I am told that one of the standing orders in the 42SAR Ops Room is that if any fat people are found in any of the three canteens in the camp, the BOS on that day will sign 7 extra, and the person in question 3. Never mind the fact that the BOS cannot be in 3 places at the same time, even if he spends the whole day patrolling the canteens - if 42SAR wants you to do something, you will have to do it, even if it is impossible. They never let reality get in the way of operational readiness, no.

We have been told that if, after our meals at the cookhouse, we are still hungry, we can always drop another chip in and eat a second round. This is surprising, for what we'd always been told had led us to believe otherwise. I wonder if this applies for obese personnel as well.

I think people who have fetishes for mountains of data suffer from insecurity.

When I was booking in on a rainy Sunday morning for duty, I saw a host of dogs in the vehicle sheds, and 2 of them were mating. Perhaps because I had disturbed their sacred ritual, or maybe because the rain had made them short-tempered, I suddenly found myself set upon by a horde of ravenous, rabid stray dogs. I was surprised, to say the least, for usually they are quite amiable - friendly, even. Hurriedly, I closed the umbrella I was using and swung it around wildly, fending off the slavering jaws bared at me. I then quickly bounded over the chain separating the vehicle sheds from the gate area, and went back to the company line by another route. I should have had my staff with me, but it was lying in the medical centre, so maybe I shall have to bring it with me next time whenever I walk around that area. Later in the week, I found that the continuous rain had its effect on more than dogs, for normally nice people became nasty.

During one session of company PT, a stray dog came by and sniffed the admin instructions, and then peed on it. Looks like even the dogs know that my unit sucks

We had a bunk inspection for contraband, which I found most ironic, for the people guilty of possessing the most contraband were the very ones who were doing the inspection. Oh, the injustice of this world! During the same inspection, my beloved pictures of Wo-Hen Nankan, the Asian Prince, were torn down. I was wroth, for they had survived 2 bunk moves and many months (more than a year, even?) of display, but not the caprices of one person. However, new pictures have appeared on my cupboard, and soon will elsewhere.

The SAF has thrown its wraps off Chemical Defence training. Yet another product of the policy of unreasoning paranoia has been discarded. I sense a healthy trend here.

I was curious and tried some Water for Injection. Curiously, it had a faint taste of vanilla about it.

As the magic date approaches, somehow I think I've forgotten what it's like to lead a normal life, and I'm more neurotic and less self-assured now. I do not feel ready to face the world without going through the Civilian Conversion Course (CCC).


"Time travel classified? Good God, why?"

"Hell, boy, didn't you ever work for the government? They'd classify sex
if they could. There doesn't have to be a reason; it's just their policy."

--Chuck Freudenberg to Daniel B. Davis
The Door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein

This reminds me of the SAF Which is why, to get the true security classification of something you must downgrade its security classification by one level. An interesting book, by the way. Some (well, one, actually) term it "pastoral", but it's refreshing to read relatively upbeat and unpretentious tales. Though the pedophilic tendencies of the main character were somewhat disturbing :0


Marche's frozen yoghurt tastes like cottage cheese. I will never try it again.

'Project Boyfriend' is a java game for handphones. What makes it interesting, however, is that in it you play a girl, where in all other dating sims I've heard of, you play a male. I thought only boys would want to play games such as these, but I guess now girls can live out their screwed up fantasies (though I don't think you get to bed the guy at the end).


Quotes:

[On a LCP driving into the range in an expensive looking car] I threw the cigarette. I thought officer or what. Fuck lah.

Food tastes better when you eat it with your left hand

[On my surviving some of the depredations of slavery] You are 25% female

'Attitude' can't change my life. Only ORD can change my life.

I know a lot of people who read motivational stories, but they still suck.

I don't want to be the people that say [other people's lives are good], I want to be the people other people call 'ah gua peng' [Ed: Sissy Soldier] (someone who says that, someone whom)

[On the combat pay of 42SAR] Receive all the money to go to [a] psychiatrist

Black Shoe Polish is not available for sale temporally because of quality problem (temporarily, problems)

PSI card (PCI)

42 will be celebrating Hari Raya in the field. Celebrating the festival of the mat in the mud.

[On Wo-Hen] Can't take it, can't take it. I need to read FHM, or what.

Life isn't fair. If life were fair, Gabriel would be my CO. (?)

The new MMI is at DSO building right? [Me: Yah] NUS right? [Me: Yeah.] I wouldn't mind working there. All the pretty girls... NUS girls *slurps* [Me: Shrill, anorexic, chinese-speaking ah lians] NUS is full of JC chicks - all should be quite cute.

Andrew:
I returned it to you this month!!! What's happened to your sense of time?

The Associate:
I agree with your acquaintance that it was ironic, for free speech seems to be a pre-requisite for debate. Perhaps saying that your friend expects a debator to have an ideological commitment to freedom of speech is a stretch, for I wager he expects a debator to at least respect the idea of free speech, even if he doesn't have an ideological commitment to it.

If freedom of speech weren't a pre-requisite for debate, then it would be possible to knock down opponents not by refuting their points sensibly, but by saying that points were "immoral", "ridiculous", "racist" or the like, and making them untenable for scoring purposes.

Today i went back to re-read "Stranger in a strange land" after gabriel returned it to me a couple of months ago... picking up things in the book that i had never noticed before. It's like watching "The sixth sense" for a second time.

Anyway, I'll be going back to melbourne in exactly 2 weeks' time. Firehouse, waking up to the sight of uropa apartments, tramping (or hurtling, if i'm late) to the faculty at 10 to 9 in the morning, clambering the spiral staircase in the brownless biomedical library after dinner, evenings hanging out at college square, friday nights in union house (and lygon st after that), hands in pockets walking against the wind, bumping into EVERYONE in safeway supermarket, trips to the greenhouse/ leicester gardens/ will's new house?/ rowville/ flagstaff. Arrrgggh! Must go visit werribee (rural farm campus for the vet students; also location of a large sewage plant) before the last old vet student graduates.

I attended a talk by a couple, gary and joanna koh, from Focus on the Family - the organisation that promotes sexual abstinence before marriage and takes a stand against homosexual lifestyles. One thing they pointed out - that comedies such as Will and Grace have subconsciously but definitely influenced my perception of people. Many gay people dislike the character Jack (the classic queen) because he's irritating, whiny, and not representative of the majority of them (as opposed to maybe ... Will? The stylish lawyer who earns a lot, has many friends- straight and gay, has impeccable taste and dresses spiffily, etc)

Last night, Gil called to talk. We've been talking a lot these days; him asking for "career counselling" (not that I see why he needs any from me of all people, given my lack of anything resembling a career at present, and the fact that he's had seven offers to date) - and myself needing someone to rant to while trapped within the molasses flow of traffic along the Federal Highway.

Snippets:

Me: "Fault is immaterial. No matter who's wrong, or right, whatever happened, happened. Nothing you do changes one bit of that."

Gil: "Okay. So let's say, hypothetically, you were driving your CR-V down the road one night. And, say, a motorcycle swerves in front of you, and you oversteer to avoid it, and you slam into a lamppost, and the car flips. Furthermore, there's no Indian guy to pull you out of the burning wreckage, and you end up a quadriplegic, with third-degree burns, and blind. And say the guy on the motorcycle is Ananda Krishnan's godson? Aren't you going to sue his ass for everything he's worth? What about fault then?"

Me: "Can I still talk?"

Gil: "Erm.. okay lah. Yes, yes you can still talk."

Me: "Am I impotent?"

Gil: "HAHAHAHAHAHAAH.. yeah, of course!"

Me: (after some thought) "Well, that's about finding fault in a legal sense, not a moral one. It's not so much out of vengeance, it's more for practical purposes. After all, I'll need the money to buy a motorized wheelchair and cybernetic limbs."

Gil: "So you're not going to hate him?"

Me: "Hatred is baggage. I'm trying to be Zen about everything."

Gil: "But let's be frank. We're never going to let go of our hate. Isn't it more Zen to admit that you can't let go of it? That it's a part of you you can't escape?"

Me: "So you're saying it's more Zen to admit you can't be Zen.. that's a pretty zhai paradox."

(few rants later)

Me: "Well.. yeah. Put it this way. If hatred is baggage, I'm a student flight from Melbourne in December."

Gil: "What?"

Me: "You know. Full of baggage, especially from those assholes graduating who are too cheap to courier and think they can lug their VCR, old textbooks, and entire wardrobe without exceeding the weight limit and end up begging the check-in person at the airport for a few extra kilos.

Put it another way. Imagine a convict who pulls out his wisdom tooth with his bare hands. Imagine that convict sharpening that tooth fragment on the wall of his cell everyday for 10 years until it's sharp enough to use as a weapon to kill the warden who fucks him in the ass every night with his truncheon. Now imagine how much hate that guy has. Well - I think I've got more."

Gil: ".... That's one of the reasons why I still talk to you. For these colourful metaphors."

Someone else I know recently got a stinging order never to post anything related to God on a debator's blog told me he found it ironic that a debator would want to censor freedom of speech.

I stared incredulously and told him that expecting a debator to have an ideological commitment to freedom of speech is like expecting a politician to serve the public trust. After all, a debate isn't about freedom of speech. Quite the opposite, as any good debator should know, it's about winning a contest of structured argumentation within fairly proscribed rules - such as the restrictions against hung cases, for one. (Hm.. do they penalise hung cases in JC debates?)

In any event, as I advised my friend, a debator's role in the debate is to win an argument by oratory and logic. It has nothing to do with his personal opinions or preferences, particularly on private property such as his blog. However, as a consoling sop, I admitted that the "shut up I don't want to hear about it" tactic rarely wins points from adjudicators in a debate. But a blog isn't (necessarily) a forum for debate.

A colleague of mine showed me a (pirated) DVD of Cinderella which he'd bought or his daughter. Much to his amusement, the blurb on the reverse of the pirate-manufactured) DVD case displayed an MPAA rating of "R - May contain foul language, nudity and drug use."

My response: "Maybe it's the director's cut"

Possible deleted scenes:

Foul Language - Evil stepsister ranting at the ending "How did that @#$%ing whore Cinderella snare that asshole of a prince! Bastard! @#$%ing glass slipper!"

Drug Use - Cinderella shooting up cocaine and popping amphetamines in the cellar on the night of the ball. That would certainly go a long way to explaining how the mice transform into footmen and pumpkins become carriages. The fairy godmother was probably her local pusher.

Nudity - Hmmmm.. Cinderella running home in the nude after midnight and her gown turns into rotting sackcloth?

I wrote the following after being forwarded yet another "motivational" story:


Attitude - is it everything?.., based on a fairy tale by Francie Baltazar-Schwartz

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!” This, of course, confounded and annoyed everyone he said it to, for it made absolutely so sense at all.

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Of course, his boisterous enthusiasm about thinking positive despite the vagaries of reality infuriated people who were not hooked on self-motivational techniques, and he was especially unwelcome at sorrowful occasions - funerals, for example, when his zest for thinking positively and inciting others to do likewise was just inappropriate. Everyone remembered what had happened when he’d shown up at Jane’s mother’s funeral and scandalised everyone with his upbeat remarks about how her hernia would never trouble her again, and how she would not have to pay taxes anymore, dancing as she was in the Elysian Fields, while Jane would not have to take care of an incontinent, Parkinson’s Disease-stricken crone anymore, and would get her mother’s old house to boot!

Seeing this style really made me curious, if not a bit apprehensive, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?’

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have 2 choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

Yes it is, Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said even though his words rung hollow. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I tried hard to be inspired by his philosophy about life. Nevertheless, it failed for I could not deceive myself. Every morning from then on, I woke up and said to myself: Man, you have 2 choices today. You can choose to delude yourself into thinking that you are happy regardless of everything that happens, and looking at the ‘silver lining’ of every storm cloud, even if there is none (hallucinating one if need be to continue the elaborate self-deception), or you can stare reality straight in the eye with no illusions and face life. I chose not to look at the world through tinted lenses. Each time something bad happened, I allowed room for regret, grief, self-pity and other cathartic emotions, and everytime someone came to me trying to convert me to Jerry’s deceptive philosophy, or something very much like it, I pointed out how they were deceiving themselves, and how it was like being addicted to Magic Mushrooms or plugged into the Matrix. Regretfully, I did not manage to convince many, for they were content to wallow in their addictive cocktail of feel-good stories, self-help books grounded n sophistry and “motivational” seminar after “motivational” seminar, delivered by saccharinely fake characters reminiscent of the worst sort of used car salesman I’d ever seen.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by 3 armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma centre.

After I8 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about 6 months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?

Somehow I was not surprised that he was still spouting that gibberish, and almost delivered a choice repartee under my breath. I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. ‘Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had 2 choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action”

‘What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything, and I decided to be a wiseacre. ‘Yes,’ I replied, with a great effort. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. As I took a deep breath, the unnecessary effort caused more air and blood to gush into my punctured lungs and croaked, ‘Bullets!’. Waves of pain shot through my already pain-wracked body, and my breathing became more laboured. Over my pain, I dimly heard that burly nurse scolding me: ‘Screw you! We’re trying to do a job here. So stop cracking bad jokes and lowering your chances of survival.’ Chastened, I managed to whisper, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead. The burly nurse shouted at me again: ‘If we thought you were dead, we’d have stopped life support long ago and sold your organs to geriatric billionaires, or maybe to that guy in charge of Body Worlds. Now shut up.’

Jerry lived thanks to the skills of his doctors, but no thanks to his ‘positive’ attitude. 20 years later, I met Jerry again. He was still working in the same job and commanding the same pay, while being abused by all his superiors. Everyone else had long moved past him up the career ladder. I was curious, so I asked him why he hadn’t changed his job if it sucked so much.

He replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have 2 choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Everytime someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life. Every time a customer spills hot soup onto my lap, or someone “accidentally’ leaves a banana peel on the floor in front of me and I slip on it, landing heavily on my tailbone, I look on the bright side: At least I still have a job. It could be worse - I could be begging on the streets”

I neglected to point out to him that, especially with a booming economy, any employer would be more than happy to take on an employee who accepted pay below the minimum wage and worked so cheerfully, motivated by empty words and hollow motivational slogans instead of decent pecuniary or even non-pecuniary benefits. With such an attitude, it was no wonder he was content to stagnate in his job and let everyone walk all over him.

Attitude, after all, isn’t everything.

I learnt from him that everyday we have the choice to deceive ourselves, and sadly, many choose to do so. Being unhappy is not necessarily bad, for it motivates you to do something about your situation and terminate the source of your troubles. After all, what do we gain by tricking ourselves into believing that we are happy? Perhaps more troublingly, if everybody were happy all of the time, the concept of happiness would be meaningless, for just as there is no good without evil and no light without darkness, there is no happiness without sadness. If one is happy all the time, in the face of reality, it cheapens the concept of happiness and makes a travesty out of it.

I have now learnt that we should not take all motivational stories at face value and send them to all our friends, because one must realise that most of them are disingenuous pieces of writing meant to deceive you about the reality of the world, and set up a self-perpetuating cycle of dependence on and addiction to self-help and motivational products and seminars to enrich those who furnish them.

You have 2 choices now:

1. Delete this crap from your mail box, or,
2. Forward it to everyone you know (and some you don’t for good measure), and annoy the hell out of all of them.

Hope you will choose choice 2.


The grammar quiz is so easy. 4 out of 11 correct answers gets you the Hitler result. Gah.


How was the Muppet Show altered for screening in Turkey?

Answer: No Miss Piggy, since the pig is unclean for Muslim audiences.

Other answers submitted:

- After uncovering some of Edison's early research, they played the soundtrack backwards so they could understand what the Swedish chef was saying?
- Miss Piggy wore a headscarf, Kermit grew a beard, and Gonzo strapped 10 sticks of dynamite to his body and drove his motorcycle into the American Embassy.
- Big Bird and the Cookie Monster are caught smoking hash and stoned to death.
- I'm not sure. Did it have anything to do with the subtitles that were shown when the Swedish Chef went ballistic, screaming "Stuff Turkey ... Stuff Turkey"?
- It was translated into Turkish, which caused quite a ruckus when they discovered much to their chagrin that "Gonzo" is a Turkish slang word for indecent activities involving pork products and frog's legs...
- They changed the frog's name to 'Kurdmit.'


A Treatise on the Astrolabe - Geoffrey Chaucer, appr. 1391

Boobies or Butt - Harder than the Moobs of Boobs quiz. I only got 5/10. I attribute it to a lack of practice, really.

Flustered, somewhat. Found out only a handful of cinemas in singapore still show Lord of the rings 3 (RoTK) and none show The Company anymore. I want to watch the odd couple before it ends its run (rather, before i leave singapore); i want to attend the jitterbugs jazz dance classes though they're far away (millenia walk is far away by my standards). Should I show my face at the melbourne uni pre-departure seminar? (I know i asked myself the same question last year)

But what is important to me? are these all worthwhile? (considering the costs, especially)

Australia (and the 1.31 exchange rate ) is looming nearer. Yikes!

Went running yesterday. Haven't gone seriously running since.... early december. Really enjoyed it.... something about pushing yourself beyond where you last went. Okay, so 2.4km is kinda wimpish to a lot of you, but that's probably 2km more than i've run for the last month or so. Same goes for weights training - if you're (like lazy me) stuck on the same weight dumbells/barbells for over a couple of months there's something wrong; you should be progressing to a heavier set/more reps by then. Going beyond the routine, progressing, stretching yourself - that is The way of achieving big goals and visions. Also refer to this. Despite intellectualizing and rationalizing everything, the only way you know you can break the time record for a run, or prove that you are able to lift a heavier set, is to actually do it. Same goes for everything - your spiritual life included.

And that's .... why I'm here in this time and place, i guess. The andrew who left melbourne on 22 november 2003 is not the same andrew who landed in singapore on the same day; likewise the andrew who wound back in the singapore airport on 5 january is not the same andrew who will be departing the same airport in 19 days' time. Everything must progress and go on .... like a friend said, I do have the choice; I always have the choice open to me ... and this path is the one i've chosen. I know what is ahead of me is virgin territory; I don't have to like what I see ahead of me; all I have to know is that the Master is in front of me preparing the ground. I don't have to like the fact that I will have to traverse many parts of this road alone, but I know one Person who will always be my side. Andrew, quit comparing your road to others' !

That's all I have to say for now.

Quote of the Day:

"Nunquam ubi sub ubi!"




create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Aiyah, very pathetic. Anyway this thing is misleading. If I just put a foot in each country for one second, the whole map would be red.



Which Evil Villain Bad Habit are you?

Very accurate quiz.


I got this Canon S200SPx Bubble Jet Printer for $88 at Carrefour today, which is a great price for such a small printer (or maybe I'm just out of touch with the tech market). But it didn't come with a USB cable. Argh!

And this brings the number of USB peripherals I have to. One cable modem, one scanner, one MP3 player (currently down), one digital camera, one printer (What's wrong with LPT1?!) and one external cd-rw drive. All sharing 2 ports. Yeh.

I'd get a USB hub, but I remember what happened the last time I tried using one. *shudder*


140 days (20 weeks) to ORD!

You are the grammar Fuhrer. All bow to your
authority. You will crush all the inferior
people under the soles of your jackboots, and
any who question your motives will be
eliminated. Your punishment is being the bane
of every other person's existence, because
you're constantly contradicting stupidity.
Everyone will be gunning for you. Your dreams
of a master race of spellers and grammarians
frighten the masses. You must always watch your
back. If only your power could be used for good
instead of evil.


What is your grammar aptitude?
brought to you by Quizilla

Haven't deteriorated that much. At least in non-verbal skills.


Penguin Batting

I got zapped by metal surfaces due to static electricity discharge twice. Seems I'm becoming like my sister. Maybe it's due to the new shoes. Or maybe I should get mattresses that reduce the level of static electricity in your body.

I think bureaucrats are extremely comforted by the sight, feel and smell of redundant paperwork, especially since they don't have to create it. They also suffer from a paranoid fear of having too little data to work with, so they call for a suffocating excess of it instead.


Ramblings from a distant land:

"a friend of mind has suggestged picking up 16-17 year old chicks because they've just hit puberty but are still young enough to con. you've been down orchard road. 14 year olds these days dress like geylang whores. most girls these days have seen more at 16 than we have in our whole lives."

Stolen baby Jesus figurine comes back black - Someone who took a baby Jesus figurine from a church's outdoor Nativity scene painted its skin black and then brought it back.

TV sitcom so transforms use of English - Language from popular Friends sitcom provides viable reflection of changes in American dialects

Terrorists of Another Brand - If you visited Disney World in Orlando sometime in the late 1990s and had occasion to ride a water taxi in one of the several theme parks, your boat driver just might have been a friendly middle-aged fellow with a nametag bearing "Jean-Claude." The tag may have even shown he was from Haiti. Perhaps Jean-Claude would have answered a few of your questions about the park, or even patted your young son or daughter on the shoulder as your family disembarked from the vessel. Disney officials, after all, have publicly stated that Jean-Claude Duperval was a fine employee until he left in 2002. It’s likely Duperval’s former employer did not provide a reference letter to Disney, since the former employer was Haitian dictator Raoul Cedras. Major General Jean-Claude Duperval was once the Deputy Commander of the Haitian Army under Raoul Cedras and helped Cedras and his band of thugs run that impoverished island country after they overthrew the duly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991.

The last dinner of King Midas.

Kokomo Spoof

Guess the Dictator or Sit-Com Character

The Official Ninja Webpage: REAL Ultimate Power

Black People Love Us - We are well-liked by Black people so we're psyched (since lots of Black people don't like lots of White people)!! We thought it'd be cool to honor our exceptional status with a ROCKIN' domain name and a killer website!!

What Beagle 2 was supposed to do on landing on Mars: "To the amazement of any nearby denizens of the Red Planet, it will play a pop song (by Blur), display a modern art picture and release balloons with sponsor’s names on them. (These are all genuine scientific experiments, but the Poms have noticed a way to make money, hopefully enough to fund the entire space program)." (Dr Bob's Skeptical Quiz, Sep 2000 issue) Maybe the little green men didn't like Blur and zapped it with their photon guns


Handsome Boy, Steven Lim aka the Eyebrow Plucker has updated! Now he's writing a book "that includes tips on... fast and magical weight gain and loss and also better skins with less acne problems!!!"

If I ever meet him on the streets, I will ask him to pluck my eyebrows and then take a picture with him!


Entries in the The Online Atheist Dictionary:

Bear - A wild animal used by God to kill groups of children for making fun of bald prophets (2nd kings 2:23-24)

Circular Argument:
* (See circular logic)

Circular Logic:
* (See circular reasoning)

Circular Reasoning
* (See circular argument)

Many other mirth inducing examples abound. The entries are mostly shorter and less dense than those in the equally excellent, albeit more verbose Devil's Dictionary (The latter link is non-blasphemous - well, largely anyway - and is safe for reading by people of all ages and dispositions).

CNY

Chinese New Year. Ho hum. Got bored several times during the dinner, but at least the food was good.

I think the Chinese have this really macabre obsession with making money, striking it rich and worshipping the God of Fortune, as reflected in their New Year Songs.


Rants and Sites

I updated my A70's firmware from 1.0.0 to 2.0.0 and all that happens is it becomes PictBridge compatible? They've got to be joking.

~NEVER BUY TAMPONS AGAIN! ~Menstrual Cup~New! - Melvin finds the weirdest stuff on ebay.

The Spice Boys - THE DARKNESS have done the impossible — and become Britain’s fastest growing band in the United States since the SPICE GIRLS.

"I will nail you all night, I'll hit like a mountain. Don don don diri diri don don don don" - Madrigals can be vulgar but it's okay as long as the lyrics are in Italian (First line in Italian: Mi ficcar tutta notte, urtar come monton. Now, don't that sound innocent!)

"not only do they touch each other's boobs
they touch other's ppl's boobs
ppl who do not want to be touched"

- Someone studying overseas on JC age girls from Singapore. I thought only guys liked molesting each other.


Intellectual Whoring

Why VERY INTELLIGENT Men Fail With Women

Got the above via E-mail - presumably the one who sent it to me thinks that he falls into the category of "VERY INTELLIGENT" :P

"If you don't know what to do at every step along the way, you'll be shut down very quickly. Women have an AMAZING "He doesn't get it" radar system. Women have all kinds of subtle and ingenious tests that they throw at men to separate the "get its" from the "don't get its". And if you don't get it, then you're going to fail one of these tests VERY quickly. But the worst part is that you won't ever KNOW that you were being tested... OR that you failed."

In a related note, was sent (by the same person) - Intellectual Whores. In short, it does not refer to a "smart slut" as it were, but rather to males who are kept around by women for their mental entertainment. These men usually want to sleep with these women who usually consider these men friends.

Among other things, there is an article on "Ladder Theory", "a theory of adult male/female interaction".

'you're everybody's favourite intellectual whore!!... what got me interested in the first place was because you were a "intellectual whore"' - Gee.


Sikhism

we all know the turban is an intergral part of sikhism, while the tudung is not.. but rather a mere accessory with religious conotations, such as wearing a cross.

Unfortunately, modernity has eroded the basic tenets of sikhism. How many Sikh boys do you see with turbans these days? The bracelets you see more frequently. I wouldn't know how many still carry the Khanga or wear the Kachha, but you sure as hell don't see people brandishing their Kirpans! I'm not sure whether using the dagger-toothed comb to symbolise the Kirpan is disingeneous or not - could someone enlighten me as to this (someone who is not He Who Shall Not Be Named will be most welcome ;) )?


Meetup.com

Unfortunately, fewer than 5 people confirmed that they'd attend
the Singapore, SG Atheists Meetup, so this month's Meetup is
CANCELLED. Help make it happen next month!

What you can do now:

Spread the word for next month:

* Tell friends about http://atheists.meetup.com/
* Post flyers around town: http://atheists.meetup.com/flyer/
* Tell good websites about http://atheists.meetup.com/share/

Similarly,

http://brights.meetup.com/

Help spread the word for next month:

* Tell friends about http://brights.meetup.com/
* Post flyers around town: http://brights.meetup.com/flyer/
* Tell good websites about http://brights.meetup.com/share/

(For the uninitiated: A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview. A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.)

14.8% of Singapore has no religious affiliation, I'm sure we can get at least 5 on Meetup.com.

Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins

Even for those who frown on controversy and political incorrectness, Section 2, Computer Viruses: a Model for an Informational Epidemiology, makes for an interesting read.

The article also explores something that has puzzled me for a long time thus: "Is it possible that some religious doctrines are favored not in spite of being ridiculous but precisely because they are ridiculous? Any wimp in religion could believe that bread symbolically represents the body of Christ, but it takes a real, red-blooded Catholic to believe something as daft as the transubstantiation. If you believe that you can believe anything", and includes a seemingly paradoxical (and thus intriguing) quote: Certum est, quia impossibile est (The fact is certain because it is impossible.) (Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, De Carne Christi [ch. V, pt. II])


George W Bush and the real state of the Union - 0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed, 0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq, 100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003

F*** THE NAZIS, SAYS CHURCHILL'S PARROT - SHE WAS at Winston Churchill's side during Britain's darkest hour. And now Charlie the parrot is 104 years old...and still cursing the Nazis.

Passers-by stop to watch as flames envelope a young Buddhist monk, Saigon, October 5th, 1963., Buddhist monk sacrifices himself - A Vietnamese-born Buddhist monk who self-immolated outside a U.S. pagoda on Christmas Eve sacrificed himself to call for an end to religious repression in his native country The more things change, the more they stay the same

Hotel Erotica - We have all had one night - The things people get up to in the Sims Online

THE SIMS AND THE ALPHAVILLE HERALD - As they observe, When you try to censor someone, though, everyone else will automatically believe that what they're saying must be true


Had a spin on the Beta version of Technorati, and found yet more people I don't know linking me. Wah. Who are all of you? :0


It seems most Nokia phones support only 4 simultaneous tones. That's pathetic.

I have just removed the opacity, partly in preparation for a new layout (sometime in the distant future). IE shouldn't choke up on it anymore.

My page's new layout is "commissioned for $15 from someone".

And maybe the only people to go on Friendster now are bored NS guys in camp and kairen, though the latter may have something to say about that *g*

Something's wrong... everytime i go to gssq.blogspot.com my IE crashes. Any-way... for all those who didn't know, i'm back in singapore and singapore is ... very hot. What's this craze about adidas, and now puma shoes?

I see "Gabriel's homepage" has surfaced yet again. Who did the layout for u? On first glance it doesn't look like signature gabriel style. What is gabriel style? Any thoughts?

On another note, is the friendster craze dying out? Haven't seen any recent bulletin board messages/new friendster requests on my friendster for some time

That the quote happens to be there is purely a coincidence. I've got the ORD mood, remember?


Muslims protest head-scarf ban in France

Considering that the ban is only for public schools, the reaction seems disproportionate.

Funny how Singaporean Muslims meekly accepted the standing headscarf ban. I say, in the interests of fairness and consistency, that the turban should be banned too.


Damnit, the first 2 pages of search results for "'power rangers' kimberly" are mostly sites offering access to the usenet newsgroups "alt.sex.fetish.power-rangers.kimberly" and "alt.sex.fetish.power-rangers.kimberly.tight-spandex".

I'm surprised no one has made any politically-correct comments about your use of "arbeit macht freit" when juxtaposed against your sufferings in NS.

Although, you fat spoiled bastard, even a vague allusion comparing your life to Auschwitz and the Shoah is pure self-pity.

I'd intended to use the same basic layout for both Balderdash and my re-launched homepage, but it hasn't worked out due to my inability to tweak the layers to compensate for the dynamic blog Image of the Week (or other time interval) and the positioning of the blog entries. Oh well. Maybe I'll use another layout in the near future. In any case, I present:

Gabriel's Homepage (Vague Incarnation III)

It comes with some words about the history of both sites, since I was feeling somewhat inspired in my half-daze.


What You Can't Say - (This essay is about heresy: how to think forbidden thoughts, and what to do with them. The latter was till recently something only a small elite had to think about. Now we all have to, because the Web has made us all publishers.) - I can't really say succinctly what this article is about, but I found it very enriching. Plus, there was a reply to He Who Must Not Be Named's accusation that altrusim is always a thin veneer disguising pure, unadulterated self-interest (since he always sees the worst in people and the human race to better vindicate his lambasting of everyone and anyone, while ensuring that he has already totally debased and degraded himself, all so no one can accuse him of hypocrisy, only of being ridiculous), as well a riposte to his extremely broad definition of hypocrisy which would make leading a normal life impossible.

I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read about the harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics, or that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak out against Israeli human rights abuses, or about people being sued for violating the DMCA, part of me wants to say, "All right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.

Making the same point is this Zits comic:

(Image has been resized so it won't break the layout)


Ever since my brother in law finished his Masters in Management, he's read nothing but stupid management books which say nothing that's not new and commonsensical, and inflicting these theories on me daily. In other news, we ordered "Candian" 2 for 1 Pizza last night, and agreed that it sucks. Hell, even frozen pizza is better and cheaper.

My mother has some very weird ideas. She thinks that I thought a pair of pants she recently shortened for me are too short only because Screwed Up Girl said so. Huh?!

Pacman for Excel - The amazing things macros can do.

JD5000 Proxomitron Filters - Perhaps the most intricate filter set I've ever seen. Industrial strength filtering indeed, but I've yet to work out the bugs it causes with Hotmail.

Ban Comics Sans - Some people are obviously too free. But then, I have an abiding suspicion that this is a joke.

Garfield Sucks - I totally agree. It's seriously un-funny and lame.

A Woman's Guide to Peeing Standing Up

Smoke Kills - How smoking leads to the Apocalypse

Does it take less muscles to smile than it does to frown?

100 MOST OFTEN MISPELLED MISSPELLED WORDS IN ENGLISH

Woman's Skin Falls Off, Miracuously Lives

Bush's Desolate Imperium - Though the author is a little alarmist and extremist, I largely agree with the points in this essay. Sadly, the USA has already swung too far to the right.


"The only unassailable arguments these days are materialism and pure philosophical agnosticism. If you are dealing with someone who believes that the material world exists, you can win every argument by having the position that all that exists are atoms and molecules bouncing randomly around and that there is no moral or philosophical principle that can be proven to be true, or even to have any meaning. Life is completely pointless on a philosophical level, but if you want to continue filling your belly just for the sheer bloody- mindedness of it, Darwin pointed out the basic game plan and Ayn Rand filled in the egotistical details. Have at it.

If you have someone who is more clever and knows to argue that the material world may not exist, then there are not only no moral or philosophical principles that can be proven to exist, but indeed, there are no scientific principles that can be proven to exist either. You have sunken into solipsism, which of course can't be proven either, leaving you with no provable statements whatsoever. As before of course, if you wish to continue filling your non-existent belly with insubstantial morsels, there are plenty of other non-existent people who will apparently play that game with what we will for argument's sake call you, so jolly good luck, if there were such a thing. "


Singapore assailed on 'hidden' death penalty toll

Singapore leads the world in executions, putting more people to death on a per capita basis than Saudi Arabia, China and Sierra Leone, the human rights group Amnesty International said Thursday.

In a report entitled "Singapore: The Death Penalty - A Hidden Toll of Executions," the organization described the city-state's execution rate as "shockingly high" and called on the government to impose a moratorium on all executions and commute all death sentences to prison terms.

"We are also calling on the authorities to end the secrecy about the use of the death penalty and encourage public debate," the rights group added.

About 400 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug-trafficking, Amnesty International said.

Singapore's drug laws are among the world's harshest. Anyone 18 or older who is convicted of carrying more than 15 grams, or half an ounce, of heroin faces mandatory execution by hanging.

But there was "no convincing evidence" that the tough penalties had curbed drug use, the organization said, citing Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau statistics. The figures showed that 3,393 people were arrested for drug offenses in 2002 and that the number of new drug abusers was up 16 percent from 2001.

From 1994 to 1999, an average of 13.57 executions were carried out per one million people, three times higher than the next country on the list, Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said.

The Prisons Department said 400 executions since 1991 was a "fair estimation." The government does not usually publish statistics about death sentences or reveal the number of prisoners on death row.

I still support the abolition of the death penalty, especially since it doesn't seem to deter people

Quote of the Day: "Arbeit Macht Frei"

Trust in the SAF

The SAF has a serious problem with trust. The implicit assumption is that enlistees can't think and are unworthy and incapable of being entrusted with responsibility, as reflected by the lower pay and status. Then again, even Senior Specialists are not that highly regarded, to say nothing of Specialists. If you are a Third Sergeant, you are entrusted with the onerous burdens of conducing warmups for PT and being a station IC for IPPT, but you are not trusted to do (marginally) more important things, like conducting activities, leading WITS Teams or approving documents. Those are tasks fit only for Officers, as we all know that their (on the whole) higher educational level and 9 months in OCS have magically endowed them with wondrous skills, even if the real work is done by other people - most often poor, suffering NSF enlistees, the true unsung heroes (more than roadsweepers, who at least get paid for their effort, have a choice to quit and get copious tributes in Chinese moral education textbooks) - most of the time (as is the case of the latter 2 examples) while everything is done in the name of the Officers, giving them all the credit [Ed: You can substitute "regulars" for "officers" and the point would hold - perhaps even more firmly].

Then again, I don't blame them. Non-officer NSFs can't be trusted, and there are good reasons for this. You enslave them for at least 2 years and treat them with little respect, like they are sub-humans unworthy of dignity due to their lack of rank. You make them do things they don't want to do. They serve as your guinea pigs, scapegoats and whipping boys for regulars. And then to add insult to injury, you pay them peanuts. Perhaps the most damning factor, however, is the lack of trust in Non-officer NSFs. Trust is reciprocal and recursive - if it is not given it won't be returned, and if you don't try to trust someone in the first place, he will never try to earn the trust. It's just like how children won't love you if you don't love them back.

In contrast, let me cite an anecdote that was related to us. This Australian soldier was hyperventillating due to an acute allergic reaction brought on by drinking water that had been purified with iodine. Their medic specialist gave him 2 puffs of Salbutamol, gave him a shot of adrenaline and sent him straight to the hospital. In contrast, we aren't allowed to give patients any medicine except for 2 tablets of panadol - not even over-the-counter medicine, let alone Salbutamol, and SAF personnel on ambulance attachment are only supposed to observe, even if their medical qualifications are greater than that of the SCDF paramedics.


PACES, the computer system for medical record management, undoubtedly sounded like a good idea when it was first introduced in the middle of the last decade. However, I think it is responsible for the greatest complaint of the patients - the waiting time. Due to the slowness of the system (mostly due to network bottlenecks), it can take up to 3-4 hours for a patient to get his medicine and status slip from the time he sees the MO. Whereas under the old manual system, a patient could conceivably leave the medical centre with his medicine and status 3 minutes after seeing the MO. This problem has become particular evident recently, for our report sick rate since the start of the year has been of a magnitude unseen since BMT, and comparable to that of 46's (considering their PTP started less than a month ago, that's saying something). 42 must be doing really horrible things to them.

I have an inkling that when cellular phones first came out, the SAF banned them. Eventually however, it sucuumbed to the inevitable and now the SAF would collapse without them. I wonder what implications the growing crop of camera phones has for the SAF - they are the future, and I don't think everyone is going to change their phones just to use them in camp. Maybe they will accept the inevitable eventually.

I think the ORD mood is striking me. The past week I've been ditzy and easily amused, and have been in better humour than for a long time - maybe since my unit started whacking me last July. Or maybe 42 has finally driven me crazy.

It seems all the uniformed SAF women I see are warrant officers. I wonder where they are hidden when they are sergeants. Maybe it's to keep them away from deprived NSFs.

A friend went for his BMT recourse and was the only one there who found the food good. Coincidentally (or otherwise), he was also the only one from Armour. Hmm.

Our cookhouses are getting pseudo-Western pretentions again. One day we had what was billed as "Mulligatawny Soup". This turned out to be a hot-and-sour soup with potatoes and onions inside - a far cry from its description as a "Classic Anglo-Indian soup, the name of which means "pepper water," [which] should be richly endowed with meat and piquantly spiced." At the same meal, the "Chicken Chop with BBQ Sauce" was more a hunk of chicken than a chop.

One of the great mysteries of life - why, by the time I eat my breakfast at the cookhouse, there's only one option left, usually the poorer one - has been solved: One day I went there early, and saw that the SFI people were only serving one of the two choices of breakfast, probably to save manpower. So their laziness condemns most of us to eating the lousier breakfast.

We now have Company PT on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The Unit Fitness Program (UFP) has been moved to Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Whee. Time to collapse from exhaustion. Luckily I'm starting to clear my off and leave...

Recently I've put this Singtel 2004 Calendar on my table in the medical centre, and marked each day from January 1st to June 11th with a number (days till June 12th). Now, not only do people vandalise my calendar, they keep moving it from its location. I've a good mind to nail it to the table.

I think a lot of the stupid things we are made to do can be explained thus - the people who make us do them think that we are as free as they are.


Misc Matters

It seems that Singaporean judges always like to use vitriol laden, emotionally charged language. Eg "You are a monster". I've come across many other examples, but they do not readily come to mind. I find that very unhealthy as self-righteous moralism is no way to dispense Justice - which is supposed to be blind, fair, just and impartial, after all - as it probably leads to unnecessarily harsh sentences being dispensed.

China is being hypocritical again. They've trotted out the "interference in our internal affairs" line again which, oddly enough, doesn't seem to have been used recently, and called on the USA to "stop interfering in Hong Kong's Internal Affairs" after a spokesman said the USA supported moves towards democracy there. Right. Meanwhile, China gets to interfere in Taiwan's Internal Affairs flagrantly and shamelessly, even making not-so-veiled threats of war and as for Tibet, well, it's much worse than mere "interference".

The Nokia DKU-5 cable is ridiculously overpriced. I saw it at $88 at one shop, and that's apparently one of the cheaper quotations. I wonder how they think they can charge so much for a simple cable.

The music that NUH plays to callers being put on hold is now Chinese New Year music. Argh!

I've finally seen the books authored by Fabio! After hearing about them for so long but not seeing them, I'd thought they were apocryphal, but one day in EMF bookstore I saw his familiar pectorals splashed across a book cover.

No anti-dandruff shampoo I've used has ever worked, but Selsun, a selenium sulphide suspension, is working miracles. I heartily recommend it.


Quotes:

[On booking out dockets] What do you put in remarks? [Someone: 'Post Out'] [Me: 'Good riddance'] They're actually very nice people. [Me: Then what did they do to deserve a place like 42?] That's what they were saying during posting.

[On someone attempting to commit suicide by drinking a bottle of muscle rub] Next time ask him to kill someone first... Kill the people who are torturing him.

It's good to have a horse... I can ride it to camp... but nowhere to park... I can let it walk home, then when I need it I can whistle and it will come, like Gandalf (It would be good, but there's, Gandalf did)

rifle stringe (sling)

You mean your camera got phone meh (phone, camera)

Braised pork chop in haninanese sauce (hainanese)

If you ask me my unit - SIW lah. [Someone: School of Infantry Weapons?] Soldier in Wonderland.

[On the price of being in the Premier Combined Arms Division] They are fuckers. My reports are never ending.

If Gabriel pass IPPT, I'll treat the whole medical centre Crystal Jade. [Someone: The Taka one] If Gabriel get a silver for IPPT, I'll treat the whole medical centre anything they want. [Me: If I get Gold, you'll treat the whole of Sungei Gedong] If Gabriel get gold, I'll treat the whole of Sungei Gedong anything. One bao4 yu2 [Ed: Abalone] each. (passes, centre to, gets, centre to, gets, Gedong to)

[On asking questions of TCS Artistes] You are sex kitten. I always fantasise you going around my bed naked (?)

[On asking questions of Fiona Xie] I'm a big fan of your breasts

[On asking questions of TCS Artistes] How do you keep your breasts so big?

[On my good humour] Gabriel, are you getting married or something?

[On SCDF people] The other day we saw them being knocked down at the gate. [Someone: Are you sure they weren't saying Friday prayers?] Jee bye! [Someone: Kannina!]

[Me on someone: Effeminate does not mean gay] He's not like Andrew Gan.

[On me not getting an understudy] After you ORD, 42's morale will go down, then they will have to be decommissioned as a unit... No one to book referrals.

[On a regular] See? Gey Kiang [Ed: Hokkien for 'trying to be too smart'], go and upgrade. Now cannot pass [IPPT], want to downgrade.

[On sggirls.com] I normally go for 'swimsuit' and 'laundry' (lingerie)

...


How Satan is propping up Bush's war on terror - An obsession with the devil, born out of personal experience, explains why so many fundamentalist Christians believe that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were working together In actuality the feature says little about Saddam and Osama. Enlightening nonetheless

Officer Murphy Is Screaming - God and the Problem of Suffering in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop "I can't decide if this is ultra-elaborate satire or not". Unfortunately, looking at the other articles on the site, I'm inclined to believe the latter.

I thought MP3/WAV to MIDI convertors were quite good, but after some grappling with them, I am very disheartened. In related news, you won't believe how hard it is to find Power Rangrs WAVs these days.


Search Requests:

rgs pinafore sports bra - I went to see what else this gets you, and found one site where someone ranted: also bought 2 sports bra... the stupid saleswoman so dumb lorz! anyway dint wanna buy the one with the thing inside... make your that thing look so big... eeew... *hints at hippo* i want to make mine smaller lorz.. the person said it was like what? size 32 or something.. sheesh... disgusting lor... i dunno why some ppl like ... I thought big was good. Singaporeans are weird.

schoolgirl give rectal thermometer - I'm sure they love getting em up the ass. Never knew that this would happen when I recounted how I had to shove one up someone...

rape of nankan - I take offence, for I am a great fan of Wo-Hen Nankan, the one and only Asian Prince!

2003 guestbook of top mechanic in turkey - Maybe he won an award.

steven spielberg bipolar disorder - He has it? Or he made a movie about it?

bestiality noticeboard - A noticeboard dedicated to animal on human sex? Whee.

jilat puki - I doubt malay porn sites are very prevalent. (This means "Lick my pussy" in Malay btw)

"Neverwinter Nights" AND "Nude Portraits" - I can't believe people still want their adventurers running around without so much as a cloak.

FACES OF DEATH OFHOLLYWOOD - If Hollywood ever makes a movie based on "Faces of Death", I will swoon.

ah beng tudung - Never shall the twain meet.

anne coulter braless pics - Someone has a thing for naked female right wing fanatics.

Gay geppers - Erm.

photos on how to clean your anus in european style of toilets - I never knew that Europeans had a different way of cleaning up after defecation. And to think this came from Google India.

On faith:

The philosopher Ronald de Sousa once memorably described philosophical theology as "intellectual tennis without a net," and I readily allow that I have indeed been assuming without comment or question up to now that the net of rational judgment was up. But we can lower it if you really want to. it's your serve. Whatever you serve, suppose I return service rudely as follows: "What you say implies that God is a ham sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. That's not much of a God to worship!" If you then volley back, demanding to know how I can logically justify my claim that your serve has such a preposterous implication, I will reply: "Oh, do you want the net up for my returns, but not for your serves? Either the net stays up, or it says down. If the net is down, there are no rules and anybody can say anything, a mug's game if there ever was one. I have been giving you the benefit of the assumption that you would not waste your own time or mine by playing with the net down."

Now if you want to reason about faith, and offer a reasoned (and reason-responsive) defense of faith as an extra category of belief worthy of special consideration, I'm eager to play. I certainly grant the existence of the phenomenon of faith; what I want to see is a reasoned ground for taking faith seriously as a way of getting to the truth, and not, say, just as a way people comfort themselves and each other (a worthy function that I do take seriously). But you must not expect me to go along with your defense of faith as a path to truth if at any point you appeal to the very dispensation you are supposedly trying to justify. Before you appeal to faith when reason has you backed into a corner, think about whether you really want to abandon reason when reason is on your side. You are sightseeing with a loved one in a foreign land, and your loved one is brutally murdered in front of your eyes. At the trial it turns out that in this land friends of the accused may be called as witnesses for the defense, testifying about their faith in his innocence. You watch the parade of his moist-eyed friends, obviously sincere, proudly proclaiming their undying faith in the innocence of the man you saw commit the terrible deed. The judge listens intently and respectfully, obviously more moved by this outpouring than by all the evidence presented by the prosecution. Is this not a nightmare? Would you be willing to live in such a land? Or would you be willing to be operated on by a surgeon who tells you that whenever a little voice in him tells him to disregard his medical training, he listens to the little voice? I know it passes in polite company to let people have it both ways, and under most circumstances I wholeheartedly cooperate with this benign arrangement. But we're seriously trying to get at the truth here, and if you think that this common but unspoken understanding about faith is anything better than socially useful obfuscation to avoid mutual embarrassment and loss of face, you have either seen much more deeply into this issue than any philosopher ever has (for none has ever come up with a good defense of this) or you are kidding yourself (The ball is now in your court.)

--- Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett, pp 154-155


Suppose, however, that God did give this law to the Jews, and did tell them that whenever a man preached a heresy, or proposed to worship any other God that they should kill him; and suppose that afterward this same God took upon himself flesh, and came to this very chosen people and taught a different religion, and that thereupon the Jews crucified him; I ask you, did he not reap exactly what he had sown? What right would this god have to complain of a crucifixion suffered in accordance with his own command? - Robert G. Ingersoll


1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it is from your family, endeavour to overcome it with argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.

6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do, the opinions will suppress you.

7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.

9. Be scrupulously truthful even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.

- Bertrand Russell

Unfortunately, following them faithfully would probably lead one to ostracism