"2 is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2." - Grabel's Law
***
More Asian women going for boob jobs - "More Asian women are making their boobs bigger through plastic surgery as the techniques used are increasingly simpler and much safer than before. Boobs can be made bigger within 20 minutes by a competent plastic surgeon and the patient can get back to work within 24-48 hours with a massive boost in her self-confidence. Renowned Swedish plastic surgeon Dr Charles Randquist speaking to Bernama from Victoriakliniken, Stockholm via Skype, said breast augmentation is something that lots of women in Asia desire at present "because it is all about quality of life"... While Asia has many breast surgeons it is unfortunate that it lacks scientific data or numbers on breast augmentation"
Sex for survival: Study shows male fiddler crabs will protect female neighbours - at a price - "Male fiddler crabs will happily defend a female neighbour against intruders - partly because the females will dole out sex in return... In 21 trials involving male intruders, the researchers found that male crabs would scuttle over to fight off the invaders on a female neighbour's territory 95 per cent of the time. But in 20 trials involving female intruders, the males crabs only fought off the invaders 15 per cent of the time"
Patriarchy extends its insidious claws into the crustacean world!
ChefsBest - Award Winners - "Expert independent judging results for America's best food products in hundreds of categories"
This award has standard. Otis Spunkmeyer muffins - which won in their category - are VERY nice. And they use sugar, not corn syrup. BAGUS!
The Straight Dope: What's the story on jury nullification? - "Jury nullification generally refers to a jury’s decision to acquit a defendant even though the jurors believe the accused to be factually guilty of the crime. This decision can arise from a desire for leniency or sympathy with the accused or from distaste for the particular law being enforced... It’s the job of the jury to sort out who is telling the truth about what, and agree upon a set of facts. In contrast, the judge’s job is to rule on questions of law... During the Civil War, the Fugitive Slave Act mandated the return of runaway slaves to their owners and prescribed penalties for those who didn't comply, but juries often refused to convict those accused of this crime; in the decades that followed, all-white juries in the south routinely refused to convict white defendants accused of acts of violence against blacks"
Millions want to swap nations - "SOME 700 million people worldwide, or more than all the adults of North and South America combined, think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and want to permanently move to another country... The most popular destination was the United States... In joint second were Britain, Canada and France... The least likely to want to emigrate were Asians"
Startup Love: Starting a relationship is like launching a business - "In both matters of the heart and matters of the mind, on average, only one-in-ten startups survive in the long run. You need to be willing to go all-in at the beginning but to be able to cut your losses if things don't work out. Embrace the concept of failing fast and frequently. That is, try lots of things and keep what works. This is the secret sauce of Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs know that the worst outcome occurs when you inhabit the land of the living dead, where your company stumbles along, just waiting for someone to put it out of its misery. So be willing to gracefully extract yourself when it's clear that things won't improve. Write off the losses on your emotional tax return, and move on to your next investment."
Similarly, not everyone is cut out to start a business, and you can possibly go bankrupt.
Uncovering Steve Jobs' Presentation Secrets - "1. A headline
2. A villain
3. A simple slide
4. A demo
5. A holy smokes moment
One more thing…sell dreams"
10 things you need to stop tweeting about - "#2 Social Media. "It's all about crowdsourcing in the social media web 2.0 twittersphere!... You sound like a douchebag with no real job skills"
Pew Internet Project: Social Isolation and New Technology - "People who use modern information and communication technologies have larger and more diverse social networks... “There is a tendency by critics to blame technology first when social change occurs,” argued Prof. Keith Hampton"
The Straight Dope: Is there any difference in quality between name-brand drugs and generics? - "The key issue in name brands versus generics is quality control. Branded drugs are tested extensively for effectiveness, side effects, and drug interactions — a slow, expensive process — and before the Waxman-Hatch Act of 1984, so were generics. The new law lowered the bar... One study found generic versions of the heart disease drug digoxin were 40 percent more likely to have “adverse events” than branded digoxin... research suggests generic versions of the blood thinner heparin are so different they can’t be safely substituted for one another."
Texas Lawmaker Suggests Asian Names Be "Easier to Deal With" - "Is Texas State Rep. Betty Brown (R-Terrell) extremely out of touch with national demographics, or is she the unfortunate scapegoat in a voter registration debate?... she asked, "Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese-I understand it's a rather difficult language-do you think it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?" But Brown's comments don't end there, and most accounts don't include the second part of that statement. She continues, "I'm not talking changing your name. I'm talking about the transliteration, or whatever you refer to it, that you could use for us."... her suggestion was a way to make it easier for Asian Americans to be identified in the voting process, since their legal transliterated names and the more common names used on their driver's licenses don't always match up... suggesting that someone of any nationality should use the same name on their legal voting documentation that they use on their driver's licenses or other forms of I.D. seems pretty logical"
Woman is allergic to her husband's sperm - "A new wife was given a nasty wedding night surprise when she discovered she was allergic to her husband's sperm. Mike and Julie Boyde had been going out for two years when they got married and decided to have unprotected sex for the first time that evening. But almost immediately the bride was in unbearable pain"
Google Opens Google Invite to Invites - "As with Google Wave and Google Voice, Google Invite invites are a hot commodity"
L'origine de Bert
Friday, November 06, 2009
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes
***
The Straight Dope: Why does Heinz ketchup say "57 varieties"? I only see one variety
Q: In case you're not aware, you've uncovered another Illuminati agent in Henry J. Heinz. Let me expand briefly. The Illuminati are an extremely secret sect, and have been among mankind practically from the beginning, originating, it is believed, in the Lost Continent, Atlantis. Being a secret, powerful, occult sect, the Illuminati gathered great mystical power from their use of the number 5. Five is an extremely strong number, still used in the worship of Satan, the power of our military, the logic of our digits, the points of our extremities, our senses, and a great many other things rooted in our collective psyche. Also important, and perhaps more powerful, is the combination of the numbers 2 and 3, equalling 5, of course. Two is the symbol for symmetry, and three, the divinity and others. It is a blatant game that the Illuminati are extremely fond of, flaunting their symbols to each other — the more bizarre the better, the more flagrant the waste of money, the better yet. Keeping this in mind, think again of the giant pickles, the man whose "mysterious" number is 57. (Remember, 7 is simply the repeating 2 + 3 cycle, i.e., 2 + 3 = 5 + 2 = 7 + 3 = 10 or 5 x 2.) Now observe the phone number — 237-5757. Ergo, buying Heinz products finances the Illuminati.
P.S.: Notice how many letters in his first and last names.
A: Very interesting, Dan, and just the kind of thing we expect from a Baltimorean. I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). In other words, the very foundations of mathematics are infected with Illuminism. Those guys are everywhere.
***
The Straight Dope: Why does Heinz ketchup say "57 varieties"? I only see one variety
Q: In case you're not aware, you've uncovered another Illuminati agent in Henry J. Heinz. Let me expand briefly. The Illuminati are an extremely secret sect, and have been among mankind practically from the beginning, originating, it is believed, in the Lost Continent, Atlantis. Being a secret, powerful, occult sect, the Illuminati gathered great mystical power from their use of the number 5. Five is an extremely strong number, still used in the worship of Satan, the power of our military, the logic of our digits, the points of our extremities, our senses, and a great many other things rooted in our collective psyche. Also important, and perhaps more powerful, is the combination of the numbers 2 and 3, equalling 5, of course. Two is the symbol for symmetry, and three, the divinity and others. It is a blatant game that the Illuminati are extremely fond of, flaunting their symbols to each other — the more bizarre the better, the more flagrant the waste of money, the better yet. Keeping this in mind, think again of the giant pickles, the man whose "mysterious" number is 57. (Remember, 7 is simply the repeating 2 + 3 cycle, i.e., 2 + 3 = 5 + 2 = 7 + 3 = 10 or 5 x 2.) Now observe the phone number — 237-5757. Ergo, buying Heinz products finances the Illuminati.
P.S.: Notice how many letters in his first and last names.
A: Very interesting, Dan, and just the kind of thing we expect from a Baltimorean. I should point out, by way of amplification, that by using the digits 2 and 3 in appropriate combinations you can generate every integer (including 1, if you allow subtraction). In other words, the very foundations of mathematics are infected with Illuminism. Those guys are everywhere.
Post ID: 9020357374632061676
In defence of Singapore exceptionalism:
"THERE are three ways to respond to critics: ignore them, rebut them or engage them." - Chua Mui Hoong.
She forgot: "sue them".
Mr Wet: "The best suit one can wear is a defamation suit"
"THERE are three ways to respond to critics: ignore them, rebut them or engage them." - Chua Mui Hoong.
She forgot: "sue them".
Mr Wet: "The best suit one can wear is a defamation suit"
Post ID: 2887813582521286367
While on Encyclopedia Dramatica I made the mistake of clicking on a link that took me back to the late 90s.
It did this by doing something I didn't think was possible on modern browsers: opening millions of windows at once (luckily I managed to terminate my browser and email client processes in Task Manager).
The URL in question:
http://www.internetisseriousbusiness.on.nimp.org/
(NSFW, do not click unless you want to crash the browser; I'm even leaving out the hyperlink)
I'm using Firefox 3.5.3.
A friend on a 1-2 week-old build of Chrome was not affected. Nor was one on the iPhone.
One on Safari 4.0.3 was not spared, though.
Someone suggested disabling Flash, since it was using Flash to generate the popups. When I did so in IE 7, there was no issue (except for my window jumping about for a few seconds). But then again the person on Chrome had Flash enabled, so.
A: I was also getting some js errors so the page may be trying multiple ways to generate the popups
B: wah shit
it detected a trojan
my AV detected
now my nod32 keeps popping
though the window closed long ago
C: if you want the html just wget the page
i think it uses irc protocol
to do something weird
not sure
Also, thanks to Encyclopedia Dramatica I have FINALLY seen something more disgusting than Breast Rash Larvae.
It did this by doing something I didn't think was possible on modern browsers: opening millions of windows at once (luckily I managed to terminate my browser and email client processes in Task Manager).
The URL in question:
http://www.internetisseriousbusiness.on.nimp.org/
(NSFW, do not click unless you want to crash the browser; I'm even leaving out the hyperlink)
I'm using Firefox 3.5.3.
A friend on a 1-2 week-old build of Chrome was not affected. Nor was one on the iPhone.
One on Safari 4.0.3 was not spared, though.
Someone suggested disabling Flash, since it was using Flash to generate the popups. When I did so in IE 7, there was no issue (except for my window jumping about for a few seconds). But then again the person on Chrome had Flash enabled, so.
A: I was also getting some js errors so the page may be trying multiple ways to generate the popups
B: wah shit
it detected a trojan
my AV detected
now my nod32 keeps popping
though the window closed long ago
C: if you want the html just wget the page
i think it uses irc protocol
to do something weird
not sure
Also, thanks to Encyclopedia Dramatica I have FINALLY seen something more disgusting than Breast Rash Larvae.
Post ID: 7215097479697172209
Thursday, November 05, 2009
"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." - Thomas A. Edison
***
"In Arabic, as in most European languages, the word 'Slavs' was becoming, by the tenth century, increasingly synonymous with human cattle.
Nothing, indeed, in the fractured Europe of the time, was more authentically multicultural than the business of enslaving Slavs. West Slavs captured in the wars of the Saxon emperors would be sold by Frankish merchants to Jewish middlemen, who then, under the shocked gaze of Christian bishops, would drive their shackled stock along the high roads of Provence and Catalonia, and across the frontier into the Caliphate.
Few opportunities were neglected in the struggle to obtain a competitive edge. In the Frankish town of Verdun, for instance, the Jewish merchants who had their headquarters there were renowned for their facility with the gelding knife. A particular specialization was the supply of 'carzimasia': eunuchs who had been deprived of their penises as well as their testicles. Even for the most practiced surgeon, the medical risks attendant on performing a penectomy were considerable - and yet the wastage served only to increase the survivors' value. Exclusivity, then as now, was the mark of a luxury brand"
--- The Forge of Christendom / Tom Holland
Luckily Slavs have better things to do than complain about how they are oppressed by language.
***
"In Arabic, as in most European languages, the word 'Slavs' was becoming, by the tenth century, increasingly synonymous with human cattle.
Nothing, indeed, in the fractured Europe of the time, was more authentically multicultural than the business of enslaving Slavs. West Slavs captured in the wars of the Saxon emperors would be sold by Frankish merchants to Jewish middlemen, who then, under the shocked gaze of Christian bishops, would drive their shackled stock along the high roads of Provence and Catalonia, and across the frontier into the Caliphate.
Few opportunities were neglected in the struggle to obtain a competitive edge. In the Frankish town of Verdun, for instance, the Jewish merchants who had their headquarters there were renowned for their facility with the gelding knife. A particular specialization was the supply of 'carzimasia': eunuchs who had been deprived of their penises as well as their testicles. Even for the most practiced surgeon, the medical risks attendant on performing a penectomy were considerable - and yet the wastage served only to increase the survivors' value. Exclusivity, then as now, was the mark of a luxury brand"
--- The Forge of Christendom / Tom Holland
Luckily Slavs have better things to do than complain about how they are oppressed by language.
Post ID: 8236119704156973487
"It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy" - James Thurber
***
"Il préférait les passes rapides, anonymes, impersonnelles. Mon cul,
ton cash, bye-bye...
'Tu crois vraiment ce que tu dis?'
'T'as l'air bizarre...'
Graham informa Grégorie que l'assassin n'avait pas sodomisé Romain
'Il a éjaculé sur ses fesses'
'Ciboire! Il a joui en l'étranglant! C'est un hostie de malade!'"
--- C'est pour mieux t'aimer, mon enfant / Chrystine Brouillet
***
"Il préférait les passes rapides, anonymes, impersonnelles. Mon cul,
ton cash, bye-bye...
'Tu crois vraiment ce que tu dis?'
'T'as l'air bizarre...'
Graham informa Grégorie que l'assassin n'avait pas sodomisé Romain
'Il a éjaculé sur ses fesses'
'Ciboire! Il a joui en l'étranglant! C'est un hostie de malade!'"
--- C'est pour mieux t'aimer, mon enfant / Chrystine Brouillet
Post ID: 747845545929667302
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
"Food is an important part of a balanced diet." - Fran Lebowitz
***
Via Siew Kum Hong, Eddie Teo's Defending Scholarships but not all Scholars speech was making the rounds on the Singaporean Twitterverse earlier.
***
Via Siew Kum Hong, Eddie Teo's Defending Scholarships but not all Scholars speech was making the rounds on the Singaporean Twitterverse earlier.
A short while ago, Acidflask came up with an Annotated Guide to Eddie Teo's Speech, which I felt was not entirely fair. As an aside, I will note that Siew Kum Hoong and I were broadly approving of the speech, while most of those who disliked it were/are scholars.
A summary of Acidflask's guide:
1) Bond-breakers are evil because they waste taxpayers' money (FALSE)
-> He says that Eddie neglected to mention that Liquidated Damages exist. Bond breakers are thus not immoral and irresponsible, since they earn their organisations money.
2) Bond-breakers are evil, but rare (O RLY?)
-> He accuses Eddie of setting up a false dichotomy between Good scholars (???/791) who finish their bonds and Bad scholars (9/791) who don't serve a single day, meanwhile ignoring Disappointing ones (!!!/791) who break their bonds having served them partially.
3) Quitters are evil, and I will bash the one who got me started
-> He says Eddie launched a "scathing ad hominem attack on a bond breaker" (Yu-Mei) by saying, based on an essay she wrote for s/pores, that "She should never have been selected for teaching [as] she showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
4) The practice of divination
-> He says that the scholarship panel selected Yu-Mei wrongly since they didn't know she (in his opinion) had "no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
5) Daddy knows best. Now sit down and shut up.
-> Scholars are not treated as independent, intelligent agents, but rather as pawns.
6) Not all fast tracks run at the same speed -> It does not make sense to have a multi-track public service
Acidflask: "That was not my point at all, merely that the existence of multiple tracks is likely to breed arrogance for those on the fastest tracks, and resentment for whose who are not."
7) Postscript - let's learn to behave at the level of a ten-year-old
-> Eddie is excoriated for praising a scholar's presumably learning to reason like a ten-year-old.
Now, in general speeches are not the same as essays, so we should bear that in mind when reading them.
More specifically,
1) Bond-breakers are evil because they waste taxpayers' money (FALSE)
This is indeed a nonsensical claim, and I always get upset when people make it.
If I get enough capital, I plan to set up my own scholarship agency which will give out scholarships and make the recipients suffer so much that they will break their bonds and I will receive a return well above the market rate.
Woo hoo!
Eddie *did* say that those who leave without having served one day are what Acidflask calls "evil", but I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of such cases do not leave for reasons similar to Acidflask's. For example, Acidflask's is the only case I know of with such special circumstances, whereas the other bond breakers I know of who did not serve a single day got bought out by investment banks or consultancies, or wanted to stay on in their countries of study to work.
All generalisations are false, and this is even more so for a speech, so quibbling about semantics is churlish.
2) Bond-breakers are evil, but rare (O RLY?)
Acidflask:
Eddie Teo's classification of quitters* GOOD (??? of 791): Those who finish their bond as contractually agreed upon, then leave the civil service - Not bond-breakers. Lots of good reaons for doing so. Now run along, kiddos.
* EVIL (9 of 791): Those who do don't serve a single day of their bond and leave the civil service - Bond-breakers. Thankfully, only 1% of the apples rot.Ladies and gentlemen, we are looking at an excellent specimen of the common logical fallacy - the false dichotomy!
And here is the missing middle, the case that was glibly elided over:
* DISAPPOINTING (??? of 791) - Those who serve part of their bond, but not all of it, before they leave the civil service...
Not even the most astute and attentive audience member could have been expected to remember that [this sort of scholar] was alluded to ten paragraphs prior!
Eddie does not leave out "those who serve part of their bond, but not all of it, before they leave the civil service", nor does he call all of them "disappointing".
Although he did not give any numbers, he did acknowledge "attrition", and say that not all "attrition" is bad. In other words, "good attrition" (his words) is not "disappointing" (Acidflask's word):
Do we expect 100% of our scholars to stay throughout their bond period? No... Attrition figures... hide many things... I often ask them if the attrition is a good attrition or a bad attrition. What I mean is "Are you losing the right people or the wrong people?" If the best officers leave, and only the mediocre remain, the public service is in big trouble. We need enough of our best people to stay and provide a continuous flow of leaders. Likewise, with scholars.
And yes, he talked about this under the "Bond Breaking & Attrition" section of the speech, one paragraph before the statistic that 9/791 PSC scholars quit without having served a single day.
So no, there's no false dichotomy or glib elision.
The most you can accuse him of is leaving out the number of scholars who fall into this category, and of conflating attrition due to scholars quitting before they serve a single day of their bonds and attrition due to their quitting while serving their bonds. So, like a bikini, this part of his speech conceals more than it reveals.
3) Quitters are evil, and I will bash the one who got me started
He is not the first person who objects to Eddie's characterisation of Yu-Mei as having "showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching".
Yet, if you read Yu-mei's essay, it is notable that she:
i) Says that "the main reason I had applied for the government scholarship in the first place was to try to save my parents from having to pay for [an overseas] education"
ii) Does not mention her classroom experience, which is presumably the central part of one's work life as a teacher.
iii) Does not mention that she had an "interest in, or passion for, teaching". Indeed, she says that
"I applied for a teaching scholarship because the only thing that I was interested in studying at the time was English literature, and the only thing I thought people did with university degrees in English literature was to become teachers (or journalists)... if teaching was my likely career path, I might as well try for the government scholarship and be done with it"
Now, if I wrote a long essay titled "My Family" and I did not mention my father at all, it would be eminently reasonable to assume one or more of the following:
i) I was an orphan
ii) I was an illegitimate child
iii) My father abandoned me when I was young
iv) I was on bad terms with my father
v) I was conceived by Zeus in the form of a golden shower
Silence speaks volumes.
Similarly, to write an essay about one's experiences as a scholar without mentioning the work that one did and whether it was to one's taste invites the not-unreasonable conclusion that one had no particular passion for it.
Of course, one could always say that Yu-mei's essay was about the scholarship system, and not about the work that she did while in it, but the omission is still puzzling. Furthermore, we still have points i) and iii) which lay out why she applied i) for a scholarship and specifically ii) for a teaching scholarship.
Why this is considered "a thin veneer of civility... [below which is] a scathing ad hominem attack on a bond breaker" is beyond me. Just because someone "should never have been selected for teaching" does not mean that he is a "bad" person. For example, I would definitely not be selected for Medical School, but if someone were to comment that I "should never have been selected for Medical School", this is not an ad hominem attack.
Indeed, the "evil" scholars (i.e. those who quit without having served a single day of their bonds) were separately identified in Eddie's speech, as were those who "those who lack commitment and have little interest in the public service" and thus break their bonds after serving for a while. He even goes so far as to say, of the latter, that "we should be disappointed that we failed to sieve them out earlier, but we should not be unhappy". Note too that Yu-mei falls into neither category as she served out her bond fully.
Acidflask says that there was a lack of evidence, and that:
Evidence as to whether or not she was actually a good and successful teacher - student feedback, principal's evaluations, etc. - is apparently not necessary to justify such a deduction [that she should not have been awarded a teaching scholarship]
Yet, if Eddie had gone to said lengths and dug out her file to present this information in a speech made during the Singapore Seminar, attended by 350 public service scholars - the text of which was put online, no less - reaction would rightly be outraged at this outrageous violation of privacy, public shaming and abuse of power (for a speech, no less). Furthermore, the ideal scholar is not just someone who does his job properly, or even does his job well; the ideal [PSC] scholar is "outstanding" and has "a strong conviction and passion to serve Singapore and Singaporeans a fulfilling and rewarding career in the Public Service" (sic), and this is something that Eddie talks about.
The fact is that talking about Yu-mei took up 2 paragraphs of a 35 paragraph speech, and served as a casual anecdote to contextualise discussion and serve as a springboard for the rest of the speech. Mountains should not be made out of molehills.
In truth, both Eddie and Yu-mei's texts make for good reading, and both address separate, though related, aspects of the scholarship system.
Of course, Eddie is missing important points. Yu-mei is definitely not the only scholar who takes/took up a scholarship despite lacking interest and passion for it. There are more scholars who lack those attributes than he would care to admit (at least in public) and so should presumably never have been given their scholarships, but then we all know that lots of people lie to the scholarship panel. There're also the other points Yu-mei's essay raises: about gullible 19 year olds being conned and other big questions about the scholarship system as a whole.
One can also say that his speech lacks more than token empathy for Yu-mei, but this is, after all, a speech to 350 scholars and not a personal (or even open) letter to her.
4) The practice of divination
Eddie's point is not that the scholarship system could not see that she would be an able and willing scholar when starting her bond - it is that she was not able and willing when she was 19.
To wit, the line was:
PSC should not have awarded her a teaching scholarship when she showed no interest in, or passion for, teaching
and not
PSC should not have awarded her a teaching scholarship when she showed that she would not turn out to be interested in or passionate about teaching
There are certainly criticisms of the scholarship system in that it is impossible to foresee at 19 what a scholar will be like at the age of 23 (or 25, for those who have to be Slaves) and at least until they finish their bonds, but this is not what Eddie was regretting - in the case of Yu-mei. He *does* make the mistake of assuming that those who are (or at least seem to be) "suitable for public service" at 19 will still be that way when they start to serve their bonds, but that is a separate point.
5) Daddy knows best. Now sit down and shut up.
Acidflask says scholarships take advantage of innocent and gullible 19 year olds, and that it is deplorable that scholars have little say over their career development.
The former is true, and I don't disagree with the last, yet the Civil Service's Management Associates scheme seems modeled after (or is at least packaged to resemble) similar schemes in many large private-sector organisations. The difference is that a [foreign] scholar's bond lasts 6 years, while private sector Management Associate programmes last 1-2 years, but the programmes differ in degree - not in kind.
(I am skimming through many things, like the MA Programme being different from but related to both scholarships and the Administrative Service, but the idea remains the same)
Acidflask also posits a hypothetical situation:
The supposed response to scholars desiring information about their career trajectories in reality does not address the fundamental issue.... Could you imagine a vice president of a large company whom, after years of work at the helm, to be absolutely ignorant of what he or she wants in the next 5 or 10 years, and have no roadmap for attaining such goals? Would you pick such a vice president to be the next CEO?
Yet, even with a Fast Track, a scholar would not reach such levels of seniority within a mere 6 years (as far as I know). Furthermore, Eddie is not asking scholars to be ignorant of what they want - he is just telling them to suck it up when they are posted. The former concerns choice desire and the latter agency; it is my understanding that scholars are not totally powerless when it comes to steering their career path.
I cannot imagine the vice president of a large company who, after years of work at the helm, is absolutely ignorant of what he wants in the next 5 or 10 years, and have no roadmap for attaining such goals, but equally I cannot imagine the vice president of a large company who is told that in 10 years time, he will definitely become the CEO. The Indonesians have a term for this sort of occurrence. It's called KKN - Korupsi, Kolusi dan Nepotisme (Korruption, Kollusion and Nepotism).
6) Not all fast tracks run at the same speed
I agree with this critique. I still agree with this critique.
7) Postscript - let's learn to behave at the level of a ten-year-old
Yes, it is disappointing that scholars have to be reminded of what ten year olds know. But it is heartening to know that scholars learn that their positions are not god-given rights and that they cannot lord it over everyone else - which are criticisms which have been leveled at them.
Post ID: 4883979929584026758
"If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking." - Lyndon B. Johnson
***
What Are Women Fighting About? - "So I become, once more, the kind of person I can't bear: the female critic who despises any female writer who doesn't project what she feels is the accurate or ideal vision of modern womanhood. This critic believes it is her job to tear down women who are "off-message" because there is only so much publishing space allotted to women, and so more attention for them is less attention for her and other worthy types... Maybe it is time to acknowledge that this is not some conspiracy on the part of the publishing industry or of the patriarchy and admit to ourselves that writers like Joanna Smith Rakoff are giving women what they want... It is tempting to feel resentful when we don’t see ourselves or our stories or our ideals reflected in the prevailing narratives of femaleness"
One comment: "The irony of this article is that she says not to tear apart other women's work and illustrates this by tearing apart another woman's work."
Another: "Women are mean to Women... Just remember, everyone wants universal brotherhood, but, no one is his right mind, wants universal sisterhood"
And a last: "The biggest single overlooked feature in our society is women competing with women. This is the feminist elephant in the room."
YouTube - Vader conducts Icelandic orchestra Háskólabíó - "Darth Vader assumes command of the Icelandic Philharmonic Orchestra as they play the Imperial March."
Islam 4 UK Home page - "Islam4UK has been established by sincere Muslims as a platform to propagate the supreme Islamic ideology within the United Kingdom as a divine alternative to man-made law. Our aim is simple: Izhaar ud Deen (Domination of Al-Islam worldwide). As submitters to Almighty God we wish to establish His Sharee’ah (Divine Law) on the earth for He has said in the Qur'an: [EMQ 5: 45] “Those who rule by other than what Allah (SWT) has revealed are the oppressors.”"
This sounds like a joke, but isn't. The videos of Non-Muslims embracing Islam are particularly funny
Muslim woman held in slay try of husband; he made her wear sexy skirts and eat pork - "She also claimed that his favorite author is Salman Rushdie, reviled by devout Muslims after writing the prophet-bashing "The Satanic Verses.""
Dirty elections: To the rigger the spoils | The Economist - "“Dirty elections are bad for economic growth by skewing politicians’ incentives.” This is because, they find, good economic performance makes a huge difference to an incumbent’s chance of re-election whether the vote is free or rigged, adding about three years’ to his or her tenure. Although economic success wins rewards in both systems, in clean ones, it adds 40% to a president’s time, whereas in dirty ones, the rewards of growth are swamped by those of rigging, which more than doubles the time in power. So rigging makes the economy less important to a president’s future—a rejoinder to the Chinese claim that in developing countries “managed democracy” is better for growth than an electoral free-for-all"
Schumpeter: The three habits... of highly irritating management gurus | The Economist - "The first is presenting stale ideas as breathtaking breakthroughs... The second irritating habit is that of naming model firms... The third irritating habit is the flogging of management tools off the back of numbered lists or facile principles... the most irritating thing of all about management gurus: that their failures only serve to stoke demand for their services"
YouTube - Balls Out Jeans! - "Hey guys! Are you tired of women showing off their junk while you can't say a thing? Wouldn't it be great to walk down the street with your junk hanging out? Well, now you can say goodbye to the old and welcome the new!... New Balls-Out Jeans!"
Strippers or Counter-Strike — Which Gets a Gamer's Attention? (title from elsewhere)
The internet has done for Scientology. Could it rumble the Christians, too? - "In France, Scientology is deemed a sect as opposed to a religion, which is why they are required to produce evidence for their claims, where recognised religious leaders are not. For those of us who believe that all religions are full of tall tales, this might seem slightly unfair... Clearly, Scientologists should be forced to justify their doctrinal lunacies – the only sadness is that other religions are apparently exempt from having to do the same"
Women with male names do better in legal careers: study - "A female "Cameron" is about three times more likely to become a judge than a "Sue," while a female "Bruce" is five times more likely... women with male names are more likely to make more money than their more femininely named counterparts"
Thinking negatively can boost your memory, Aust study finds - "Being sad make people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory... People in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices... sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments"
Spore workers frustrated - "29 per cent of employees in Singapore feel frustrated in their jobs while 35 per cent feel detached. Only 16 per cent feel effective"
China looks to export censorship - "The festival organisation was subjected to an intense campaign of threats, intimidation and disruption, although it is not clear who - if anyone - orchestrated the campaign... Some notes to the organisers contained messages threatening Mr Moore's family... Chinese film-makers withdrew their movies from the festival... "China is using its economic influence to threaten its trade partners in order to censor what they don't like""
10 of the World’s Greatest Jobs - "The Chilean lothario has beat all of us by holding the type of fantasy job that just sounds too good to be true: Quality Control in a brothel... The applicants are whittled down to a final six, who are then fucked one after the other in a single day by Jaime. He takes diligent notes on, say, how they moved their hips and whether their groans were adequate, and makes recommendations to the madam. There is even paperwork involved. The strain of the job is actually such that he can only do it once a month, testing around seventy girls or so a year"
Most of them are either unpaid or very lowly paid.
Disney Princesses, Deconstructed » Sociological Images - "Sleeping Beauty: Betrothed at birth to solidify a political position, she is killed by another woman out of spite. Her owner... ahem... fiance, saves her with a kiss. Again, sex is her only salvation
What Disney princes teach men about attracting women: Be rich, charming, famous, and good looking (x6)"
One comment: "it has nothing to do with Disney, guys. These stories have been around forever. Everyone knows that."
Sartre's "No Exit" - by Hhhalek - "Man’s overwhelming predilection to define himself through the perception and opinion of others and his unwavering tendency to assume that he, accordingly, acquires being-hood, is inherently false... Man is inherently and fundamentally incapable of accepting that the only certitude in life is death... Persistent in his determination to forge bonds with others and to find meaning from without, man becomes what he assumes others want him to be and, thus, damns himself to an eternal void"
The Sex Diaries - A Critical Reading of New Yorkers’ Sexual Habits & Anxieties - "1. The anxiety of too much choice.
2. The anxiety of making the wrong choice.
3. The anxiety of not being chosen.
4. The anxiety of appearing overly enthusiastic.
5. The anxiety of appearing delusional.
6. The anxiety of appearing overly sincere.
7. The anxiety of appearing prudish.
8. Internet-enabled agoraphobia
9. Separation anxiety
10. The anxiety of being unable to love."
***
What Are Women Fighting About? - "So I become, once more, the kind of person I can't bear: the female critic who despises any female writer who doesn't project what she feels is the accurate or ideal vision of modern womanhood. This critic believes it is her job to tear down women who are "off-message" because there is only so much publishing space allotted to women, and so more attention for them is less attention for her and other worthy types... Maybe it is time to acknowledge that this is not some conspiracy on the part of the publishing industry or of the patriarchy and admit to ourselves that writers like Joanna Smith Rakoff are giving women what they want... It is tempting to feel resentful when we don’t see ourselves or our stories or our ideals reflected in the prevailing narratives of femaleness"
One comment: "The irony of this article is that she says not to tear apart other women's work and illustrates this by tearing apart another woman's work."
Another: "Women are mean to Women... Just remember, everyone wants universal brotherhood, but, no one is his right mind, wants universal sisterhood"
And a last: "The biggest single overlooked feature in our society is women competing with women. This is the feminist elephant in the room."
YouTube - Vader conducts Icelandic orchestra Háskólabíó - "Darth Vader assumes command of the Icelandic Philharmonic Orchestra as they play the Imperial March."
Islam 4 UK Home page - "Islam4UK has been established by sincere Muslims as a platform to propagate the supreme Islamic ideology within the United Kingdom as a divine alternative to man-made law. Our aim is simple: Izhaar ud Deen (Domination of Al-Islam worldwide). As submitters to Almighty God we wish to establish His Sharee’ah (Divine Law) on the earth for He has said in the Qur'an: [EMQ 5: 45] “Those who rule by other than what Allah (SWT) has revealed are the oppressors.”"
This sounds like a joke, but isn't. The videos of Non-Muslims embracing Islam are particularly funny
Muslim woman held in slay try of husband; he made her wear sexy skirts and eat pork - "She also claimed that his favorite author is Salman Rushdie, reviled by devout Muslims after writing the prophet-bashing "The Satanic Verses.""
Dirty elections: To the rigger the spoils | The Economist - "“Dirty elections are bad for economic growth by skewing politicians’ incentives.” This is because, they find, good economic performance makes a huge difference to an incumbent’s chance of re-election whether the vote is free or rigged, adding about three years’ to his or her tenure. Although economic success wins rewards in both systems, in clean ones, it adds 40% to a president’s time, whereas in dirty ones, the rewards of growth are swamped by those of rigging, which more than doubles the time in power. So rigging makes the economy less important to a president’s future—a rejoinder to the Chinese claim that in developing countries “managed democracy” is better for growth than an electoral free-for-all"
Schumpeter: The three habits... of highly irritating management gurus | The Economist - "The first is presenting stale ideas as breathtaking breakthroughs... The second irritating habit is that of naming model firms... The third irritating habit is the flogging of management tools off the back of numbered lists or facile principles... the most irritating thing of all about management gurus: that their failures only serve to stoke demand for their services"
YouTube - Balls Out Jeans! - "Hey guys! Are you tired of women showing off their junk while you can't say a thing? Wouldn't it be great to walk down the street with your junk hanging out? Well, now you can say goodbye to the old and welcome the new!... New Balls-Out Jeans!"
Strippers or Counter-Strike — Which Gets a Gamer's Attention? (title from elsewhere)
The internet has done for Scientology. Could it rumble the Christians, too? - "In France, Scientology is deemed a sect as opposed to a religion, which is why they are required to produce evidence for their claims, where recognised religious leaders are not. For those of us who believe that all religions are full of tall tales, this might seem slightly unfair... Clearly, Scientologists should be forced to justify their doctrinal lunacies – the only sadness is that other religions are apparently exempt from having to do the same"
Women with male names do better in legal careers: study - "A female "Cameron" is about three times more likely to become a judge than a "Sue," while a female "Bruce" is five times more likely... women with male names are more likely to make more money than their more femininely named counterparts"
Thinking negatively can boost your memory, Aust study finds - "Being sad make people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory... People in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices... sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments"
Spore workers frustrated - "29 per cent of employees in Singapore feel frustrated in their jobs while 35 per cent feel detached. Only 16 per cent feel effective"
China looks to export censorship - "The festival organisation was subjected to an intense campaign of threats, intimidation and disruption, although it is not clear who - if anyone - orchestrated the campaign... Some notes to the organisers contained messages threatening Mr Moore's family... Chinese film-makers withdrew their movies from the festival... "China is using its economic influence to threaten its trade partners in order to censor what they don't like""
10 of the World’s Greatest Jobs - "The Chilean lothario has beat all of us by holding the type of fantasy job that just sounds too good to be true: Quality Control in a brothel... The applicants are whittled down to a final six, who are then fucked one after the other in a single day by Jaime. He takes diligent notes on, say, how they moved their hips and whether their groans were adequate, and makes recommendations to the madam. There is even paperwork involved. The strain of the job is actually such that he can only do it once a month, testing around seventy girls or so a year"
Most of them are either unpaid or very lowly paid.
Disney Princesses, Deconstructed » Sociological Images - "Sleeping Beauty: Betrothed at birth to solidify a political position, she is killed by another woman out of spite. Her owner... ahem... fiance, saves her with a kiss. Again, sex is her only salvation
What Disney princes teach men about attracting women: Be rich, charming, famous, and good looking (x6)"
One comment: "it has nothing to do with Disney, guys. These stories have been around forever. Everyone knows that."
Sartre's "No Exit" - by Hhhalek - "Man’s overwhelming predilection to define himself through the perception and opinion of others and his unwavering tendency to assume that he, accordingly, acquires being-hood, is inherently false... Man is inherently and fundamentally incapable of accepting that the only certitude in life is death... Persistent in his determination to forge bonds with others and to find meaning from without, man becomes what he assumes others want him to be and, thus, damns himself to an eternal void"
The Sex Diaries - A Critical Reading of New Yorkers’ Sexual Habits & Anxieties - "1. The anxiety of too much choice.
2. The anxiety of making the wrong choice.
3. The anxiety of not being chosen.
4. The anxiety of appearing overly enthusiastic.
5. The anxiety of appearing delusional.
6. The anxiety of appearing overly sincere.
7. The anxiety of appearing prudish.
8. Internet-enabled agoraphobia
9. Separation anxiety
10. The anxiety of being unable to love."
Post ID: 4525640865748680803
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
"Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right." - Kurt Herbert Alder
***
"Until about forty years ago, many economists besides Marx believed that the capitalist process tended to change relative shares in the national total so that the obvious inference from our average might be invalidated by the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer, at least relatively. But there is no such tendency. Whatever may he thought of the statistical measures devised for the purpose. this much is certain: that the structure of the pyramid of incomes, expressed in terms of money, has not greatly changed during the period covered by our material—which for England includes the whole of the nineteenth century...
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses...
Verification is easy. There are no doubt some things available to the modern workman that Louis XIV himself would have been delighted to have modern dentistry for instance. On the whole, however, a budget on that level had little that really mattered to gain from capitalist achievement. Even speed of traveling may be assumed to have been a minor consideration for so very dignified a gentleman. Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has enough money to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
--- Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy / Joseph Alois Schumpeter
***
"Until about forty years ago, many economists besides Marx believed that the capitalist process tended to change relative shares in the national total so that the obvious inference from our average might be invalidated by the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer, at least relatively. But there is no such tendency. Whatever may he thought of the statistical measures devised for the purpose. this much is certain: that the structure of the pyramid of incomes, expressed in terms of money, has not greatly changed during the period covered by our material—which for England includes the whole of the nineteenth century...
The capitalist engine is first and last an engine of mass production which unavoidably means also production for the masses...
Verification is easy. There are no doubt some things available to the modern workman that Louis XIV himself would have been delighted to have modern dentistry for instance. On the whole, however, a budget on that level had little that really mattered to gain from capitalist achievement. Even speed of traveling may be assumed to have been a minor consideration for so very dignified a gentleman. Electric lighting is no great boon to anyone who has enough money to buy a sufficient number of candles and to pay servants to attend them. It is the cheap cloth, the cheap cotton and rayon fabric, boots, motorcars and so on that are the typical achievements of capitalist production, and not as rule improvements that would mean much to the rich man. Queen Elizabeth owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort."
--- Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy / Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Post ID: 5351026658913958245
Monday, November 02, 2009
Japanese women and the appearance of submission
"Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology." - Rebecca West
How about recessions and economics?
***
On "patriarchy" in Japan:
"Few Westerners are aware that Japanese women have any kind of domestic power at all. In publications produced by Japanese women’s groups. I have also read the surprising figure that 70 percent of married women with teenage children now work outside the home, but that even women who do not work for wages are usually the ones who decide how much a family saves or spends...
Many Japanese companies actually pay a man’s wages directly into his wife’s bank account. I’ve heard male professors joke about how they only give speeches around the country on the condition that they be paid discreetly and directly, a way of getting their hands on some cash their wives don’t know about and can’t control. Many Japanese wives handle all the family income and give their husbands allowances. Men frequently complain among themselves about their stingy wives. It’s a familiar topic of comedy on television, the hardworking saraiiman whose wife won’t let him have enough money to go out drinking or to play pachinko, the pinball game that’s a national obsession. In fact, the beauty of the company bar is that one’s tab is usually picked up by the company or deducted directly from one’s salary, before it lands in the wife’s account.
You would not know from observing popular culture that women are Japan’s primary consumers, however. Most Japanese ads cater to male fantasies, as if men were the potential customers who had to be persuaded.
“But isn’t that typical in Japan?” one of my friends responded when I asked her about this. “We women pretend that men have all the power—and then we go about our own lives. As long as the men feel they are in control, we can do what we like.
The difference between the appearance of submissiveness and the reality of control is something Ted noticed almost immediately, especially since he kept meeting foreign men with Japanese girlfriends or wives. Not all gajin fell into this category, certainly, but Ted joked that there were some gajin men who looked cocksure when they were dating Japanese women, happily anticipating the Western fantasy of the totally deferential Oriental wife. Yet there was a perplexed look of lost illusions that unmistakably marked those who had learned, too well, that there could be an iron will and enormous capability behind the demure smile of the “submissive” Japanese wife...
Yet the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman never goes away. Every English-language publication in Japan is filled with desperate personal ads, like this one from an English-language magazine published in Kobe:
The pathetic author of this advertisement was partly right; in Japan, the person who has the power frequently is the one who acts the most powerless. This appearance of submission may be one way that Japanese women survive in a system that, by tradition and law, grants men a superior position. Again I think of Mrs. Okano. I doubt that she would find any contradiction between selecting and arranging the financing for a house that in our suburb could easily cost a million dollars, and making sure she’s always there, rice cooker at the ready, when her husband comes home from work or from after-work barhopping. In our conversations, she always refers to her husband with the old-fashioned term teishu: "My Master."
If she’s really typical, Mrs. Okano also spends part of her day reading financial reports and phoning her broker. Women actively participate in the Nikkei, the Japanese stock market, and Japan’s astonishing 20 percent savings rate (one of its biggest weapons in the trade wars) is due almost entirely to the pecuniary habits of Japanese women."
--- 36 views of Mount Fuji: on finding myself in Japan / Cathy N. Davidson
How about recessions and economics?
***
On "patriarchy" in Japan:
"Few Westerners are aware that Japanese women have any kind of domestic power at all. In publications produced by Japanese women’s groups. I have also read the surprising figure that 70 percent of married women with teenage children now work outside the home, but that even women who do not work for wages are usually the ones who decide how much a family saves or spends...
Many Japanese companies actually pay a man’s wages directly into his wife’s bank account. I’ve heard male professors joke about how they only give speeches around the country on the condition that they be paid discreetly and directly, a way of getting their hands on some cash their wives don’t know about and can’t control. Many Japanese wives handle all the family income and give their husbands allowances. Men frequently complain among themselves about their stingy wives. It’s a familiar topic of comedy on television, the hardworking saraiiman whose wife won’t let him have enough money to go out drinking or to play pachinko, the pinball game that’s a national obsession. In fact, the beauty of the company bar is that one’s tab is usually picked up by the company or deducted directly from one’s salary, before it lands in the wife’s account.
You would not know from observing popular culture that women are Japan’s primary consumers, however. Most Japanese ads cater to male fantasies, as if men were the potential customers who had to be persuaded.
“But isn’t that typical in Japan?” one of my friends responded when I asked her about this. “We women pretend that men have all the power—and then we go about our own lives. As long as the men feel they are in control, we can do what we like.
The difference between the appearance of submissiveness and the reality of control is something Ted noticed almost immediately, especially since he kept meeting foreign men with Japanese girlfriends or wives. Not all gajin fell into this category, certainly, but Ted joked that there were some gajin men who looked cocksure when they were dating Japanese women, happily anticipating the Western fantasy of the totally deferential Oriental wife. Yet there was a perplexed look of lost illusions that unmistakably marked those who had learned, too well, that there could be an iron will and enormous capability behind the demure smile of the “submissive” Japanese wife...
Yet the stereotype of the submissive Asian woman never goes away. Every English-language publication in Japan is filled with desperate personal ads, like this one from an English-language magazine published in Kobe:
OBEDIENCE. An American man who is sensitive but strict seeks a woman of a delicate and docile nature who is interested in exploring the full range of the meaning of this word. What do you think of the ancient Chinese statement “He who rules, truly serves and she who serves, truly rules”? All who are interested should write to...
The pathetic author of this advertisement was partly right; in Japan, the person who has the power frequently is the one who acts the most powerless. This appearance of submission may be one way that Japanese women survive in a system that, by tradition and law, grants men a superior position. Again I think of Mrs. Okano. I doubt that she would find any contradiction between selecting and arranging the financing for a house that in our suburb could easily cost a million dollars, and making sure she’s always there, rice cooker at the ready, when her husband comes home from work or from after-work barhopping. In our conversations, she always refers to her husband with the old-fashioned term teishu: "My Master."
If she’s really typical, Mrs. Okano also spends part of her day reading financial reports and phoning her broker. Women actively participate in the Nikkei, the Japanese stock market, and Japan’s astonishing 20 percent savings rate (one of its biggest weapons in the trade wars) is due almost entirely to the pecuniary habits of Japanese women."
--- 36 views of Mount Fuji: on finding myself in Japan / Cathy N. Davidson
Post ID: 4637236822261278450
Everyone Hates Prokofiev
"On September 5 Prokoflev’s name once again attracted the attention of St. Petersburg’s musical circles. The occasion was the première of the Second Piano Concerto, which took place at Pavlovsk under the baton of Aslanov. The Concerto left the audience in a state of open bewilderment. Miaskovsky, who attended the concert, reported that the audience "hissed and often did not behave quite properly."
... "He seats himself at the piano and begins to strike the keyboard with a dry, sharp touch. He seems to be either dusting or testing the keys. The audience is bewildered. Some are indignant. One couple stands up and runs toward the exit. ‘Such music is enough to drive you crazy!’‘What is he doing, making fun of us?’ More listeners follow the first couple from various parts of the hail. Prokofiev plays the second movement of his Concerto. Again the rhythmical collection of sounds. The most daring members of the audience hiss. Here and there seats become empty. Finally the young artist ends his Concerto with a mercilessly discordant combination of brasses. The audience is scandalized. The majority hiss. Prokofiev bows defiantly and plays an encore. The audience rushes away. On all sides there are exclamations: ‘To the devil with all this futurist music! We came here to enjoy ourselves. The cats at home can make music like this!’"
Most of the critics could not find words to describe this violator of musical canons. Of the twelve reviews in the press, eight were sharply negative. Yu. Kurdyumov called the Concerto “a Babel of insane sounds heaped one upon another without rhyme or reason.” N. Bernstein found it “a cacophony of sounds that has nothing in common with civilized music.. . . Prokofiev’s cadenzas, for example, are unbearable. They are such a musical mess that one might think they were created by capriciously emptying an inkwell on the paper.”...
The hostile reaction to Prokofiev’s Concerto is easy to understand. To the Pavlovsk audience and the critics who reflected its tastes, this music was a tonal “slap in the face,” an unpertinent, anarchic assault. Exactly the same reaction was evoked by the daring utterances of the young futurist poets, who maliciously mocked their listeners."
--- Prokofiev / Israel V. Nestyev
... "He seats himself at the piano and begins to strike the keyboard with a dry, sharp touch. He seems to be either dusting or testing the keys. The audience is bewildered. Some are indignant. One couple stands up and runs toward the exit. ‘Such music is enough to drive you crazy!’‘What is he doing, making fun of us?’ More listeners follow the first couple from various parts of the hail. Prokofiev plays the second movement of his Concerto. Again the rhythmical collection of sounds. The most daring members of the audience hiss. Here and there seats become empty. Finally the young artist ends his Concerto with a mercilessly discordant combination of brasses. The audience is scandalized. The majority hiss. Prokofiev bows defiantly and plays an encore. The audience rushes away. On all sides there are exclamations: ‘To the devil with all this futurist music! We came here to enjoy ourselves. The cats at home can make music like this!’"
Most of the critics could not find words to describe this violator of musical canons. Of the twelve reviews in the press, eight were sharply negative. Yu. Kurdyumov called the Concerto “a Babel of insane sounds heaped one upon another without rhyme or reason.” N. Bernstein found it “a cacophony of sounds that has nothing in common with civilized music.. . . Prokofiev’s cadenzas, for example, are unbearable. They are such a musical mess that one might think they were created by capriciously emptying an inkwell on the paper.”...
The hostile reaction to Prokofiev’s Concerto is easy to understand. To the Pavlovsk audience and the critics who reflected its tastes, this music was a tonal “slap in the face,” an unpertinent, anarchic assault. Exactly the same reaction was evoked by the daring utterances of the young futurist poets, who maliciously mocked their listeners."
--- Prokofiev / Israel V. Nestyev
Post ID: 1581144591703057648
"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top." - An English Professor, Ohio University
***
UMN Dept of Psychology: Labs: Minnesota Twin Family Study
"Similarity in twins reared together is due to genes and environment. Similarity in twins reared apart is due only to genes because they don't share experiences together. Most people would guess that twins reared together would be more alike than twins reared apart. But are they?..
[Identical] twins reared apart were about 50% similar in personality... [Identical] twins reared together are also about 50% similar in personality...
Similarities between twins are due to genes, not the environment... the environment, rather than making twins reared together alike, makes them different...
1. The spouses of [Identical] twins are no more alike than the spouses of [fraternal] twins and hardly more alike than random pairs of people!
2. When we asked male twins how they felt about their co-twin's spouse, two-thirds of the twins said they were indifferent to their twin's mate or actively disliked her!
Our choice of mate is one of the most important choices we ever make and yet it seems to be a random affair, not strongly influenced by genes or upbringing. The person that we end up with is determined by a kind of lottery, by whom we happen to be near when Cupid's arrow strikes!...
By asking twins about divorces in their families, a divorce risk was calculated according to which family member was divorced...
Identical (MZ) twins thus have very similar personalities.
We believe their similar divorce rates are due to their having genetically influenced personality characteristics that contribute to marital adjustment...
As twins grow older, do they become less similar to one another?
MZ (identical) twins become less similar in terms of physical traits like looks and weight over time. However, we recently found that MZ twins become more similar with respect to abilities such as vocabularies and arithmetic scores...
As DZ (fraternal) twins get older, as they leave their rearing home, marry, start careers and families, and develop their own circle of friends, they become less similar with respect to vocabularies and arithmetic scores."
Ah, the power of socialisation!
***
UMN Dept of Psychology: Labs: Minnesota Twin Family Study
"Similarity in twins reared together is due to genes and environment. Similarity in twins reared apart is due only to genes because they don't share experiences together. Most people would guess that twins reared together would be more alike than twins reared apart. But are they?..
[Identical] twins reared apart were about 50% similar in personality... [Identical] twins reared together are also about 50% similar in personality...
Similarities between twins are due to genes, not the environment... the environment, rather than making twins reared together alike, makes them different...
1. The spouses of [Identical] twins are no more alike than the spouses of [fraternal] twins and hardly more alike than random pairs of people!
2. When we asked male twins how they felt about their co-twin's spouse, two-thirds of the twins said they were indifferent to their twin's mate or actively disliked her!
Our choice of mate is one of the most important choices we ever make and yet it seems to be a random affair, not strongly influenced by genes or upbringing. The person that we end up with is determined by a kind of lottery, by whom we happen to be near when Cupid's arrow strikes!...
By asking twins about divorces in their families, a divorce risk was calculated according to which family member was divorced...
Identical (MZ) twins thus have very similar personalities.
We believe their similar divorce rates are due to their having genetically influenced personality characteristics that contribute to marital adjustment...
As twins grow older, do they become less similar to one another?
MZ (identical) twins become less similar in terms of physical traits like looks and weight over time. However, we recently found that MZ twins become more similar with respect to abilities such as vocabularies and arithmetic scores...
As DZ (fraternal) twins get older, as they leave their rearing home, marry, start careers and families, and develop their own circle of friends, they become less similar with respect to vocabularies and arithmetic scores."
Ah, the power of socialisation!
Post ID: 3873152399696449327
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Profile writing FAIL!
"Featured Delegate Profile: Singapore - Valerie Lim
Written by Woman of the Earth
Name: VALERIE LIM
Age: 24 years old
Height: 179 cm
Weight: 158 kg
Body: 34-26-36 in
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Occupation: Behavioral Therapist
Birthplace: Singapore"
One thing I've always wondered: if your profile describes your hair colour and you change it, is the profile amended?
"Featured Delegate Profile: Singapore - Valerie Lim
Written by Woman of the Earth
Name: VALERIE LIM
Age: 24 years old
Height: 179 cm
Weight: 158 kg
Body: 34-26-36 in
Eye Color: Dark Brown
Hair Color: Dark Brown
Occupation: Behavioral Therapist
Birthplace: Singapore"
One thing I've always wondered: if your profile describes your hair colour and you change it, is the profile amended?
Post ID: 6056095797185381006
Officespeak
"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." - William G. McAdoo
***
"This section deals with the technical aspects of officespeak, such as passive voice, circular reasoning, and rhetorical questions. These are the nuts and bolts of the Rube Goldberg contraption that is the language of the office. Obscurity, vagueness, and a noncommittal stance on everything define the essence of officespeak. No one wants to come out and say what they really think. It is much safer for the company and those up top to constantly cloak their language in order to hide how much they do know or, just as often, how much they don't know...
Passive voice: The bread and butter of press releases and official statements. For those who have forgotten their basic grammar, a sentence in the passive voice does not have an active verb. Thus, no one can take the blame for 'doing' something, since nothing, grammatically speaking, has been done by anybody. Using the passive voice takes the emphasis off yourself (or the company). Here [is an] few example of how the passive voice can render any situation guiltless:
'Five hundred employees were laid off.' (Not 'The company laid off five hundred employees,' or even worse, 'I laid off five hundred employees.' These layoffs occurred in a netherworld of displaced blame, in which the company and the individual are miraculously absent from the picture)...
Circular reasoning: Another favorite when it comes time to deliver bad news. In circular reasoning, a problem is posited and a reason is given. Except that the reason is basically just a rewording of the problem. Pretty nifty. Here are some examples to better explain the examples:
'Our profits are down because of [a decrease in revenues].'
'People were laid off because there was a surplus of workers.'...
Rhetorical questions: The questions that ask for no answers. So why even ask the question? Because it makes it seem as though the listener is participating in a true dialogue. When your boss asks, 'Who's staying late tonight?' you know he really means, 'Anyone who wants to keep their job will work late.' Still, there's that split second when you think you have a say in the matter, when you believe your opinion counts. Only to be reminded, yet again, that no one cares what you think...
Hollow statements: The second cousin of circular reasoning. Hollow statements make it seem as though something positive is happening (such as better profits or increased market share), but they lack any proof to support the claim.
'Our company is performing better than it looks.'
'Once productivity increases, so will profits.'...
They and them: Pronouns used to refer to the high-level management that no one has ever met, only heard whispers about. 'They' are faceless and often nameless. And their decisions render those beneath them impotent to change anything. 'They' fire people, 'they' freeze wages, 'they' make your life a living hell. It's not your boss who is responsible - he would love to reverse all these directives if he could. But you see, his hands are tied.
'I'd love to give you that raise, you know I would. But they're the ones in charge.'
'Okay, gang, bad news, no more cargo shorts allowed. Hey, I love the casual look, but they hate it.'...
Obfuscation: A tendency to obscure, darken, or stupefy. The primary goal of the above techniques is, in the end, obfuscation. Whether it's by means of the methods outlined above or by injecting jargon-heavy phrases into sentences, corporations want to make their motives and actions as difficult to comprehend as possible."
--- Officespeak / David W. Martin
Also from the book:
"As a grown man I see emoticons as the domain of teenage girls and the mentally deficient"
***
"This section deals with the technical aspects of officespeak, such as passive voice, circular reasoning, and rhetorical questions. These are the nuts and bolts of the Rube Goldberg contraption that is the language of the office. Obscurity, vagueness, and a noncommittal stance on everything define the essence of officespeak. No one wants to come out and say what they really think. It is much safer for the company and those up top to constantly cloak their language in order to hide how much they do know or, just as often, how much they don't know...
Passive voice: The bread and butter of press releases and official statements. For those who have forgotten their basic grammar, a sentence in the passive voice does not have an active verb. Thus, no one can take the blame for 'doing' something, since nothing, grammatically speaking, has been done by anybody. Using the passive voice takes the emphasis off yourself (or the company). Here [is an] few example of how the passive voice can render any situation guiltless:
'Five hundred employees were laid off.' (Not 'The company laid off five hundred employees,' or even worse, 'I laid off five hundred employees.' These layoffs occurred in a netherworld of displaced blame, in which the company and the individual are miraculously absent from the picture)...
Circular reasoning: Another favorite when it comes time to deliver bad news. In circular reasoning, a problem is posited and a reason is given. Except that the reason is basically just a rewording of the problem. Pretty nifty. Here are some examples to better explain the examples:
'Our profits are down because of [a decrease in revenues].'
'People were laid off because there was a surplus of workers.'...
Rhetorical questions: The questions that ask for no answers. So why even ask the question? Because it makes it seem as though the listener is participating in a true dialogue. When your boss asks, 'Who's staying late tonight?' you know he really means, 'Anyone who wants to keep their job will work late.' Still, there's that split second when you think you have a say in the matter, when you believe your opinion counts. Only to be reminded, yet again, that no one cares what you think...
Hollow statements: The second cousin of circular reasoning. Hollow statements make it seem as though something positive is happening (such as better profits or increased market share), but they lack any proof to support the claim.
'Our company is performing better than it looks.'
'Once productivity increases, so will profits.'...
They and them: Pronouns used to refer to the high-level management that no one has ever met, only heard whispers about. 'They' are faceless and often nameless. And their decisions render those beneath them impotent to change anything. 'They' fire people, 'they' freeze wages, 'they' make your life a living hell. It's not your boss who is responsible - he would love to reverse all these directives if he could. But you see, his hands are tied.
'I'd love to give you that raise, you know I would. But they're the ones in charge.'
'Okay, gang, bad news, no more cargo shorts allowed. Hey, I love the casual look, but they hate it.'...
Obfuscation: A tendency to obscure, darken, or stupefy. The primary goal of the above techniques is, in the end, obfuscation. Whether it's by means of the methods outlined above or by injecting jargon-heavy phrases into sentences, corporations want to make their motives and actions as difficult to comprehend as possible."
--- Officespeak / David W. Martin
Also from the book:
"As a grown man I see emoticons as the domain of teenage girls and the mentally deficient"
Post ID: 8386656834525813431
So degrading to wash cars topless while others watched - "WHAT really happened at the topless car wash? Were the models really topless? Were they misled into taking part, or did they go in with their eyes open? All four models and their freelance agent have challenged the organiser's version of the event.... All four girls said they took off their bikini tops but kept their nude-coloured nipple tape on throughout... Mr Chen insisted all the models took off their nipple tapes. To prove it, he showed The New Paper on Sunday one uncensored low-resolution picture showing Cara's exposed breasts. But she said: 'I swear, I never never took it off. It must have been edited to look like I wasn't wearing anything.'"
Right. How come no one asks the participants (i.e. drivers)?
Britons Weary of Surveillance in Minor Cases - "A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore... It is legal for localities to follow residents secretly. Local governments regularly use these surveillance powers — which they “self-authorize,” without oversight from judges or law enforcement officers — to... investigate reports of noise pollution and people who do not clean up their dogs’ waste. Local governments use them to catch people who fail to recycle, people who put their trash out too early, people who sell fireworks without licenses, people whose dogs bark too loudly and people who illegally operate taxicabs... the localities and agencies can film people with hidden cameras, trawl through communication traffic data like phone calls and Web site visits"
Animal welfare in Nazi Germany - Wikipedia - "There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany and the Nazis took several measures to ensure protection of animals. Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists, and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the Nazi regime. Heinrich Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was an animal lover and conservationist. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are more or less modification of the laws introduced by the Nazis."
PETA would approve.
Women and shoes: A love affair in pairs - "Actress Penelope Cruz confesses: "I have never been able to study a new role until, alongside the director, we choose the shoes which the woman we are about to bring to the screen will be wearing. Everything starts down there." More than anything else, women's shoes speak the language of sex. You don't have to be a moralist or an anthropologist in order to understand the message transmitted by a girl in a pair of rubber-soled loafers versus one wearing noisy stilettos... A high-heeled shoe is the object of apparel that - more than any other - marks the difference between men and women... "Sometimes, when we're about to shoot a closeup, the director will say to me that I can take off my shoes as my feet won't be in the frame," said actress Sarah Jessica Parker. "But I've never done it. The expression of a woman in flats is totally different from one in heels.""
False Sex Abuse Accusations Lead to Revision of Theories - "The research showed that between 23 percent and 33 percent of child sexual abuse cases involved false allegations, between 2 percent and 8 percent of cases involved deliberate lies by children, and the majority of reported cases were unfounded"
The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States - "Like Ahab's search for the Great White Whale, liberals' search for the Great White Defendant is relentless and never-ending. When, in 1988, Tawana Brawley's and Al Sharpton's then year-old spectacular charge that several white men including prosecutor Steven Pagones (whose name Brawley had picked out of a newspaper article) had abducted and raped the 15 year old was shown to be completely false, the Nation said it didn't matter, since the charges expressed the essential nature of white men's treatment of black women in this country. When the Duke University lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper last year, liberals everywhere treated the accusation as fact, because... the rape charge seemed to the minds of liberals to reflect the true nature of oppressive racial and sexual relations in America... In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man"
The figures sounded like inflammatory lynch mob material, but when I checked the figures for 2006 they were similar to the quoted ones for 2005. Of course one can pick on the "Perceived race of offender", but that won't explain the large discrepancy. You can't blame underreporting either since this was from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (i.e. people saying if they'd been a victim of crime).
Another interesting finding: not only are White people incompetent interracial robbers, they are violent AND incompetent interracial robbers
What Do You Have Against Women? - "One obstacle to gender equality are those women who demand equal treatment in public, while demanding unequal treatment in private... It is an objective fact that most serial killers are men. To hide this fact is to mislead the public about a matter of public concern... women have no hesitation in saying the most rapists are men. The reason? It's an objective fact — most rapists really are men. But if I say that most false accusers are women, someone will certainly complain that I am saying most women are false accusers... As a general rule, men don't make ridiculous accusations of bias. Editors know this, so they publish virtually anything if it's only offensive to men, not women. Before you ask "where's your evidence?", a request to which you have every right, here it is: "All men are rapists, and that's all they are." — Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room" (1977) The book was published without hesitation and still sees brisk sales... I've had many conversations like this over the years. They follow this general pattern:
* "You can't say that about women!"
* "Can I say it about men?"
* "Uhh ... sure, why not? Men are animals.""
not martha - Meat Hand
Giant breasts shock China - ""The park used to be a great place for families, but now what attracts my son the most is the huge breasts. "I have tried to educate him with some scientific knowledge, but all he thinks when he sees the statue are smutty thoughts"... "The little girls were scared and cried loudly, asking me if they would grow those huge things""
Man sues over lack of 'Lynx effect' - ""The company cheated me because in its advertisements, it says women will be attracted to you if you use Axe. I used it for seven years but no girl came to me."... "There is no data to substantiate the supposition that unattractive and unintelligent men don't attract women. "In fact some of the best looking women have been known to marry and date absolutely ghoulish guys""
Living in a cage in Hong Kong - "Chung lives in a 625 square foot (58.06 square meter) flat here with 18 strangers... The 19 occupants share two toilets"
There is actually something to the government's statement: "People choose to live in bedspace apartments and cubicles because these apartments, apart from commanding a low rental level, are mostly conveniently located in the urban area"
A Pretty Face or a Hot Body? - "If you were interested in pursuing a partner for a short-term relationship which would you be most interested in…their face or their body? And for a long-term relationship?... They asked 375 college students to pick whether to date someone based on either seeing just their face or their body. Nearly all participants chose to see the face. Except for one of the sexes in one situation... "We found that everyone was more interested in the opposite sex person’s face than their body—except for men in the short-term mating condition."... Freud famously asked, what do women want. I guess it was clear to him what men wanted."
This explains "cover the face, bang the base" (or bomb the base). The explanation is not a very strong one (maybe they'll firm it up when they write a paper), but the results at least have been replicated elsewhere
The SuperFreakonomics Global-Warming Fact Quiz - Freakonomics Blog - "Our question, at noted above, is what is the cheapest, fastest way to quickly cool the Earth... But that is not the question that Al Gore and the climate scientists are trying to answer. The sorts of questions they tend to ask are “What is the ‘right’ amount of carbon to emit?” or “Is it moral for this generation to put carbon into the air when future generations will pay the price?” or “What are the responsibilities of humankind to the planet?”"
Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We'll Miss Forever - "1) Under Construction GIFs
2) HTML... HTML makes it harder to add a hyperlink than to make text scroll horizontally across the page. That’s where priorities were in the Netscape days.
3) Guestbooks
4) FAQs
5) Webmasters
6) Take me to the top
7) Visitor counters...
We’ll miss the impossible to remember URLs. We’re going to miss hand-coding our pages in Notepad. We’ll even miss the ridiculously invasive ads"
Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$ng Plug - Worldwide electric plugs
Daddies be damned! Who are the British women who think fathers are irrelevant? - "Having reached the age of 38 without meeting Mr Right, Karen Shefras decided to become a mother by using donated sperm... According to one gynaecologist the Mail spoke to this week, as many as 50 per cent of patients being given sperm at his clinic are single women or are in same-sex relationships... In the end, perhaps the truth is that, for complete fulfilment, women need both a partner and children. The most worrying question of all is why the most natural thing in the world has become so seemingly difficult to achieve, and why a generation of women have fallen foul of their dreams."
The Kids Are All Right - "Many people claim that all the graphic imagery and information floating around the internet will warp young minds and stunt the maturity of our children. Maybe. Maybe not. Older generations always bemoan the morals of those who come after them. People thought my generation would turn out to be a cohort of criminals, deviants and slackers. That happened to some of us sure, but most people my age are well into careers, raising families and just as confused about life as their parents before them. And when it comes to sex no single generation can claim the moral high ground... The kids of today will inherit their own particular set of problems, especially regarding sex. But they’ll develop their own coping skills and muddle though"
Right. How come no one asks the participants (i.e. drivers)?
Britons Weary of Surveillance in Minor Cases - "A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore... It is legal for localities to follow residents secretly. Local governments regularly use these surveillance powers — which they “self-authorize,” without oversight from judges or law enforcement officers — to... investigate reports of noise pollution and people who do not clean up their dogs’ waste. Local governments use them to catch people who fail to recycle, people who put their trash out too early, people who sell fireworks without licenses, people whose dogs bark too loudly and people who illegally operate taxicabs... the localities and agencies can film people with hidden cameras, trawl through communication traffic data like phone calls and Web site visits"
Animal welfare in Nazi Germany - Wikipedia - "There was widespread support for animal welfare in Nazi Germany and the Nazis took several measures to ensure protection of animals. Many Nazi leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists, and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the Nazi regime. Heinrich Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals. Göring was an animal lover and conservationist. The current animal welfare laws in Germany are more or less modification of the laws introduced by the Nazis."
PETA would approve.
Women and shoes: A love affair in pairs - "Actress Penelope Cruz confesses: "I have never been able to study a new role until, alongside the director, we choose the shoes which the woman we are about to bring to the screen will be wearing. Everything starts down there." More than anything else, women's shoes speak the language of sex. You don't have to be a moralist or an anthropologist in order to understand the message transmitted by a girl in a pair of rubber-soled loafers versus one wearing noisy stilettos... A high-heeled shoe is the object of apparel that - more than any other - marks the difference between men and women... "Sometimes, when we're about to shoot a closeup, the director will say to me that I can take off my shoes as my feet won't be in the frame," said actress Sarah Jessica Parker. "But I've never done it. The expression of a woman in flats is totally different from one in heels.""
False Sex Abuse Accusations Lead to Revision of Theories - "The research showed that between 23 percent and 33 percent of child sexual abuse cases involved false allegations, between 2 percent and 8 percent of cases involved deliberate lies by children, and the majority of reported cases were unfounded"
The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States - "Like Ahab's search for the Great White Whale, liberals' search for the Great White Defendant is relentless and never-ending. When, in 1988, Tawana Brawley's and Al Sharpton's then year-old spectacular charge that several white men including prosecutor Steven Pagones (whose name Brawley had picked out of a newspaper article) had abducted and raped the 15 year old was shown to be completely false, the Nation said it didn't matter, since the charges expressed the essential nature of white men's treatment of black women in this country. When the Duke University lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper last year, liberals everywhere treated the accusation as fact, because... the rape charge seemed to the minds of liberals to reflect the true nature of oppressive racial and sexual relations in America... In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man"
The figures sounded like inflammatory lynch mob material, but when I checked the figures for 2006 they were similar to the quoted ones for 2005. Of course one can pick on the "Perceived race of offender", but that won't explain the large discrepancy. You can't blame underreporting either since this was from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (i.e. people saying if they'd been a victim of crime).
Another interesting finding: not only are White people incompetent interracial robbers, they are violent AND incompetent interracial robbers
What Do You Have Against Women? - "One obstacle to gender equality are those women who demand equal treatment in public, while demanding unequal treatment in private... It is an objective fact that most serial killers are men. To hide this fact is to mislead the public about a matter of public concern... women have no hesitation in saying the most rapists are men. The reason? It's an objective fact — most rapists really are men. But if I say that most false accusers are women, someone will certainly complain that I am saying most women are false accusers... As a general rule, men don't make ridiculous accusations of bias. Editors know this, so they publish virtually anything if it's only offensive to men, not women. Before you ask "where's your evidence?", a request to which you have every right, here it is: "All men are rapists, and that's all they are." — Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room" (1977) The book was published without hesitation and still sees brisk sales... I've had many conversations like this over the years. They follow this general pattern:
* "You can't say that about women!"
* "Can I say it about men?"
* "Uhh ... sure, why not? Men are animals.""
not martha - Meat Hand
Giant breasts shock China - ""The park used to be a great place for families, but now what attracts my son the most is the huge breasts. "I have tried to educate him with some scientific knowledge, but all he thinks when he sees the statue are smutty thoughts"... "The little girls were scared and cried loudly, asking me if they would grow those huge things""
Man sues over lack of 'Lynx effect' - ""The company cheated me because in its advertisements, it says women will be attracted to you if you use Axe. I used it for seven years but no girl came to me."... "There is no data to substantiate the supposition that unattractive and unintelligent men don't attract women. "In fact some of the best looking women have been known to marry and date absolutely ghoulish guys""
Living in a cage in Hong Kong - "Chung lives in a 625 square foot (58.06 square meter) flat here with 18 strangers... The 19 occupants share two toilets"
There is actually something to the government's statement: "People choose to live in bedspace apartments and cubicles because these apartments, apart from commanding a low rental level, are mostly conveniently located in the urban area"
A Pretty Face or a Hot Body? - "If you were interested in pursuing a partner for a short-term relationship which would you be most interested in…their face or their body? And for a long-term relationship?... They asked 375 college students to pick whether to date someone based on either seeing just their face or their body. Nearly all participants chose to see the face. Except for one of the sexes in one situation... "We found that everyone was more interested in the opposite sex person’s face than their body—except for men in the short-term mating condition."... Freud famously asked, what do women want. I guess it was clear to him what men wanted."
This explains "cover the face, bang the base" (or bomb the base). The explanation is not a very strong one (maybe they'll firm it up when they write a paper), but the results at least have been replicated elsewhere
The SuperFreakonomics Global-Warming Fact Quiz - Freakonomics Blog - "Our question, at noted above, is what is the cheapest, fastest way to quickly cool the Earth... But that is not the question that Al Gore and the climate scientists are trying to answer. The sorts of questions they tend to ask are “What is the ‘right’ amount of carbon to emit?” or “Is it moral for this generation to put carbon into the air when future generations will pay the price?” or “What are the responsibilities of humankind to the planet?”"
Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We'll Miss Forever - "1) Under Construction GIFs
2) HTML... HTML makes it harder to add a hyperlink than to make text scroll horizontally across the page. That’s where priorities were in the Netscape days.
3) Guestbooks
4) FAQs
5) Webmasters
6) Take me to the top
7) Visitor counters...
We’ll miss the impossible to remember URLs. We’re going to miss hand-coding our pages in Notepad. We’ll even miss the ridiculously invasive ads"
Giz Explains: Why Every Country Has a Different F#$ng Plug - Worldwide electric plugs
Daddies be damned! Who are the British women who think fathers are irrelevant? - "Having reached the age of 38 without meeting Mr Right, Karen Shefras decided to become a mother by using donated sperm... According to one gynaecologist the Mail spoke to this week, as many as 50 per cent of patients being given sperm at his clinic are single women or are in same-sex relationships... In the end, perhaps the truth is that, for complete fulfilment, women need both a partner and children. The most worrying question of all is why the most natural thing in the world has become so seemingly difficult to achieve, and why a generation of women have fallen foul of their dreams."
The Kids Are All Right - "Many people claim that all the graphic imagery and information floating around the internet will warp young minds and stunt the maturity of our children. Maybe. Maybe not. Older generations always bemoan the morals of those who come after them. People thought my generation would turn out to be a cohort of criminals, deviants and slackers. That happened to some of us sure, but most people my age are well into careers, raising families and just as confused about life as their parents before them. And when it comes to sex no single generation can claim the moral high ground... The kids of today will inherit their own particular set of problems, especially regarding sex. But they’ll develop their own coping skills and muddle though"
Post ID: 7140744622348818501
I was wondering why Malay and Indian food was always so expensive (for example, Malay rice costs more than Chinese rice).
One person complained to me about $7.20 Nasi Padang with 2 meat dishes and 1 vegetable dish, while 1 meat dish, 1 vegetable dish and 2 extras cost me $6.20 (Chinese caifan would have cost $2.80 for the equivalent). On the Indian side, the cheapest Briyani I've had was $3.50, and then the piece of mutton was small and mostly bone.
Even if you ignore possible racial discrimination and factor in sometimes slightly bigger pieces of meat, this is a large price difference.
Someone said it was because pounding spices takes time, but I think the captive market is a better explanation.
One person complained to me about $7.20 Nasi Padang with 2 meat dishes and 1 vegetable dish, while 1 meat dish, 1 vegetable dish and 2 extras cost me $6.20 (Chinese caifan would have cost $2.80 for the equivalent). On the Indian side, the cheapest Briyani I've had was $3.50, and then the piece of mutton was small and mostly bone.
Even if you ignore possible racial discrimination and factor in sometimes slightly bigger pieces of meat, this is a large price difference.
Someone said it was because pounding spices takes time, but I think the captive market is a better explanation.
Post ID: 5921038745292918312
Saturday, October 31, 2009
"The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it." - Carl Becker
***
'More to quit' in drug advice row - "The UK's chief drugs adviser is predicting there will be resignations after he was forced to quit for criticising government policy... The professor most recently criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C... He told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects. He described his sacking as an example of the government's "Luddite attitude" towards science and accused Gordon Brown of making "irrational" remarks about the dangers of cannabis... The professor said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness. In the past, Prof Nutt has also claimed that taking ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse... "It is disturbing if an independent scientist should be removed for reporting sound scientific advice""
Addendum: Science chief backs cannabis view - "The UK government's chief science adviser has told BBC News that he supports the former chief drugs adviser's scientific view on cannabis"
Bering in Mind: Are there asexuals among us? On the possibility of a "fourth" sexual orientation - "Yet many asexuals are also perfectly willing to have sex if it satisfies their sexual partners; it’s not awkward or painful for them but rather, like making toast or emptying the trash, they just don’t personally derive pleasure from the act... while many asexuals are virgins, others are ironically even more experienced than your traditionally sexual friends... the only good way to solve the riddle is also a bit unsavory. But unless psychological scientists ever gather a group of willing, self-identified asexuals and, systematically and under controlled conditions, expose them to an array of erotic stimuli while measuring their physical arousal (penile erection or vaginal lubrication), the truth of the matter will lie forever hidden away in the asexual's pants"
Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? - "In a series of studies published in a 2003 issue of the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, Gallup and a team of his students put the “semen displacement hypothesis” to the test using artificial genitalia of different shapes and sizes. They even concocted several batches of realistic seminal fluid. Findings from the study may not have “proved” the semen displacement hypothesis, but it certainly confirmed its principal points and made a believer out of most readers"
Art Wars: Hong Kong vs. Singapore - "Hong Kong also has another advantage: a livelier local artists scene. "Singapore is very planned," Mr. Tan says, and in the long run, that can mean missing something that "can happen if things are allowed to grow organically... while Hong Kong's overall arts scene has improved in recent times and draws such international attractions as the Chanel Mobile Art show, much of the focus, unlike Singapore's more diverse regional offerings, is on Chinese-oriented art and antiques displays"
Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents - "Both had hit upon an essential difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don't: parents. My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap... They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn't wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop... Achievement gaps don't break down neatly along racial lines... Community activists and school administrators at T.C. Williams or around the country... cast the difference between kids who are succeeding in school and those who are not in terms of race and seem obsessed with what they call "the gap" between the test scores of white and black students... Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom"
Tiny banner ads attached to flies generate buzz
stuff white people do: wonder where to start when they join the fight against racism - "The definition of racism that you probably have... "prejudice against someone based on their skin color or ethnicity" is NOT the definition that's commonly used in anti-racist circles [but] the accepted sociological definition... commonly used in academic research: "racism is prejudice plus power"... Only white people can be racist, because only white people have institutional power.... If you start talking about "reverse racism" you're going to either get insulted or laughed at, because it isn't possible under that definition; PoC don't have the power in North America, so by definition, they can't be racist. Crying "reverse racism!" is like waving a Clueless White Person Badge around... Pointing out that the colloquial definition is how Webster's Dictionary defines racism is not going to make anti-racists [admit that they're engaging in doublespeak]... [Do not use your "privilege"] to hurt PoC inadvertently (for example, by going into a PoC "safe space" and taking over the conversation)... Accept that you will make mistakes and you will show your privileged ass and people will get upset at you about it... Just make a sincere apology, figure out your mistake, and keep learning. (If you don't know how to make a sincere apology, it goes like this: "I'm sorry I hurt you by saying XYZ." Statements like "I'm sorry I did XYZ, but [offer excuse here]" or "I'm sorry if I upset you" or "I'm sorry you found my statements offensive" are not sincere apologies and they won't help the situation.)"
Translation: Due to Original Sin, white people are evil and if you point out the People of Colour are wrong (even if they are), you're being "racist" and "hurting" people. However, if you're accused of upsetting People of Colour, suck it up.
Even Babies Discriminate: A NurtureShock Excerpt - "Hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race... They wanted their children to grow up colorblind. But... they weren't colorblind at all. Asked how many white people are mean, these children commonly answered, "Almost none." Asked how many blacks are mean, many answered, "Some," or "A lot." Even kids who attended diverse schools answered the questions this way... For decades, it was assumed that children see race only when society points it out to them. However, child-development researchers have increasingly begun to question that presumption... The unfortunate twist of diverse schools is that they don't necessarily lead to more cross-race relationships. Often it's the opposite... the more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school, and thus the likelihood that any two kids of different races have a friendship goes down... Harris-Britt warns that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination: "If you overfocus on those types of events, you give the children the message that the world is going to be hostile—you're just not valued and that's just the way the world is.""
Ingroup/outgroup discrimination is hardly surprising. It is only surprising that people think it wouldn't exist without an evil society.
***
'More to quit' in drug advice row - "The UK's chief drugs adviser is predicting there will be resignations after he was forced to quit for criticising government policy... The professor most recently criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C... He told the BBC he stood by his claim that cannabis should not be a Class B drug, based on its effects. He described his sacking as an example of the government's "Luddite attitude" towards science and accused Gordon Brown of making "irrational" remarks about the dangers of cannabis... The professor said smoking cannabis created only a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness. In the past, Prof Nutt has also claimed that taking ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse... "It is disturbing if an independent scientist should be removed for reporting sound scientific advice""
Addendum: Science chief backs cannabis view - "The UK government's chief science adviser has told BBC News that he supports the former chief drugs adviser's scientific view on cannabis"
Bering in Mind: Are there asexuals among us? On the possibility of a "fourth" sexual orientation - "Yet many asexuals are also perfectly willing to have sex if it satisfies their sexual partners; it’s not awkward or painful for them but rather, like making toast or emptying the trash, they just don’t personally derive pleasure from the act... while many asexuals are virgins, others are ironically even more experienced than your traditionally sexual friends... the only good way to solve the riddle is also a bit unsavory. But unless psychological scientists ever gather a group of willing, self-identified asexuals and, systematically and under controlled conditions, expose them to an array of erotic stimuli while measuring their physical arousal (penile erection or vaginal lubrication), the truth of the matter will lie forever hidden away in the asexual's pants"
Secrets of the Phallus: Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? - "In a series of studies published in a 2003 issue of the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, Gallup and a team of his students put the “semen displacement hypothesis” to the test using artificial genitalia of different shapes and sizes. They even concocted several batches of realistic seminal fluid. Findings from the study may not have “proved” the semen displacement hypothesis, but it certainly confirmed its principal points and made a believer out of most readers"
Art Wars: Hong Kong vs. Singapore - "Hong Kong also has another advantage: a livelier local artists scene. "Singapore is very planned," Mr. Tan says, and in the long run, that can mean missing something that "can happen if things are allowed to grow organically... while Hong Kong's overall arts scene has improved in recent times and draws such international attractions as the Chanel Mobile Art show, much of the focus, unlike Singapore's more diverse regional offerings, is on Chinese-oriented art and antiques displays"
Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents - "Both had hit upon an essential difference between the kids who make it in school and those who don't: parents. My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap... They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn't wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop... Achievement gaps don't break down neatly along racial lines... Community activists and school administrators at T.C. Williams or around the country... cast the difference between kids who are succeeding in school and those who are not in terms of race and seem obsessed with what they call "the gap" between the test scores of white and black students... Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom"
Tiny banner ads attached to flies generate buzz
stuff white people do: wonder where to start when they join the fight against racism - "The definition of racism that you probably have... "prejudice against someone based on their skin color or ethnicity" is NOT the definition that's commonly used in anti-racist circles [but] the accepted sociological definition... commonly used in academic research: "racism is prejudice plus power"... Only white people can be racist, because only white people have institutional power.... If you start talking about "reverse racism" you're going to either get insulted or laughed at, because it isn't possible under that definition; PoC don't have the power in North America, so by definition, they can't be racist. Crying "reverse racism!" is like waving a Clueless White Person Badge around... Pointing out that the colloquial definition is how Webster's Dictionary defines racism is not going to make anti-racists [admit that they're engaging in doublespeak]... [Do not use your "privilege"] to hurt PoC inadvertently (for example, by going into a PoC "safe space" and taking over the conversation)... Accept that you will make mistakes and you will show your privileged ass and people will get upset at you about it... Just make a sincere apology, figure out your mistake, and keep learning. (If you don't know how to make a sincere apology, it goes like this: "I'm sorry I hurt you by saying XYZ." Statements like "I'm sorry I did XYZ, but [offer excuse here]" or "I'm sorry if I upset you" or "I'm sorry you found my statements offensive" are not sincere apologies and they won't help the situation.)"
Translation: Due to Original Sin, white people are evil and if you point out the People of Colour are wrong (even if they are), you're being "racist" and "hurting" people. However, if you're accused of upsetting People of Colour, suck it up.
Even Babies Discriminate: A NurtureShock Excerpt - "Hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race... They wanted their children to grow up colorblind. But... they weren't colorblind at all. Asked how many white people are mean, these children commonly answered, "Almost none." Asked how many blacks are mean, many answered, "Some," or "A lot." Even kids who attended diverse schools answered the questions this way... For decades, it was assumed that children see race only when society points it out to them. However, child-development researchers have increasingly begun to question that presumption... The unfortunate twist of diverse schools is that they don't necessarily lead to more cross-race relationships. Often it's the opposite... the more diverse the school, the more the kids self-segregate by race and ethnicity within the school, and thus the likelihood that any two kids of different races have a friendship goes down... Harris-Britt warns that frequent predictions of future discrimination ironically become as destructive as experiences of actual discrimination: "If you overfocus on those types of events, you give the children the message that the world is going to be hostile—you're just not valued and that's just the way the world is.""
Ingroup/outgroup discrimination is hardly surprising. It is only surprising that people think it wouldn't exist without an evil society.
Post ID: 133065411196757551
Minding the gap between THE PINK & THE BLUE
"In a 1950 essay on citizenship that continues to be widely cited, British sociologist T.H. Marshall noted that citizenship confers on a citizen three kinds of rights.
The first is civil rights such as the right to free speech, to own property, to freedom of religion and to equality before the law.
The second is political rights such as the right to vote and to stand for office.
The third is social rights such as the right to education, housing and protection against poverty.
To public law expert Kevin Tan, Singaporeans have some grounds when they feel they do not have enough of these rights due to them as citizens.
'If you say you are a citizen, the most blatant right is the right to vote, but because of the GRC system, there are a large number of Singaporeans who have never voted in their life. As a result, they do not feel they are citizens in the political sense,' he says.
Associate Professor Straughan adds that many Singaporeans have not had the opportunity to exercise the right to vote because of the lack of opposition.
'If you actively voted a government in, it will be in your vested interest to support that government and ensure that the governance will be a success. But if you did not exercise that right, there is a high likelihood that you may end up just watching from the sidelines and throwing in criticisms whenever you deem appropriate,' she says...
Dr Tan acknowledges that citizens have some exclusive rights, such as the right to speak freely at Speakers' Corner, but says these are not tangible enough. Political leaders have maintained repeatedly that politics remains the preserve of citizens.
'If citizens can stage protests, without a permit, everywhere, that is something else,' he says. 'If you feel you are empowered, then you are more likely to feel this country belongs to you.'
As for social rights, there is a growing perception that PRs enjoy many of the same rights citizens have, albeit with restrictions.
These include the right to live in subsidised HDB housing, even if PRs can buy only resale flats, and the right to significant subsidies in areas like education...
But the key difference, explains sociologist Sharon Siddique, is that Singapore is both a city and a nation.
Many see this place as one or the other. The fundamental issue for Dr Siddique is whether an individual considers Singapore as a nation, or just a city.
‘For those who follow the ‘Singapore is my country’ route, the identity, perks, and obligations of citizenship are vital. For those who consider Singapore primarily as a city, the freedom to leave, to move on, to see this as one place on a global cosmopolitan continuum, will prevail, whatever passport one carries,’ she says."
Meanwhile,
"Law Minister K. Shanmugam said on Wednesday...
'This is where most people make a mistake...I have tried to explain that we are different. We are a city. We are not a country,' he told 200 lawyers, many from America, at the New York State Bar Association International Section's meeting here."
"In a 1950 essay on citizenship that continues to be widely cited, British sociologist T.H. Marshall noted that citizenship confers on a citizen three kinds of rights.
The first is civil rights such as the right to free speech, to own property, to freedom of religion and to equality before the law.
The second is political rights such as the right to vote and to stand for office.
The third is social rights such as the right to education, housing and protection against poverty.
To public law expert Kevin Tan, Singaporeans have some grounds when they feel they do not have enough of these rights due to them as citizens.
'If you say you are a citizen, the most blatant right is the right to vote, but because of the GRC system, there are a large number of Singaporeans who have never voted in their life. As a result, they do not feel they are citizens in the political sense,' he says.
Associate Professor Straughan adds that many Singaporeans have not had the opportunity to exercise the right to vote because of the lack of opposition.
'If you actively voted a government in, it will be in your vested interest to support that government and ensure that the governance will be a success. But if you did not exercise that right, there is a high likelihood that you may end up just watching from the sidelines and throwing in criticisms whenever you deem appropriate,' she says...
Dr Tan acknowledges that citizens have some exclusive rights, such as the right to speak freely at Speakers' Corner, but says these are not tangible enough. Political leaders have maintained repeatedly that politics remains the preserve of citizens.
'If citizens can stage protests, without a permit, everywhere, that is something else,' he says. 'If you feel you are empowered, then you are more likely to feel this country belongs to you.'
As for social rights, there is a growing perception that PRs enjoy many of the same rights citizens have, albeit with restrictions.
These include the right to live in subsidised HDB housing, even if PRs can buy only resale flats, and the right to significant subsidies in areas like education...
But the key difference, explains sociologist Sharon Siddique, is that Singapore is both a city and a nation.
Many see this place as one or the other. The fundamental issue for Dr Siddique is whether an individual considers Singapore as a nation, or just a city.
‘For those who follow the ‘Singapore is my country’ route, the identity, perks, and obligations of citizenship are vital. For those who consider Singapore primarily as a city, the freedom to leave, to move on, to see this as one place on a global cosmopolitan continuum, will prevail, whatever passport one carries,’ she says."
Meanwhile,
"Law Minister K. Shanmugam said on Wednesday...
'This is where most people make a mistake...I have tried to explain that we are different. We are a city. We are not a country,' he told 200 lawyers, many from America, at the New York State Bar Association International Section's meeting here."
Post ID: 1764521721780290981
From The Onion Radio News:
Millions Cheer Ball's Passage Through Hoop
"In a landmark event today, a ball going through a hoop left millions cheering, while at the same time leading others to gnash their teeth in despair.
Experts say the far-reaching consequences of the ball going through the hoop may never be fully understood, and may lead to the loss of large sums of money, the end of relationships and violence.
Police Chief Vincent Carber (?):
"Whenever you have a ball or object go through a hoop or a goal, you have to be ready for anything"
Carber went on to say that the addition of a racquet, club or lady easily eliminates the violence prevalent in all other ball-related sports"
Millions Cheer Ball's Passage Through Hoop
"In a landmark event today, a ball going through a hoop left millions cheering, while at the same time leading others to gnash their teeth in despair.
Experts say the far-reaching consequences of the ball going through the hoop may never be fully understood, and may lead to the loss of large sums of money, the end of relationships and violence.
Police Chief Vincent Carber (?):
"Whenever you have a ball or object go through a hoop or a goal, you have to be ready for anything"
Carber went on to say that the addition of a racquet, club or lady easily eliminates the violence prevalent in all other ball-related sports"
Post ID: 1295717486640233014
Friday, October 30, 2009
"A lawyer starts life giving $500 worth of law for $5 and ends giving $5 worth for $500." - Benjamin H. Brewster
***
Quotes:
[On being an alibi] Gabriel, can you come home with me? I will pay you with something. [Me: That sounds dodgy. Especially since you're untying your dress]
Your pronunciation is quite good. [Me: Really? My sister says I have a Singlish accent...] You'll have no problems in Marseilles.
[Me: Is she chatting with her secret lover?] She doesn't have a secret lover. [Me: Argh. The point of a secret lover is to keep it secret]
[On a DOTA LAN party] It's because it's become an official sport that people are playing it now. [Me: That's quite sad]
[Someone: We need a gyroscope.] Eww. Isn't that the thing you put up your anus?... Bimbo moment
[On 叫我皇帝] Lucky in Singapore we don't have 'Call me Lee Kuan Yew'
Speaks in a very high voice. Very fair. No wonder all the guys like.
I've never met any guy who likes Japanese porn
My China friend came to Singapore to study. She said her English standard went down.
I realise all my ex-boyfriends had a thing for anal. [Me: All? Maybe that says something about you...]
[Me: I'm quite risk averse, and my time horizon isn't that long] You're getting married?
What XXX and I wanted to do was get a Tarsier, slit its throat and han it over his door... Keep the eyes open
[On relief teaching] I had students whipping themselves with canes... I'd usher them in and they would run out and cane each other
[On international dating] Taiwan, that one, a bit dangerous. She has a free trade policy... The rest are bilateral trade relations.
[On my taste in women] You like the prepubescent, undernourished dwarf.
Yay, I'm going to go home and watch Desperate Housewives. [Me: What shall I do?] Masturbate? [Me: *rolls eyes*]
[On what she saw outside the window] There's a lot of people out there [on the street]. [Me: You can shout at them. Then they'll come up here and beat you up. Sorry they'll come and beat me up.]
[Me on a Middle Eastern restaurant: Why are these places always so dimly lit?] So you can't see how grimy the carpet is.
[24 year old on marrying older men] I wouldn't marry anyone my age - they're too immature. [Me: I wouldn't marry anyone my age - they're too old.]
[Me on Singapore Idol: Where are all of these kids coming from?] From the birth canals of Singaporeans. I had to say that.
[On his Orientation camp] They're so young. [Me: I thought guys like young girls...] they're so immature and not full-bodied.
***
Quotes:
[On being an alibi] Gabriel, can you come home with me? I will pay you with something. [Me: That sounds dodgy. Especially since you're untying your dress]
Your pronunciation is quite good. [Me: Really? My sister says I have a Singlish accent...] You'll have no problems in Marseilles.
[Me: Is she chatting with her secret lover?] She doesn't have a secret lover. [Me: Argh. The point of a secret lover is to keep it secret]
[On a DOTA LAN party] It's because it's become an official sport that people are playing it now. [Me: That's quite sad]
[Someone: We need a gyroscope.] Eww. Isn't that the thing you put up your anus?... Bimbo moment
[On 叫我皇帝] Lucky in Singapore we don't have 'Call me Lee Kuan Yew'
Speaks in a very high voice. Very fair. No wonder all the guys like.
I've never met any guy who likes Japanese porn
My China friend came to Singapore to study. She said her English standard went down.
I realise all my ex-boyfriends had a thing for anal. [Me: All? Maybe that says something about you...]
[Me: I'm quite risk averse, and my time horizon isn't that long] You're getting married?
What XXX and I wanted to do was get a Tarsier, slit its throat and han it over his door... Keep the eyes open
[On relief teaching] I had students whipping themselves with canes... I'd usher them in and they would run out and cane each other
[On international dating] Taiwan, that one, a bit dangerous. She has a free trade policy... The rest are bilateral trade relations.
[On my taste in women] You like the prepubescent, undernourished dwarf.
Yay, I'm going to go home and watch Desperate Housewives. [Me: What shall I do?] Masturbate? [Me: *rolls eyes*]
[On what she saw outside the window] There's a lot of people out there [on the street]. [Me: You can shout at them. Then they'll come up here and beat you up. Sorry they'll come and beat me up.]
[Me on a Middle Eastern restaurant: Why are these places always so dimly lit?] So you can't see how grimy the carpet is.
[24 year old on marrying older men] I wouldn't marry anyone my age - they're too immature. [Me: I wouldn't marry anyone my age - they're too old.]
[Me on Singapore Idol: Where are all of these kids coming from?] From the birth canals of Singaporeans. I had to say that.
[On his Orientation camp] They're so young. [Me: I thought guys like young girls...] they're so immature and not full-bodied.
Post ID: 7071070383109366279
Thursday, October 29, 2009
"About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." - Josh Billings
***
I remember being very amused by this article - as in the US, you don't need to be driving a car when drunk to be convicted of drunk driving.
CJ lifts jail term on drink driver
Straits Times, 1 April 2009
Man caught a second time escapes jail as, in his 1st conviction, he was drunk and asleep in parked car
ALMOST all drink drivers are jailed when caught a second time.
But the Chief Justice has lifted the jail term on one such offender, Chong Pit Khai, and fined him $5,000 instead, because he felt the circumstances for the 28-year-old's first offence in 2002 were rather different.
CJ Chan Sek Keong said in a written judgment on Monday that the law does not say jail is mandatory for repeat offenders like Chong, whose previous case had no precedent.
'In my view, using an imprisonment term for each and every case as a starting point is not necessarily desirable as a sentencing precedent. The present case shows why it is not desirable,' he said.
Chong's case was different because in his first offence, he was found drunk and asleep in a parked car by police.
Then, he was charged with being in possession of a car while under the influence of alcohol, while in the current case he was actually driving while drunk.
CJ Chan also noted that defendants do plead guilty 'especially for minor offences of which they may not be guilty for a variety of reasons'.
'This is a reality which the court should not close its eyes to or shy away from,' he said.
For this reason, a defendant is allowed to explain to the sentencing court why he pleaded guilty to a previous charge.
Chong, through his lawyer Krishnan Nadarajan, had explained that he was a national serviceman then and pleaded guilty as he felt the offence was a minor one and he wanted to save himself the hassle of going from his camp to court.
He said he had bought some alcoholic drinks from a nearby store and later drank in his father's car, parked near the family home. He had not driven the car but had merely slept in it with the engine turned off.
CJ Chan said the courts are prepared to review an earlier offence to help decide the degree of guilt for that offence.
He said that if Chong's story raised 'a question of reasonable doubt, then he ought to be entitled to that doubt'.
Chong's explanation showed his previous conviction was a weak antecedent to justify a jail term for the present case, said the judge.
Added to this, the high level of alcohol is in itself not enough to send a drink driver to jail in lieu of a fine, unless it is so high as to create a reasonable risk of the offender causing injury to people or damage to property on the road.
'It should be the risk of inflicting social costs on the public that should be the aggravating factor,' CJ Chan said.
This was not the case with Chong as the alcohol content found in him was moderate and did not impair his ability to drive, said CJ Chan, who made clear that each case must depend on its own facts.
In addition to the fine, Chong was also disqualified from driving for two years.
***
I remember being very amused by this article - as in the US, you don't need to be driving a car when drunk to be convicted of drunk driving.
CJ lifts jail term on drink driver
Straits Times, 1 April 2009
Man caught a second time escapes jail as, in his 1st conviction, he was drunk and asleep in parked car
ALMOST all drink drivers are jailed when caught a second time.
But the Chief Justice has lifted the jail term on one such offender, Chong Pit Khai, and fined him $5,000 instead, because he felt the circumstances for the 28-year-old's first offence in 2002 were rather different.
CJ Chan Sek Keong said in a written judgment on Monday that the law does not say jail is mandatory for repeat offenders like Chong, whose previous case had no precedent.
'In my view, using an imprisonment term for each and every case as a starting point is not necessarily desirable as a sentencing precedent. The present case shows why it is not desirable,' he said.
Chong's case was different because in his first offence, he was found drunk and asleep in a parked car by police.
Then, he was charged with being in possession of a car while under the influence of alcohol, while in the current case he was actually driving while drunk.
CJ Chan also noted that defendants do plead guilty 'especially for minor offences of which they may not be guilty for a variety of reasons'.
'This is a reality which the court should not close its eyes to or shy away from,' he said.
For this reason, a defendant is allowed to explain to the sentencing court why he pleaded guilty to a previous charge.
Chong, through his lawyer Krishnan Nadarajan, had explained that he was a national serviceman then and pleaded guilty as he felt the offence was a minor one and he wanted to save himself the hassle of going from his camp to court.
He said he had bought some alcoholic drinks from a nearby store and later drank in his father's car, parked near the family home. He had not driven the car but had merely slept in it with the engine turned off.
CJ Chan said the courts are prepared to review an earlier offence to help decide the degree of guilt for that offence.
He said that if Chong's story raised 'a question of reasonable doubt, then he ought to be entitled to that doubt'.
Chong's explanation showed his previous conviction was a weak antecedent to justify a jail term for the present case, said the judge.
Added to this, the high level of alcohol is in itself not enough to send a drink driver to jail in lieu of a fine, unless it is so high as to create a reasonable risk of the offender causing injury to people or damage to property on the road.
'It should be the risk of inflicting social costs on the public that should be the aggravating factor,' CJ Chan said.
This was not the case with Chong as the alcohol content found in him was moderate and did not impair his ability to drive, said CJ Chan, who made clear that each case must depend on its own facts.
In addition to the fine, Chong was also disqualified from driving for two years.
Post ID: 8586060815035707311
Reocities , rising from the ashes - RIP Geocities... - "Behind this minimalistic page stretches a wealth of Internet history. If any of it was yours and we have successfully recovered it, then we hope it makes you happy to see it restored.
We've rebuilt the walls to the Cities and the streets where a large part of the early settlers of the World Wide Web used to live in. You can still find them where they were before, but not all of the houses have been rebuilt yet... If you have a website that links to old GeoCities content, and we've managed to restore that content, we would like to ask you to change the links from geocities.com to reocities.com. It's just a one letter change and it will help the Internet to hang together that much better"
The History of Tennis, Part 1 - "Two kings lost their lives as a result of tennis: King Louis X of France (1314-16) and Charles VIII of France (1483-98). It is said that Louis X died of a chill immediately after playing an energetic game of jeu de paume at Château de Vincennes. Charles VIII died after striking his head on a horizontal piece of wood over the door which led to his tennis court."
The latter is worse than falling down a staircase.
How Shoe Obsession Disorder Can Boost Your Career - "“Contrary to popular belief, Cinderella's stepsisters were not desperate for Prince Charming -- they were desperate for her glass slipper. Unlike shopping for jeans (which is about as much fun as going to the gynecologist), shopping for shoes is an exhilarating experience. Feet don't have hips, feet don't have thighs. Feet are our friends."... “My grandpa said, ‘Whenever I compliment a woman on her shoes, she loves it, she just lights up…It's better than any line I know.’"... Want to bond with a female co-worker? Instead of asking her out to lunch (salad, dressing on the side, water with lime), ask if she’d like to go shoe shopping. Men, I’m not sure you should try that... As far as I’m concerned, high heels are instruments of self-torture, but Shea responds, “Heels may be uncomfortable, but they make you taller, which makes you confident.”"
Vulva Portrait Pendant mature by VulvaLoveLovely on Etsy - "Celebrate your own beauty. Each piece is an original, one of a kind hand sculpted image of its owner to remind her that regardless of what the world and the people in it may tell her: she is beautiful... If you are not comfortable sending pictures you also have to option of sending me a description of your Yoni."
West Aceh to Ban 'Tight' Trousers, Shorts - "“If people disagree, don’t be mad at me — be angry at God, because what I impose is religious law... In the afterlife, I will be asked by God, what have I done for the people of West Aceh during my term in office. What I am doing now is enforcing thorough Islamic law”... executive director of the Women’s Partnership forum (MISPI) in Aceh... [said] “Other regions in Indonesia want to see Shariah succeed in Aceh, but since it was put in effect in 2001, all we seem to be dealing with is women’s clothing... There is a tendency to view Islamic law from just a very narrow perspective. Just look at the bathrooms at government offices in Aceh. Do they reflect Islamic values, since many of them are dirty and the water sometimes doesn’t run? And that’s just one example"... Syarifah suggested that before imposing the regulation, West Aceh take measures to support the implementation of Shariah that does not merely focus on the punitive aspects... “Many of his people still live below the poverty line; he should give his priority to people’s welfare because that is an important issue endorsed by Islam.”"
Arnold to SF: Fuck You - "Well, maybe Arnold is still mad at being told to "kiss my gay ass", but this is a rather puerile way for the governor of California to be spending his time."
Don’t speak English? In Texas, that’s a crime - "Since their chief’s public apology, Dallas police uncovered more than 20 officers who had written tickets to drivers for not speaking English."
Yahoo! Answers - Why are people against racial profiling? - "People seem happy to accept racial profiling when they're stopping Young White Males suspected of being football hooligans, and why not that's what 99% of Football Hooligans are going to be. Its only offensive when its a crime that an ethnic minority may be more likley to commit."
China parents lynch book salesman - "A mob of parents have killed a book salesman and badly injured four of his colleagues after rumours spread that the men were a human smuggling ring... As gossip spread that a gang was trying to ensnare the young pupils, parents surrounded and set upon the men"
Saying children are threatened - whether by homosexuals, child sex predators or fast food companies - is a great away to mobilise people
McDonald's to close in Iceland for higher cost - "The reason is the rising cost of imported supplies following the collapse of the Icelandic krona"
Anti-globalisation people will be happy
Just deserts - "That which is deserved. A reward for what has been done - good or bad"
Turns out we all spell it wrong in SG
Dissolving Bikini is the Ultimate Revenge Gift - "The sexy swimsuit disappears by dissolving in water, leaving a woman completely nude and embarrassed... Named the "Get Naked Bikini," the item is being marketed as the ultimate form of revenge for recently-dumped dudes. The bikini has upset women's rights groups, with one campaigner, Rosmarie Zapfl, saying, “It is an absolute insult to women that this has been invented.” It sounds like Ms. Zapfl needs a gift to calm her down. May we suggest a new bikini?"
Another video
Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women | The Onion - "Women Deserve Better says PETA abuses defenseless, simple-minded women by forcing them to remove their clothes and participate in humiliating publicity stunts...
"Is it really worth it to spend so much time protecting these basically clueless women? They might not even comprehend what's happening to them" "Once you see the torture a PETA volunteer lives with everyday, how can you not help them? Some are fed nothing but lentils and nutdogs before performing on the Howard Stern show. Coached to talk about how vegans' vaginas taste better than meat eaters'... we're starting a new program to... recapture abused women and take them to a farm where they can live out their lives in peace""
Viagra or Jellyfish? - "Thanks or no thanks (whichever way you want to look at it) to the Irukandji Syndrome that comes as a result of jellyfish stinging, a man achieves a prolonged erection that is said to rival the effects of Viagra. However, such erection comes with severe pain which would probably erase any sexual ideas a man may have. While jellyfish stinging can do wonders for males who have a hard time achieving and maintaining an erection, it can also result to severe cerebral hemorrhaging and blood pressure increase which be fatal. It can also lead to cramps, breathing difficulties, cardiac problems and vomiting. These medical conditions may be too much of a trade-off just so one can get an erection."
We've rebuilt the walls to the Cities and the streets where a large part of the early settlers of the World Wide Web used to live in. You can still find them where they were before, but not all of the houses have been rebuilt yet... If you have a website that links to old GeoCities content, and we've managed to restore that content, we would like to ask you to change the links from geocities.com to reocities.com. It's just a one letter change and it will help the Internet to hang together that much better"
The History of Tennis, Part 1 - "Two kings lost their lives as a result of tennis: King Louis X of France (1314-16) and Charles VIII of France (1483-98). It is said that Louis X died of a chill immediately after playing an energetic game of jeu de paume at Château de Vincennes. Charles VIII died after striking his head on a horizontal piece of wood over the door which led to his tennis court."
The latter is worse than falling down a staircase.
How Shoe Obsession Disorder Can Boost Your Career - "“Contrary to popular belief, Cinderella's stepsisters were not desperate for Prince Charming -- they were desperate for her glass slipper. Unlike shopping for jeans (which is about as much fun as going to the gynecologist), shopping for shoes is an exhilarating experience. Feet don't have hips, feet don't have thighs. Feet are our friends."... “My grandpa said, ‘Whenever I compliment a woman on her shoes, she loves it, she just lights up…It's better than any line I know.’"... Want to bond with a female co-worker? Instead of asking her out to lunch (salad, dressing on the side, water with lime), ask if she’d like to go shoe shopping. Men, I’m not sure you should try that... As far as I’m concerned, high heels are instruments of self-torture, but Shea responds, “Heels may be uncomfortable, but they make you taller, which makes you confident.”"
Vulva Portrait Pendant mature by VulvaLoveLovely on Etsy - "Celebrate your own beauty. Each piece is an original, one of a kind hand sculpted image of its owner to remind her that regardless of what the world and the people in it may tell her: she is beautiful... If you are not comfortable sending pictures you also have to option of sending me a description of your Yoni."
West Aceh to Ban 'Tight' Trousers, Shorts - "“If people disagree, don’t be mad at me — be angry at God, because what I impose is religious law... In the afterlife, I will be asked by God, what have I done for the people of West Aceh during my term in office. What I am doing now is enforcing thorough Islamic law”... executive director of the Women’s Partnership forum (MISPI) in Aceh... [said] “Other regions in Indonesia want to see Shariah succeed in Aceh, but since it was put in effect in 2001, all we seem to be dealing with is women’s clothing... There is a tendency to view Islamic law from just a very narrow perspective. Just look at the bathrooms at government offices in Aceh. Do they reflect Islamic values, since many of them are dirty and the water sometimes doesn’t run? And that’s just one example"... Syarifah suggested that before imposing the regulation, West Aceh take measures to support the implementation of Shariah that does not merely focus on the punitive aspects... “Many of his people still live below the poverty line; he should give his priority to people’s welfare because that is an important issue endorsed by Islam.”"
Arnold to SF: Fuck You - "Well, maybe Arnold is still mad at being told to "kiss my gay ass", but this is a rather puerile way for the governor of California to be spending his time."
Don’t speak English? In Texas, that’s a crime - "Since their chief’s public apology, Dallas police uncovered more than 20 officers who had written tickets to drivers for not speaking English."
Yahoo! Answers - Why are people against racial profiling? - "People seem happy to accept racial profiling when they're stopping Young White Males suspected of being football hooligans, and why not that's what 99% of Football Hooligans are going to be. Its only offensive when its a crime that an ethnic minority may be more likley to commit."
China parents lynch book salesman - "A mob of parents have killed a book salesman and badly injured four of his colleagues after rumours spread that the men were a human smuggling ring... As gossip spread that a gang was trying to ensnare the young pupils, parents surrounded and set upon the men"
Saying children are threatened - whether by homosexuals, child sex predators or fast food companies - is a great away to mobilise people
McDonald's to close in Iceland for higher cost - "The reason is the rising cost of imported supplies following the collapse of the Icelandic krona"
Anti-globalisation people will be happy
Just deserts - "That which is deserved. A reward for what has been done - good or bad"
Turns out we all spell it wrong in SG
Dissolving Bikini is the Ultimate Revenge Gift - "The sexy swimsuit disappears by dissolving in water, leaving a woman completely nude and embarrassed... Named the "Get Naked Bikini," the item is being marketed as the ultimate form of revenge for recently-dumped dudes. The bikini has upset women's rights groups, with one campaigner, Rosmarie Zapfl, saying, “It is an absolute insult to women that this has been invented.” It sounds like Ms. Zapfl needs a gift to calm her down. May we suggest a new bikini?"
Another video
Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women | The Onion - "Women Deserve Better says PETA abuses defenseless, simple-minded women by forcing them to remove their clothes and participate in humiliating publicity stunts...
"Is it really worth it to spend so much time protecting these basically clueless women? They might not even comprehend what's happening to them" "Once you see the torture a PETA volunteer lives with everyday, how can you not help them? Some are fed nothing but lentils and nutdogs before performing on the Howard Stern show. Coached to talk about how vegans' vaginas taste better than meat eaters'... we're starting a new program to... recapture abused women and take them to a farm where they can live out their lives in peace""
Viagra or Jellyfish? - "Thanks or no thanks (whichever way you want to look at it) to the Irukandji Syndrome that comes as a result of jellyfish stinging, a man achieves a prolonged erection that is said to rival the effects of Viagra. However, such erection comes with severe pain which would probably erase any sexual ideas a man may have. While jellyfish stinging can do wonders for males who have a hard time achieving and maintaining an erection, it can also result to severe cerebral hemorrhaging and blood pressure increase which be fatal. It can also lead to cramps, breathing difficulties, cardiac problems and vomiting. These medical conditions may be too much of a trade-off just so one can get an erection."
Post ID: 3627584873370769641
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." - Sir Winston Churchill
***
Who’s afraid of the avant-garde?
"The writer Joe Queenan caused a minor rumpus in the austere world of contemporary classical music last year by complaining about how painful much of it is. He called Berio’s Sinfonia (1968) “35 minutes of non-stop torture,” Stockhausen’s Kontra-Punkte (1953) like “a cat running up and down the piano” and Birtwistle’s latest opera The Minotaur “funereal caterwauling.” “A hundred years after Schoenberg,” he wrote, “the public still doesn’t like anything after Transfigured Night, and even that is a stretch.”
Inevitably, Queenan was lambasted as a reactionary philistine...
His comments were denounced as the same old clichés. Yet clichés become clichés for a reason... Stockhausen and Penderecki, whose works are now as old as “Rock Around the Clock,” have not been assimilated into the classical canon in the way that Ravel and Stravinsky have...
Theodor Adorno, perhaps the 20th century’s most renowned social theorist, was a passionate advocate of Schoenberg’s atonal modernism for political reasons: tonality, he declared, was the bastion of bourgeois complacency. Following Adorno’s lead, the hardline musical modernists of the 1950s and 1960s treated any hint of tonality as a form of recidivism to be denounced with Maoist vigour; Pierre Boulez refused for a time even to speak to tonal composers. The American composer Milton Babbitt’s 1958 essay “Who Cares if You Listen?” responded to the wider world’s hostility towards this new music by arguing that serious composers should simply withdraw from the concert hall, while offering no explanation for the public’s antipathy to “difficult” music beyond a belief that they were too ill-informed to understand it...
It takes no more cognitive effort to “see” a painting by Mark Rothko than it does to look at wallpaper. The fact we can see the painting at all as a coherent object gives our interpretive mind something to work on, even if we come up with nothing more than a vague sense of beauty, serenity or absurdity. Music can defy even this basic sort of cognitive parsing: it can refute our efforts to find coherence, rather as if a video artist were to present us with unstructured static. Even Jackson Pollock’s chaos is contained—but sound is at once everywhere and constantly shifting.
Many musicologists accept a definition of music as “organised sound.” Yet sound is structured into music not on paper, nor even in the mind of the composer, but in the mind of the listener... There are some universal principles that come into play in differentiating music from mere noise. For example, melodies that move in small steps tend to sound unified and “good,” while ones with large and frequent jumps between high and low notes are liable to seem fragmented and harder to make out. Regular rhythms also contribute to coherence, while erratic ones often confuse us. Tonality creates a hierarchy of pitch and a sense of “place” in the musical scale. But it’s not just tonal music that uses these cognitive aids: they are found in other musical traditions the world over...
In Boulez’s Structures I or Stockhausen’s Klavierstück VII, say, there is no discernible rhythm, and the melody line, if one can call it that, is as jagged as the Dolomites. In this situation, it is hard to develop any expectations about the music...
This is not to say that atonality in general, and serialism in particular, is doomed to sound aimless and incomprehensible. There are plenty of other parameters that a composer can deploy to create coherent structures, and many have done so to great effect. But, increasingly, serial techniques were applied not just to pitch but to these other musical parameters, such as rhythm and dynamics. Such compositional methods progressively and systematically subverted any means of providing audible organisation. So it was unsurprising that audiences found the music harder to understand. For the serialist’s rules are not ones that can be heard. Boulez’s serial piece Le Marteau Sans Maître was acclaimed when premièred in 1955, but it took over two decades for anyone else to figure out how it was serial: no one could deduce analytically, let alone hear, the organisational structure.
Music, like any art, must be constantly rejuvenated by experiment. But “experimental” music surely only qualifies as such if it includes the possibility of failure. And if musical composition takes no account of cognition—denies that cognition has a role to play, or actively frustrates it—then composers cannot complain when their music is unloved...
If music is not acknowledged as a mental process, sound is all that remains."
***
Who’s afraid of the avant-garde?
"The writer Joe Queenan caused a minor rumpus in the austere world of contemporary classical music last year by complaining about how painful much of it is. He called Berio’s Sinfonia (1968) “35 minutes of non-stop torture,” Stockhausen’s Kontra-Punkte (1953) like “a cat running up and down the piano” and Birtwistle’s latest opera The Minotaur “funereal caterwauling.” “A hundred years after Schoenberg,” he wrote, “the public still doesn’t like anything after Transfigured Night, and even that is a stretch.”
Inevitably, Queenan was lambasted as a reactionary philistine...
His comments were denounced as the same old clichés. Yet clichés become clichés for a reason... Stockhausen and Penderecki, whose works are now as old as “Rock Around the Clock,” have not been assimilated into the classical canon in the way that Ravel and Stravinsky have...
Theodor Adorno, perhaps the 20th century’s most renowned social theorist, was a passionate advocate of Schoenberg’s atonal modernism for political reasons: tonality, he declared, was the bastion of bourgeois complacency. Following Adorno’s lead, the hardline musical modernists of the 1950s and 1960s treated any hint of tonality as a form of recidivism to be denounced with Maoist vigour; Pierre Boulez refused for a time even to speak to tonal composers. The American composer Milton Babbitt’s 1958 essay “Who Cares if You Listen?” responded to the wider world’s hostility towards this new music by arguing that serious composers should simply withdraw from the concert hall, while offering no explanation for the public’s antipathy to “difficult” music beyond a belief that they were too ill-informed to understand it...
It takes no more cognitive effort to “see” a painting by Mark Rothko than it does to look at wallpaper. The fact we can see the painting at all as a coherent object gives our interpretive mind something to work on, even if we come up with nothing more than a vague sense of beauty, serenity or absurdity. Music can defy even this basic sort of cognitive parsing: it can refute our efforts to find coherence, rather as if a video artist were to present us with unstructured static. Even Jackson Pollock’s chaos is contained—but sound is at once everywhere and constantly shifting.
Many musicologists accept a definition of music as “organised sound.” Yet sound is structured into music not on paper, nor even in the mind of the composer, but in the mind of the listener... There are some universal principles that come into play in differentiating music from mere noise. For example, melodies that move in small steps tend to sound unified and “good,” while ones with large and frequent jumps between high and low notes are liable to seem fragmented and harder to make out. Regular rhythms also contribute to coherence, while erratic ones often confuse us. Tonality creates a hierarchy of pitch and a sense of “place” in the musical scale. But it’s not just tonal music that uses these cognitive aids: they are found in other musical traditions the world over...
In Boulez’s Structures I or Stockhausen’s Klavierstück VII, say, there is no discernible rhythm, and the melody line, if one can call it that, is as jagged as the Dolomites. In this situation, it is hard to develop any expectations about the music...
This is not to say that atonality in general, and serialism in particular, is doomed to sound aimless and incomprehensible. There are plenty of other parameters that a composer can deploy to create coherent structures, and many have done so to great effect. But, increasingly, serial techniques were applied not just to pitch but to these other musical parameters, such as rhythm and dynamics. Such compositional methods progressively and systematically subverted any means of providing audible organisation. So it was unsurprising that audiences found the music harder to understand. For the serialist’s rules are not ones that can be heard. Boulez’s serial piece Le Marteau Sans Maître was acclaimed when premièred in 1955, but it took over two decades for anyone else to figure out how it was serial: no one could deduce analytically, let alone hear, the organisational structure.
Music, like any art, must be constantly rejuvenated by experiment. But “experimental” music surely only qualifies as such if it includes the possibility of failure. And if musical composition takes no account of cognition—denies that cognition has a role to play, or actively frustrates it—then composers cannot complain when their music is unloved...
If music is not acknowledged as a mental process, sound is all that remains."
Post ID: 2286025849793512145
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Mozart Requiem Tuba Mirum Blooper
I was trying to locate the Mozart Tuba Mirum which Frigid Girl called "that fucked up version that you let me hear".
All was to no avail, till I remembered that I found it by searching for Florence Foster Jenkins (and not, as I thought, the Portsmouth Sinfonia).
So, from File audio - Brass Playing Mishaps (I'm not as 1337 as I used to be, so I didn't manage to convert the file - get the original for slightly less-bad quality):
"Ecco una serie di File audio "umoristici", rigorosamente anonimi, che circolano come allegati alle E-Mail o che si trovano su siti Internet.
Se avete un file che non è nella lista siete pregati di spedirmelo come allegato ad una E-Mail.
Tuba Mirum Blooper - Mozart
Mozart - Tuba mirum dal Requiem (Formato file: Real Audio)"
It's not as bad as I remember, but we take what we can get.
All was to no avail, till I remembered that I found it by searching for Florence Foster Jenkins (and not, as I thought, the Portsmouth Sinfonia).
So, from File audio - Brass Playing Mishaps (I'm not as 1337 as I used to be, so I didn't manage to convert the file - get the original for slightly less-bad quality):
"Ecco una serie di File audio "umoristici", rigorosamente anonimi, che circolano come allegati alle E-Mail o che si trovano su siti Internet.
Se avete un file che non è nella lista siete pregati di spedirmelo come allegato ad una E-Mail.
Tuba Mirum Blooper - Mozart
Mozart - Tuba mirum dal Requiem (Formato file: Real Audio)"
It's not as bad as I remember, but we take what we can get.
2024 May 27 update:
imeem no longer works, but luckily the original website still does.
I have converted the file to MP3 once again and am hosting it on 4shared (I have 2012 files on there so hopefully it stays up - as long as I don't miss the reminders to login or have my account wiped)
Mozart - Requiem - Tuba Mirum Blooper.mp3
Sadly, I was unable to convert such a short clip to video with Voice2V Express, so I can't put it on YouTube.
Post ID: 5511306465098808641
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