HWMNBN on why we use "Basis points" rather than "percentage points":
Two main reasons
a) To avoid relative vs absolute confusion.
Let's say a given interest rate is 20%. If we say it's increased by 2%, you can interpret it as: either 20% -> 22% (absolute), or 20% -> 20.4% (relative)
Saying 200bps makes it very clear it's an absolute increase in the rate from 20% -> 22%
b) Granularity.
Most times interest rates increase by tiny increments. eg 4.5% -> 4.52%, etc. However these granular increases can have large effects on exposure (because we're usually
talking about million or billion dollar impacts here). It's mentally easier to visualise 10-15bps as having a large effect vs 0.1%
Same reason why we have cents, rather than denominating everything in dollars (eg 0.5 dollars, 0.65 dollars) - it's just more convenient
L'origine de Bert
Thursday, April 09, 2009
"Anything too stupid to be said is sung." - Voltaire
***
Random posts from gamebooks mailing lists:
"i just bought a book in Ebay, thinking it was an unknow "branching-plot-novel ", here what it say in the back cover :
"lost at the train station station ? to buy a ticket, turn to page 40. To find a hotel, go to 55. hot day, blue sky ? to hit the beach, turn to page 141. To meet the local, open page 93. Take this phrasebook and choose your own adventure ! "
well, so nothing to do with a choose your own adventure, it is a phrasebook, to help you translate croatian in english...
the book name are "craotian" phrasebooks, lonely planet editor, written by Gordana & Ivan Ivetac .
just wanted to warn you, to avoid the same mistake i've done ^^"
"Regarding genres, it must be noticed that fantasy doesn't necessarily need elves and trolls to be fantasy. Modern fantasy is deeply rooted in medieval Europe, a complex setting that did exist in the real world and whose appeal on today's Western people is obvious - after all, it's our past. And it is a past that not only offers many elements of wonder and much food for thought, but can also be represented fairly easily by just anyone who has studied it in his or her schoolyears. On the other hand, the future depicted in sci-fi is only too often a lazy speculation that inexorably tends to project current social problems in a stainless-steel, uber-technological world that is way too square and clean to be fascinating and too advanced to possibly pose all the problems we see depicted in sci-fi books and movies. Combat in a futuristic setting is also incredibly boring - you hit the target and zap!, battle's over. It's not physical nor spectacular, and it's no wonder that lightsaber duels are among the most exciting sequences in Star Wars. What made the original Star Wars great is exactly its fantasy elements: decadent towns and civilizations, space rogues, an evil empire, supernatural powers and myths, weapons that are more advanced than anything we have today but still are considered ancient at the time of the story. These elements are all mutuated from the classic medieval background of fantasy, and they're interesting because they existed in the past in some other form, and also because they can pose problems and help people solve those problems. Let's face it, a future where all disease is curable, where people needn't walk, cook nor work, where everything is clean and pure and everyone speak the same language just isn't interesting. And most sci-fi gamebooks fail to be interesting because they offer the usual generic "save the world" mission in a setting that features futuristic looks, but it's just our good ol' everyday Earth deep inside."
***
Random posts from gamebooks mailing lists:
"i just bought a book in Ebay, thinking it was an unknow "branching-plot-novel ", here what it say in the back cover :
"lost at the train station station ? to buy a ticket, turn to page 40. To find a hotel, go to 55. hot day, blue sky ? to hit the beach, turn to page 141. To meet the local, open page 93. Take this phrasebook and choose your own adventure ! "
well, so nothing to do with a choose your own adventure, it is a phrasebook, to help you translate croatian in english...
the book name are "craotian" phrasebooks, lonely planet editor, written by Gordana & Ivan Ivetac .
just wanted to warn you, to avoid the same mistake i've done ^^"
"Regarding genres, it must be noticed that fantasy doesn't necessarily need elves and trolls to be fantasy. Modern fantasy is deeply rooted in medieval Europe, a complex setting that did exist in the real world and whose appeal on today's Western people is obvious - after all, it's our past. And it is a past that not only offers many elements of wonder and much food for thought, but can also be represented fairly easily by just anyone who has studied it in his or her schoolyears. On the other hand, the future depicted in sci-fi is only too often a lazy speculation that inexorably tends to project current social problems in a stainless-steel, uber-technological world that is way too square and clean to be fascinating and too advanced to possibly pose all the problems we see depicted in sci-fi books and movies. Combat in a futuristic setting is also incredibly boring - you hit the target and zap!, battle's over. It's not physical nor spectacular, and it's no wonder that lightsaber duels are among the most exciting sequences in Star Wars. What made the original Star Wars great is exactly its fantasy elements: decadent towns and civilizations, space rogues, an evil empire, supernatural powers and myths, weapons that are more advanced than anything we have today but still are considered ancient at the time of the story. These elements are all mutuated from the classic medieval background of fantasy, and they're interesting because they existed in the past in some other form, and also because they can pose problems and help people solve those problems. Let's face it, a future where all disease is curable, where people needn't walk, cook nor work, where everything is clean and pure and everyone speak the same language just isn't interesting. And most sci-fi gamebooks fail to be interesting because they offer the usual generic "save the world" mission in a setting that features futuristic looks, but it's just our good ol' everyday Earth deep inside."
Post ID: 1334873738150626064
"The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
***
4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet - "The most powerful people on the Internet don't work for Microsoft, Google or the government. Rather, they're a bunch of antisocial, foul-mouthed, clever nerds who congregate at a largely unknown Web site called 4chan.org."
The pleasures and sorrows of work | The Economist - "Even the most soulless of offices has its vital part to play. The “start of work means an end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires... How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been, and now never will be.” This last observation seems so heartfelt, so poignantly rendered, that one can only advise Mr de Botton himself to cease his solitary endeavours and take the plunge into the pleasures of office life."
Human psychology and the economy | An economic bestiary | The Economist - "Messrs Akerlof and Shiller list eight questions which, they say, cannot be well explained without an appeal to animal spirits—but can be tackled with them. These range from why markets for housing and shares swing wildly (a combination of confidence, stories and bad faith) to why, contrary to standard theory, there appears to be a long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (mainly, a mix of money illusion and fairness)... How much do animal spirits help? Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these—even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations."
The ballot and the bottom billion | Democracy in difficult places | The Economist - "He shows unambiguously what observers of elections in poor countries have long suspected: that on their own, unless they are held in the context of a functioning democracy, elections can retard rather than advance a country’s progress. “If democracy means little more than elections, it is damaging to the reform process,” he writes... elections begin to pay dividends to society only when they occur in a system of checks and balances, with a functioning rule of law"
Will’s Maid Café Visit - "After a bit of a wait we had another maid (I think she was different) bring us our order. She didn’t just give it to us though, no way. First she knelt down on her knees and held up to us a container for us to pick our favourite colour straw out of. If choose pink as I am the epitome of masculinity while Shigeki opted for green. She then stirred my ice coffee (on her knees in front of me) and put the straw in our drinks. I thought we would get our items now, but no, there is more. She placed the tray in front of her and said “もえ、もえ、胸、きゅう！” (moe, moe, mune kyuu!) in a cute little voice accompanied by some hand actions. And we had to do the same thing if we were to receive our order. My dignity was annulled, but it was fun."
Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex - "Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts. This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
What will the feminists say?!
The world according to Kishore Mahbubani - "Ostensibly a book about the rise of Asia – there is quite a bit favourable to India – it is a long litany of complaints against America and a eulogy to China. While America is criticized on various issues from the Iraq war to the torture of prisoners, there is just one reference to Taiwan and none to Tibet; I checked the index... when he talks about the domination of the Western media, he should have asked himself who made it so. The fact is Asians read Western publications such as Time, Newsweek and the Economist and Asian newspapers use Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg because Asian media coverage is either inadequate or not sufficiently informative... Mahbubani sees what he calls “the irresistible shift of global power to the East” as a reversion to the old order of things. Asia was far richer than the West until the early 19th century... But what did Asia do with those riches? Where were the Asian Gutenbergs, Leonardo da Vincis, Shakespeares, Galileos? Why did democracy develop in the West while despotism seemed to be the rule in the East? Maybe those questions are for others to answer. Mahbubani's focus is on power and prosperity."
Corri Fetman Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit - "Corri Fetman, the Chicago divorce attorney who worked on the principle that it is better to divorce now so you can marry your trophy husband/wife, and who appeared in a nude Playboy spread, has alleged that she was sexually harassed by a former executive at the magazine. She said that Thomas Hagopian of the digital branch of Playboy Enterprises sent her sexually explicit emails and phone calls, touched her and then revoked her column when she refused to play into his advances... Fetman filed her lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and sought more than $4.5 million in damages for a number of charges, including, “gender violence” and emotional stress"
The fact that she's abusing the term "gender violence" (legally, the term is actually defined much more loosely than how Progressives use it) is telling.
Roseville couple, state settle suit over marriage license wording - "Attorney Steven Wood on Wednesday called it a clear victory for the Coddings and common sense... "The state's previous rejection of the marriage license caused the Coddings considerable anguish, as well as financial harm," said Wood. "That has now been remedied."... The couple claimed the state of California did not have the right to replace the terms "bride" and "groom" with "Party A" and "Party B" on state marriage documents."
Anguish and financial harm?! Then again some people might call the terms "Bride" and "Groom" homophobic."The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
***
4Chan: The Rude, Raunchy Underbelly of the Internet - "The most powerful people on the Internet don't work for Microsoft, Google or the government. Rather, they're a bunch of antisocial, foul-mouthed, clever nerds who congregate at a largely unknown Web site called 4chan.org."
The pleasures and sorrows of work | The Economist - "Even the most soulless of offices has its vital part to play. The “start of work means an end to freedom, but also to doubt, intensity and wayward desires... How satisfying it is to be held in check by the assumptions of colleagues, instead of being forced to contemplate, in the loneliness of the early hours, all that one might have been, and now never will be.” This last observation seems so heartfelt, so poignantly rendered, that one can only advise Mr de Botton himself to cease his solitary endeavours and take the plunge into the pleasures of office life."
Human psychology and the economy | An economic bestiary | The Economist - "Messrs Akerlof and Shiller list eight questions which, they say, cannot be well explained without an appeal to animal spirits—but can be tackled with them. These range from why markets for housing and shares swing wildly (a combination of confidence, stories and bad faith) to why, contrary to standard theory, there appears to be a long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (mainly, a mix of money illusion and fairness)... How much do animal spirits help? Most of the time, the unrealistic assumption of rationality serves economists fairly well. They should, however, be more prepared to depart from it, especially in times like these—even if that makes behaviour more difficult to describe in elegant equations."
The ballot and the bottom billion | Democracy in difficult places | The Economist - "He shows unambiguously what observers of elections in poor countries have long suspected: that on their own, unless they are held in the context of a functioning democracy, elections can retard rather than advance a country’s progress. “If democracy means little more than elections, it is damaging to the reform process,” he writes... elections begin to pay dividends to society only when they occur in a system of checks and balances, with a functioning rule of law"
Will’s Maid Café Visit - "After a bit of a wait we had another maid (I think she was different) bring us our order. She didn’t just give it to us though, no way. First she knelt down on her knees and held up to us a container for us to pick our favourite colour straw out of. If choose pink as I am the epitome of masculinity while Shigeki opted for green. She then stirred my ice coffee (on her knees in front of me) and put the straw in our drinks. I thought we would get our items now, but no, there is more. She placed the tray in front of her and said “もえ、もえ、胸、きゅう！” (moe, moe, mune kyuu!) in a cute little voice accompanied by some hand actions. And we had to do the same thing if we were to receive our order. My dignity was annulled, but it was fun."
Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex - "Male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts. This is a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are."
What will the feminists say?!
The world according to Kishore Mahbubani - "Ostensibly a book about the rise of Asia – there is quite a bit favourable to India – it is a long litany of complaints against America and a eulogy to China. While America is criticized on various issues from the Iraq war to the torture of prisoners, there is just one reference to Taiwan and none to Tibet; I checked the index... when he talks about the domination of the Western media, he should have asked himself who made it so. The fact is Asians read Western publications such as Time, Newsweek and the Economist and Asian newspapers use Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg because Asian media coverage is either inadequate or not sufficiently informative... Mahbubani sees what he calls “the irresistible shift of global power to the East” as a reversion to the old order of things. Asia was far richer than the West until the early 19th century... But what did Asia do with those riches? Where were the Asian Gutenbergs, Leonardo da Vincis, Shakespeares, Galileos? Why did democracy develop in the West while despotism seemed to be the rule in the East? Maybe those questions are for others to answer. Mahbubani's focus is on power and prosperity."
Corri Fetman Files Sexual Harassment Lawsuit - "Corri Fetman, the Chicago divorce attorney who worked on the principle that it is better to divorce now so you can marry your trophy husband/wife, and who appeared in a nude Playboy spread, has alleged that she was sexually harassed by a former executive at the magazine. She said that Thomas Hagopian of the digital branch of Playboy Enterprises sent her sexually explicit emails and phone calls, touched her and then revoked her column when she refused to play into his advances... Fetman filed her lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court and sought more than $4.5 million in damages for a number of charges, including, “gender violence” and emotional stress"
The fact that she's abusing the term "gender violence" (legally, the term is actually defined much more loosely than how Progressives use it) is telling.
Roseville couple, state settle suit over marriage license wording - "Attorney Steven Wood on Wednesday called it a clear victory for the Coddings and common sense... "The state's previous rejection of the marriage license caused the Coddings considerable anguish, as well as financial harm," said Wood. "That has now been remedied."... The couple claimed the state of California did not have the right to replace the terms "bride" and "groom" with "Party A" and "Party B" on state marriage documents."
Anguish and financial harm?! Then again some people might call the terms "Bride" and "Groom" homophobic."The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." - Henry Stimson
Post ID: 4826819173879148031
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Random tidbit:
"Auspicium melioris aevi" does NOT translate as "Hope for a better age" but "Omen of a better age"
"Auspicium melioris aevi" does NOT translate as "Hope for a better age" but "Omen of a better age"
Post ID: 9180147986113491408
Monday, April 06, 2009
"I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing." - Johnny Carson
***
Aiding is Abetting
"Dambisa Moyo's prescription for economic sustainability in Africa—which includes cutting off all aid within five years—might seem insane if the statistics weren't so grim: despite one trillion dollars in western aid over the past sixty years, the economic lot of the average African has only gotten worse...
Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren't accountable to their citizens: since they don't depend on tax revenue, leaders don't think they owe their people anything—and the people don't expect anything from their leaders...
Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship... We have centuries of evidence that [capitalism] generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we're ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
I think the whole aid model is couched in pity [rather than] logic and evidence... [the] whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it's based largely on emotion and pity...
In Madagascar, some aid money had been cut and the government was not investing in the domestic citizenry or even paying the army. So the army staged a coup...
A friend of mine had a great quote: "Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA."... The Chinese have created jobs; they've built roads. The West has failed to do that in sixty years in Africa...
Aside from the corrupt leaders, aid supports over five hundred thousand people (mainly in the West) working in the aid industry and virtually none of it reaches the people for whom it was intended."
This is another tragic tale of what happens when you think with your heart instead of your head.
Comment elsewhere:
"[No Western politicians or Economists] draw an outright battle line between logic and pity. Oh, there are plenty of demagogues who claim the evidence is on their side, but they won't be so outright condemning of emotion... Moyo says she's gotten a better reception in Africa than in the West. Maybe you need to see your whole continent wrecked by emotion and pity before "logic and evidence" start to sound appealing."
***
Aiding is Abetting
"Dambisa Moyo's prescription for economic sustainability in Africa—which includes cutting off all aid within five years—might seem insane if the statistics weren't so grim: despite one trillion dollars in western aid over the past sixty years, the economic lot of the average African has only gotten worse...
Systematic western aid, Moyo argues in Dead Aid, has essentially turned Africa into one giant welfare state. The unending stream of money has created a situation where governments aren't accountable to their citizens: since they don't depend on tax revenue, leaders don't think they owe their people anything—and the people don't expect anything from their leaders...
Furthermore, aid stamps out entrepreneurship... We have centuries of evidence that [capitalism] generates wealth and delivers jobs, and yet here we are after one bad year and we're ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater...
I think the whole aid model is couched in pity [rather than] logic and evidence... [the] whole rationale for giving more aid to Africa is not couched in logic or evidence; it's based largely on emotion and pity...
In Madagascar, some aid money had been cut and the government was not investing in the domestic citizenry or even paying the army. So the army staged a coup...
A friend of mine had a great quote: "Africa is to the development industry what Mars is to NASA."... The Chinese have created jobs; they've built roads. The West has failed to do that in sixty years in Africa...
Aside from the corrupt leaders, aid supports over five hundred thousand people (mainly in the West) working in the aid industry and virtually none of it reaches the people for whom it was intended."
This is another tragic tale of what happens when you think with your heart instead of your head.
Comment elsewhere:
"[No Western politicians or Economists] draw an outright battle line between logic and pity. Oh, there are plenty of demagogues who claim the evidence is on their side, but they won't be so outright condemning of emotion... Moyo says she's gotten a better reception in Africa than in the West. Maybe you need to see your whole continent wrecked by emotion and pity before "logic and evidence" start to sound appealing."
Post ID: 6588032913250169343
"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels." - Bob Thaves
***
Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders - "Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force... Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. “They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”... “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”"
AXED GALS TAKE POLE POSITIONS - "The economy's gone bust, and so have they. Scores of professional New York women stripped of their six-figure jobs are now working as "gentlemen's club entertainers" at upscale Manhattan jiggle joints. Former Wall Streeters, fashion executives and real-estate agents are pole dancing and stripping for as much as $1,500 a night -- but also because they like the flexible hours... "These places give men hope," Langdan said. "Even in the worst of times, for us it's the breast of times.""
Chinese Word List - CantoDict - "CantoDict v1.3.16 is a collaborative Chinese Dictionary project started in November 2003. Entries are added and mistakes corrected by a team of kind volunteers from around the world."
Bouncers face charges in beating of patron at Muskego bar - "The bouncers held his arms, kicked Hummer in the side and struck him in the face. The bouncers then picked up Hummer, already bloody and bruised, pushed him toward the door and then outside and to the ground. As he fell, Hummer's head struck a jagged stone pillar... The bartender told police he asked the bouncers to remove the men from the bar because Hummer refused to put a coaster under his beer, the report says."
The Straight Dope: Can playing the bongos make you piss blood? - "Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle."
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink - "• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters
Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!""
Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 Attempts - "When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children."
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center - "Languages are categorized from I (easiest) to IV (hardest), based on the difficulty native speakers of American English may have in learning a foreign language... Category I: English, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian (DLPT III)
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean"
"This is a joke, isn't it?" My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News - ""You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?" My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.
"No, it's not satire. Why are you asking?" I said.
"Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it's Nazi talk.""
Akihabara Cafe: Miko-san Cafe - "In Akihabara, the Miko-san also have a new duty. To perform popular JPop songs, while serving you fruit juice and rice balls. The Miko-san Cafe has opened on Chuo Street, near Dragon Ice Cream for those of you actually in Japan. Their traditional Shrine attire has received a makeover… well really it was just raised like 2 feet turning it into almost a mini-skirt."
Damn Japs.
Five hurt as mop-wielding woman runs amok - "One report claimed she was laughing uncontrollably as she struck an elderly woman several times during her 30-minute spree."
This was posted on April Fool's but it seems genuine enough.
The Women's Movement - "Cooking a meal could only be "dogwork," and to claim any pleasure from it was evidence of craven acquiescence in one's own forced labor. Small children could only be odious mechanisms for the spilling and digesting of food, for robbing women of their "freedom." It was a long way from Simone de Beauvoir's grave and awesome recognition of woman's role as "the Other" to the notion that the first step in changing that role was Alix Kates Shulman's marriage contract ("wife strips beds, husband remakes them") reproduced in Ms; but it was toward just such trivialization that the women's movement seemed to be heading... This ubiquitous construct was everyone's victim but her own. She was persecuted even by her gynecologist, who made her beg in vain for contraceptives. She particularly needed contraceptives because she was raped on every date, raped by her husband, and raped finally on the abortionist's table... Increasingly it seemed that the aversion was to adult sexual life itself: how much cleaner to stay forever children... I suspect, that the women's movement is no longer a cause but a symptom."
Virgin Atlantic cabin crew ad 'is sexist and offensive to women', claim viewers - "Today the advertising watchdog dismissed complaints that the TV ad is sexist and offensive to women. The ASA has decided that there were no grounds for a formal investigation and said that it 'considered that the ad was unlikely to be seen as sexist or derogatory towards women or to cause serious or widespread offence.' The advert plays upon stereo types of advertising in the 1980s when Virgin Atlantic was first launched."
***
Kyoto protest beaten back by inflamed petrol traders - "Greenpeace had hoped to paralyse oil trading at the exchange in the City near Tower Bridge on the day that the Kyoto Protocol came into force... Protesters conceded that mounting the operation after lunch may not have been the best plan. “The violence was instant,” Jon Beresford, 39, an electrical engineer from Nottingham, said. “They grabbed us and started kicking and punching. Then when we were on the floor they tried to push huge filing cabinets on top of us to crush us.”... “They followed the guys into the lobby and kept kicking and punching them there. They literally kicked them on to the pavement.”"
AXED GALS TAKE POLE POSITIONS - "The economy's gone bust, and so have they. Scores of professional New York women stripped of their six-figure jobs are now working as "gentlemen's club entertainers" at upscale Manhattan jiggle joints. Former Wall Streeters, fashion executives and real-estate agents are pole dancing and stripping for as much as $1,500 a night -- but also because they like the flexible hours... "These places give men hope," Langdan said. "Even in the worst of times, for us it's the breast of times.""
Chinese Word List - CantoDict - "CantoDict v1.3.16 is a collaborative Chinese Dictionary project started in November 2003. Entries are added and mistakes corrected by a team of kind volunteers from around the world."
Bouncers face charges in beating of patron at Muskego bar - "The bouncers held his arms, kicked Hummer in the side and struck him in the face. The bouncers then picked up Hummer, already bloody and bruised, pushed him toward the door and then outside and to the ground. As he fell, Hummer's head struck a jagged stone pillar... The bartender told police he asked the bouncers to remove the men from the bar because Hummer refused to put a coaster under his beer, the report says."
The Straight Dope: Can playing the bongos make you piss blood? - "Music is a brutal business, James: String and keyboard players can suffer from focal dystonia. Saxophone and clarinet players develop disorders of the temporomandibular joint. At least one guitarist, Terry Balsamo of the metal act Evanescence, apparently gave himself a stroke by head-banging onstage. And hand drummers risk rhabdomyolysis, the disorder you refer to. Typically it's not blood they're seeing in their urine, though — it's muscle."
Twitter switch for Guardian, after 188 years of ink - "• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service
• Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters
Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from Stephen Fry, whose reliably jolly tone, whether trapped in a lift or eating a scrumptious tart, has won him thousands of fans. A further 11% is made up of his 363,000 followers replying "@stephenfry LOL!", "@stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me", and "@stephenfry Meanwhile, I am making myself an omelette! Delicious!""
Paid to do it, but fails to make his friend’s wife pregnant after 72 Attempts - "When Traute failed to get pregnant after six months, however, Soupolos was not understanding and insisted that Maus have a medical examination, which he did. The doctor’s announcement that Maus was also sterile shocked everyone except his wife, who was forced to confess that Maus was not the real father of their two children."
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center - "Languages are categorized from I (easiest) to IV (hardest), based on the difficulty native speakers of American English may have in learning a foreign language... Category I: English, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), and Spanish
Category II: German, Romanian (DLPT III)
Category III: Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian-Farsi, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese
Category IV: Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean"
"This is a joke, isn't it?" My Ex-Nazi Father's Reaction to Fox News - ""You mean this is an actual news show? Not satire?" My father obviously thought I was pulling his leg.
"No, it's not satire. Why are you asking?" I said.
"Because all you have to do is change a few adjectives, and it's Nazi talk.""
Akihabara Cafe: Miko-san Cafe - "In Akihabara, the Miko-san also have a new duty. To perform popular JPop songs, while serving you fruit juice and rice balls. The Miko-san Cafe has opened on Chuo Street, near Dragon Ice Cream for those of you actually in Japan. Their traditional Shrine attire has received a makeover… well really it was just raised like 2 feet turning it into almost a mini-skirt."
Damn Japs.
Five hurt as mop-wielding woman runs amok - "One report claimed she was laughing uncontrollably as she struck an elderly woman several times during her 30-minute spree."
This was posted on April Fool's but it seems genuine enough.
The Women's Movement - "Cooking a meal could only be "dogwork," and to claim any pleasure from it was evidence of craven acquiescence in one's own forced labor. Small children could only be odious mechanisms for the spilling and digesting of food, for robbing women of their "freedom." It was a long way from Simone de Beauvoir's grave and awesome recognition of woman's role as "the Other" to the notion that the first step in changing that role was Alix Kates Shulman's marriage contract ("wife strips beds, husband remakes them") reproduced in Ms; but it was toward just such trivialization that the women's movement seemed to be heading... This ubiquitous construct was everyone's victim but her own. She was persecuted even by her gynecologist, who made her beg in vain for contraceptives. She particularly needed contraceptives because she was raped on every date, raped by her husband, and raped finally on the abortionist's table... Increasingly it seemed that the aversion was to adult sexual life itself: how much cleaner to stay forever children... I suspect, that the women's movement is no longer a cause but a symptom."
Virgin Atlantic cabin crew ad 'is sexist and offensive to women', claim viewers - "Today the advertising watchdog dismissed complaints that the TV ad is sexist and offensive to women. The ASA has decided that there were no grounds for a formal investigation and said that it 'considered that the ad was unlikely to be seen as sexist or derogatory towards women or to cause serious or widespread offence.' The advert plays upon stereo types of advertising in the 1980s when Virgin Atlantic was first launched."
Post ID: 7131714959220529291
Sunday, April 05, 2009
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Anonymous
***
A case not so different from what you find in some religious texts (as the people quoted here agree):
Death Opens Doors on Group
"Answering to a leader called Queen Antoinette, they denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say "Amen" at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring...
Ramkissoon, 22, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.
Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs, in part because they were shared by those around her.
"She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors' psychiatric evaluation...
Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.
"At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion," said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. "It's a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system."...
According to charging documents, in December 2006, Javon stopped saying "Amen" at mealtimes. Queen Antoinette told members the boy had developed a demonic spirit and needed to be cleansed through fasting and by being denied water, law enforcement officials said...
The group came to believe there had been no resurrection because someone among them was not a true believer, according to an attorney for one of the other defendants, Marcus Cobbs. With that person no longer part of the group, they headed north out of Baltimore with the suitcase, believing Javon could be raised at a future date, according to Cobbs's attorney, Maureen Rowland."
If you talk to God, you're religious.
If God talks to you, you're psychotic
***
A case not so different from what you find in some religious texts (as the people quoted here agree):
Death Opens Doors on Group
"Answering to a leader called Queen Antoinette, they denied a 16-month-old boy food and water because he did not say "Amen" at mealtimes. After he died, they prayed over his body for days, expecting a resurrection, then packed it into a suitcase with mothballs. They left it in a shed in Philadelphia, where it remained for a year before detectives found it last spring...
Ramkissoon, 22, has agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge on one condition: The charges against her must be dropped if her son, Javon Thompson, is resurrected.
Psychiatrists who evaluated Ramkissoon at the request of a judge concluded that she was not criminally insane. Her attorney, Steven Silverman, said the doctors found that her beliefs were indistinguishable from religious beliefs, in part because they were shared by those around her.
"She wasn't delusional, because she was following a religion," Silverman said, describing the findings of the doctors' psychiatric evaluation...
Although an inability to think critically can be a sign of brainwashing, experts said, the line between that and some religious beliefs can be difficult to discern.
"At times there can be an overlap between extreme religious conviction and delusion," said Robert Jay Lifton, a cult expert and psychiatrist who lectures at Harvard Medical School. "It's a difficult area for psychiatry and the legal system."...
According to charging documents, in December 2006, Javon stopped saying "Amen" at mealtimes. Queen Antoinette told members the boy had developed a demonic spirit and needed to be cleansed through fasting and by being denied water, law enforcement officials said...
The group came to believe there had been no resurrection because someone among them was not a true believer, according to an attorney for one of the other defendants, Marcus Cobbs. With that person no longer part of the group, they headed north out of Baltimore with the suitcase, believing Javon could be raised at a future date, according to Cobbs's attorney, Maureen Rowland."
If you talk to God, you're religious.
If God talks to you, you're psychotic
Post ID: 5567691141509349904
"Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are." - Henry Fielding
***
From the hilarious (for so many reasons, but now-deleted) CNA forum thread: GOVT SHOULD BAN "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST"
Huatuatua: I have never started a thread here, but I feel anger and compelled to write about this. Let me explain.
My daughter and her Junior College schoolmates (male and females) attended the play "The importance of being earnest" by Glenn Goei and Ivan Heng (the two well known effeminate threatre actors.) At first I was uncertain to let her go, but since she and her schoolmates wanted to get some ideas for her drama plays, I decided to let her, especially after I saw it featured on Prime Time Morning Show on Channel News Asia.
What she told me after the play shocked me.
The play has male actors playing the roles of females but dressing in Men's suits. There were enough compromising scenes among the male actors to suggest that this is a play meant for the gays! But this is not more disgusting part.
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows. They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots. Her male schoolmates even saw some kissing scenes in the male toilets!!
This is rtaher disgusting. I felt that this is a play that is solely targeted for gay gathering and should not be allowed for public viewing. It should be a close door event, with school children banned from the show..
Since our dear PM has endorsed the gay movement in singapore, these people are getting bolder and bolder. Please be careful with your children attending such shows!!
Alot of parents really don't know what their children are doing outside in the public!! You got to stop your children from being gay as early as possible. Not all children are born gay, many are influenced by their gay peers. Many are influenced by what they saw outside. If they think that males holding hands with males, or males embacing males are okay, they will think it is a okay trend and do likewise. Evenutally they will become gay.
No wonder 35 percent of the males do not want to get married!!!
desert moon: Morals are sure degrading fast in Singapore, thats for sure. Even the PM was dragged down.
samseng: Screw all the chow ah Kuas. If brave, show your face, name, ic, address publicly, Why must always hide behind closed doors?
Joshing: Don't need to hide. I hope you will have a lesbian daughter or a gay son. You can screw them yourself at home and hide behind the closed doors.
schroeder: There were no “compromising scenes” – in fact, there was nothing more “compromising” than a peck on the cheek!
As for the event being “disgusting”, I don’t recall observing any young couples in the audience being publicly affectionate. I also used the male toilet during the intermission and after the play, and I’m sure I didn’t see any kissing there.
Mei Mui Bee: Huatuatua made ths post only to annoy people.
Thats why you can find it 11 times here:
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
Guess you have never watched the Rocky Horror Picture show.
They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots.
Go to little India and you can see that every Saturday and Sunday. No they are no gays, they are Banglas doing that.
Besides girls also ofetn hold hands or hug....girls can and guys can not?
dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
It cant be that so many are suddenly gay. That would defy any statistics.
Huatuatua: I annoy people? Only the gays will think that way!!! If you are so confident about your views, why asked the Admin to remove the remarks and comments made by non-gays??!!
I got the right to inform normal parents, what is happening in such plays! That they should be careful that their normal children would not be recruited into this "special community". I got the same right as you gay people. Period.
Mei Mui Bee: Well, if you dont call it annoying to make 11 times the same post.
Thats reckless...
You can start worrying about gay or not when your kids are mid 20ies and then they still display strange behaviour.
Some theatre piece make no one gay.
little_gecko: Btw, watching a gay play does not make one gay. If that is possible, gays can watch a normal play and become normal people too, rite? Kaoz, that's not how things work...
I did not feel uncomfortable, It is my daughter and her schoolmates who felt uncomfortable. The play would have been good if they get the females to play as females. What is so difficult?
Even back in the olden days, whether the Japanese Kabuki or Shakespearean plays, no females were allowed and males played the roles of females. So what good old fashion values are you promoting?? Shocked
This is my favourite comment:
trucky: 1) Unlike you've suggested, The Importance of Being Earnest is NOT a 'gay' play. In fact it is an approved 'O' level literature text that has been studied by millions of people over the years. And for this production, the actors are NOT playing female roles. The roles have been MODIFIED for an all-male cast. Therefore there are references to homosexuality but the play does not promote homosexuality. (Fallacy of division: Part of it containing 'gay' content does not make the whole of it a 'gay' play)
2) I went to watch Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (a Wild Rice musical) last December. They stage annual musicals targeted for children and the family (hence fairy tales as storylines). The musical contains ZERO content suggesting homosexuality. But among audiences I saw grown men wearing pink shirts, holding hands and acting effeminately. Does this mean we have to ban children from watching theatre with such audiences? Or do we have to ban supposed-gays from enjoying theatre so that our 'normal' children can enjoy plays? Or even better, ban men from wearing pink and force every male in our society to be burly and muscular to suggest they are 'normal' men?
...
4) Clearly you are against the play simply because you fear that the younger generation (whose sexual identities are supposedly not fully-formed) will be influenced by its 'gay' agenda(s). However I'm quite sure that no 'normal' student will turn 'gay' because of a play. Students are more easily influenced by real people (ie. friends and family) than fictional characters. I watched tons of children's TV shows growing up. But I do not have pink slime for lunch just because the Teletubbies do. Neither do I talk to goldfish or dye my hair red because Elmo has such characteristics.
[Ed: Emphasis mine. This can also be used to counter feminist (or other Progressive) nonsense. See also Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size]
... We won't be influenced or compelled to become a homosexual because of a play. If students were really that easily influenced, there would be no teen-smokers nor teen pregnancies!
(For the record, I am a girl, and I am straight. So no 'gay' accusations!)
samseng: joshing chow ah kua, you are losing the plot already. All the ah Kuas are the same. Lose only, use threats, curse people. You see that in Bangkok, you heard that in Orchard Tower. Why don't you do like one of those Shakespearean heros, go take a knife and plunge it into your heart? That would be very stylo.
Joshing: Losing? You mean there's a prize for winning?
If you win, do you get $10million SGD from me or the ah kua association?
rainbow 999: Too many beliefs is not the point
Just like COE, ERP, Road tax, Fuel tax, Insurance
Just fancy names which serve only One purpose
We are being imposed by some exceptional indivualds
No need to understand why or know why
Sun always up from the east
Just need to know these are exceptional perverts
which are the toxic asset of economic growth
i passed my PSLE english: Please stop discussing this type of sensitive topic here, we're a multi-racial and multi-religious society here. There're people of all faiths here including Muslims. Homosexuals is disallowed in Islam.
STOP talking nonsense in this forum regarding Ah Quas. Period.
MFTTW on the above: WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
you should start a new tag for your blogposts
"Singaporeans are full of shit"
***
From the hilarious (for so many reasons, but now-deleted) CNA forum thread: GOVT SHOULD BAN "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST"
Huatuatua: I have never started a thread here, but I feel anger and compelled to write about this. Let me explain.
My daughter and her Junior College schoolmates (male and females) attended the play "The importance of being earnest" by Glenn Goei and Ivan Heng (the two well known effeminate threatre actors.) At first I was uncertain to let her go, but since she and her schoolmates wanted to get some ideas for her drama plays, I decided to let her, especially after I saw it featured on Prime Time Morning Show on Channel News Asia.
What she told me after the play shocked me.
The play has male actors playing the roles of females but dressing in Men's suits. There were enough compromising scenes among the male actors to suggest that this is a play meant for the gays! But this is not more disgusting part.
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows. They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots. Her male schoolmates even saw some kissing scenes in the male toilets!!
This is rtaher disgusting. I felt that this is a play that is solely targeted for gay gathering and should not be allowed for public viewing. It should be a close door event, with school children banned from the show..
Since our dear PM has endorsed the gay movement in singapore, these people are getting bolder and bolder. Please be careful with your children attending such shows!!
Alot of parents really don't know what their children are doing outside in the public!! You got to stop your children from being gay as early as possible. Not all children are born gay, many are influenced by their gay peers. Many are influenced by what they saw outside. If they think that males holding hands with males, or males embacing males are okay, they will think it is a okay trend and do likewise. Evenutally they will become gay.
No wonder 35 percent of the males do not want to get married!!!
desert moon: Morals are sure degrading fast in Singapore, thats for sure. Even the PM was dragged down.
samseng: Screw all the chow ah Kuas. If brave, show your face, name, ic, address publicly, Why must always hide behind closed doors?
Joshing: Don't need to hide. I hope you will have a lesbian daughter or a gay son. You can screw them yourself at home and hide behind the closed doors.
schroeder: There were no “compromising scenes” – in fact, there was nothing more “compromising” than a peck on the cheek!
As for the event being “disgusting”, I don’t recall observing any young couples in the audience being publicly affectionate. I also used the male toilet during the intermission and after the play, and I’m sure I didn’t see any kissing there.
Mei Mui Bee: Huatuatua made ths post only to annoy people.
Thats why you can find it 11 times here:
What she saw, was youngsters, males youngsters, dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
Guess you have never watched the Rocky Horror Picture show.
They were holding hands (yes males holding hands) openly and even embacing each in whatever spots.
Go to little India and you can see that every Saturday and Sunday. No they are no gays, they are Banglas doing that.
Besides girls also ofetn hold hands or hug....girls can and guys can not?
dressing up effeminately, and in droves, attending the shows.
It cant be that so many are suddenly gay. That would defy any statistics.
Huatuatua: I annoy people? Only the gays will think that way!!! If you are so confident about your views, why asked the Admin to remove the remarks and comments made by non-gays??!!
I got the right to inform normal parents, what is happening in such plays! That they should be careful that their normal children would not be recruited into this "special community". I got the same right as you gay people. Period.
Mei Mui Bee: Well, if you dont call it annoying to make 11 times the same post.
Thats reckless...
You can start worrying about gay or not when your kids are mid 20ies and then they still display strange behaviour.
Some theatre piece make no one gay.
little_gecko: Btw, watching a gay play does not make one gay. If that is possible, gays can watch a normal play and become normal people too, rite? Kaoz, that's not how things work...
I did not feel uncomfortable, It is my daughter and her schoolmates who felt uncomfortable. The play would have been good if they get the females to play as females. What is so difficult?
Even back in the olden days, whether the Japanese Kabuki or Shakespearean plays, no females were allowed and males played the roles of females. So what good old fashion values are you promoting?? Shocked
This is my favourite comment:
trucky: 1) Unlike you've suggested, The Importance of Being Earnest is NOT a 'gay' play. In fact it is an approved 'O' level literature text that has been studied by millions of people over the years. And for this production, the actors are NOT playing female roles. The roles have been MODIFIED for an all-male cast. Therefore there are references to homosexuality but the play does not promote homosexuality. (Fallacy of division: Part of it containing 'gay' content does not make the whole of it a 'gay' play)
2) I went to watch Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (a Wild Rice musical) last December. They stage annual musicals targeted for children and the family (hence fairy tales as storylines). The musical contains ZERO content suggesting homosexuality. But among audiences I saw grown men wearing pink shirts, holding hands and acting effeminately. Does this mean we have to ban children from watching theatre with such audiences? Or do we have to ban supposed-gays from enjoying theatre so that our 'normal' children can enjoy plays? Or even better, ban men from wearing pink and force every male in our society to be burly and muscular to suggest they are 'normal' men?
...
4) Clearly you are against the play simply because you fear that the younger generation (whose sexual identities are supposedly not fully-formed) will be influenced by its 'gay' agenda(s). However I'm quite sure that no 'normal' student will turn 'gay' because of a play. Students are more easily influenced by real people (ie. friends and family) than fictional characters. I watched tons of children's TV shows growing up. But I do not have pink slime for lunch just because the Teletubbies do. Neither do I talk to goldfish or dye my hair red because Elmo has such characteristics.
[Ed: Emphasis mine. This can also be used to counter feminist (or other Progressive) nonsense. See also Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size]
... We won't be influenced or compelled to become a homosexual because of a play. If students were really that easily influenced, there would be no teen-smokers nor teen pregnancies!
(For the record, I am a girl, and I am straight. So no 'gay' accusations!)
samseng: joshing chow ah kua, you are losing the plot already. All the ah Kuas are the same. Lose only, use threats, curse people. You see that in Bangkok, you heard that in Orchard Tower. Why don't you do like one of those Shakespearean heros, go take a knife and plunge it into your heart? That would be very stylo.
Joshing: Losing? You mean there's a prize for winning?
If you win, do you get $10million SGD from me or the ah kua association?
rainbow 999: Too many beliefs is not the point
Just like COE, ERP, Road tax, Fuel tax, Insurance
Just fancy names which serve only One purpose
We are being imposed by some exceptional indivualds
No need to understand why or know why
Sun always up from the east
Just need to know these are exceptional perverts
which are the toxic asset of economic growth
i passed my PSLE english: Please stop discussing this type of sensitive topic here, we're a multi-racial and multi-religious society here. There're people of all faiths here including Muslims. Homosexuals is disallowed in Islam.
STOP talking nonsense in this forum regarding Ah Quas. Period.
MFTTW on the above: WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
you should start a new tag for your blogposts
"Singaporeans are full of shit"
Post ID: 3670446753939456662
Saturday, April 04, 2009
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." - Charles Bukowski
***
"Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons"
"Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25"
"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds"
"Get 50% off or half price, whichever is less."
"One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers"
"What constitutes a millionaire?"
"A millionaire is someone who has $1 million"
"Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum"
"A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman."
"Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison"
"Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks"
"A caller reported... someone was on a porch yelling "help"... the person was calling a cat that is named "Help.""
"Police were called... about a "suspicious coin." Investigating officer reported it was a quarter."
"A woman... reported that someone must have stolen her mail, because she did not receive birthday cards from some of her friends."
"Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a tash can. Upon investigation, officers discover it was only a burrito."
"1995 NISSAN Maxima, green, leather, loaded, CD, auto start, sunroof, 4-door, good condition, $4500. Not for sale."
"Police checked the area and found an open door in the back of the building. An officer went inside and called out, "Marco."
The man's name was not Marco... "the officer was trying to inject some humor into the situation."
Police found the suspect after he responded, "Polo.""
"TOMBSTONE: Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady"
***
"Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons"
"Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25"
"County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds"
"Get 50% off or half price, whichever is less."
"One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers"
"What constitutes a millionaire?"
"A millionaire is someone who has $1 million"
"Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum"
"A deputy responded to a report of a vehicle stopping at mail boxes. It was the mailman."
"Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison"
"Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks"
"A caller reported... someone was on a porch yelling "help"... the person was calling a cat that is named "Help.""
"Police were called... about a "suspicious coin." Investigating officer reported it was a quarter."
"A woman... reported that someone must have stolen her mail, because she did not receive birthday cards from some of her friends."
"Police receive a report of a newborn infant found in a tash can. Upon investigation, officers discover it was only a burrito."
"1995 NISSAN Maxima, green, leather, loaded, CD, auto start, sunroof, 4-door, good condition, $4500. Not for sale."
"Police checked the area and found an open door in the back of the building. An officer went inside and called out, "Marco."
The man's name was not Marco... "the officer was trying to inject some humor into the situation."
Police found the suspect after he responded, "Polo.""
"TOMBSTONE: Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady"
Post ID: 5914571014407566368
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong
***
Feedback I got on Improve Your English (wow, people actually read it!):
"You have a lot of great phrases to help others in catching mistakes. However, one phrase in the "Misspelled/Odd/Funny/Erroneous Signs" section is actually correct, but marked wrong:
- There are also news and traffic updates to make that drive home even smoother. (is)
To say, "There is also news and traffic updates" is a common MISTAKE that many native English speakers make. However, since the goal of your page is to help people speak English correctly, the subject and verb should agree. To see if they do, use this rule: simplify the sentence.
If the word "updates" is the subject you can simplify to "There are updates."
"Are" goes with the plural noun "updates".
If the words "news and traffic" are the subject of the sentence simplify to "There are news and traffic". You still use the verb "are" because the two things "news" and "traffic" combine to form a plural subject.
If you say "is" it sounds okay, unless you restructure the sentence. "Updates is there." is clearly wrong, just like "There is updates."
Enjoy the English language!"
Gosh, that entry is very old.
I'd like to think my kungfu has improved since then.
***
Feedback I got on Improve Your English (wow, people actually read it!):
"You have a lot of great phrases to help others in catching mistakes. However, one phrase in the "Misspelled/Odd/Funny/Erroneous Signs" section is actually correct, but marked wrong:
- There are also news and traffic updates to make that drive home even smoother. (is)
To say, "There is also news and traffic updates" is a common MISTAKE that many native English speakers make. However, since the goal of your page is to help people speak English correctly, the subject and verb should agree. To see if they do, use this rule: simplify the sentence.
If the word "updates" is the subject you can simplify to "There are updates."
"Are" goes with the plural noun "updates".
If the words "news and traffic" are the subject of the sentence simplify to "There are news and traffic". You still use the verb "are" because the two things "news" and "traffic" combine to form a plural subject.
If you say "is" it sounds okay, unless you restructure the sentence. "Updates is there." is clearly wrong, just like "There is updates."
Enjoy the English language!"
Gosh, that entry is very old.
I'd like to think my kungfu has improved since then.
Post ID: 1083035799477486249
"America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up." - Oscar Wilde
***
For sale: nagging wife, very high maintenance - "A British man fed up with his wife's complaints advertised her for sale -- and got a number of offers... Bates said his 40-year-old wife -- whom he advertised in the magazine's Free to Collect section, along with some of his fishing tackle -- initially gave him "a bit of an ear-bashing." But he said: "She's seen the funny side of it now though!""
KFC willing to fill potholes if company can brand its work - "Why did the fried-chicken maker cross the road? To fill the potholes, of course. The folks at KFC recently cooked up an appetizing offer for cash-strapped cities: The restaurant chain will fix crater-ridden streets for free if they're allowed to brand repairs with a chalked-on message saying that the road has been "Re-Freshed by KFC.""
YouTube - Mario: Game Over
American expat in S'pore in top 16 for "best job in the world" - ""(The caller) went, 'Hi Greg, this is Minister from Queensland Tourism Board. Congratulations!' I said yes! Whoo!"... Fulfilling an earlier promise should he make it to the final stage of the contest, he will he shaving his head and painting the colours of the Singapore flag on it on Friday. He will then run down Orchard Road in his flippers and snorkel."
I'm not surprised it's not a local.
Facebook | Famous Bishan Gay! - "Affiliation: Gay
Location: Bishan KFC, Singapore"
Five Geek Social Fallacies - "Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive... GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong... GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend. Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier."
Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study - "The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not. Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said "workplace Internet leisure browsing," or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration. "People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration"... "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity," said Coker. "That's not always the case." However, Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office."
Men spend more time gossiping than women, poll finds - "Men spend an average 76 minutes a day tittle-tattling with their friends or work colleagues, compared to just 52 minutes for women... Women also love to talk about news, but rather than focusing on politics or government issues, news about soap operas and celebrities are more likely to cause a debate.
MEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Drunken friends
2. News
3. Old school friends
4. Female colleagues at work
5. The sexiest girl at work
6. Spreading rumours
7. Promotions
8. Sexual relationships
9. Salaries
10. The boss
WOMEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Other women
2. News
3. Relationship problems
4. Other people's relationships
5. Sexual relationships
6. Friend's weight gain
7. Soap operas
8. Other women's boyfriends / husbands
9. The mother-in-law
10. Celebrities"
Product Fail - "Love bacon and all its goodness? Want to spice things up in the bedroom? Well, you’re sure to love this new product, baconlube™ . baconlube is a delicious personal lubricant designed to “keep it sizzlin’”. Now you can have your cake and eat it too."
Facebook | The Final Solution - "What if Science discovered a genetic cure for the moral defects of mankind? Sin would no longer be an option.
The world would be a better place. Or so it seems.
Will this be the "Final Solution" to all the problems in society?
In this Easter drama, view your world through the eyes of the new "Messiah" as faith, science, love and choice collide ...
You're invited to join us as we discover the true meaning of Easter. See you there!"
Why am I not surprised that this FAIL event name was from City Harvest?
Professor Sues Students for "Anti-intellectualism" - "Venkatesan is the author of a book called Molecular biology in Narrative form., which is also the title of her Ph.D. thesis. At least one reviewer thought the book was a joke... Professor Venkatesan taught a freshman course on "Science, Technology and Society" at Dartmouth where she expounded at length on various post-modern ideas and the concept that, "scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct." During one of those lectures some of her students challenged her and attempted to refute her post-modernist views. Some students applauded the dissidents. The result was traumatic for Professor Venkatesan and she ended up quitting her job at Dartmouth. She also launched a lawsuit against her students for violating her civil rights... There are too many universities these days whose faculties subscribe to the gibberish of these post-modernist pseudo-intellectuals. This may be a bigger threat to university students than creationism."
Squeez Bacon® - "A fully cooked 100% bacon paste that could be squeezed from a tube... Vilhelm Lillefläsk's Squeez Bacon® is fully cooked 100% bacon... If it's edible, it's better with Squeez Bacon®. In the immortal words of Vilhelm Lillefläsk, "Aldrig kommer att ge dig upp!" Once you get a taste of Squeez Bacon®, you'll know exactly what he meant."
Does Having Children Make You Unhappy? - "Children do not bring happiness. In fact more often they seem to bring unhappiness. That is the conclusion of one academic study after the next — and there are so many that it makes one wonder if researchers kept trying, hoping for a different result."
Viagra reduces hamster 'jet lag'
Facebook discipline may be illegal: expert - "Firms who discipline or sack staff for comments made on Facebook and Twitter could be acting illegally, says a veteran lawyer... She said she wrote something along the lines of "he's such an anally retentive asshole", without naming any individuals or the company. A manager at the company thought the comments were referring to him and refused to back down on giving her an official warning, so she quit her job... Penning said most employment contracts and policies had rules against speaking to media, but these were different from posting comments on social networking sites... A reader responding to yesterday's story about the NSW prison officers said he was fired from his job at a "large corporate bank" for using the word "recession" in his Facebook profile. "Ended up being reprimanded by both my boss and the head of our division, despite not using the company name or having either of them on my friends list. I lost my job shortly after," the reader wrote."
5 Things That Didn’t Kill Gaming As We Know It, Just Like Wii Fit Won’t - "Yanking a gamer from the fantasy adventure worlds of our imaginations back into the mundane, cyclical day-to-day rituals of reality is like getting punched in the face in the middle of a wet dream. The Sims managed to take everything we had built as the visionary standard of our beloved art-form and brutally ravage it. Casual gamers came out in droves to purchase the title, which momentarily gave them a break from things like going to the bathroom and ignoring their nagging mother in the real world so they could replicate similar acts of boredom in the game. The push for reality based games has always baffled my inner connection with video games as a trip through escapism. Mimicking the daily boredom of the average American suburbanite should never, ever be confused with ingenious game design, and a world taken over by Sims games would’ve done nothing but constantly echo the banality of our own lives. Plus the graphics sucked."
***
For sale: nagging wife, very high maintenance - "A British man fed up with his wife's complaints advertised her for sale -- and got a number of offers... Bates said his 40-year-old wife -- whom he advertised in the magazine's Free to Collect section, along with some of his fishing tackle -- initially gave him "a bit of an ear-bashing." But he said: "She's seen the funny side of it now though!""
KFC willing to fill potholes if company can brand its work - "Why did the fried-chicken maker cross the road? To fill the potholes, of course. The folks at KFC recently cooked up an appetizing offer for cash-strapped cities: The restaurant chain will fix crater-ridden streets for free if they're allowed to brand repairs with a chalked-on message saying that the road has been "Re-Freshed by KFC.""
YouTube - Mario: Game Over
American expat in S'pore in top 16 for "best job in the world" - ""(The caller) went, 'Hi Greg, this is Minister from Queensland Tourism Board. Congratulations!' I said yes! Whoo!"... Fulfilling an earlier promise should he make it to the final stage of the contest, he will he shaving his head and painting the colours of the Singapore flag on it on Friday. He will then run down Orchard Road in his flippers and snorkel."
I'm not surprised it's not a local.
Facebook | Famous Bishan Gay! - "Affiliation: Gay
Location: Bishan KFC, Singapore"
Five Geek Social Fallacies - "Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive... GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong... GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend. Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier."
Facebook, YouTube at work make better employees: study - "The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not. Study author Brent Coker, from the department of management and marketing, said "workplace Internet leisure browsing," or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration. "People need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration"... "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online under the pretence that it costs millions in lost productivity," said Coker. "That's not always the case." However, Coker said the study looked at people who browsed in moderation, or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office."
Men spend more time gossiping than women, poll finds - "Men spend an average 76 minutes a day tittle-tattling with their friends or work colleagues, compared to just 52 minutes for women... Women also love to talk about news, but rather than focusing on politics or government issues, news about soap operas and celebrities are more likely to cause a debate.
MEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Drunken friends
2. News
3. Old school friends
4. Female colleagues at work
5. The sexiest girl at work
6. Spreading rumours
7. Promotions
8. Sexual relationships
9. Salaries
10. The boss
WOMEN'S GOSSIP TOPICS
1. Other women
2. News
3. Relationship problems
4. Other people's relationships
5. Sexual relationships
6. Friend's weight gain
7. Soap operas
8. Other women's boyfriends / husbands
9. The mother-in-law
10. Celebrities"
Product Fail - "Love bacon and all its goodness? Want to spice things up in the bedroom? Well, you’re sure to love this new product, baconlube™ . baconlube is a delicious personal lubricant designed to “keep it sizzlin’”. Now you can have your cake and eat it too."
Facebook | The Final Solution - "What if Science discovered a genetic cure for the moral defects of mankind? Sin would no longer be an option.
The world would be a better place. Or so it seems.
Will this be the "Final Solution" to all the problems in society?
In this Easter drama, view your world through the eyes of the new "Messiah" as faith, science, love and choice collide ...
You're invited to join us as we discover the true meaning of Easter. See you there!"
Why am I not surprised that this FAIL event name was from City Harvest?
Professor Sues Students for "Anti-intellectualism" - "Venkatesan is the author of a book called Molecular biology in Narrative form., which is also the title of her Ph.D. thesis. At least one reviewer thought the book was a joke... Professor Venkatesan taught a freshman course on "Science, Technology and Society" at Dartmouth where she expounded at length on various post-modern ideas and the concept that, "scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct." During one of those lectures some of her students challenged her and attempted to refute her post-modernist views. Some students applauded the dissidents. The result was traumatic for Professor Venkatesan and she ended up quitting her job at Dartmouth. She also launched a lawsuit against her students for violating her civil rights... There are too many universities these days whose faculties subscribe to the gibberish of these post-modernist pseudo-intellectuals. This may be a bigger threat to university students than creationism."
Squeez Bacon® - "A fully cooked 100% bacon paste that could be squeezed from a tube... Vilhelm Lillefläsk's Squeez Bacon® is fully cooked 100% bacon... If it's edible, it's better with Squeez Bacon®. In the immortal words of Vilhelm Lillefläsk, "Aldrig kommer att ge dig upp!" Once you get a taste of Squeez Bacon®, you'll know exactly what he meant."
Does Having Children Make You Unhappy? - "Children do not bring happiness. In fact more often they seem to bring unhappiness. That is the conclusion of one academic study after the next — and there are so many that it makes one wonder if researchers kept trying, hoping for a different result."
Viagra reduces hamster 'jet lag'
Facebook discipline may be illegal: expert - "Firms who discipline or sack staff for comments made on Facebook and Twitter could be acting illegally, says a veteran lawyer... She said she wrote something along the lines of "he's such an anally retentive asshole", without naming any individuals or the company. A manager at the company thought the comments were referring to him and refused to back down on giving her an official warning, so she quit her job... Penning said most employment contracts and policies had rules against speaking to media, but these were different from posting comments on social networking sites... A reader responding to yesterday's story about the NSW prison officers said he was fired from his job at a "large corporate bank" for using the word "recession" in his Facebook profile. "Ended up being reprimanded by both my boss and the head of our division, despite not using the company name or having either of them on my friends list. I lost my job shortly after," the reader wrote."
5 Things That Didn’t Kill Gaming As We Know It, Just Like Wii Fit Won’t - "Yanking a gamer from the fantasy adventure worlds of our imaginations back into the mundane, cyclical day-to-day rituals of reality is like getting punched in the face in the middle of a wet dream. The Sims managed to take everything we had built as the visionary standard of our beloved art-form and brutally ravage it. Casual gamers came out in droves to purchase the title, which momentarily gave them a break from things like going to the bathroom and ignoring their nagging mother in the real world so they could replicate similar acts of boredom in the game. The push for reality based games has always baffled my inner connection with video games as a trip through escapism. Mimicking the daily boredom of the average American suburbanite should never, ever be confused with ingenious game design, and a world taken over by Sims games would’ve done nothing but constantly echo the banality of our own lives. Plus the graphics sucked."
Post ID: 7584730585876195814
Friday, April 03, 2009
On the utility of labels:
"The nice thing about labels is that they allow you to have a discussion about something where everyone involved knows what's being discussed. Like, when you ask someone if they want a cookie, obviously you're not fully describing the infinite variety of cookies in the universe, but at least they know you're not offering a ham...
I completely agree that labels can cause a lot of problems. That's the problem with everything: it's not perfect."
"The nice thing about labels is that they allow you to have a discussion about something where everyone involved knows what's being discussed. Like, when you ask someone if they want a cookie, obviously you're not fully describing the infinite variety of cookies in the universe, but at least they know you're not offering a ham...
I completely agree that labels can cause a lot of problems. That's the problem with everything: it's not perfect."
Post ID: 2040651141139509600
"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right." - Arthur Schopenhauer
***
Pinker on some reasons why people think violence has increased in recent decades and years, though it has instead fallen precipitiously (and that "we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence"):
"There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets. No one ever attracted advocates and donors by saying 'things just seems to be getting better and better'.
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life. An unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture."
More from him about Pax Modernitatis:
"In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
... The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood"). But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler...
The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century...
According to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent."
***
Pinker on some reasons why people think violence has increased in recent decades and years, though it has instead fallen precipitiously (and that "we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence"):
"There are dynamics in the opinion and advocacy markets. No one ever attracted advocates and donors by saying 'things just seems to be getting better and better'.
There's guilt about our treatment of native peoples in modern intellectual life. An unwillingness to acknowledge there could be anything good about Western culture."
More from him about Pax Modernitatis:
"In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
... The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood"). But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler...
The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century...
According to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent."
Post ID: 1176254953792409273
Thursday, April 02, 2009
"None are so busy as the fool and knave." - John Dryden
***
PIRAMUS.
Pyramus was the most beautiful youth in the East and lived in Babylon. He fell in love with his neighbor Thisbe, but their parents refused consent to their marriage. They planned to escape together; first, they would meet at King Ninus's tomb, near which grew a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first but, frightened by a lioness, she fled into the tomb, leaving her cloak behind. The lioness tore the cloak with her bloody jaws, then went off. When Pyramus arrived and saw the bloody cloak, he presumed that Thisbe had been slain. He drew his sword and killed himself, and as his blood spurted upwards, it changed the white fruit of the mulberry tree to deep purple. Arriving soon afterwards, Thisbe found Pyramus dead and slew herself with his sword (Met IV.55-166; OM IV.229-1169). The story is also told in an Anglo-Norman poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Pyrame et Tisbé, in an Old French poem, Piramus et Tisbé (c. 1170), and in Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Navarre, 3171-3212.
Sounds familiar?
***
PIRAMUS.
Pyramus was the most beautiful youth in the East and lived in Babylon. He fell in love with his neighbor Thisbe, but their parents refused consent to their marriage. They planned to escape together; first, they would meet at King Ninus's tomb, near which grew a mulberry tree. Thisbe arrived first but, frightened by a lioness, she fled into the tomb, leaving her cloak behind. The lioness tore the cloak with her bloody jaws, then went off. When Pyramus arrived and saw the bloody cloak, he presumed that Thisbe had been slain. He drew his sword and killed himself, and as his blood spurted upwards, it changed the white fruit of the mulberry tree to deep purple. Arriving soon afterwards, Thisbe found Pyramus dead and slew herself with his sword (Met IV.55-166; OM IV.229-1169). The story is also told in an Anglo-Norman poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century, Pyrame et Tisbé, in an Old French poem, Piramus et Tisbé (c. 1170), and in Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Navarre, 3171-3212.
Sounds familiar?
Post ID: 8422525846002241622
"I was the kid next door's imaginary friend." - Emo Phillips
***
A dozen a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Is nine squared and not a bit more!
(12 + 144 + 20 + (3 x (4^.5)))/7 + 5 x 11 = (9 ^2) + 0
Credit: Sunflower
The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
From 1 to the cube root of 3,
Times the cosine,
Of 3 pi by 9,
Is the log of the cube root of e.
(I haven't done integration in almost a decade, so I don't know if this is right)
***
A dozen a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Is nine squared and not a bit more!
(12 + 144 + 20 + (3 x (4^.5)))/7 + 5 x 11 = (9 ^2) + 0
Credit: Sunflower
The integral of zee-squared dee zee,
From 1 to the cube root of 3,
Times the cosine,
Of 3 pi by 9,
Is the log of the cube root of e.
(I haven't done integration in almost a decade, so I don't know if this is right)
Post ID: 1588835935618050872
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?" - Jay Leno
***
On women in Cambodia:
"An employee of local NGO Gender and Development for Cambodia commented in 2002 that ‘20 people can rape a woman at the same time, and consider this a fun, bonding experience between males’ (PPP 2002: 14). Perhaps the most bizarre commentary on the role of women in post-revolutionary Cambodia is to he found on the Cambodian People’s Party list of important events in Cambodia’s history: ‘20 June 1999 — Royal palace denies rumour of evil god demanding thousands of long-haired virgin girls’ (CPP 2000)"
--- Women's Political Participation and Representation in Asia: Obstacles and Challenges / Kazuki Iwanaga
And, from Lost goddesses: the denial of female power in Cambodian history / Trudy Jacobsen:
"The presence of a pervasive sex industry was also perceived as being a result of female immorality, vanity, and lack of willingness to engage in 'real work'...
It continues to be the prerogative of elite men to demonstrate their potency and superiority over other men through sexual access to large numbers of women. If these women are virgins, the higher the prowess of the man involved, because virginity is an expensive commodity. High-level business agreements are ‘ratified by deflowering virgins procured for the purpose, in order to demonstrate mutual high regard. A Western parallel might be the decanting of a 30-year-old single malt in order to toast the business agreement. Virginity carries with it the assurance that there will he no ill-effects from the encounter (for the man, at least) and some believe that taking the virginity of a girl will remove bad luck, rejuvenate a flagging libido, or cure HIV/AIDS. This is why so many sex workers are young teenagers. Their value is diminished once their virginity has been sold, but they will not physically show the toll that the sex industry takes on their bodies for some years. Another attractive characteristic in young sex workers is that they are socially constrained to be obedient. Most Cambodian men expect their sexual partners, including sex workers, to be submissive and are disconcerted when their expectations are not met. It was extremely difficult to convince any Cambodian man to speak openly about why Cambodian women should not enjoy sex. Many seemed to think that it was an inherent aspect of Cambodian femininity. One moto driver said 'If wanted a srei rijoh rilenh [wriggly woman) I would go to a Vietnamese.’ Ly Ly, a sex worker, told me that she had been surprised at first when her Western clients 'told me to make noise, to move around, to sit on top ... . If I did this with a Cambodian man, he would be shocked and afraid'.
The majority of Cambodian men believe that Cambodian women are naturally timid, docile, and less capable than they are...
I have seen women agreeing to have sex with men in exchange for the price of the moto ride to her own home afterwards (around 50 US cents).
Foreign men come to Cambodia and find their every fantasy can be easily facilitated while not earning any disapproval from society at large because it is acceptable for Cambodian men to do the same. A popular ‘gentleman’s bar’ in Phnom Penh offers a particular service combining the exoticism of the east with the pleasures of the local pub. As soon as they walk in, men are given a complimentary beer. Shortly afterward, a hostess will appear and fellate them against the wall while they wait their turn at the pool table. Disapproval of this and other exploitative practices is portrayed as jealousy on the part of Western women who secretly desire the attention lavished upon their ostensibly more attractive counterparts. A cartoon in a locally. produced English-language magazine showed a Western man dancing with four young, slim, sexily dressed Cambodian women while at a nearby table four overweight older Western ladies voiced their disapproval over their colleague’s contribution to the exploitation of women. In the next frame, each woman had a thought-bubble over her head expressing sentiments such as ‘I wonder how much liposuction costs’ and ‘Can I get out to Bangkok for a facelift before New Year” Criticism is dismissed as jealousy."
Perhaps all this is due to Cambodian history:
"Sexual autonomy seems to have been exercised by women to a high degree, at least amongst women who were not born into the royal family. Zhou Daguan was told that Cambodian women were not likely to remain faithful in the absence of their husbands:
This is at odds with the inscriptions, which stress the importance of fidelity of women after marriage. Virginity is also the subject of conflicting views. One inscription speaks of a king’s infatuation with a woman ‘of perfect body, of irreproachable face’ waning when he realised that she was ‘already deflowered.' Jayavarman VII was pleasurably aroused by ‘a virginal and enchanting wife, awkward in revealing her charms: According to Zhou Daguan, however, brides and grooms often had pre-nuptial intercourse without social reprisal.” There was one rule for the elite and another for the rest of society."
Or maybe the Cambodians Zhou Daguan talked to pulled a Margaret Mead on him.
And finally, on sex workers in Southeast Asia:
"As highlighted throughout this book. women in the sex industry do not identify with representations that place them as victims of political economy, sex tourists or HIV/AIDS. Indeed. they perceive a negotiated tension between their free will to enter prostitution and the constraints that make this particular type of employment an opportunity for them. Moreover, sex workers do not conceive their encounters with foreign men in strictly oppressive terms. Dichotomous models of power—whether based on the colonizer/colonized or oppressor/subordinate binaries of nationalist and feminist discourse—are necessarily more complex, situated and strategic. Furthermore, the subjects of these models are capable of power and resistance in complex and unanticipated ways. In go-go bars throughout Southeast Asia the differences between white, Western men and Southeast Asian women are worked out, but this negotiation is not based on a clear relation of domination...
This approach to understanding the relationship between sex workers and their customers has much affinity with postcolonial perspectives which seek to disrupt the nationalist ideologies that set up a binary relation between Third World/First World... While the relationship between sex workers and their customers is the most detailed example given here, a similar argument is made about the relationship between Australian NGOs and their Filipino NGO ‘partners’. To define peer education as a purely colonizing discourse, for example, would be at the expense of understanding the Filipino translation and use of the concept.
As this study shows, organizations with specific political agendas utilize dichotomous notions of power which are incommensurable with the lives of women employed in the sex industry. Due to the global concern with HIV/ AIDS, these organizations include an increasingly complex web of international agencies (i.e. the United Nations, aid organizations from the West, etc.), national and local governments, and NOOs carrying out community—based WV/AIDS education projects. Furthermore, the advent of WV/AIDS has brought new voices to these debates, including those from the Western—based prostitutes’ rights movement. Through examining the perspectives of local, national and foreign organizations—as well as the uneasy processes of social and cultural identification between them—it becomes clear that representations of prostitute victims/sex worker agents are also articulations of organizational identity. Because the images the produced by government and non-government organizations are as much about their own positions within debates about sex work and AIDS. it could be argued these images are politically strategic stereotypes—and are therefore fragile and ambivalent. While they might deny the lived experience of sex work, they can also be considered the foundation upon which new identities might be constituted."
--- Sex work in Southeast Asia: the place of desire in a time of AIDS / Lisa Law
***
On women in Cambodia:
"An employee of local NGO Gender and Development for Cambodia commented in 2002 that ‘20 people can rape a woman at the same time, and consider this a fun, bonding experience between males’ (PPP 2002: 14). Perhaps the most bizarre commentary on the role of women in post-revolutionary Cambodia is to he found on the Cambodian People’s Party list of important events in Cambodia’s history: ‘20 June 1999 — Royal palace denies rumour of evil god demanding thousands of long-haired virgin girls’ (CPP 2000)"
--- Women's Political Participation and Representation in Asia: Obstacles and Challenges / Kazuki Iwanaga
And, from Lost goddesses: the denial of female power in Cambodian history / Trudy Jacobsen:
"The presence of a pervasive sex industry was also perceived as being a result of female immorality, vanity, and lack of willingness to engage in 'real work'...
It continues to be the prerogative of elite men to demonstrate their potency and superiority over other men through sexual access to large numbers of women. If these women are virgins, the higher the prowess of the man involved, because virginity is an expensive commodity. High-level business agreements are ‘ratified by deflowering virgins procured for the purpose, in order to demonstrate mutual high regard. A Western parallel might be the decanting of a 30-year-old single malt in order to toast the business agreement. Virginity carries with it the assurance that there will he no ill-effects from the encounter (for the man, at least) and some believe that taking the virginity of a girl will remove bad luck, rejuvenate a flagging libido, or cure HIV/AIDS. This is why so many sex workers are young teenagers. Their value is diminished once their virginity has been sold, but they will not physically show the toll that the sex industry takes on their bodies for some years. Another attractive characteristic in young sex workers is that they are socially constrained to be obedient. Most Cambodian men expect their sexual partners, including sex workers, to be submissive and are disconcerted when their expectations are not met. It was extremely difficult to convince any Cambodian man to speak openly about why Cambodian women should not enjoy sex. Many seemed to think that it was an inherent aspect of Cambodian femininity. One moto driver said 'If wanted a srei rijoh rilenh [wriggly woman) I would go to a Vietnamese.’ Ly Ly, a sex worker, told me that she had been surprised at first when her Western clients 'told me to make noise, to move around, to sit on top ... . If I did this with a Cambodian man, he would be shocked and afraid'.
The majority of Cambodian men believe that Cambodian women are naturally timid, docile, and less capable than they are...
I have seen women agreeing to have sex with men in exchange for the price of the moto ride to her own home afterwards (around 50 US cents).
Foreign men come to Cambodia and find their every fantasy can be easily facilitated while not earning any disapproval from society at large because it is acceptable for Cambodian men to do the same. A popular ‘gentleman’s bar’ in Phnom Penh offers a particular service combining the exoticism of the east with the pleasures of the local pub. As soon as they walk in, men are given a complimentary beer. Shortly afterward, a hostess will appear and fellate them against the wall while they wait their turn at the pool table. Disapproval of this and other exploitative practices is portrayed as jealousy on the part of Western women who secretly desire the attention lavished upon their ostensibly more attractive counterparts. A cartoon in a locally. produced English-language magazine showed a Western man dancing with four young, slim, sexily dressed Cambodian women while at a nearby table four overweight older Western ladies voiced their disapproval over their colleague’s contribution to the exploitation of women. In the next frame, each woman had a thought-bubble over her head expressing sentiments such as ‘I wonder how much liposuction costs’ and ‘Can I get out to Bangkok for a facelift before New Year” Criticism is dismissed as jealousy."
Perhaps all this is due to Cambodian history:
"Sexual autonomy seems to have been exercised by women to a high degree, at least amongst women who were not born into the royal family. Zhou Daguan was told that Cambodian women were not likely to remain faithful in the absence of their husbands:
Everyone with whom I talked said that the Cambodian women are highly sexed. One or two days after giving birth to a child they are ready for intercourse: if a husband is not responsive he will be discarded. When a husband is called away on matters of business, they endure his absence for a while; but if he is gone as much as ten days, the wife is apt to say, ‘I am no ghost; how can I be expected to sleep alone?’ Though their sexual impulses are very strong,, it is said some of them remain faithful.’
This is at odds with the inscriptions, which stress the importance of fidelity of women after marriage. Virginity is also the subject of conflicting views. One inscription speaks of a king’s infatuation with a woman ‘of perfect body, of irreproachable face’ waning when he realised that she was ‘already deflowered.' Jayavarman VII was pleasurably aroused by ‘a virginal and enchanting wife, awkward in revealing her charms: According to Zhou Daguan, however, brides and grooms often had pre-nuptial intercourse without social reprisal.” There was one rule for the elite and another for the rest of society."
Or maybe the Cambodians Zhou Daguan talked to pulled a Margaret Mead on him.
And finally, on sex workers in Southeast Asia:
"As highlighted throughout this book. women in the sex industry do not identify with representations that place them as victims of political economy, sex tourists or HIV/AIDS. Indeed. they perceive a negotiated tension between their free will to enter prostitution and the constraints that make this particular type of employment an opportunity for them. Moreover, sex workers do not conceive their encounters with foreign men in strictly oppressive terms. Dichotomous models of power—whether based on the colonizer/colonized or oppressor/subordinate binaries of nationalist and feminist discourse—are necessarily more complex, situated and strategic. Furthermore, the subjects of these models are capable of power and resistance in complex and unanticipated ways. In go-go bars throughout Southeast Asia the differences between white, Western men and Southeast Asian women are worked out, but this negotiation is not based on a clear relation of domination...
This approach to understanding the relationship between sex workers and their customers has much affinity with postcolonial perspectives which seek to disrupt the nationalist ideologies that set up a binary relation between Third World/First World... While the relationship between sex workers and their customers is the most detailed example given here, a similar argument is made about the relationship between Australian NGOs and their Filipino NGO ‘partners’. To define peer education as a purely colonizing discourse, for example, would be at the expense of understanding the Filipino translation and use of the concept.
As this study shows, organizations with specific political agendas utilize dichotomous notions of power which are incommensurable with the lives of women employed in the sex industry. Due to the global concern with HIV/ AIDS, these organizations include an increasingly complex web of international agencies (i.e. the United Nations, aid organizations from the West, etc.), national and local governments, and NOOs carrying out community—based WV/AIDS education projects. Furthermore, the advent of WV/AIDS has brought new voices to these debates, including those from the Western—based prostitutes’ rights movement. Through examining the perspectives of local, national and foreign organizations—as well as the uneasy processes of social and cultural identification between them—it becomes clear that representations of prostitute victims/sex worker agents are also articulations of organizational identity. Because the images the produced by government and non-government organizations are as much about their own positions within debates about sex work and AIDS. it could be argued these images are politically strategic stereotypes—and are therefore fragile and ambivalent. While they might deny the lived experience of sex work, they can also be considered the foundation upon which new identities might be constituted."
--- Sex work in Southeast Asia: the place of desire in a time of AIDS / Lisa Law
Post ID: 6060769679278207432
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