bra doubles as shopping bag - "Lingerie manufacturer Triumph International Japan has unveiled a new type of brassiere that can be converted into a shopping bag. Called the “No! Shopping Bag Bra” (NO! reji-bukuro bra), the environmentally-friendly lingerie is designed to promote the reduction of plastic bag consumption, a key objective of the revised Containers and Packaging Recycling Law hammered out by Japanese lawmakers in June."
Damn Japs. Who also have a bra you can slot chopsticks in - “the chopsticks on the sides help add a little extra volume to your bust.”
Lingerie firm offers women "liberating" loincloths - "Loincloths, called "fundoshi" in Japanese, were worn by adult men in the past, but they are now a rarity. Kyoto-based lingerie firm Wacoal, however, has brought them back into fashion, this time for women seeking "emancipation" from the tightness of conventional underwear."
Post ID: 6032090993857225434
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." - J. Paul Getty
***
Fromage frais volume scoops odd book prize
""The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais" was chosen as 2008 champion from a shortlist which pitted it notably against "Baboon Metaphysics" and "The Large Sieve and its Applications."
Contest organiser Horace Bent of the Bookseller magazine welcomed the choice as a smut-free relief, after victory in recent years for titles including "High Performance Stiffened Structures" and "Living With Crazy Buttocks."
"Given that three times in the 21st century the public have crowned somewhat vulgar titles ... I assumed that either 'Strip And Knit With Style' or 'Curbside Consultation Of The Colon' would" win, he said, citing other shortlisted books...
***
Fromage frais volume scoops odd book prize
""The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais" was chosen as 2008 champion from a shortlist which pitted it notably against "Baboon Metaphysics" and "The Large Sieve and its Applications."
Contest organiser Horace Bent of the Bookseller magazine welcomed the choice as a smut-free relief, after victory in recent years for titles including "High Performance Stiffened Structures" and "Living With Crazy Buttocks."
"Given that three times in the 21st century the public have crowned somewhat vulgar titles ... I assumed that either 'Strip And Knit With Style' or 'Curbside Consultation Of The Colon' would" win, he said, citing other shortlisted books...
"What does the future hold for these items? Well, given that fromage frais normally comes in 60-gram containers, not 60-milligram, one would assume that the world outlook for 0.06-gram containers of fromage frais is pretty bleak.
"But I'm not willing to pay 795 pounds to find out," he said.
Previous winners of the Oddest Book Title of the Year award include:
- 1997: "The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition."
- 1998: "Development in Dairy Cow Breeding and Management: and New Opportunities to Widen the Uses of Straw."
- 1999: "Weeds in a Changing World."
- 2000: "High Performance Stiffened Structures."
- 2001: "Butterworths Corporate Manslaughter Service."
- 2002: "Living with Crazy Buttocks."
- 2003: "The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories."
- 2004: "Bombproof Your Horse."
- 2005: "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It."
- 2006: "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification."
- 2007: "If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.""
Post ID: 4947877143483623117
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
"The fun I had experienced in making things as a boy was magnified a hundred fold when I began making things as a man. There is in manufacturing a creative joy that only poets are supposed to know. Some day I'd like to show a poet how it feels to design and build a railroad locomotive." - Quoted in: Chrysler: The Life and Times of an Automotive Genius / Vincent Curcio
Post ID: 2401698620820216778
"For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed." - Clifton Fadiman
***
More logic FAIL:
All people are the same
From Third World to First, there are both courteous and impolite
Letter from Rejesh Seth
"I refer to "Efficiency's a drag" (March 30). I believe "we see what we want to see" and our minds are mostly biased when we make observations.
Mr Joseph Wong compared an incident at a five-star hotel in Tokyo with one at a public event which drew a record crowd in Singapore.
I am sure if the comparison was made between a Tokyo train station during peak hour and one in a lift at a five-star hotel here, the result would have been the opposite.
I have travelled extensively all over the world and I have found that humans are similar in their behaviour regardless of their backgrounds.
Circumstances or the existing way of life are what makes people behave the way they do.
To take this discussion a little forward, in Third World countries, where a majority of the population do not have a decent lifestyle, you may perhaps find a lot of pushing and jostling.
But this in no way changes human behaviour, as you will still find most of the people there eager to be polite in the way they know best.
On the other hand, recent cases of natural disasters in first world countries brought out shocking cases of inhuman behaviour in normally orderly people.
Behaviour is very complex and cannot be generalised.
In any case, I strongly consider Singaporeans as one of the most polite people compared to their counterparts elsewhere."
(Emphases mine)
Well, he is right about one thing, at least, in this letter ripe with (self-)contradiction and paradox: most people "'see what [they] want to see' and [their] minds are mostly biased when we make observations".
***
More logic FAIL:
All people are the same
From Third World to First, there are both courteous and impolite
Letter from Rejesh Seth
"I refer to "Efficiency's a drag" (March 30). I believe "we see what we want to see" and our minds are mostly biased when we make observations.
Mr Joseph Wong compared an incident at a five-star hotel in Tokyo with one at a public event which drew a record crowd in Singapore.
I am sure if the comparison was made between a Tokyo train station during peak hour and one in a lift at a five-star hotel here, the result would have been the opposite.
I have travelled extensively all over the world and I have found that humans are similar in their behaviour regardless of their backgrounds.
Circumstances or the existing way of life are what makes people behave the way they do.
To take this discussion a little forward, in Third World countries, where a majority of the population do not have a decent lifestyle, you may perhaps find a lot of pushing and jostling.
But this in no way changes human behaviour, as you will still find most of the people there eager to be polite in the way they know best.
On the other hand, recent cases of natural disasters in first world countries brought out shocking cases of inhuman behaviour in normally orderly people.
Behaviour is very complex and cannot be generalised.
In any case, I strongly consider Singaporeans as one of the most polite people compared to their counterparts elsewhere."
(Emphases mine)
Well, he is right about one thing, at least, in this letter ripe with (self-)contradiction and paradox: most people "'see what [they] want to see' and [their] minds are mostly biased when we make observations".
Post ID: 8069300256248943964
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