"If p is true and q is false, what are the truth values of the following conditional sentences?
1) p if q
2) q if p
3) q if q
4) If p, then q
5) p, provided that q
6) q whenever p
7) p is necessary for q
8) q is sufficient for p
9) p unless q
10) p only if q"
!@#$%^&*()
L'origine de Bert
Sunday, October 15, 2006
But, remember the law of diminishing returns, studied earlier. Beyond a certain point, increase in reliability incurs a disproportionately greater cost. Remember also that the quality of a product at the point of use may be impaired by improper handling, transportation and storage*.
* - I am convinced that some wines (of the same label) taste better in Europe than in Singapore. How many distributors or supermarkets store their wines at the optimum temperature? Temperature variation doesn’t do the wine any good – by the time it gets into your father’s wine-cooler at home, the damage may already have been done.
It is also a misconception that all wines improve with age. In fact, more than 90% of all the world’s wines should be consumed within one year, and less than 1% should be aged for more than 10 years. Some wines now come in aluminium cans (e.g., on Tiger Airways flights). Nevertheless, please don’t gulp down your wine. Taste wine with your taste buds all over your mouth – on both sides of your tongue, underneath, on the tip, and extending to the back of your throat. Also smell the wine, after swirling it to release the esters, ethers and aldehydes, which combine with oxygen to yield the bouquet (total smell) of the wine. An average person can perceive only 4 tastes (sweet, sour, bitter and salt) but can detect about 2000 different scents. And wine has more than 200 different scents.
- Extract from notes for a class where, I swear, we spend up to 20% of class time on Internet jokes, which amazingly have some pedagogical point or other to them.
* - I am convinced that some wines (of the same label) taste better in Europe than in Singapore. How many distributors or supermarkets store their wines at the optimum temperature? Temperature variation doesn’t do the wine any good – by the time it gets into your father’s wine-cooler at home, the damage may already have been done.
It is also a misconception that all wines improve with age. In fact, more than 90% of all the world’s wines should be consumed within one year, and less than 1% should be aged for more than 10 years. Some wines now come in aluminium cans (e.g., on Tiger Airways flights). Nevertheless, please don’t gulp down your wine. Taste wine with your taste buds all over your mouth – on both sides of your tongue, underneath, on the tip, and extending to the back of your throat. Also smell the wine, after swirling it to release the esters, ethers and aldehydes, which combine with oxygen to yield the bouquet (total smell) of the wine. An average person can perceive only 4 tastes (sweet, sour, bitter and salt) but can detect about 2000 different scents. And wine has more than 200 different scents.
- Extract from notes for a class where, I swear, we spend up to 20% of class time on Internet jokes, which amazingly have some pedagogical point or other to them.
Post ID: 116091862146516233
Someone asked me for Asian Prince links, so since I've dug them up I might as well paste them here for reference (I hope I remember to look here the next time someone wants Asian Prince resources):
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2004/06/as-harry-potter-books-get-longer-and.html ("Don't even PRETEND you aren't jealous. YOU ARE. Seeing this guy is BETTER than winning money. Way better.")
AsianPrince213's Xanga Site
Friendster - Wo-Hen
www.myspace.com/asianprince213
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2005/04/intellectual-is-man-who-takes-more.html
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2003/11/following-was-recommended-to-me-by.html
Slippery Nipples: Spotted!
Better yet, I've found some new stuff.
First, a reverse search referral lookup revealed a Korean (?) guy who looks like Wo-hen: 어쩜 이렇게 느끼할 수가
Also, a forum thread: Asia Finest Discussion Forum > TUAN ANH! with 2 new pictures!
6th December 2003
Some comments in that thread:
"When I was a kid my best friend was viet and I would go to her house all the time and her mom would listen to this vietnamese artist, he has a mustache, with a mullet and wears makeup...he even dresses in very fancy shiney clothing like a woman."
"I met him in real life before at the mall with his three big ol body guards he saw my mom looking and he smiled and nod at her..and I asked her who is that transexual hella loud...I was young at the time.."
"He is gay lol. when i was livin' in new orleans like on tet there will be a fair thing at a church and we would od stuff and viet celeberities come and stuff. so he's sitting there waitin' to sign autographs (no one wanted his). so me and my friends were bored cause we were waitin' for trish to come out and perform. so yea my friends like let's go talk to him (i was the only one who talked to him). so iwas like hi. and he's like hi. and so my friend told me to ask him and if he has any kids and so i asked and he's like yes i do. I got 9 kids. and i just was like whoa. so i asked for his autograph and then i asked him can i borrow his sharpie and he's like why. and i'm like so i can get trish's autograph. and he like uhh ok but bring it back. i guessed he was annoyed when i asked for it. o well. but i lost the calender that had his and trish's autograph on it. man that sucks. but yea. he's gay to me. lol. my mom said she was on the same plane with him and i'm like cool. i just knw he's famous and gay but i don't know anything else about him. lol"
"you guys are laughing but this guy is considered a legendary singer for the older generation and even the younger generation. he's made hit after hit songs and is the vietnamese version of elvis."
"my parents still play his hit songs while singing along to his tunes on their karaoke system. i myself, own a fairly good amount of his collection."
"i would kill for his mullet."
"he is considered a legend to all vietnamese. the way the music business is going today in VN, tuan anh is STILL consider the greatest singer in VN of all time."
"When i asked mine.They just laughed their asses off and told me,"That faggy singer(Thang bong lai cai ma noi tieng ha" is exactly what they told me and started laughing)"
"he looks indian on that cover! so he's Indian as well?" (wth?!)
"hey was Tuan Anh ever part of any band or did he ever had a partner? or a sidekick or something? can anyone find tuan anh's pix from his early days? maybe he was a girl transformed into a man?"
"My parents told me that he is married to a woman. His wife likes to dress as a man though. And it is true, he is a legend. My parents and their friends love his music."
"From what I heard this guy gets more poon than anybody I know. I am not suprised if he had gotten hold of all those fine chicks from Paris by Night gig."
Oh my god! I'm going to hyperventilate soon! (The candid shot looks a lot worse. Maybe he's showing his age. Or he finally found his website.)
Someone: you know, when i first saw him, i really thought he was a fictional character created by you
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2004/06/as-harry-potter-books-get-longer-and.html ("Don't even PRETEND you aren't jealous. YOU ARE. Seeing this guy is BETTER than winning money. Way better.")
AsianPrince213's Xanga Site
Friendster - Wo-Hen
www.myspace.com/asianprince213
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2005/04/intellectual-is-man-who-takes-more.html
http://gssq.blogspot.com/2003/11/following-was-recommended-to-me-by.html
Slippery Nipples: Spotted!
Better yet, I've found some new stuff.
First, a reverse search referral lookup revealed a Korean (?) guy who looks like Wo-hen: 어쩜 이렇게 느끼할 수가
Also, a forum thread: Asia Finest Discussion Forum > TUAN ANH! with 2 new pictures!
6th December 2003
Some comments in that thread:
"When I was a kid my best friend was viet and I would go to her house all the time and her mom would listen to this vietnamese artist, he has a mustache, with a mullet and wears makeup...he even dresses in very fancy shiney clothing like a woman."
"I met him in real life before at the mall with his three big ol body guards he saw my mom looking and he smiled and nod at her..and I asked her who is that transexual hella loud...I was young at the time.."
"He is gay lol. when i was livin' in new orleans like on tet there will be a fair thing at a church and we would od stuff and viet celeberities come and stuff. so he's sitting there waitin' to sign autographs (no one wanted his). so me and my friends were bored cause we were waitin' for trish to come out and perform. so yea my friends like let's go talk to him (i was the only one who talked to him). so iwas like hi. and he's like hi. and so my friend told me to ask him and if he has any kids and so i asked and he's like yes i do. I got 9 kids. and i just was like whoa. so i asked for his autograph and then i asked him can i borrow his sharpie and he's like why. and i'm like so i can get trish's autograph. and he like uhh ok but bring it back. i guessed he was annoyed when i asked for it. o well. but i lost the calender that had his and trish's autograph on it. man that sucks. but yea. he's gay to me. lol. my mom said she was on the same plane with him and i'm like cool. i just knw he's famous and gay but i don't know anything else about him. lol"
"you guys are laughing but this guy is considered a legendary singer for the older generation and even the younger generation. he's made hit after hit songs and is the vietnamese version of elvis."
"my parents still play his hit songs while singing along to his tunes on their karaoke system. i myself, own a fairly good amount of his collection."
"i would kill for his mullet."
"he is considered a legend to all vietnamese. the way the music business is going today in VN, tuan anh is STILL consider the greatest singer in VN of all time."
"When i asked mine.They just laughed their asses off and told me,"That faggy singer(Thang bong lai cai ma noi tieng ha" is exactly what they told me and started laughing)"
"he looks indian on that cover! so he's Indian as well?" (wth?!)
"hey was Tuan Anh ever part of any band or did he ever had a partner? or a sidekick or something? can anyone find tuan anh's pix from his early days? maybe he was a girl transformed into a man?"
"My parents told me that he is married to a woman. His wife likes to dress as a man though. And it is true, he is a legend. My parents and their friends love his music."
"From what I heard this guy gets more poon than anybody I know. I am not suprised if he had gotten hold of all those fine chicks from Paris by Night gig."
Oh my god! I'm going to hyperventilate soon! (The candid shot looks a lot worse. Maybe he's showing his age. Or he finally found his website.)
Someone: you know, when i first saw him, i really thought he was a fictional character created by you
Post ID: 116090738729831468
I was asked to upload to YouTube these videos shot on October 24th, 2005. They're entitled "Fun with Kotex" (Original post, with more information and video transcript, including many screenshots).
Post ID: 116090161865189603
"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose." - Darrin Weinberg
***
The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners - "A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered."
Malaysia Sucks - "The head or political leader of the Malaysian Government is known as the Prime Minister or PM. The former reigning so called elected democratic government was ruled by the infamous:
Prime Minister Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohammed Most would agree that the world has many assholes, but this guy really really sucks! This guy is a real pip. He is a certified 'ASSHOLE.'"
Even I find this ridiculous.
YouTube - NikeCosplay (Sentai)- "It happens in Akiba, electronics city and mecca of cosplay. The man happens to meet them.. ... (more)"
Japanese Teriyaki - "The key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients when it's cooked and adds nice aroma. Since it is effective in masking the smell of fish, using mirin for teriyaki seafood dishes is a good idea. The sweetness of mirin is different from that of sugar. It's a perfect seasoning to add a mild sweetness to Japanese cooking."
Teriyaki is haram!
HITMAN - Professional Killings - "Our firm consists of a small team of highly-skilled, and experienced, specialists. We are the industry leader in innovative killing approaches and have built a lasting reputation over decades of outstanding services for clients on five continents. Instead of fiddling around with amateur killing techniques and messing up crime scenes just pick up the phone and give us a call. After reviewing your case, our team will develop a customized package that is best-suited for your particular situation. You provide us with the name of your mark, along with a photo and personal details, and take a vacation; we'll make sure one of our specialists sends flowers to the grieving widow while you enjoy your margaritas on the beach... HITMAN is a cruelty-free organization. None of our services have been tested on animals."
Facebook | Melvin Tay appreciation society - "melvin tay is a pwc and birmingham legend!"
Maybe someone can set up a fanclub for me too. Hurr hurr.
Blogging 'un-Christian' - shock - "Blathering on blogs is un-Christian, an Evangelical church has warned. "Blogging has become a socially accepted practice - just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving," notes the monthly of the Reformed Church of God, Ambassador Youth."
Ten Reasons Why China Sucks - "Horrible Mandarin. A properly educated mainland Chinese person speaks beautiful Mandarin, I have to admit. Unfortunately, most Chinese people aren't well educated and they speak horrendous Mandarin."
Are you a bleeding-heart conservative? - "Bleeding-heart conservatives are folks who get just as emotional about injustice and unfairness as bleeding-heart liberals do. Like their liberal counterparts, bleeding-heart conservatives want the government to address what they see as pressing national injustices... the child-friendly bleeding-heart conservative is more likely to say, "I can't stand thinking about the children of the Carnegie and Heinz families being forced to pay taxes on their multi-million dollar inheritances! The government should help them!" See how the difference isn't the bleeding-heart? The difference is the target of our affections."
Facebook | Better A Bleeding Heart Than None At All - "No longer will the liberals of this world sit back and be the object of insult, scorn, and slander at the hands of the right wing. We speak with many voices, for many things; for the impoverished, the hungry, the persecuted, the oppressed, for the right to personal liberty, safety from the threat of violence, understanding in the face of ignorance, compassion and respect to our global neighbors, faithful stewardship of the Earth, and the spread of common decency and peace in our war-ravaged world. We stand together, and light a candle in the dark."
This is a good retort to those who think having a heart is a sin.
Greg Mankiw's Blog: Why Aspiring Economists Need Math - "Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart."
A fat world? Now wouldn't that be blubberly... - "More good news: those teenage pregnancy rates are going to plummet. Once you get over 20 stone, physical conjoinment is near impossible, and so for the 21st-century teenager, a really heavy petting session will consist of texting each other apt emotions, and sighing. Similarly, crime rates should drop through the floor. A great deal of the skill in burglary involves slipping through small basement windows, shimmying over fences or tiptoeing around people’s drawing rooms."
Pagan virtues can counter the vice of narrow world view - ""A hundred years ago his English history plays were exploited as propaganda for the British throne and Empire. Today most critics see them as ironic, satirical and deeply subversive." More recently, King Lear had been simultaneously banned in some London schools because it was seen as "glorifying the patriachy" and in some US states because it didn't offer a Christian message of hope and redemption. And in South Africa, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello had been banished from the syllabus because they offered negative views of life, endorsed suicide and contained characters and situations that were absurd and unbelievable."
I thought about creating a drinking game, but I can’t very well go to class hung over - "And so, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present - precalculus bingo... 'bubbly girlish handwriting pleasing "please be nice!"'"
Cute Overload: Cats 'n' Racks™ - Uhh. Somehow "cute" isn't the word that comes to find when I see cats on racks.
Galbadia Hotel - Video Game Music & Anime Soundtracks List - I wonder where he finds all that space. And it's not just Jap games - there're English ones too!
Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist: A Bloggasm case study - "I was surfing through the job listings at Craigslist, and inevitably wandered my way into the personals section, and became instantly fascinated with all the posts. I eventually made my way into the “Sex with no strings attached” section, and immediately wondered: Could this be real? Is it really this easy to get laid by simply logging in and making a post, when so many other people out there have to struggle to get laid the normal way? It didn’t take long to realize that for every female who posted, there were anywhere from ten to twenty males posting, and several of the posts mentioned that half the girls who posted were just spammers, which led me to believe that the ratio was even greater than that. So with this curiosity in mind, I set out to find out how hard it was to get laid using Craigslist, or rather, how many people actually responded to the “No strings attached” ads."
On the teenage brain - "Teenagers have a much harder time than adults at even simple tasks that involve controlling one's impulses, but with a twist. For example, when told to ignore a light visible through their peripheral vision, teenagers do as well as adults, but much larger portions of their frontal regions light up during the task. These are the regions involved in rational decisions, and apparently teenagers need to use them in overdrive to keep themselves from yielding to even very simple impulses. Imagine the extra work that teenage frontal regions have to do if the task is to keep away from sex, drugs or alcohol..."
The World According to Eco - "Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with "sumptuous icons" and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven ("or at least the moment when your document is printed") by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: "it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions ... and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation.""
YouTube - MIT sketching - Objects drawn on a whiteboard come to life as the computer recognises them.
My quandary in an all-boys school - "As a product of hunting ancestry, a man’s brain falls into a complete resting state if he sits still too long (which explains men’s ability to zone out of awkward conversations). No wonder boys fail when education is ever more about quietly listening and less about cutting up frogs. And while boys — particularly those who have no father at home — thrive under good male teachers, men have all but left primary education, a terrible by-product of a society that obscenely questions their motives for working with small children."
Ban for boy with two snacks - "A boy aged 10 has been banned from his school dining hall because his packed lunch broke the government's healthy eating guidelines."
Democracy? Must we? Oh all right, but we'd really rather stay serfs - "You would never think that this Crown dependency has just been rocked by revolution, but it has. Last week it agreed to abolish 450 years of feudal rule and introduce universal suffrage. Mr Beaumont will be stripped progressively of his ancient powers and privileges. Eventually, he could lose even his right to keep the island’s only pigeons and unspayed female dogs, and anything washed up on its shores."
This year's top Christmas gift - a book that rejects God - "A book that rejects religion and argues for the non- existence of God is heading to be the No 1 bestseller for Christmas. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is at the top of the bestseller chart of the online bookseller Amazon, and is climbing up The Times bestseller chart... In the book he writes: “Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that ‘God is the ultimate’ or ‘God is our better nature’ or ‘God is the universe’. “Of course, like any other word, the word ‘God’ can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that ‘God is energy’, then you can find God in a lump of coal.”"
Who says Chinese vs. Malays? - ""I hope for the leaders to say something smarter," said Muhammad Hafez, as he walked along Arab Street. "How would ageing politicians who are not on the streets know what's going on?""
This is probably the best response so far.
Seeing the world's Disney parks - "The group was in Hong Kong on the second leg of their Disney-themed round-the-world tour, realizing months of planning for a 32-day trip that takes them to every Disney park in the world -- from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris, to the U.S. flagships, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. It was a dream come true for the "Down Under Disneyana" fan club members, who have all been to one or more Disney parks before but have never done them all at one go. The idea of a world tour was especially appealing for Australian fans because they live so far away from all the Disney parks, Simpson said."
The physics of goo - "Back when he was writing the Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton argued with his pal Chistiaan Hyugens about an interesting question: Would someone swim faster through water or through a thick, viscous goo? Newton bet you'd go slower; Hyugens argued the opposite. Newton decided to put both viewpoints in the Principia, since he couldn't resolve it. There seemed to be no way to test it: Who was going to go to the trouble of constructing a massive tank and filling it with goo? A professor at the University of Minnesota, as it turns out. Edward Cussler took 300 kilograms of guar gum, a thickening agent found in salad dressing, and dumped it into a 25-meter swimming pool on campus."
***
The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners - "A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered."
Malaysia Sucks - "The head or political leader of the Malaysian Government is known as the Prime Minister or PM. The former reigning so called elected democratic government was ruled by the infamous:
Prime Minister Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir Mohammed Most would agree that the world has many assholes, but this guy really really sucks! This guy is a real pip. He is a certified 'ASSHOLE.'"
Even I find this ridiculous.
YouTube - NikeCosplay (Sentai)- "It happens in Akiba, electronics city and mecca of cosplay. The man happens to meet them.. ... (more)"
Japanese Teriyaki - "The key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients when it's cooked and adds nice aroma. Since it is effective in masking the smell of fish, using mirin for teriyaki seafood dishes is a good idea. The sweetness of mirin is different from that of sugar. It's a perfect seasoning to add a mild sweetness to Japanese cooking."
Teriyaki is haram!
HITMAN - Professional Killings - "Our firm consists of a small team of highly-skilled, and experienced, specialists. We are the industry leader in innovative killing approaches and have built a lasting reputation over decades of outstanding services for clients on five continents. Instead of fiddling around with amateur killing techniques and messing up crime scenes just pick up the phone and give us a call. After reviewing your case, our team will develop a customized package that is best-suited for your particular situation. You provide us with the name of your mark, along with a photo and personal details, and take a vacation; we'll make sure one of our specialists sends flowers to the grieving widow while you enjoy your margaritas on the beach... HITMAN is a cruelty-free organization. None of our services have been tested on animals."
Facebook | Melvin Tay appreciation society - "melvin tay is a pwc and birmingham legend!"
Maybe someone can set up a fanclub for me too. Hurr hurr.
Blogging 'un-Christian' - shock - "Blathering on blogs is un-Christian, an Evangelical church has warned. "Blogging has become a socially accepted practice - just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving," notes the monthly of the Reformed Church of God, Ambassador Youth."
Ten Reasons Why China Sucks - "Horrible Mandarin. A properly educated mainland Chinese person speaks beautiful Mandarin, I have to admit. Unfortunately, most Chinese people aren't well educated and they speak horrendous Mandarin."
Are you a bleeding-heart conservative? - "Bleeding-heart conservatives are folks who get just as emotional about injustice and unfairness as bleeding-heart liberals do. Like their liberal counterparts, bleeding-heart conservatives want the government to address what they see as pressing national injustices... the child-friendly bleeding-heart conservative is more likely to say, "I can't stand thinking about the children of the Carnegie and Heinz families being forced to pay taxes on their multi-million dollar inheritances! The government should help them!" See how the difference isn't the bleeding-heart? The difference is the target of our affections."
Facebook | Better A Bleeding Heart Than None At All - "No longer will the liberals of this world sit back and be the object of insult, scorn, and slander at the hands of the right wing. We speak with many voices, for many things; for the impoverished, the hungry, the persecuted, the oppressed, for the right to personal liberty, safety from the threat of violence, understanding in the face of ignorance, compassion and respect to our global neighbors, faithful stewardship of the Earth, and the spread of common decency and peace in our war-ravaged world. We stand together, and light a candle in the dark."
This is a good retort to those who think having a heart is a sin.
Greg Mankiw's Blog: Why Aspiring Economists Need Math - "Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart."
A fat world? Now wouldn't that be blubberly... - "More good news: those teenage pregnancy rates are going to plummet. Once you get over 20 stone, physical conjoinment is near impossible, and so for the 21st-century teenager, a really heavy petting session will consist of texting each other apt emotions, and sighing. Similarly, crime rates should drop through the floor. A great deal of the skill in burglary involves slipping through small basement windows, shimmying over fences or tiptoeing around people’s drawing rooms."
Pagan virtues can counter the vice of narrow world view - ""A hundred years ago his English history plays were exploited as propaganda for the British throne and Empire. Today most critics see them as ironic, satirical and deeply subversive." More recently, King Lear had been simultaneously banned in some London schools because it was seen as "glorifying the patriachy" and in some US states because it didn't offer a Christian message of hope and redemption. And in South Africa, King Lear, Hamlet and Othello had been banished from the syllabus because they offered negative views of life, endorsed suicide and contained characters and situations that were absurd and unbelievable."
I thought about creating a drinking game, but I can’t very well go to class hung over - "And so, ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present - precalculus bingo... 'bubbly girlish handwriting pleasing "please be nice!"'"
Cute Overload: Cats 'n' Racks™ - Uhh. Somehow "cute" isn't the word that comes to find when I see cats on racks.
Galbadia Hotel - Video Game Music & Anime Soundtracks List - I wonder where he finds all that space. And it's not just Jap games - there're English ones too!
Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist: A Bloggasm case study - "I was surfing through the job listings at Craigslist, and inevitably wandered my way into the personals section, and became instantly fascinated with all the posts. I eventually made my way into the “Sex with no strings attached” section, and immediately wondered: Could this be real? Is it really this easy to get laid by simply logging in and making a post, when so many other people out there have to struggle to get laid the normal way? It didn’t take long to realize that for every female who posted, there were anywhere from ten to twenty males posting, and several of the posts mentioned that half the girls who posted were just spammers, which led me to believe that the ratio was even greater than that. So with this curiosity in mind, I set out to find out how hard it was to get laid using Craigslist, or rather, how many people actually responded to the “No strings attached” ads."
On the teenage brain - "Teenagers have a much harder time than adults at even simple tasks that involve controlling one's impulses, but with a twist. For example, when told to ignore a light visible through their peripheral vision, teenagers do as well as adults, but much larger portions of their frontal regions light up during the task. These are the regions involved in rational decisions, and apparently teenagers need to use them in overdrive to keep themselves from yielding to even very simple impulses. Imagine the extra work that teenage frontal regions have to do if the task is to keep away from sex, drugs or alcohol..."
The World According to Eco - "Mac, he posited, is Catholic, with "sumptuous icons" and the promise of offering everybody the chance to reach the Kingdom of Heaven ("or at least the moment when your document is printed") by following a series of easy steps. DOS, on the other hand, is Protestant: "it allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions ... and takes for granted that not all can reach salvation.""
YouTube - MIT sketching - Objects drawn on a whiteboard come to life as the computer recognises them.
My quandary in an all-boys school - "As a product of hunting ancestry, a man’s brain falls into a complete resting state if he sits still too long (which explains men’s ability to zone out of awkward conversations). No wonder boys fail when education is ever more about quietly listening and less about cutting up frogs. And while boys — particularly those who have no father at home — thrive under good male teachers, men have all but left primary education, a terrible by-product of a society that obscenely questions their motives for working with small children."
Ban for boy with two snacks - "A boy aged 10 has been banned from his school dining hall because his packed lunch broke the government's healthy eating guidelines."
Democracy? Must we? Oh all right, but we'd really rather stay serfs - "You would never think that this Crown dependency has just been rocked by revolution, but it has. Last week it agreed to abolish 450 years of feudal rule and introduce universal suffrage. Mr Beaumont will be stripped progressively of his ancient powers and privileges. Eventually, he could lose even his right to keep the island’s only pigeons and unspayed female dogs, and anything washed up on its shores."
This year's top Christmas gift - a book that rejects God - "A book that rejects religion and argues for the non- existence of God is heading to be the No 1 bestseller for Christmas. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion is at the top of the bestseller chart of the online bookseller Amazon, and is climbing up The Times bestseller chart... In the book he writes: “Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that ‘God is the ultimate’ or ‘God is our better nature’ or ‘God is the universe’. “Of course, like any other word, the word ‘God’ can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that ‘God is energy’, then you can find God in a lump of coal.”"
Who says Chinese vs. Malays? - ""I hope for the leaders to say something smarter," said Muhammad Hafez, as he walked along Arab Street. "How would ageing politicians who are not on the streets know what's going on?""
This is probably the best response so far.
Seeing the world's Disney parks - "The group was in Hong Kong on the second leg of their Disney-themed round-the-world tour, realizing months of planning for a 32-day trip that takes them to every Disney park in the world -- from Tokyo to Hong Kong to Paris, to the U.S. flagships, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. It was a dream come true for the "Down Under Disneyana" fan club members, who have all been to one or more Disney parks before but have never done them all at one go. The idea of a world tour was especially appealing for Australian fans because they live so far away from all the Disney parks, Simpson said."
The physics of goo - "Back when he was writing the Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton argued with his pal Chistiaan Hyugens about an interesting question: Would someone swim faster through water or through a thick, viscous goo? Newton bet you'd go slower; Hyugens argued the opposite. Newton decided to put both viewpoints in the Principia, since he couldn't resolve it. There seemed to be no way to test it: Who was going to go to the trouble of constructing a massive tank and filling it with goo? A professor at the University of Minnesota, as it turns out. Edward Cussler took 300 kilograms of guar gum, a thickening agent found in salad dressing, and dumped it into a 25-meter swimming pool on campus."
Post ID: 116089445685773334
Phelps on Dynamic Capitalism:
"What would be the consequence, from this Rawlsian point of view, of releasing entrepreneurs onto the economy? In the classic case to which Rawls devoted his attention, the lowest score is always that of workers with the lowest wage, whom he called the "least advantaged": Their self-realization lies mostly in marrying, raising children and participating in the community, and it will be greater the higher their wage. So if the increased dynamism created by liberating private entrepreneurs and financiers tends to raise productivity, as I argue--and if that in turn pulls up those bottom wages, or at any rate does not lower them--it is not unjust. Does anyone doubt that the past two centuries of commercial innovations have pulled up wage rates at the low end and everywhere else in the distribution?"
2 responses:
A: "And it appears that the recent street protesters associate business with established wealth; in their minds, giving greater latitude to businesses would increase the privileges of old wealth. By an "entrepreneur" they appear to mean a rich owner of a bank or factory, while for Schumpeter and Knight it meant a newcomer, a parvenu who is an outsider."
But the fact is that such large businesses are currently wildly successful to a degree that gives them power entirely out of proportion to the numbers and kinds of welfare they are designed to serve. The laws that they push forward which are widely regarded as "pro-business", are in fact designed to benefit those who are currently rich at the expense not only of those who are poor but also those who would produce to the benefit of wider society.
The increasingly insane developments of intellectual property rights trends is great evidence of this. There is no obvious, uncontestable definition of "property" in a film or musical recording that makes, for instance, re-recording for a range of forms of personal consumption, or the creation of remixes, or being able to skip advertisements in DVDs of the film, consequences flowing from that film or musical recording that someone involved in artistically creative activity would foresee and take into account when deciding how much and what to produce. The question is purely one of distribution of the wealth of this cultural product -- more to the corporations or more to consumers?
Yet business lobbies insist that tilting distribution in their favour (with the weight of governmental force, mind you) is an incentive to innovation -- that the laws that back up anti-circumvention and turn us from active users into mere consumers are pro-innovation. And perhaps they have a point here, that there is a definite effect of IP protection on future creation. But what kind of effect? If the madness of anti-circumvention is pro-innovation, pro- what kind of innovation? Certainly not the kind of fluid, participative, democratised innovation performed everyday by people who swap and modify one another's works on, say, the Internet (anyone who has ever followed a web comic and seen the great quality of work and the innovations that come from guest strips and cross-fertilisation of ideas will know what I mean). Certainly not innovation in the form of parody and pastiche that can only come when the originators of works don't arrogate to themselves the right to censor so as to protect not their authorial integrity but their commercial brand.
If Phelps were merely arguing that the capitalists have perverted capitalism I could be more sympathetic. But the claim that America's corporatised (the irony, that he should choose to call Western European 'corporatist' instead!) version of capitalism is somehow one that more closely than any other developed country's model approximates the kind of ideals underlying capitalism doesn't, to my mind, pan out. The corporations have the weight of thousands of lawyers and lobbyists on their side, and we lawyers (I'm ashamed to admit) and lobbyists work to alter the terms of every transaction so that the notion of a fair bargain has become entirely illusory in many cases. Giving large businesses free rein is giving them the power to set the terms on which you choose. Democracy -- ideally, the source of restraining laws -- acts as a counterbalance by giving us the means to ensure that -we- set the terms on which they set the terms on which we choose. The (all too sadly increasingly realised) alternative is government by other people's profit motives.
Phelps thinks we should identify "pro-business" laws with laws that are "pro-small-business." A "pro-business" law is never equally pro-big-business and pro-small-business; it's going to favour one or the other. It's pretty crazy that Phelps talks about Western European anti-capitalists having an antipathy toward capitalism that ignores all consequences. It's precisely the hard fact of consequences, aside from all pretty theory, on which laws that restrict the ability of large businesses to do as they like with impunity are founded.
B: "The system operates to discourage changes such as relocations and the entry of new firms, and its performance depends on established companies in cooperation with local and national banks. What it lacks in flexibility it tries to compensate for with technological sophistication. So different is this system that it has its own name: the "social market economy" in Germany, "social democracy" in France and "concertazione" in Italy ."
Given that the world is growing increasingly interconnected, Phelp's apparent assumption that there is an objective characteristic of "capitalist" or "non-capitalist", that can be used to describe any particular country, is problematic. One thing that you'll realise when you look at the so-called "capitalist" countries the world over is that they vary widely. Not just within the bounds of "monopolies too big to break up, cartels... etc" but also the influence of the multinational corporation. The beauty, and the tragedy, of the efficiency in a world which increasingly promotes free trade, is that any large corporation has a disproportionately large influence in where it chooses to invest. When countries such as the USA experience "increased productivity growth" that allow its lowest paid workers to choose other, ostensibly more fulfilling, jobs (such as data entry possibly), other countries such as India have workers which enter into these markets. Such is the beauty of outsourcing.
Free trade enthusiasts would argue that these jobs created would be a step up from what these individuals were doing in the past, and make them better off. Two criticisms are pertinent here however. Firstly, it makes the assumption that a better paid job makes a person better off, which Phelps criticizes in his essay; Second, it ignores the fact that in moving these jobs into a developing country, a multinational corporation does not only save on cost, ceteris paribus, but in many cases, also saves on a multitude of other factors - minimum working conditions, union protection and the cost of firing and hiring are just a few examples. The quality of the jobs held therefore, would seem to be different. This is not to say that the overall effect is not positive, but it is far more complex than what Phelps would seem to argue, and is not clearly positive in the way he makes it out to be.
An extension of this point is relevant to A's observation about multinational firms and intellectual property. One of the first things that you will come across when you study market failures is that companies have a concentrated gain from organizing and lobbying to forward legislation that is in their interest - in this case, intellectual property law. By contrast, individuals, who benefit from competing legislation, have far fewer resources and organizational capability. All other things remaining equal, as A points out, the companies win. In the international sphere, this is analogous. Multinational corporations have a concentrated gain in forwarding international legislation that is in their interest; in the international community, organizing becomes even more difficult. Witness the broadcaster-weighted proposals in the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), where broadcasters are close to securing ability to unrestrictedly use orphan works, and retain the rights to them for 20 years.
These forces work directly against the so-called "dynamic" forces of capitalism, that Phelps emphasizes in his essay. Intellectual property was arguably designed to safeguard innovation and indeed promote it, by offering individuals an economic incentive to innovate. In a simplified conception, it consists of access and protection elements - protection which safeguards an individual's innovation, whether in the form of copyright or a patent, or access, which allows individuals to create derivative works which are potentially just as valuable, or even more.
The unequal forces mentioned two paragraphs back skews laws toward the protection element, which often favours the incumbent, as they have the most invested in intellectual property, and are the most able to legislate against its trespass. It would seem that the large firm, a by-product of the capitalist system, is in fact eating away at one of it's foundations - the access to information that allows dynamism to continue.
"What would be the consequence, from this Rawlsian point of view, of releasing entrepreneurs onto the economy? In the classic case to which Rawls devoted his attention, the lowest score is always that of workers with the lowest wage, whom he called the "least advantaged": Their self-realization lies mostly in marrying, raising children and participating in the community, and it will be greater the higher their wage. So if the increased dynamism created by liberating private entrepreneurs and financiers tends to raise productivity, as I argue--and if that in turn pulls up those bottom wages, or at any rate does not lower them--it is not unjust. Does anyone doubt that the past two centuries of commercial innovations have pulled up wage rates at the low end and everywhere else in the distribution?"
2 responses:
A: "And it appears that the recent street protesters associate business with established wealth; in their minds, giving greater latitude to businesses would increase the privileges of old wealth. By an "entrepreneur" they appear to mean a rich owner of a bank or factory, while for Schumpeter and Knight it meant a newcomer, a parvenu who is an outsider."
But the fact is that such large businesses are currently wildly successful to a degree that gives them power entirely out of proportion to the numbers and kinds of welfare they are designed to serve. The laws that they push forward which are widely regarded as "pro-business", are in fact designed to benefit those who are currently rich at the expense not only of those who are poor but also those who would produce to the benefit of wider society.
The increasingly insane developments of intellectual property rights trends is great evidence of this. There is no obvious, uncontestable definition of "property" in a film or musical recording that makes, for instance, re-recording for a range of forms of personal consumption, or the creation of remixes, or being able to skip advertisements in DVDs of the film, consequences flowing from that film or musical recording that someone involved in artistically creative activity would foresee and take into account when deciding how much and what to produce. The question is purely one of distribution of the wealth of this cultural product -- more to the corporations or more to consumers?
Yet business lobbies insist that tilting distribution in their favour (with the weight of governmental force, mind you) is an incentive to innovation -- that the laws that back up anti-circumvention and turn us from active users into mere consumers are pro-innovation. And perhaps they have a point here, that there is a definite effect of IP protection on future creation. But what kind of effect? If the madness of anti-circumvention is pro-innovation, pro- what kind of innovation? Certainly not the kind of fluid, participative, democratised innovation performed everyday by people who swap and modify one another's works on, say, the Internet (anyone who has ever followed a web comic and seen the great quality of work and the innovations that come from guest strips and cross-fertilisation of ideas will know what I mean). Certainly not innovation in the form of parody and pastiche that can only come when the originators of works don't arrogate to themselves the right to censor so as to protect not their authorial integrity but their commercial brand.
If Phelps were merely arguing that the capitalists have perverted capitalism I could be more sympathetic. But the claim that America's corporatised (the irony, that he should choose to call Western European 'corporatist' instead!) version of capitalism is somehow one that more closely than any other developed country's model approximates the kind of ideals underlying capitalism doesn't, to my mind, pan out. The corporations have the weight of thousands of lawyers and lobbyists on their side, and we lawyers (I'm ashamed to admit) and lobbyists work to alter the terms of every transaction so that the notion of a fair bargain has become entirely illusory in many cases. Giving large businesses free rein is giving them the power to set the terms on which you choose. Democracy -- ideally, the source of restraining laws -- acts as a counterbalance by giving us the means to ensure that -we- set the terms on which they set the terms on which we choose. The (all too sadly increasingly realised) alternative is government by other people's profit motives.
Phelps thinks we should identify "pro-business" laws with laws that are "pro-small-business." A "pro-business" law is never equally pro-big-business and pro-small-business; it's going to favour one or the other. It's pretty crazy that Phelps talks about Western European anti-capitalists having an antipathy toward capitalism that ignores all consequences. It's precisely the hard fact of consequences, aside from all pretty theory, on which laws that restrict the ability of large businesses to do as they like with impunity are founded.
B: "The system operates to discourage changes such as relocations and the entry of new firms, and its performance depends on established companies in cooperation with local and national banks. What it lacks in flexibility it tries to compensate for with technological sophistication. So different is this system that it has its own name: the "social market economy" in Germany, "social democracy" in France and "concertazione" in Italy ."
Given that the world is growing increasingly interconnected, Phelp's apparent assumption that there is an objective characteristic of "capitalist" or "non-capitalist", that can be used to describe any particular country, is problematic. One thing that you'll realise when you look at the so-called "capitalist" countries the world over is that they vary widely. Not just within the bounds of "monopolies too big to break up, cartels... etc" but also the influence of the multinational corporation. The beauty, and the tragedy, of the efficiency in a world which increasingly promotes free trade, is that any large corporation has a disproportionately large influence in where it chooses to invest. When countries such as the USA experience "increased productivity growth" that allow its lowest paid workers to choose other, ostensibly more fulfilling, jobs (such as data entry possibly), other countries such as India have workers which enter into these markets. Such is the beauty of outsourcing.
Free trade enthusiasts would argue that these jobs created would be a step up from what these individuals were doing in the past, and make them better off. Two criticisms are pertinent here however. Firstly, it makes the assumption that a better paid job makes a person better off, which Phelps criticizes in his essay; Second, it ignores the fact that in moving these jobs into a developing country, a multinational corporation does not only save on cost, ceteris paribus, but in many cases, also saves on a multitude of other factors - minimum working conditions, union protection and the cost of firing and hiring are just a few examples. The quality of the jobs held therefore, would seem to be different. This is not to say that the overall effect is not positive, but it is far more complex than what Phelps would seem to argue, and is not clearly positive in the way he makes it out to be.
An extension of this point is relevant to A's observation about multinational firms and intellectual property. One of the first things that you will come across when you study market failures is that companies have a concentrated gain from organizing and lobbying to forward legislation that is in their interest - in this case, intellectual property law. By contrast, individuals, who benefit from competing legislation, have far fewer resources and organizational capability. All other things remaining equal, as A points out, the companies win. In the international sphere, this is analogous. Multinational corporations have a concentrated gain in forwarding international legislation that is in their interest; in the international community, organizing becomes even more difficult. Witness the broadcaster-weighted proposals in the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO), where broadcasters are close to securing ability to unrestrictedly use orphan works, and retain the rights to them for 20 years.
These forces work directly against the so-called "dynamic" forces of capitalism, that Phelps emphasizes in his essay. Intellectual property was arguably designed to safeguard innovation and indeed promote it, by offering individuals an economic incentive to innovate. In a simplified conception, it consists of access and protection elements - protection which safeguards an individual's innovation, whether in the form of copyright or a patent, or access, which allows individuals to create derivative works which are potentially just as valuable, or even more.
The unequal forces mentioned two paragraphs back skews laws toward the protection element, which often favours the incumbent, as they have the most invested in intellectual property, and are the most able to legislate against its trespass. It would seem that the large firm, a by-product of the capitalist system, is in fact eating away at one of it's foundations - the access to information that allows dynamism to continue.
Post ID: 116088318608831881
An email HWMNBN forwarded me:
Hi all,
What does it take to be recognised as World Heritage Site ? We might be shocked by what Malaysian civil servants think including this guy Rais Yatim. UNESCO Heritage Site authority will never recognise a site to be of WH grade if it is turned into a theme park for tourists.
This is exactly what this Dr. wants to do (build a tower with a revolving restaurant at the top near the very site he wants the UN to recognise). This is exactly the opposite what a WH site is all about - never change the site facially, never change the lifestyle of people living in that site, never build Disneyland structures within the vicinity, never do things just to attract tourists ........ leave the place alone and let the people living there ply their trade as they get on with their lives. Never turn the place into a theme park.
Why is it so difficult for Bolehland civil servants to undertsand ?
Regards
***
__________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday October 11, 2006
Rais downplays UN heritage bids
MALACCA: Getting Penang and Malacca listed as World Heritage Sites may not be so important after all, Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said.
He said the current conditions set by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) for listing were also difficult for Asian countries.
He said he would propose to the United Nations to establish an Asia Chapter for Unesco listing comprising Asian members as judges.
"It would be fairer this way. The current conditions set by Unesco are difficult for Asian countries to be listed," he said, adding that European countries enjoyed a higher chance of being listed.
He was speaking to reporters after the groundbreaking ceremony for the 110m-high revolving tower which would be built near the Stadhuys heritage zone here yesterday.
Dr Rais said Penang and Malacca had made three joint applications and each time Unesco came back to ask for more data.
"We gave the additional data when asked to do so. Now, we do not have any more new data to give," he said.
Gunung Mulu National Park and Kinabalu National Park have been declared World Heritage Sites.
Mak yong and orang asli carvings have also been proclaimed "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity" by Unesco.
On the construction of the revolving tower, Dr Rais said it should not be used as a reason to reject the application for listing.
Ah, obviously the panel is being biased and ethnocentric in applying their subjective standards to judge Malaysia's application. Ideally, the panel judging the bid would be totally made up of judges nominated by the Malaysian government, which would understand the special circumstances of that country.
Luckily, 2/3 of the OJ Simpson Trial Jury were Black, which is why a fair and balanced verdict was delivered in that trial.
Hi all,
What does it take to be recognised as World Heritage Site ? We might be shocked by what Malaysian civil servants think including this guy Rais Yatim. UNESCO Heritage Site authority will never recognise a site to be of WH grade if it is turned into a theme park for tourists.
This is exactly what this Dr. wants to do (build a tower with a revolving restaurant at the top near the very site he wants the UN to recognise). This is exactly the opposite what a WH site is all about - never change the site facially, never change the lifestyle of people living in that site, never build Disneyland structures within the vicinity, never do things just to attract tourists ........ leave the place alone and let the people living there ply their trade as they get on with their lives. Never turn the place into a theme park.
Why is it so difficult for Bolehland civil servants to undertsand ?
Regards
***
__________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday October 11, 2006
Rais downplays UN heritage bids
MALACCA: Getting Penang and Malacca listed as World Heritage Sites may not be so important after all, Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim said.
He said the current conditions set by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) for listing were also difficult for Asian countries.
He said he would propose to the United Nations to establish an Asia Chapter for Unesco listing comprising Asian members as judges.
"It would be fairer this way. The current conditions set by Unesco are difficult for Asian countries to be listed," he said, adding that European countries enjoyed a higher chance of being listed.
He was speaking to reporters after the groundbreaking ceremony for the 110m-high revolving tower which would be built near the Stadhuys heritage zone here yesterday.
Dr Rais said Penang and Malacca had made three joint applications and each time Unesco came back to ask for more data.
"We gave the additional data when asked to do so. Now, we do not have any more new data to give," he said.
Gunung Mulu National Park and Kinabalu National Park have been declared World Heritage Sites.
Mak yong and orang asli carvings have also been proclaimed "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritages of Humanity" by Unesco.
On the construction of the revolving tower, Dr Rais said it should not be used as a reason to reject the application for listing.
Ah, obviously the panel is being biased and ethnocentric in applying their subjective standards to judge Malaysia's application. Ideally, the panel judging the bid would be totally made up of judges nominated by the Malaysian government, which would understand the special circumstances of that country.
Luckily, 2/3 of the OJ Simpson Trial Jury were Black, which is why a fair and balanced verdict was delivered in that trial.
Post ID: 116088185208496045
"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards." - Oscar Wilde
***
Assuming I am not senile yet, I remember that in Secondary School (or was it JC? I forget) we got this really far-out reading where the most hilarious claim was that:
"Plato's teaching about music is, put simply, that rhythm and melody, accompanied by dance, are the barbarous expression of the soul. Barbarous, not animal.
... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.
Young people know that rock music has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is why Ravel's Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly known and liked by them."
I swear that at some point in the past I found the essay it was from online, but anyhow I was prompted to look for the full thing again today to reference to someone.
It seems it's from Allan Bloom's "The closing of the American mind : how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". Wikipedia's summary:
"He especially targets the "openness" of Relativism as leading paradoxically to the great "closing" referenced in the book's title.
The book's lengthy introduction delineates two kinds of "openness". One sort stimulates the student to pursue "the good" by discovering new aspects of goodness in other times and places than the West; this is the sort that Bloom apparently favors. The other sort misuses the study of other cultures to prove the dogmatic, a priori assumption that our culture is not the best and that we have no special claim on knowing the good.
Bloom criticizes the openness of cultural relativism, in which he claims:
In line with Plato, whom he quotes periodically throughout the book, Bloom believes that it is incumbent on the individual to search for truth in order to have any hope of a higher life. He believes it is the unique obligation of the university to point students in this very direction.
Like Tocqueville and Nietzsche, Bloom asserts that democracy—by valuing the opinion of each citizen equally—is not an environment in which genius excels. It is therefore the university that needs to lead the lost art of living the good life.
Contemporary critical reaction to the book was politically polarised, but many of those hostile to Bloom's conclusions acknowledged the value of the book's recapitulation of the history of political philosophy." (Emphases mine)
It's in the NUS library too, so I really have no excuse not to read it.
(Maybe after I finish my travelogue. Hurr hurr.)
"When I was an undergrad like you I used to spend my holidays reading Karl Marx... Marx is very difficult to read. Most people read Karl Marx in jail... no one spends their holidays reading Karl Marx." - NUS Staff
"Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason's power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognising the inherent political, social, or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. Culture, hence, closedness, reigns supreme. Openess to closedness is what we teach."
Trying to prevent prejudices by "removing the authority of men's reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct their prejudices."
(Quotes from a review here)
***
Assuming I am not senile yet, I remember that in Secondary School (or was it JC? I forget) we got this really far-out reading where the most hilarious claim was that:
"Plato's teaching about music is, put simply, that rhythm and melody, accompanied by dance, are the barbarous expression of the soul. Barbarous, not animal.
... rock music has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire--not love, not eros, but sexual desire undeveloped and untutored.
Young people know that rock music has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is why Ravel's Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly known and liked by them."
I swear that at some point in the past I found the essay it was from online, but anyhow I was prompted to look for the full thing again today to reference to someone.
It seems it's from Allan Bloom's "The closing of the American mind : how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students". Wikipedia's summary:
"He especially targets the "openness" of Relativism as leading paradoxically to the great "closing" referenced in the book's title.
The book's lengthy introduction delineates two kinds of "openness". One sort stimulates the student to pursue "the good" by discovering new aspects of goodness in other times and places than the West; this is the sort that Bloom apparently favors. The other sort misuses the study of other cultures to prove the dogmatic, a priori assumption that our culture is not the best and that we have no special claim on knowing the good.
Bloom criticizes the openness of cultural relativism, in which he claims:
"the point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all."
In line with Plato, whom he quotes periodically throughout the book, Bloom believes that it is incumbent on the individual to search for truth in order to have any hope of a higher life. He believes it is the unique obligation of the university to point students in this very direction.
Like Tocqueville and Nietzsche, Bloom asserts that democracy—by valuing the opinion of each citizen equally—is not an environment in which genius excels. It is therefore the university that needs to lead the lost art of living the good life.
Contemporary critical reaction to the book was politically polarised, but many of those hostile to Bloom's conclusions acknowledged the value of the book's recapitulation of the history of political philosophy." (Emphases mine)
It's in the NUS library too, so I really have no excuse not to read it.
(Maybe after I finish my travelogue. Hurr hurr.)
"When I was an undergrad like you I used to spend my holidays reading Karl Marx... Marx is very difficult to read. Most people read Karl Marx in jail... no one spends their holidays reading Karl Marx." - NUS Staff
"Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason's power. The unrestrained and thoughtless pursuit of openness, without recognising the inherent political, social, or cultural problem of openness as the goal of nature, has rendered openness meaningless. Cultural relativism destroys both one's own and the good. Culture, hence, closedness, reigns supreme. Openess to closedness is what we teach."
Trying to prevent prejudices by "removing the authority of men's reason is to render ineffective the instrument that can correct their prejudices."
(Quotes from a review here)
Post ID: 116084418861358223
Saturday, October 14, 2006
"An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." - Aldous Huxley
***
YouTube - every sperm is sacred - "I've got something to tell y'all... The mill's closed. There's no more work. We're destitute... I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments... Blame the Catholic Church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things... If they let me wear one of those rubber things on the end of my cock, we wouldn't be in the mess that we are now."
This seditious song is even funnier to watch than listen to.
YouTube - cuddles clip robot chicken
The Middle Ages of Reason: It was the medieval world that dragged us into the future, not the reactionary Renaissance - "The Renaissance was a backward-looking movement that hailed the distant past - ancient Greece and ancient Rome - as the only source of enlightenment. Petrarch, a Renaissance writer, wanted to put the clock back and to return to writing in Latin. And not just the Latin that was then current. He wanted to return to classical Latin. The Latin that was then current and still being spoken in the churches and monasteries was condemned as deficient. Rather than reviving Latin, the Renaissance killed it stone dead as a spoken language."
Girls beat Glasto toilet nightmare - "This year, the festival's organisers sought to redress the balance with the introduction of female urinals - or She-pees - guarded by concierges to keep the boys at bay. And two other products were also launched, promising differing solutions to how a girl can get a swift comfortable pee and still keep her dignity. The Whiz is a funnel which allows a woman to go standing up - in the She-pee for instance. Taking a different tack, the Go Bag is a pouch of crystals which turn liquid into a solid gel for easy disposal."
Sweatshop workers who satisfy gamers' lust for virtual power - "The room is crammed with Chinese workers stripped to the waist. Poorly paid and exhausted from their punishing shifts, they chain-smoke and rub their eyes, while their colleagues sleep two to a mat on the floor. But this Shanghai sweatshop is not churning out T-shirts, trainers or children’s toys. Its workers are known in the computer games world as “gold farmers”. They are playing online games and winning virtual gold, which the owners of the gold farms then sell on to cash-rich, time-poor Westerners for real money."
Racist Rev Row - "A driver spent two nights in jail after being accused of "revving his car in a racist manner"."
Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Contraception the Next Big Target? - "The illogical thinking of some of these people is absolutely astounding: "I think it's great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it," said Helen Mazur, 27, who flew in from Philadelphia with her husband for the conference, called "Contraception is Not the Answer." "It's always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world," Mazur said."
Overcoming News Addiction - "A little over 30 days ago, I decided to go on a news fast, using my trusty 30-day trial method. I had already dropped TV news and newspapers, but I still had the habit of checking Yahoo News or CNN every day or two, so for 30 days I decided to drop all news sources and go totally news-free. In this article I’ll share what I learned from this experiment. It went well enough that I intend to remain free of the habit of daily news checking."
Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep - "As songbirds awaken the early risers at dawn on the farm, one resident is already up; in fact, he never slept – not once in the past 33 years."
Boys try to join girls' teams following human-rights ruling - "As two Winnipeg sisters find out Tuesday if they've made the boys' hockey team at their high school, their recent human-rights victory has spurred boys to try out for girls' sports teams. Morris Glimcher, executive director of the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association, said Tuesday that several requests from boys wanting to play on girls' teams started coming shortly after the ruling was handed down on Friday."
Prostitutes, smugglers a boost Greek economy - "Prostitutes and smugglers will give the Greek economy an unexpected boost as their illicit activities will now be counted in the country's official economic output, a senior official said on Wednesday."
FunReports.Com: Sex games end with electric toothbrush in young man's rectum - "The operating center of the Moscow rescue service has recently received a very strange, albeit a very funny call. A 25-year-old Muscovite called and said that his girlfriend had pushed an electric toothbrush up his anus. The toothbrush was turned on during the process, the young man specified."
Fear of offending Islam spurs hot debate in Europe - "Four canceled performances of a Mozart opera have reignited an anxious and heated debate in Europe over free speech, self-censorship and Islam. By canning its production of "Idomeneo", fearful of security threats because of a scene that might offend Muslims, Berlin's Deutsche Oper provoked front-page headlines across the continent and found itself fending off charges of cowardice."
For archival purposes.
A helping hand - "Specialist establishments catering for carriage groping connoisseurs are certainly nothing new, with this picture of such a train-themed retreat featuring in the book Pink Box: Inside Japan’s Sex Clubs. Yet the Train Cafe club in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district has recently claimed that by allowing its patrons to casually cop a feel in the confines of a recreated carriage, it combats any similarly tactile transgressions in the real world – or real trains to be more precise."
They cry, pray to Bush and wash out the devil - welcome to Jesus Camp - "The children at the Kids on Fire summer camp are intent as they pray over a cardboard cutout of President George Bush. They raise their hands in the air and sway, eyes closed, as they join the chant for "righteous judges". Tears stream down their faces as they are told that they are "phonies" and "hypocrites" and must wash their hands in bottled water to drive out the devil."
Shortchanged - "In August, two Princeton economists released a study titled “Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes.” The aim of the paper, by Anne Case and Christina Paxson, was to attempt to explain why tall people generally earn more than short people... Reuters published a story on the paper under the headline “TALLER PEOPLE ARE SMARTER—STUDY.” Within days, Case and Paxson had received dozens and dozens of e-mails from outraged readers. “I have no idea if it was the fact that women had written the study, but half of the ones I got were from short men,” Case said the other day. “Some of them were actually obscene.” Most of the e-mails were hostile: “Shame on you!” scolded one man (4" 9'). “I find your hypothesis insulting, prejudicial, inflammatory and bigoted,” said another (5" 6'). “You have loaded a gun and pointed it at the vertically challenged man’s head” (no height given). “I want to thank you and your colleague for perpetuating the crusade against short people” (5" 6'). “On a personal note it was very nice to be reminded that I really am a loser and will never be held in ‘high’ esteem by society” (5" 4'). “LEAVE THIS ALONE YOU’RE NOT HELPING ANYBODY,” another read."
This is what happens when people argue from emotion. When PC people claim rape is not about power, they mean "you can't blame the victim for the crime". When the PC people claim genetics does not affect intelligence, they mean "biology isn't everything". If only they were able to separate ideology from what is actually in front of them.
***
YouTube - every sperm is sacred - "I've got something to tell y'all... The mill's closed. There's no more work. We're destitute... I've got no option but to sell you all for scientific experiments... Blame the Catholic Church for not letting me wear one of those little rubber things... If they let me wear one of those rubber things on the end of my cock, we wouldn't be in the mess that we are now."
This seditious song is even funnier to watch than listen to.
YouTube - cuddles clip robot chicken
The Middle Ages of Reason: It was the medieval world that dragged us into the future, not the reactionary Renaissance - "The Renaissance was a backward-looking movement that hailed the distant past - ancient Greece and ancient Rome - as the only source of enlightenment. Petrarch, a Renaissance writer, wanted to put the clock back and to return to writing in Latin. And not just the Latin that was then current. He wanted to return to classical Latin. The Latin that was then current and still being spoken in the churches and monasteries was condemned as deficient. Rather than reviving Latin, the Renaissance killed it stone dead as a spoken language."
Girls beat Glasto toilet nightmare - "This year, the festival's organisers sought to redress the balance with the introduction of female urinals - or She-pees - guarded by concierges to keep the boys at bay. And two other products were also launched, promising differing solutions to how a girl can get a swift comfortable pee and still keep her dignity. The Whiz is a funnel which allows a woman to go standing up - in the She-pee for instance. Taking a different tack, the Go Bag is a pouch of crystals which turn liquid into a solid gel for easy disposal."
Sweatshop workers who satisfy gamers' lust for virtual power - "The room is crammed with Chinese workers stripped to the waist. Poorly paid and exhausted from their punishing shifts, they chain-smoke and rub their eyes, while their colleagues sleep two to a mat on the floor. But this Shanghai sweatshop is not churning out T-shirts, trainers or children’s toys. Its workers are known in the computer games world as “gold farmers”. They are playing online games and winning virtual gold, which the owners of the gold farms then sell on to cash-rich, time-poor Westerners for real money."
Racist Rev Row - "A driver spent two nights in jail after being accused of "revving his car in a racist manner"."
Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Contraception the Next Big Target? - "The illogical thinking of some of these people is absolutely astounding: "I think it's great that more pro-life people are finally speaking up about it," said Helen Mazur, 27, who flew in from Philadelphia with her husband for the conference, called "Contraception is Not the Answer." "It's always been a touchy subject, but you have to stand strong on your beliefs. Contraception is the root cause of the explosion of the amount of abortions in the world," Mazur said."
Overcoming News Addiction - "A little over 30 days ago, I decided to go on a news fast, using my trusty 30-day trial method. I had already dropped TV news and newspapers, but I still had the habit of checking Yahoo News or CNN every day or two, so for 30 days I decided to drop all news sources and go totally news-free. In this article I’ll share what I learned from this experiment. It went well enough that I intend to remain free of the habit of daily news checking."
Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep - "As songbirds awaken the early risers at dawn on the farm, one resident is already up; in fact, he never slept – not once in the past 33 years."
Boys try to join girls' teams following human-rights ruling - "As two Winnipeg sisters find out Tuesday if they've made the boys' hockey team at their high school, their recent human-rights victory has spurred boys to try out for girls' sports teams. Morris Glimcher, executive director of the Manitoba High Schools Athletic Association, said Tuesday that several requests from boys wanting to play on girls' teams started coming shortly after the ruling was handed down on Friday."
Prostitutes, smugglers a boost Greek economy - "Prostitutes and smugglers will give the Greek economy an unexpected boost as their illicit activities will now be counted in the country's official economic output, a senior official said on Wednesday."
FunReports.Com: Sex games end with electric toothbrush in young man's rectum - "The operating center of the Moscow rescue service has recently received a very strange, albeit a very funny call. A 25-year-old Muscovite called and said that his girlfriend had pushed an electric toothbrush up his anus. The toothbrush was turned on during the process, the young man specified."
Fear of offending Islam spurs hot debate in Europe - "Four canceled performances of a Mozart opera have reignited an anxious and heated debate in Europe over free speech, self-censorship and Islam. By canning its production of "Idomeneo", fearful of security threats because of a scene that might offend Muslims, Berlin's Deutsche Oper provoked front-page headlines across the continent and found itself fending off charges of cowardice."
For archival purposes.
A helping hand - "Specialist establishments catering for carriage groping connoisseurs are certainly nothing new, with this picture of such a train-themed retreat featuring in the book Pink Box: Inside Japan’s Sex Clubs. Yet the Train Cafe club in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district has recently claimed that by allowing its patrons to casually cop a feel in the confines of a recreated carriage, it combats any similarly tactile transgressions in the real world – or real trains to be more precise."
They cry, pray to Bush and wash out the devil - welcome to Jesus Camp - "The children at the Kids on Fire summer camp are intent as they pray over a cardboard cutout of President George Bush. They raise their hands in the air and sway, eyes closed, as they join the chant for "righteous judges". Tears stream down their faces as they are told that they are "phonies" and "hypocrites" and must wash their hands in bottled water to drive out the devil."
Shortchanged - "In August, two Princeton economists released a study titled “Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes.” The aim of the paper, by Anne Case and Christina Paxson, was to attempt to explain why tall people generally earn more than short people... Reuters published a story on the paper under the headline “TALLER PEOPLE ARE SMARTER—STUDY.” Within days, Case and Paxson had received dozens and dozens of e-mails from outraged readers. “I have no idea if it was the fact that women had written the study, but half of the ones I got were from short men,” Case said the other day. “Some of them were actually obscene.” Most of the e-mails were hostile: “Shame on you!” scolded one man (4" 9'). “I find your hypothesis insulting, prejudicial, inflammatory and bigoted,” said another (5" 6'). “You have loaded a gun and pointed it at the vertically challenged man’s head” (no height given). “I want to thank you and your colleague for perpetuating the crusade against short people” (5" 6'). “On a personal note it was very nice to be reminded that I really am a loser and will never be held in ‘high’ esteem by society” (5" 4'). “LEAVE THIS ALONE YOU’RE NOT HELPING ANYBODY,” another read."
This is what happens when people argue from emotion. When PC people claim rape is not about power, they mean "you can't blame the victim for the crime". When the PC people claim genetics does not affect intelligence, they mean "biology isn't everything". If only they were able to separate ideology from what is actually in front of them.
Post ID: 116083972851756022
July Trip
19/7 - In Transit (Italy-France)
[Ed: With this post, I've 11 days of travelogue left!]
After Italy, France was a refreshing change. Instead of people chattering to me in Italian, which I didn't understand, I had people chattering to me in French, which I didn't understand.
The pen cap of one of the French girls was chewed. Eugh. I thought only boys did that, and only in Primary school. One was reading 'Code de Route' or something, and inside were road signs.
I was warned by my French ex-housemate that Marseille could be dangerous, especially outside of the more trafficked areas. He also recommended Lyon since the people there are very friendly. Maybe another time.
I was thinking whether I should've stayed at Arles for one night, but Nimes had an amphitheatre as well (though maybe it was a bit smaller).
At Nimes, I asked on a lark and found out that there were vacancies on the night train from Avignon to Reims. Either the French don't like the Italians or Italian English is really CMI. Interestingly there were couchettes in 1st Class. Wth.
While buying train tickets I was offered the French <25 discount card which cost €49 and would give me a substantially greater discount (at 50%) than just being under 25 (between 25 and 33%, IIRC). In the end I got it, since the night train already cost €70 and I was getting a headache trying to optimise my utility function. Too bad I hadn't been told about it in Marseille. It required a photo, but luckily I had one with me.
"Reims" was a French word I found particularly difficult to pronounce. The way the woman at the ticket counter and someone pronounced it can best be described as someone sneezing. The woman at the counter eventually kindly humoured me by pronouncing it as 'rhymes'.
It's good to be young in France. You automatically get discounts on domestic train travel and a youth discount card for further discounts on them. Unless you're French, of course, since you'll be unemployed. Maybe the concessions are meant to appease the army of unemployed youth.
There was an "Avenue Franklin Roosevelt" in Nimes. I didn't see Fuck Street beside it.
Outside Paris people are more polite. They bonjour you when you enter their establishment and au revoir you when you leave.
Getting off at the HI bus stop, I bought a can of boisson ('Jemsa! Jus d'orange') at a gas station to fortify myself for the climb uphill. It was the worst vile juice I'd ever had. I should've plumped for Minute Maid. So much for supporting local brands - there's a good reason why they stay local.
A 500+m climb awaited me to get to the HI hostel from the bus stop, but someone driving by in a car gave me a lift. Heh.
The HI hostel at Nimes was modern and big by HI standards - not only was the reception open 24 hours, it used magnetic cards to gain access to the rooms. It was supposed to have internet access too, but the computer was broken. It even had a minibus leaving at 9am which brought guests to the train station. Wah.
The staff were quite friendly - the main ones were a British punk (who asked about my Lewis Chessmen shirt) and a middle-aged French man who kept talking to be in French (so it was hard to communicate).
Consulting with the staff at the hostel, I realised I couldn't do Arles, Nimes and the Pont du Gard in one day ("Do you have a car?"). Such a pity. I decided to drop Arles, since apparently the arena there could fit in the Nimes arena, and this was better preserved as well. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to visit the amphitheatre in Nimes because there was a rock concert held there. Damn July!
Since I was already at the hostel, and it would be too much trouble to venture out down the 500+m slope, into town , eat and then come back up 500+m, I decided to eat there. With my pork chop I got 'Pueros' brand 'Poivre du Mekong'.
The temperature was supposedly 33 degrees, but it was noticeably cooler than Italy's 33 degrees. Maybe it was psychological. Then again, Cinque Terra's 33 was cooler than the rest of Italy's 33 too.
I was in the shower when a grasshopper jumped onto the floor (disadvantages of being on top of a hill and close to nature). I whacked it with one sandal but it wouldn't die, so I had to whack it again.
someone: Do you miss us?
Me: Do you want to pay my phone bill?
someone: *I can't believe he said that sound*
Me: Then stop asking stupid questions like that on my [handphone] time!
At the hostel there was a wall where people posted photos of themselves on the countries they came from. Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand were shown, as was Korea and Japan but the rest of Asia wasn't there. There was also a wall of [currency] bills, on top of which people had written things. There was an old Singapore $5 note with the PSA container terminal on it, on top of which was written: "I don't come from this godforsaken country, but I thought I'd demonstrate my wide travels - Matt Hortin (Australia)". At least Singapore has a law against defacing currency (and so cursing the country). We should arrest him if he returns to Singapore!
During the night I was woken up many times by mosquito bites, which had been itching since the night before. Gah.
It'd been a while since I'd read a book, but you know the thing about urgent/important, urgent/not important, non-urgent/important and non-urgent/not important tasks. I would place reading in the non-urgent/not-so-important sphere and so it's usually shunted (I have philosophical disagreements with some people over this). Andrew had brought some book about South African boxing and exchanged it for Neil Gaiman'sEverywhere Neverwhere, which I took possession of when we parted.
I'd always shyed away from him because I found his work disturbing; the Sandman pictures alternately scare and repulse me, the story about eating babies is disgusting [Babycakes] and I'm quite sure the story about the boy sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool over the water intake sluice and wanking because the suction stimulated him, until one day his guts got sucked out and he had to leave his intestines behind or drown was by him too.[Addendum: Apparently it's not. Guts was by Chuck Palahniuk, but anyhow it's as disturbing as Babycakes]
Everywhere Neverwhere was alright but probably that's because it was an early work (1996).
I exchangedEverywhere Neverwhere for "A short history of tractors in Ukrainian" which, if nothing else, had the imprimatur of my favourite periodical.
Travel tips:
- If you can travel with a friend, you can watch each others' backs, talk on long journeys and if you want comfort, a double is less than twice the price of a single. Though of course the downside is less flexibility, but in cities you can split up.
- Get 1 Visa and 1 Mastercard, in case the establishment doesn't accept 1 (these places do exist, but I haven't seen a place that accepts neither but does others), and/or one fouls up.
- Don't take Eurolines. Let's Go said Eurolines is the best way to visit one of the countries listed early in the book (they were listed in alphabetical order); I'm not going there until there's a better way!
- Bring photos with you for various silly things. If you're cheapskate you can be like the cock and scan one in and printing multiple copies.
- Bring a lock for lockers, if you have anything you want to keep safe
- Use a packing list
- Be shameless. Crash everywhere with people you (hardly) know
19/7 - In Transit (Italy-France)
[Ed: With this post, I've 11 days of travelogue left!]
After Italy, France was a refreshing change. Instead of people chattering to me in Italian, which I didn't understand, I had people chattering to me in French, which I didn't understand.
The pen cap of one of the French girls was chewed. Eugh. I thought only boys did that, and only in Primary school. One was reading 'Code de Route' or something, and inside were road signs.
I was warned by my French ex-housemate that Marseille could be dangerous, especially outside of the more trafficked areas. He also recommended Lyon since the people there are very friendly. Maybe another time.
I was thinking whether I should've stayed at Arles for one night, but Nimes had an amphitheatre as well (though maybe it was a bit smaller).
At Nimes, I asked on a lark and found out that there were vacancies on the night train from Avignon to Reims. Either the French don't like the Italians or Italian English is really CMI. Interestingly there were couchettes in 1st Class. Wth.
While buying train tickets I was offered the French <25 discount card which cost €49 and would give me a substantially greater discount (at 50%) than just being under 25 (between 25 and 33%, IIRC). In the end I got it, since the night train already cost €70 and I was getting a headache trying to optimise my utility function. Too bad I hadn't been told about it in Marseille. It required a photo, but luckily I had one with me.
"Reims" was a French word I found particularly difficult to pronounce. The way the woman at the ticket counter and someone pronounced it can best be described as someone sneezing. The woman at the counter eventually kindly humoured me by pronouncing it as 'rhymes'.
It's good to be young in France. You automatically get discounts on domestic train travel and a youth discount card for further discounts on them. Unless you're French, of course, since you'll be unemployed. Maybe the concessions are meant to appease the army of unemployed youth.
There was an "Avenue Franklin Roosevelt" in Nimes. I didn't see Fuck Street beside it.
Outside Paris people are more polite. They bonjour you when you enter their establishment and au revoir you when you leave.
Getting off at the HI bus stop, I bought a can of boisson ('Jemsa! Jus d'orange') at a gas station to fortify myself for the climb uphill. It was the worst vile juice I'd ever had. I should've plumped for Minute Maid. So much for supporting local brands - there's a good reason why they stay local.
A 500+m climb awaited me to get to the HI hostel from the bus stop, but someone driving by in a car gave me a lift. Heh.
The HI hostel at Nimes was modern and big by HI standards - not only was the reception open 24 hours, it used magnetic cards to gain access to the rooms. It was supposed to have internet access too, but the computer was broken. It even had a minibus leaving at 9am which brought guests to the train station. Wah.
The staff were quite friendly - the main ones were a British punk (who asked about my Lewis Chessmen shirt) and a middle-aged French man who kept talking to be in French (so it was hard to communicate).
Consulting with the staff at the hostel, I realised I couldn't do Arles, Nimes and the Pont du Gard in one day ("Do you have a car?"). Such a pity. I decided to drop Arles, since apparently the arena there could fit in the Nimes arena, and this was better preserved as well. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to visit the amphitheatre in Nimes because there was a rock concert held there. Damn July!
Since I was already at the hostel, and it would be too much trouble to venture out down the 500+m slope, into town , eat and then come back up 500+m, I decided to eat there. With my pork chop I got 'Pueros' brand 'Poivre du Mekong'.
The temperature was supposedly 33 degrees, but it was noticeably cooler than Italy's 33 degrees. Maybe it was psychological. Then again, Cinque Terra's 33 was cooler than the rest of Italy's 33 too.
I was in the shower when a grasshopper jumped onto the floor (disadvantages of being on top of a hill and close to nature). I whacked it with one sandal but it wouldn't die, so I had to whack it again.
someone: Do you miss us?
Me: Do you want to pay my phone bill?
someone: *I can't believe he said that sound*
Me: Then stop asking stupid questions like that on my [handphone] time!
At the hostel there was a wall where people posted photos of themselves on the countries they came from. Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand were shown, as was Korea and Japan but the rest of Asia wasn't there. There was also a wall of [currency] bills, on top of which people had written things. There was an old Singapore $5 note with the PSA container terminal on it, on top of which was written: "I don't come from this godforsaken country, but I thought I'd demonstrate my wide travels - Matt Hortin (Australia)". At least Singapore has a law against defacing currency (and so cursing the country). We should arrest him if he returns to Singapore!
During the night I was woken up many times by mosquito bites, which had been itching since the night before. Gah.
It'd been a while since I'd read a book, but you know the thing about urgent/important, urgent/not important, non-urgent/important and non-urgent/not important tasks. I would place reading in the non-urgent/not-so-important sphere and so it's usually shunted (I have philosophical disagreements with some people over this). Andrew had brought some book about South African boxing and exchanged it for Neil Gaiman's
I'd always shyed away from him because I found his work disturbing; the Sandman pictures alternately scare and repulse me, the story about eating babies is disgusting [Babycakes] and I'm quite sure the story about the boy sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool over the water intake sluice and wanking because the suction stimulated him, until one day his guts got sucked out and he had to leave his intestines behind or drown was by him too.[Addendum: Apparently it's not. Guts was by Chuck Palahniuk, but anyhow it's as disturbing as Babycakes]
I exchanged
Travel tips:
- If you can travel with a friend, you can watch each others' backs, talk on long journeys and if you want comfort, a double is less than twice the price of a single. Though of course the downside is less flexibility, but in cities you can split up.
- Get 1 Visa and 1 Mastercard, in case the establishment doesn't accept 1 (these places do exist, but I haven't seen a place that accepts neither but does others), and/or one fouls up.
- Don't take Eurolines. Let's Go said Eurolines is the best way to visit one of the countries listed early in the book (they were listed in alphabetical order); I'm not going there until there's a better way!
- Bring photos with you for various silly things. If you're cheapskate you can be like the cock and scan one in and printing multiple copies.
- Bring a lock for lockers, if you have anything you want to keep safe
- Use a packing list
- Be shameless. Crash everywhere with people you (hardly) know
Post ID: 116074305626717893
"If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done." - Ludwig Wittgenstein
***
Someone: [the bell curve] is impeding classroom discussion
it makes ppl not want to share and thereby bounce ideas off each other
and create the synergy for everyone to benefit
(ha, i wont' have used the word myself, but a prof i respect actually used it)
forum discussion, too
ppl are reluctant to post stuff because they seem afraid that ppl will benefit off what they say
i mean, i'm doing well by the bell curve so far
and it helps that the majority of nus students are stupid
but it doesn't help things in the long run!
MFM in Chicago where they bell-curve also: no the bell curve doesn't impede discussion here for various reasons:
1) discussion performance can affect your final grade
2) people actually enjoy discussion
3) discussion helps you make a favourable impact on professors whom you my want to write your recommendation letters
I think an important difference is that americans are more extroverted, so they enjoy talking for its own sake
there's not necessarily a curve
there is no definite rule as to when
instructors' discretion
but definitely there are plenty of classes in which As proliferate
The Top Bio Student in NJ in His Year with a current CAP of "no high enough": let me enlighten you on the period-moon thingy
long long time ago, before artificial lights, menstrual cycles go in sync with moonlight
or something like that
and women tend to develop periods at the same time cos of pheromones
so sayeth something i read a while back
Someone: my mother has always been depressed, and she commited suicide before.
Me: she committed suicide before?
are you a necromancer?
Someone else: spgs are damn protective of their guys!
it's so bizarre!
today when i got back i met a bunch of international students
guys, going clubbing, a canadian, an englishman, and a hungarian.
they were sitting on the steps and the canadian had an spg sitting behind him.
since i knew them, i stopped to say hi, and they tried to sweet talk me into going to double o with them
but the whole time i talked to them the spg kept inching closer and closer to the canadian, and draped herself over and gave me the evil eye! i was like wtf?! i'm not even interested!
Me: hehehe
she can't take all 3 of them at once =D
how SPGish was she?
Someone else: mildly. she didn't have flesh falling out from every clothing orifice, but she looked at me evilly enough.
Me: did she have flesh to fall?
Someone else: i dunno. i was trying to ignore the evil glares!
although.
if she looked at me evilly, it must mean i must be decent enough to be potential competition! hahaha!
Me: you didn't say where you got the idea I'm asexual from inthe first place
Someone: you exude it from every pore and hair follicle
you dont try to be attractive to any one sex
you just dont bother
Me: ok
that's a new perspective
Someone else: in my soci tutorial - there was this guy who was asked "what would your life be like if you were of the other gender? (female)" and he said "I would definitely dress in skimpy revealing clothing so that I can use my sexuality to get my dates to pay for me and give me presents
then my teacher asked him back "So do you pay when you bring a girl out on a date?" and he said "No...but that's because I'm too broke."
Someone: you don't even drink
i think in terms of a general tendency to vice you are quite a failure
***
Someone: [the bell curve] is impeding classroom discussion
it makes ppl not want to share and thereby bounce ideas off each other
and create the synergy for everyone to benefit
(ha, i wont' have used the word myself, but a prof i respect actually used it)
forum discussion, too
ppl are reluctant to post stuff because they seem afraid that ppl will benefit off what they say
i mean, i'm doing well by the bell curve so far
and it helps that the majority of nus students are stupid
but it doesn't help things in the long run!
MFM in Chicago where they bell-curve also: no the bell curve doesn't impede discussion here for various reasons:
1) discussion performance can affect your final grade
2) people actually enjoy discussion
3) discussion helps you make a favourable impact on professors whom you my want to write your recommendation letters
I think an important difference is that americans are more extroverted, so they enjoy talking for its own sake
there's not necessarily a curve
there is no definite rule as to when
instructors' discretion
but definitely there are plenty of classes in which As proliferate
The Top Bio Student in NJ in His Year with a current CAP of "no high enough": let me enlighten you on the period-moon thingy
long long time ago, before artificial lights, menstrual cycles go in sync with moonlight
or something like that
and women tend to develop periods at the same time cos of pheromones
so sayeth something i read a while back
Someone: my mother has always been depressed, and she commited suicide before.
Me: she committed suicide before?
are you a necromancer?
Someone else: spgs are damn protective of their guys!
it's so bizarre!
today when i got back i met a bunch of international students
guys, going clubbing, a canadian, an englishman, and a hungarian.
they were sitting on the steps and the canadian had an spg sitting behind him.
since i knew them, i stopped to say hi, and they tried to sweet talk me into going to double o with them
but the whole time i talked to them the spg kept inching closer and closer to the canadian, and draped herself over and gave me the evil eye! i was like wtf?! i'm not even interested!
Me: hehehe
she can't take all 3 of them at once =D
how SPGish was she?
Someone else: mildly. she didn't have flesh falling out from every clothing orifice, but she looked at me evilly enough.
Me: did she have flesh to fall?
Someone else: i dunno. i was trying to ignore the evil glares!
although.
if she looked at me evilly, it must mean i must be decent enough to be potential competition! hahaha!
Me: you didn't say where you got the idea I'm asexual from inthe first place
Someone: you exude it from every pore and hair follicle
you dont try to be attractive to any one sex
you just dont bother
Me: ok
that's a new perspective
Someone else: in my soci tutorial - there was this guy who was asked "what would your life be like if you were of the other gender? (female)" and he said "I would definitely dress in skimpy revealing clothing so that I can use my sexuality to get my dates to pay for me and give me presents
then my teacher asked him back "So do you pay when you bring a girl out on a date?" and he said "No...but that's because I'm too broke."
Someone: you don't even drink
i think in terms of a general tendency to vice you are quite a failure
Post ID: 116075712502061573
Friday, October 13, 2006
"A poem is no place for an idea." - Edgar Watson Howe
***
The real reasons to hate the Pope - "In the past year, I have sat in two Catholic churches thousands of miles apart and listened while a Catholic priest told illiterate people with no alternative sources of information that condoms come pre-infected with AIDS and are the reason people die of it. In Bukavu, a crater-city in Congo, and in the slums ringing Caracas, Venezuela, people believed it. They told me they “would not go to Heaven” if they used condoms, and that condoms contain tiny invisible holes through which the virus passes – the advice their priest had doled out."
U.S. slips in competitive ranking - "The United States fell to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's 2006 global competitiveness rankings, ceding the top place to Switzerland, as macroeconomic concerns eroded prospects for the world's largest economy."
Curiously, wage costs don't appear in the article, despite the constant beating of the "cut wages" drum here in Singapore. Shows you how insignificant wage costs are in the competitiveness rankings. Makes you wonder, don't it?
Bromont golf club - Description: "A Canadian RC airplane enthusiast combined a model airplane, virtual reality goggles and a wireless camera. It works like this: A fairly standard model airplane is controlled normally with a wireless remote control. A pan-and-tilt camera is mounted at the airplane's center of gravity, also controlled wirelessly. Video from the camera is viewable through virtual reality goggles, which have a gyroscope attached to sense the movement of the goggles and control the camera accordingly. When the wearer moves his head, the camera also moves."
Also: A dream come true
The Straight Dope: Do other languages have obscenities like those of English? - Mecagum les cinc llagues de Crist... Catalan. Even more bloodcurdling is Mecagum Deu, en la creu, en el fuster que la feu i en el fill de puta que va plantar el pi"
English just can't compare.
The Straight Dope: Guns don't kill people, frying pans kill people: Is the frying pan the #1 domestic weapon? - "Research suggests women are the aggressors much more often than is commonly believed. In fact, a study published this year in the Journal of Family Psychology indicates that women are more likely than men to commit domestic violence. Of 1,600 straight couples surveyed, 18 percent reported that in the previous year the woman had engaged in one of 11 "violent behaviors" toward the man, versus 14 percent the other way around. What's more, over 7 percent of the couples reported "severe" female-on-male violence, compared to less than 4 percent reporting severe male-on-female violence. The most common female-on-male acts were "threw something" and "pushed, grabbed, or shoved," both at about 12 percent."
Sistic: Event Details - Bulgarian International Recital - I'm very pissed off. The programmes are usually not displayed. I always want to know what's to be performed, since I don't want to listen to Shostakovich et al. I emailed them and the response was along the lines of "they didn't tell us, go ask them if you want to know". Gah. And it's not like the works to be performed have not already been decided months in advance.
The Geek-a-Cycle - "The evidence in favor of exercise is overwhelming. It is absolutely necessary for good health. Now, exercising is easy and convenient, too. Get your daily exercise while doing your daily work. The Geek-a-Cycle - Fitness for the Computer User. The Geek-a-CycleTM: a computer work/exercise station (Computer and model not included)"
Sinful Acts - "Sin is the problem. Salvation is the cure. The preacher is the doctor. And he is no different from a voodoo witchdoctor removing an evil spirit. The christian witchdoctor calls it exorcism. The evil spirits are God's demons and His devil. God allows it all. That is how much God loves us."
Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth > Borrowing, getting started (new version) - "If Reverend Bruce Manning Metzger claims Christianity didn't borrow from Paganism because Christianity is different from Paganism, then you shouldn't believe Reverend Metzger's analysis until you see it applies to other ancient religions. Judaism comes to mind. How does the apologists' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule work with Judaism? Well, the Christian three-headed God is different from Judaism's one-headed God. Christian salvation is different from Jewish salvation. Christian baptism is different from Jewish baptism. The Christian Eucharist is different from Judaism's Eucharist—does Judaism even have baptism and a Eucharist? Apply the apologists scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism, and you learn that Christianity is free of the taint of Jewish origins. Which is maybe why you never hear any believing scholar apply the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism. Doesn't give the answer they want. When someone gives you a "reason" that only works in the one place it has to work for their theory to be true, and that on other situations gives a completely different answer, you should not believe their analysis."
There also seems to be a new page about how Judaism itself borrowed from pagan religions (which rends the defence that the borrowing was from Judaism and not the pagans).
Why is Singapore in the “Wrong” Time Zone? - "The time zones in Singapore and Malaysia are good examples of how the lines between time zones tend to creep westward over the years. In other words, a place that's near the eastern edge of a time zone is likely to move its clocks ahead one hour, thereby moving to the western edge of the adjacent time zone."
WikiCharts — Top 100 — 10/2006 - "This tool shows the articles from the English Wikipedia that are viewed most."
Fewer are about sex than I thought.
Philips files for patent to force ad viewing - "Philips Electronics has done it again. Flush with heady optimism after successful products such as the digital compact cassette (DCC) and the super audio CD (SACD), the redoubtable European giant has developed a way to keep television free for the masses for the foreseeable future—a patent application for a device which prevents a user from changing the channel during commercials... The fundamental downside to merely forcing commercials to run unimpeded is that the viewer retains freedom of movement which would allow him or her to leave the room, cover the TV with a blanket, or eat or use a product in direct competition with an advertisement. For the propaganda to be most effective, the device needs to work in concert with the couch to prevent any unauthorized activity or movement while a commercial is running. Ideally, all phones in the vicinity would also be put on hold, and it would become impossible to deactivate the TV, even if unplugged."
With this and DVDs where they force you to watch ads, they still wonder why consumers flock to pirated products.
Everyone Loves the Cat - A pussy that consents to be on a leash can't be that evil.
Study: Mice Do Not Like Cheese - "A study made by the Manchester Metropolitan University has found that mice really don't like cheese, debunking the myth that was popularized in the cartoon show "Tom and Jerry.""
Language Evolution in the Digital Age - "Dictionaries are more used than ever and are nowhere near a downfall. It’s just that they’re now often digital as well as print. There are also few new authorities, there are mostly merely transformations of old authorities. (Even Wiktionary includes many thousands of definitions from an out-of-copyright edition of an early unabridged dictionary.)"
Parking is no joke as Italy's women sue over beer ad - "In a scene set a century ago, a young woman struggles to park her horse and carriage, while two beer-drinking, male, bystanders look on, laughing. The action cuts to the present and shows the same woman having trouble parking her car, eventually leaving it jutting into the road. Again she is watched by two smug men swigging from bottles of Peroni beer, as a voice-over remarks: "Fortunately some things don't change". For Italy's women, however, the joke has fallen flat. A group of female lawyers is making legal history by suing the beer company for being sexist and discriminatory."
I remember this ad, it was quite funny.
***
The real reasons to hate the Pope - "In the past year, I have sat in two Catholic churches thousands of miles apart and listened while a Catholic priest told illiterate people with no alternative sources of information that condoms come pre-infected with AIDS and are the reason people die of it. In Bukavu, a crater-city in Congo, and in the slums ringing Caracas, Venezuela, people believed it. They told me they “would not go to Heaven” if they used condoms, and that condoms contain tiny invisible holes through which the virus passes – the advice their priest had doled out."
U.S. slips in competitive ranking - "The United States fell to sixth place in the World Economic Forum's 2006 global competitiveness rankings, ceding the top place to Switzerland, as macroeconomic concerns eroded prospects for the world's largest economy."
Curiously, wage costs don't appear in the article, despite the constant beating of the "cut wages" drum here in Singapore. Shows you how insignificant wage costs are in the competitiveness rankings. Makes you wonder, don't it?
Bromont golf club - Description: "A Canadian RC airplane enthusiast combined a model airplane, virtual reality goggles and a wireless camera. It works like this: A fairly standard model airplane is controlled normally with a wireless remote control. A pan-and-tilt camera is mounted at the airplane's center of gravity, also controlled wirelessly. Video from the camera is viewable through virtual reality goggles, which have a gyroscope attached to sense the movement of the goggles and control the camera accordingly. When the wearer moves his head, the camera also moves."
Also: A dream come true
The Straight Dope: Do other languages have obscenities like those of English? - Mecagum les cinc llagues de Crist... Catalan. Even more bloodcurdling is Mecagum Deu, en la creu, en el fuster que la feu i en el fill de puta que va plantar el pi"
English just can't compare.
The Straight Dope: Guns don't kill people, frying pans kill people: Is the frying pan the #1 domestic weapon? - "Research suggests women are the aggressors much more often than is commonly believed. In fact, a study published this year in the Journal of Family Psychology indicates that women are more likely than men to commit domestic violence. Of 1,600 straight couples surveyed, 18 percent reported that in the previous year the woman had engaged in one of 11 "violent behaviors" toward the man, versus 14 percent the other way around. What's more, over 7 percent of the couples reported "severe" female-on-male violence, compared to less than 4 percent reporting severe male-on-female violence. The most common female-on-male acts were "threw something" and "pushed, grabbed, or shoved," both at about 12 percent."
Sistic: Event Details - Bulgarian International Recital - I'm very pissed off. The programmes are usually not displayed. I always want to know what's to be performed, since I don't want to listen to Shostakovich et al. I emailed them and the response was along the lines of "they didn't tell us, go ask them if you want to know". Gah. And it's not like the works to be performed have not already been decided months in advance.
The Geek-a-Cycle - "The evidence in favor of exercise is overwhelming. It is absolutely necessary for good health. Now, exercising is easy and convenient, too. Get your daily exercise while doing your daily work. The Geek-a-Cycle - Fitness for the Computer User. The Geek-a-CycleTM: a computer work/exercise station (Computer and model not included)"
Sinful Acts - "Sin is the problem. Salvation is the cure. The preacher is the doctor. And he is no different from a voodoo witchdoctor removing an evil spirit. The christian witchdoctor calls it exorcism. The evil spirits are God's demons and His devil. God allows it all. That is how much God loves us."
Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth > Borrowing, getting started (new version) - "If Reverend Bruce Manning Metzger claims Christianity didn't borrow from Paganism because Christianity is different from Paganism, then you shouldn't believe Reverend Metzger's analysis until you see it applies to other ancient religions. Judaism comes to mind. How does the apologists' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule work with Judaism? Well, the Christian three-headed God is different from Judaism's one-headed God. Christian salvation is different from Jewish salvation. Christian baptism is different from Jewish baptism. The Christian Eucharist is different from Judaism's Eucharist—does Judaism even have baptism and a Eucharist? Apply the apologists scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism, and you learn that Christianity is free of the taint of Jewish origins. Which is maybe why you never hear any believing scholar apply the believing scholars' difference-proves-no-borrowing rule to Judaism. Doesn't give the answer they want. When someone gives you a "reason" that only works in the one place it has to work for their theory to be true, and that on other situations gives a completely different answer, you should not believe their analysis."
There also seems to be a new page about how Judaism itself borrowed from pagan religions (which rends the defence that the borrowing was from Judaism and not the pagans).
Why is Singapore in the “Wrong” Time Zone? - "The time zones in Singapore and Malaysia are good examples of how the lines between time zones tend to creep westward over the years. In other words, a place that's near the eastern edge of a time zone is likely to move its clocks ahead one hour, thereby moving to the western edge of the adjacent time zone."
WikiCharts — Top 100 — 10/2006 - "This tool shows the articles from the English Wikipedia that are viewed most."
Fewer are about sex than I thought.
Philips files for patent to force ad viewing - "Philips Electronics has done it again. Flush with heady optimism after successful products such as the digital compact cassette (DCC) and the super audio CD (SACD), the redoubtable European giant has developed a way to keep television free for the masses for the foreseeable future—a patent application for a device which prevents a user from changing the channel during commercials... The fundamental downside to merely forcing commercials to run unimpeded is that the viewer retains freedom of movement which would allow him or her to leave the room, cover the TV with a blanket, or eat or use a product in direct competition with an advertisement. For the propaganda to be most effective, the device needs to work in concert with the couch to prevent any unauthorized activity or movement while a commercial is running. Ideally, all phones in the vicinity would also be put on hold, and it would become impossible to deactivate the TV, even if unplugged."
With this and DVDs where they force you to watch ads, they still wonder why consumers flock to pirated products.
Everyone Loves the Cat - A pussy that consents to be on a leash can't be that evil.
Study: Mice Do Not Like Cheese - "A study made by the Manchester Metropolitan University has found that mice really don't like cheese, debunking the myth that was popularized in the cartoon show "Tom and Jerry.""
Language Evolution in the Digital Age - "Dictionaries are more used than ever and are nowhere near a downfall. It’s just that they’re now often digital as well as print. There are also few new authorities, there are mostly merely transformations of old authorities. (Even Wiktionary includes many thousands of definitions from an out-of-copyright edition of an early unabridged dictionary.)"
Parking is no joke as Italy's women sue over beer ad - "In a scene set a century ago, a young woman struggles to park her horse and carriage, while two beer-drinking, male, bystanders look on, laughing. The action cuts to the present and shows the same woman having trouble parking her car, eventually leaving it jutting into the road. Again she is watched by two smug men swigging from bottles of Peroni beer, as a voice-over remarks: "Fortunately some things don't change". For Italy's women, however, the joke has fallen flat. A group of female lawyers is making legal history by suing the beer company for being sexist and discriminatory."
I remember this ad, it was quite funny.
Post ID: 116073270698339713
Monday, October 09, 2006
On sabbatical till Friday.
Search Referrals:
jack smith + khalwat + raffles hotel
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EMMA WATSON POWER RANGER - Wth.
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bicuriousity explained - Why am I first?
smurf blog gic
"instant noodles" "grey hair" - I thought it was related to hair dropping, not hair greying.
"singapore army" vegetarian food
cast of pirates of carabinas - They need a new ride at Disneyland.
can i see emma watson naked - No.
SAF + CDF + Kim jung
pictures of JC girls upskirt singapore
"i hate carrot juice"
upskirt in sacred place pics
milk fetish rapidshare
nus cleavage pic - This would be hard to find.
"her chariot" fucking
"sex stories" ovulating - "She was ovulating that day and so felt hornier."
yan can cook obnoxious
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Toilet, withdraw, confidential, appear, porno
sexy stores breasts tits hanging while being milked
photos nus boys
does emma watson uses bracelet?
microeconomics tied into mlm
pros and cons of frosted shower door
singapore praised for IMF - Maybe by the Straits Times.
WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE MY FRESHMEN CCD CLASS MORE EXCITING?
topless sunbather google maps
dionysus thatcher blair rant religion engineer
pedophilia in noddy
t-shirt "not everything in holland is flat" - I hope someone bought it.
"my girlfriend is my computer"
secretgarden amputee
massive pubic hari
sex stories of brothers , sisters,and cosine malayalam language
skandal melayu - Patetik!
SAF weather CAT-1 hotline
crotch pressure naked female pictures pony
sweaty sexy armpit photos of aunties
strange ebay items "vibrating hand"
malay pussy tightening remedy
Screw Ups Tart n tiny dispenser
what to do when someone steals your cell phone
OCS only chaokeng survive
ultrathin sanitary pad volume absorbed - They need to do experiments too.
call me fuck you in johor
tidus "nice legs" - Crushing a video game character? Uhh.
girls and urinals
"nice neighbours" torrent porn
Anime female character "red jacket" gun mustache
artful pics of girls on the toilet
buttoning a cardigan
men living with gynaecomastia and wearing a bra
lesbians straped to chains and getting huge toys stuck in them while sucking huge dicks
charlie chiu's halal nederland - It's maybe 15% Halal.
list down the different chemicals that can be found in a sunsilk shampoo and identify the uses And disadvantages
s200spx ink tanks clog up - Ah, it's not just Third Party Ink. Damnit.
+depilator+nono
chicken in a biskit hurt my tongue
mai liao belgian daddy
fanfic kotor bastila breasts
cybernetic theory of wait times in an acute care emergency room
"what if god smoked cannabis" pronounce - Yes, it is a bit off.
purge or purging kruiden sin or guilt - ???
school shorts sex singapore
poem YOU CRASH INTO MY CERVIX LIKE THE ARABS CRASH INTO THE WORLD'S HEART
pink ranger has to pee power rangers
garbage sanitary pad rules in munich
oyster sauce haram
NUS orgy - Where ah?!
dragons are cannibals that have ate sexy bikinis
"raffles girls" online
chracteristics of a stock trader
recipe biskut nutella - Sedap.
strictly horny malay girls - As opposed to?
emma watson's moustache
beach volley ball singapore JC
cheesy mills and boon love story extract
Kimberly Harts dresses in the mighty morphin power rangers
schreech porno saved by the bell
university student massage guilt handjob
telling girlfriend you have pearly penile papules
how to find brothel in Flanders Square
alka seltzer pussy
red haired kid doing a dettol commercial
acjc making out
pictures of nude girl with electric toothbrush
Communion Wafer and Juice Sets singapore
singapore poly girls more sexy than jc girls
upskirt invasion
i got upskirted
bullshit "safety slogans"
what brand of pantyhose does emma watson wear?
pretty girls of acjc - Like Chinatsu Wakatsuki.
smu marketing lecturer molested
RECIPE FOR MODERN DAY BALDERDASH
designer "symbol of torment"
A pragmatist view of contemporary analytic philosophy - !@#$%^&*()
+clips +download +groped +train
anti-peta shirts
night train Brussels to Cinque Terra - Yeah right.
malaysian examination makes a generation of rote-learners,but not thinkers
recommended coolant for perodua kancil - Palm oil.
gallery "her enormous eyes" - Eye fetish?
if there's something wrong in the neighbourhood..who you're gona call.. - Master Chew? Seetoh Yih Pin?
vibrablade exercise
japanese jap AV porn fun torrent - Fun?
NJC no chio bus
emma watson dog
wear school uniform on weekends
where to buy clothes in italy cheap zara upim
heart joy honor skill handphone wallpaper
rapidshare - 7th ad 8th Famous Boxing Techniques of Shaolin
porno dan red fish
acjc girls + easy - Maybe the Straits Times can do something on this.
swallow sperm haram?
graph of sexual harassment in malaysia
Baileys Room Braless on the boat!
will raygold ever get caught? - *facepalm*
premarital sex: definition and prevention - They make it sound like a disease.
Did Hitler speak fluent Greek?
does nutella contain palm oil - !@#$
satanic meanings buttercup
ascii pictures moobs
gummi bears theme cantonese
dwarf, bestiality - No wonder dwarf tossing should be legalised.
riddle for lim bo seng
mundell-fleming IS-LM model with imperfect capital mobility - I should search for this myself.
ladies nape shaving
geneva particle detector "things to do before you die"
"ankle or knee socks" -tights
Japanese Tutor Big Tits teaches biology
saw some cjc students smoking singapore
Malaysia Truly asia lyrics
You should see the video of this cute little Swedish model where you get to see us do public nudity & flashing at the beach, I could not keep my eyes of her, so on the way home we went up a qu
Alka Seltzer Holy Spirit Object Lesson
i accidentally ate moldy
bak foong, pills, fertility
bearsex with girls - That might be more disgusting than bearsex with men.
"man's point of view" cancer breast pace blog
are tummy tucks haram
skeptic bible dionysius
nus arts degree economics regret - I can sympathise.
yellow power ranger pornstar - Just because she appeared in Another Teen Movie topless does not make her one!
christian apologetics sedona method emotional healing
acjc students sex+clips
modern day dong-song civilisation
how to make a cardboard songkok
" RGS girl" AND "sexy"
blog olive tree mediterranean singapore - My pasta beats the one done on the spot at their buffet.
pussy galore manchester traffic light party dress code
rgs miss piggy kermit the frog
bone china halal haram cutlery
truly scrumptious underwear
pink power ranger scandal "blowjob"
Google site search:
SACSAL
Search Referrals:
jack smith + khalwat + raffles hotel
film clips girls stripping clean no adware
zentai fashion week
emma watson's religion
EMMA WATSON POWER RANGER - Wth.
rgs school cheers low
virginity test gallery
free bdsm rome slaves torture arena
make-out-spots in ntu
acjc babes in uniform
charity undressing
"of weirdos and eccentrics" analyze - See? It's a valid GP essay topic!
singapore student fight & porn video
pussy cats in cracow
nanyang girls high war rumours
easter eggs little mermaid myths penis
Tasks really who I am pollo and you one vixen? He could be the contrary.....a times I pretend of being one stupid just in order to see until to that p
girls standing up to pee
Sarsaparilla Lycra Spandex
where to get roofinex
orgasm rgs
bicuriousity explained - Why am I first?
smurf blog gic
"instant noodles" "grey hair" - I thought it was related to hair dropping, not hair greying.
"singapore army" vegetarian food
cast of pirates of carabinas - They need a new ride at Disneyland.
can i see emma watson naked - No.
SAF + CDF + Kim jung
pictures of JC girls upskirt singapore
"i hate carrot juice"
upskirt in sacred place pics
milk fetish rapidshare
nus cleavage pic - This would be hard to find.
"her chariot" fucking
"sex stories" ovulating - "She was ovulating that day and so felt hornier."
yan can cook obnoxious
acjc skirt mini
rice krispie treats-science fair
Toilet, withdraw, confidential, appear, porno
sexy stores breasts tits hanging while being milked
photos nus boys
does emma watson uses bracelet?
microeconomics tied into mlm
pros and cons of frosted shower door
singapore praised for IMF - Maybe by the Straits Times.
WHAT CAN I DO TO MAKE MY FRESHMEN CCD CLASS MORE EXCITING?
topless sunbather google maps
dionysus thatcher blair rant religion engineer
pedophilia in noddy
t-shirt "not everything in holland is flat" - I hope someone bought it.
"my girlfriend is my computer"
secretgarden amputee
massive pubic hari
sex stories of brothers , sisters,and cosine malayalam language
skandal melayu - Patetik!
SAF weather CAT-1 hotline
crotch pressure naked female pictures pony
sweaty sexy armpit photos of aunties
strange ebay items "vibrating hand"
malay pussy tightening remedy
Screw Ups Tart n tiny dispenser
what to do when someone steals your cell phone
OCS only chaokeng survive
ultrathin sanitary pad volume absorbed - They need to do experiments too.
call me fuck you in johor
tidus "nice legs" - Crushing a video game character? Uhh.
girls and urinals
"nice neighbours" torrent porn
Anime female character "red jacket" gun mustache
artful pics of girls on the toilet
buttoning a cardigan
men living with gynaecomastia and wearing a bra
lesbians straped to chains and getting huge toys stuck in them while sucking huge dicks
charlie chiu's halal nederland - It's maybe 15% Halal.
list down the different chemicals that can be found in a sunsilk shampoo and identify the uses And disadvantages
s200spx ink tanks clog up - Ah, it's not just Third Party Ink. Damnit.
+depilator+nono
chicken in a biskit hurt my tongue
mai liao belgian daddy
fanfic kotor bastila breasts
cybernetic theory of wait times in an acute care emergency room
"what if god smoked cannabis" pronounce - Yes, it is a bit off.
purge or purging kruiden sin or guilt - ???
school shorts sex singapore
poem YOU CRASH INTO MY CERVIX LIKE THE ARABS CRASH INTO THE WORLD'S HEART
pink ranger has to pee power rangers
garbage sanitary pad rules in munich
oyster sauce haram
NUS orgy - Where ah?!
dragons are cannibals that have ate sexy bikinis
"raffles girls" online
chracteristics of a stock trader
recipe biskut nutella - Sedap.
strictly horny malay girls - As opposed to?
emma watson's moustache
beach volley ball singapore JC
cheesy mills and boon love story extract
Kimberly Harts dresses in the mighty morphin power rangers
schreech porno saved by the bell
university student massage guilt handjob
telling girlfriend you have pearly penile papules
how to find brothel in Flanders Square
alka seltzer pussy
red haired kid doing a dettol commercial
acjc making out
pictures of nude girl with electric toothbrush
Communion Wafer and Juice Sets singapore
singapore poly girls more sexy than jc girls
upskirt invasion
i got upskirted
bullshit "safety slogans"
what brand of pantyhose does emma watson wear?
pretty girls of acjc - Like Chinatsu Wakatsuki.
smu marketing lecturer molested
RECIPE FOR MODERN DAY BALDERDASH
designer "symbol of torment"
A pragmatist view of contemporary analytic philosophy - !@#$%^&*()
+clips +download +groped +train
anti-peta shirts
night train Brussels to Cinque Terra - Yeah right.
malaysian examination makes a generation of rote-learners,but not thinkers
recommended coolant for perodua kancil - Palm oil.
gallery "her enormous eyes" - Eye fetish?
if there's something wrong in the neighbourhood..who you're gona call.. - Master Chew? Seetoh Yih Pin?
vibrablade exercise
japanese jap AV porn fun torrent - Fun?
NJC no chio bus
emma watson dog
wear school uniform on weekends
where to buy clothes in italy cheap zara upim
heart joy honor skill handphone wallpaper
rapidshare - 7th ad 8th Famous Boxing Techniques of Shaolin
porno dan red fish
acjc girls + easy - Maybe the Straits Times can do something on this.
swallow sperm haram?
graph of sexual harassment in malaysia
Baileys Room Braless on the boat!
will raygold ever get caught? - *facepalm*
premarital sex: definition and prevention - They make it sound like a disease.
Did Hitler speak fluent Greek?
does nutella contain palm oil - !@#$
satanic meanings buttercup
ascii pictures moobs
gummi bears theme cantonese
dwarf, bestiality - No wonder dwarf tossing should be legalised.
riddle for lim bo seng
mundell-fleming IS-LM model with imperfect capital mobility - I should search for this myself.
ladies nape shaving
geneva particle detector "things to do before you die"
"ankle or knee socks" -tights
Japanese Tutor Big Tits teaches biology
saw some cjc students smoking singapore
Malaysia Truly asia lyrics
You should see the video of this cute little Swedish model where you get to see us do public nudity & flashing at the beach, I could not keep my eyes of her, so on the way home we went up a qu
Alka Seltzer Holy Spirit Object Lesson
i accidentally ate moldy
bak foong, pills, fertility
bearsex with girls - That might be more disgusting than bearsex with men.
"man's point of view" cancer breast pace blog
are tummy tucks haram
skeptic bible dionysius
nus arts degree economics regret - I can sympathise.
yellow power ranger pornstar - Just because she appeared in Another Teen Movie topless does not make her one!
christian apologetics sedona method emotional healing
acjc students sex+clips
modern day dong-song civilisation
how to make a cardboard songkok
" RGS girl" AND "sexy"
blog olive tree mediterranean singapore - My pasta beats the one done on the spot at their buffet.
pussy galore manchester traffic light party dress code
rgs miss piggy kermit the frog
bone china halal haram cutlery
truly scrumptious underwear
pink power ranger scandal "blowjob"
Google site search:
SACSAL
Post ID: 116040814672962513
July Trip
19/7 - In Transit (Italy-France)
Let's Go said Italian trains were efficient. I don't want to see what they consider an inefficient train system.
I was in the train station before 7am, and in the cafe everyone else was having a coffee (in the smallest plastic cups I'd ever seen - Turkish coffee size but in plastic, which I didn't know they made) or at the most a fruit juice for breakfast. I had a granite. It was a good deal - €1,50 for half a pint (it said so on the cup). The cashier was giving me odd looks. I think all the people were laughing at me, but heck - it was my last granite in Italy.
A stand at the train station was selling: "Top Anal" (the same series that gave us "Top Gay", perchance?), "Prostituta Miliardaria", "Transex incontri" and "Lesbian girls" (the cover looked like it had CG jap girls on it). Even the Pope can't stop this filth!
There was a young couple in the train with an older woman (their older sister?) who took pictures of the both of them. Then the younger girl took the camera and snapped a picture of herself in her seat. Camwhoring is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
A sign on a corridor in the train: "Smoking is not permitted on this train. Smoking is not permitted on all trains. Transgressors will be subject to a 7 euro fine. This provision applies regardless of any other (even contrary) indications that may be displayed in the coaches."
At Albenga, parts of the beach were full of umbrellas and people. I guess it was part of the Italian riviera. The sea was shimmering blue and boundless stretching to the horizon. Its expanse was broken occasionally by a yacht, verdant island or speedboat. I was amazed at how many people were free to go on vacation in July/August. Don't they need to work? Maybe it's too hot to work in summer, and people there only get to enjoy the sun, sea, sand and... swimming for 3 months a year so they seize the opportunity when they can; anyway the concept of a summer holiday doesn't work out in the land of Eternal Summer.
A 14 year old girl was wearing a yellow T-shirt with cap sleeves and the words "Hope. Faith. Love." I should get a customised one which reads: "Prudence. Temperance. Fortitude. Justice."
Most French trains also need to be booked - even non-TGV (TGV is the ultra-quick express line) ones, unless they're the slow or intra-regional ones. Gah. Why can't they be like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium where you can just hop onto trains? It'd be so much easier to get my brother-in-law to drive me around, and someone might finally come in useful due to French knowledge.
The Italian and French rivieras are pretty much the same, with sun, sand, sea and... swimming. Though the part between Nice and Marseille is nicer, having fewer people. nice brown rock formating (?)
I checked the automated ticket machines at Marseille St Charles, but they were being wonky. I checked out the trains from Marseille to Arles and Marseille to Nimes the next day and later in the day, but they seemed to claim they were fully booked (later I realised "Reservation not possible" meant that seats on those trains were not sold out but rather not reservable). They also refused to accept my credit cards (I didn't have a Eurocard Mastercard, but surely my Visa should've worked!) The train timings were also quite weird, so I decided to skip Marseille (I only really wanted to see the Basilica, and maybe the islands, and this time I'd have more time for Nimes/Arles) and spend 3 nights in Nimes. Oddly enough, the Visa worked at the ticket office.
France was the first European country I'd come across this year with a youth discount on intra-country travel (though for some reason I didn't qualify for it when I bought the ticket in Milan). For the rest, the discount applied only on crossing borders. Conceivably, it *might* be cheaper to buy a ticket to travel further (thus crossing a border) to get a discount for the rest of the trip.
Most European train tickets are so big (airline boarding pass size). The Dutch are the best, having small slips of paper which are environmentally friendly.
2 French girls were doing maths beside me on the train. One was staring at the first page of a textbook that said "lnes" and instructed on how to solve simultaneous equations with 3 variables. Another was annotating a book with a pen. It was July! Why were they so kiasu?
A young French couple went into the area between train carriages and stopped in the gangway and kissed. Then the (transparent) carriage doors closed around them. Tsk.
19/7 - In Transit (Italy-France)
Let's Go said Italian trains were efficient. I don't want to see what they consider an inefficient train system.
I was in the train station before 7am, and in the cafe everyone else was having a coffee (in the smallest plastic cups I'd ever seen - Turkish coffee size but in plastic, which I didn't know they made) or at the most a fruit juice for breakfast. I had a granite. It was a good deal - €1,50 for half a pint (it said so on the cup). The cashier was giving me odd looks. I think all the people were laughing at me, but heck - it was my last granite in Italy.
A stand at the train station was selling: "Top Anal" (the same series that gave us "Top Gay", perchance?), "Prostituta Miliardaria", "Transex incontri" and "Lesbian girls" (the cover looked like it had CG jap girls on it). Even the Pope can't stop this filth!
There was a young couple in the train with an older woman (their older sister?) who took pictures of the both of them. Then the younger girl took the camera and snapped a picture of herself in her seat. Camwhoring is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
A sign on a corridor in the train: "Smoking is not permitted on this train. Smoking is not permitted on all trains. Transgressors will be subject to a 7 euro fine. This provision applies regardless of any other (even contrary) indications that may be displayed in the coaches."
At Albenga, parts of the beach were full of umbrellas and people. I guess it was part of the Italian riviera. The sea was shimmering blue and boundless stretching to the horizon. Its expanse was broken occasionally by a yacht, verdant island or speedboat. I was amazed at how many people were free to go on vacation in July/August. Don't they need to work? Maybe it's too hot to work in summer, and people there only get to enjoy the sun, sea, sand and... swimming for 3 months a year so they seize the opportunity when they can; anyway the concept of a summer holiday doesn't work out in the land of Eternal Summer.
A 14 year old girl was wearing a yellow T-shirt with cap sleeves and the words "Hope. Faith. Love." I should get a customised one which reads: "Prudence. Temperance. Fortitude. Justice."
Most French trains also need to be booked - even non-TGV (TGV is the ultra-quick express line) ones, unless they're the slow or intra-regional ones. Gah. Why can't they be like Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium where you can just hop onto trains? It'd be so much easier to get my brother-in-law to drive me around, and someone might finally come in useful due to French knowledge.
The Italian and French rivieras are pretty much the same, with sun, sand, sea and... swimming. Though the part between Nice and Marseille is nicer, having fewer people. nice brown rock formating (?)
I checked the automated ticket machines at Marseille St Charles, but they were being wonky. I checked out the trains from Marseille to Arles and Marseille to Nimes the next day and later in the day, but they seemed to claim they were fully booked (later I realised "Reservation not possible" meant that seats on those trains were not sold out but rather not reservable). They also refused to accept my credit cards (I didn't have a Eurocard Mastercard, but surely my Visa should've worked!) The train timings were also quite weird, so I decided to skip Marseille (I only really wanted to see the Basilica, and maybe the islands, and this time I'd have more time for Nimes/Arles) and spend 3 nights in Nimes. Oddly enough, the Visa worked at the ticket office.
France was the first European country I'd come across this year with a youth discount on intra-country travel (though for some reason I didn't qualify for it when I bought the ticket in Milan). For the rest, the discount applied only on crossing borders. Conceivably, it *might* be cheaper to buy a ticket to travel further (thus crossing a border) to get a discount for the rest of the trip.
Most European train tickets are so big (airline boarding pass size). The Dutch are the best, having small slips of paper which are environmentally friendly.
2 French girls were doing maths beside me on the train. One was staring at the first page of a textbook that said "lnes" and instructed on how to solve simultaneous equations with 3 variables. Another was annotating a book with a pen. It was July! Why were they so kiasu?
A young French couple went into the area between train carriages and stopped in the gangway and kissed. Then the (transparent) carriage doors closed around them. Tsk.
Post ID: 115987721784905860
"Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself." - Peter da Silva
***
MFM: the logical fallacies popping up in the calculus assignments I'm grading are driving me nuts. I'm starting to think elementary logic should be a compulsory course for everyone.
Me: wait wait
how does logic appear in calculus?
MFM: proofs
Me: uhh
please give me an example
this is fascinating
MFM: calculus in america is not about calculating
"if x exists when y exists, then y does not exist when x does not exist"
Me: this seems rather abstract
examples would be nice
MFM: er, replace x with lim(x->c)f(x)
and y with lim(x->c)g(x)
don't be silly, it's just the classic negation of the antecedent fallacy
correctly, if x implies y, then not y imples not x
but not x does not imply not y
but really the most endemic problem is to assume the result they're supposed to prove
Me: you need an if and only if somewhere
anyway that's why there're so many science students in my logic class
hurr hurr
they've done the maths version of logic
Someone: i don't trust internet resources
people may have easily come up with some rubbish online to lure people away from christianity
evidence that may not be real
Me: I don't trust internet resources
people may have easily come up with some rubbish online to lure people away from the PAP
evidence that may not be real
[Addendum: Substitute also the Communist Party of China and Scientology]
Someone else on Zwiebel-Sahne Hähnchen: i just realised that u can never get that packet of mix in singapore even though singapore has maggi stuff
stupid halal requirements
singapore's maggi can only be halal
that's like so discriminating
sucks...
i wanted to buy some knorr condiments for pork but cannot find any
because the knorr we get here all have to be halal too
shucks~
stupid halal requirement
it's so unfair!!!
it's discrimination!!!
Someone: haha yeah and your standards are too high for malaysia eh.
oh but i seriously cannot stand malaysian pringles. >< thats about the only thing though.
oh yknow there's like a little supermarket in my condo estate. and the pringles, there's one shelf labelled, PRINGLES, and one labelled ORIGINAL PRINGLES FROM THE US.
and the pringles one is always full. but the other one runs out of flavours so quickly. :(
Someone else: i'm off to do more constructive things
i have an assignment to do
therefore, i will now proceed to play computer games
Someone: you have a very idea of what postmodernism is, all out of line of really existing postmodernism
then again i don't blame you
99.9% of people who claim to be postmodernists or acquainted with postmod theory in casual conversation have no idea what they're talking about, and give an oversimplified, distorted representation
like "there is no truth
"we can never be sure of anything"
a true postmodernist NEVER claims to be one
like foucault. he insisted he was never a foucauldian theorist
99.9% of christians take that perverted, distorted idea of postmodernism and then claim that postmodernism is destroying the world, etc
simple. the idea that there is no truth... is very threatening to some christians
that and cultural relativism
and of course, historicism
that the truth is not literal, that meanings can change and be lost over time, that social translation and triangulation is needed to *interpret* the bible... that is extremely threatening to some christians
Someone else: I tried once
two periods back
Me: wow you're like timing by the moon
women have a strange relationship with the moon :P
Someone else: yeah I know
i was going to say "two moons ago"
someone speculated that women used to cycle with the moon
which sort of connects with the 28 day thing
Me: bah
cock lah
Someone else: maybe when the moon is full special magneto-kinetic forces unite women and the moon in a wonderful blood dripping exercise
Me: blood moon
then werewolves change form too
Someone else: oh oh that's where the werewolf thing stemmed from
it's actually a euphemism for women and periods I suppose
Me: wth
A nick I saw: "support the arts. sleep with a musician."
***
MFM: the logical fallacies popping up in the calculus assignments I'm grading are driving me nuts. I'm starting to think elementary logic should be a compulsory course for everyone.
Me: wait wait
how does logic appear in calculus?
MFM: proofs
Me: uhh
please give me an example
this is fascinating
MFM: calculus in america is not about calculating
"if x exists when y exists, then y does not exist when x does not exist"
Me: this seems rather abstract
examples would be nice
MFM: er, replace x with lim(x->c)f(x)
and y with lim(x->c)g(x)
don't be silly, it's just the classic negation of the antecedent fallacy
correctly, if x implies y, then not y imples not x
but not x does not imply not y
but really the most endemic problem is to assume the result they're supposed to prove
Me: you need an if and only if somewhere
anyway that's why there're so many science students in my logic class
hurr hurr
they've done the maths version of logic
Someone: i don't trust internet resources
people may have easily come up with some rubbish online to lure people away from christianity
evidence that may not be real
Me: I don't trust internet resources
people may have easily come up with some rubbish online to lure people away from the PAP
evidence that may not be real
[Addendum: Substitute also the Communist Party of China and Scientology]
Someone else on Zwiebel-Sahne Hähnchen: i just realised that u can never get that packet of mix in singapore even though singapore has maggi stuff
stupid halal requirements
singapore's maggi can only be halal
that's like so discriminating
sucks...
i wanted to buy some knorr condiments for pork but cannot find any
because the knorr we get here all have to be halal too
shucks~
stupid halal requirement
it's so unfair!!!
it's discrimination!!!
Someone: haha yeah and your standards are too high for malaysia eh.
oh but i seriously cannot stand malaysian pringles. >< thats about the only thing though.
oh yknow there's like a little supermarket in my condo estate. and the pringles, there's one shelf labelled, PRINGLES, and one labelled ORIGINAL PRINGLES FROM THE US.
and the pringles one is always full. but the other one runs out of flavours so quickly. :(
Someone else: i'm off to do more constructive things
i have an assignment to do
therefore, i will now proceed to play computer games
Someone: you have a very idea of what postmodernism is, all out of line of really existing postmodernism
then again i don't blame you
99.9% of people who claim to be postmodernists or acquainted with postmod theory in casual conversation have no idea what they're talking about, and give an oversimplified, distorted representation
like "there is no truth
"we can never be sure of anything"
a true postmodernist NEVER claims to be one
like foucault. he insisted he was never a foucauldian theorist
99.9% of christians take that perverted, distorted idea of postmodernism and then claim that postmodernism is destroying the world, etc
simple. the idea that there is no truth... is very threatening to some christians
that and cultural relativism
and of course, historicism
that the truth is not literal, that meanings can change and be lost over time, that social translation and triangulation is needed to *interpret* the bible... that is extremely threatening to some christians
Someone else: I tried once
two periods back
Me: wow you're like timing by the moon
women have a strange relationship with the moon :P
Someone else: yeah I know
i was going to say "two moons ago"
someone speculated that women used to cycle with the moon
which sort of connects with the 28 day thing
Me: bah
cock lah
Someone else: maybe when the moon is full special magneto-kinetic forces unite women and the moon in a wonderful blood dripping exercise
Me: blood moon
then werewolves change form too
Someone else: oh oh that's where the werewolf thing stemmed from
it's actually a euphemism for women and periods I suppose
Me: wth
A nick I saw: "support the arts. sleep with a musician."
Post ID: 116032595289783371
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Me:2 male friends and I were at the terrace at vivocity
we were practically the only non-couples there
Someone: what is vivocity is it a gay club
Weiyi, HWMNBN and I went to Vivocity last night to watch Scoop. It's obviously not ready for prime time yet. Half the stores are unopened, there're holes in the ceiling and there're dirt tracks on some pillars and floors. I hope it gets better by 1 Dec (their real launch); it's so far from ready it's not even funny.
But then there're some problems which will not (can not) be resolved before then - the laminate of the floor tiles is poor quality (contributing to the dirt tracks), it has the most number of annoying sparkly dots embedded in the floor that I've ever seen and the carpark surfacing is shitty.
The GV there also sucks. We had trouble finding our cinema hall; they have halls 1-12, and the sign hanging from the ceiling says to follow it to reach halls 2-11 and the Europa and Gold Class halls. Actually the Gold Class hall is Hall 1 and Europa Hall is Hall 12. We wasted 2 minutes dawdling because of the damn signage and so missed more of the movie than we should've.
On the up-side, there's free parking.
When Woody Allen came onscreen in the Cock Car, everyone started laughing. See? It's not just me!
we were practically the only non-couples there
Someone: what is vivocity is it a gay club
Weiyi, HWMNBN and I went to Vivocity last night to watch Scoop. It's obviously not ready for prime time yet. Half the stores are unopened, there're holes in the ceiling and there're dirt tracks on some pillars and floors. I hope it gets better by 1 Dec (their real launch); it's so far from ready it's not even funny.
But then there're some problems which will not (can not) be resolved before then - the laminate of the floor tiles is poor quality (contributing to the dirt tracks), it has the most number of annoying sparkly dots embedded in the floor that I've ever seen and the carpark surfacing is shitty.
The GV there also sucks. We had trouble finding our cinema hall; they have halls 1-12, and the sign hanging from the ceiling says to follow it to reach halls 2-11 and the Europa and Gold Class halls. Actually the Gold Class hall is Hall 1 and Europa Hall is Hall 12. We wasted 2 minutes dawdling because of the damn signage and so missed more of the movie than we should've.
On the up-side, there's free parking.
When Woody Allen came onscreen in the Cock Car, everyone started laughing. See? It's not just me!
Post ID: 116029252771130133
Saturday, October 07, 2006
"Consience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does." - Evan Esar
***
MFM: it's not just fundies
everyone has cognitive dissonances of one kind or another
by the way, have you ever played 'battleground god'?
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm
I did much worse than I expected
revealed previously unseen dissonances in my belief system
You are consistent in applying the principle that it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity this conviction. The problem is that it seems you have to accept that people might be justified in their belief that terrible things are right. You have agreed that the rapist is justified in believing that he carries out the will of God, and in an earlier answer you indicated that you think that God defines what is good and what is evil. Therefore, to be consistent, you must think the rapist is justified in believing that he acts morally when he acts on his inner conviction. Hence, you bite the bullet and justify the rapist.
anyway, I said taht it's ok to base one's beliefs on solely a firm inner conviction because that's really the only way we can make any decisions at all instead of being in constant philosophical aporia
with the result that I had to admit it was ok for the rapist to rape based on a firm inner conviction.
Me: yeah it is
which is why fundies are talking rubbish when they say god's commands are perfect, glorify abraham for isaac and acquit deanna laney on grounds of insanity
http://www.courttv.com/trials/laney/
MFM: you're amazing. like the panda's thumb bloggers
determinedly shooting fish in a barrel
Me: the sad thing is that there're so many fish to shoot
and so many barrels presented
the intellectual battle has been lost by the fundies
but the fact is that the battle for people's minds has not been won
anyhow this recent spurt has been incited by a fundie emailing me
before that I was rather placid.
look at it this way: if everyone believed the earth was flat, the thing to do would be to convince them that the earth was round
even if we all already knew the earth was round
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" (or words to that effect
MFM: what noble concern
Me: one does one's best
I like to save souls
MFM: the main thing that annoys me about fundies isn't the possible triumph of evil, but the sheer despicability of wilful ignorance and/or stupidity
Me: IAWTC
as I told someone else, I don't mind that so much. admit your religion is irrational. I don't mind.
but when they claim it's logical then commit intellectual suicide - that's what I simply cannot stand
as someone said "the parallels between your relationship to truth and other people's to god are fascinating"
MFM: well this particular aspect is more about methodology than truth. an unthinking atheist is just as bad as an unthinking theist
Me: >This could go on forever. I don't know how to end it. He made our
>minds, the minds that use logic. He made logic and will not be stumped
>by it. We are the ones (or should I say I am the one since you've 'seen
>the light') who is stumped.
Bland assertion does not an argument make. You just claim things without giving me reasons to believe them (ad hoc fallacy).
"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.""
Someone: sigh. you're debating with a fundie? again?! where did your energy come from? can you spare me some so that i'll not run out of it while going round the island for my current job?
enjoy your fun in [using fundie speak] throwing pearls before swine.
***
MFM: it's not just fundies
everyone has cognitive dissonances of one kind or another
by the way, have you ever played 'battleground god'?
http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/god.htm
I did much worse than I expected
revealed previously unseen dissonances in my belief system
You are consistent in applying the principle that it is justifiable to base one's beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction, regardless of the external evidence, or lack of it, for the truth or falsity this conviction. The problem is that it seems you have to accept that people might be justified in their belief that terrible things are right. You have agreed that the rapist is justified in believing that he carries out the will of God, and in an earlier answer you indicated that you think that God defines what is good and what is evil. Therefore, to be consistent, you must think the rapist is justified in believing that he acts morally when he acts on his inner conviction. Hence, you bite the bullet and justify the rapist.
anyway, I said taht it's ok to base one's beliefs on solely a firm inner conviction because that's really the only way we can make any decisions at all instead of being in constant philosophical aporia
with the result that I had to admit it was ok for the rapist to rape based on a firm inner conviction.
Me: yeah it is
which is why fundies are talking rubbish when they say god's commands are perfect, glorify abraham for isaac and acquit deanna laney on grounds of insanity
http://www.courttv.com/trials/laney/
MFM: you're amazing. like the panda's thumb bloggers
determinedly shooting fish in a barrel
Me: the sad thing is that there're so many fish to shoot
and so many barrels presented
the intellectual battle has been lost by the fundies
but the fact is that the battle for people's minds has not been won
anyhow this recent spurt has been incited by a fundie emailing me
before that I was rather placid.
look at it this way: if everyone believed the earth was flat, the thing to do would be to convince them that the earth was round
even if we all already knew the earth was round
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" (or words to that effect
MFM: what noble concern
Me: one does one's best
I like to save souls
MFM: the main thing that annoys me about fundies isn't the possible triumph of evil, but the sheer despicability of wilful ignorance and/or stupidity
Me: IAWTC
as I told someone else, I don't mind that so much. admit your religion is irrational. I don't mind.
but when they claim it's logical then commit intellectual suicide - that's what I simply cannot stand
as someone said "the parallels between your relationship to truth and other people's to god are fascinating"
MFM: well this particular aspect is more about methodology than truth. an unthinking atheist is just as bad as an unthinking theist
Me: >This could go on forever. I don't know how to end it. He made our
>minds, the minds that use logic. He made logic and will not be stumped
>by it. We are the ones (or should I say I am the one since you've 'seen
>the light') who is stumped.
Bland assertion does not an argument make. You just claim things without giving me reasons to believe them (ad hoc fallacy).
"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.""
Someone: sigh. you're debating with a fundie? again?! where did your energy come from? can you spare me some so that i'll not run out of it while going round the island for my current job?
enjoy your fun in [using fundie speak] throwing pearls before swine.
Post ID: 116020040694162004
Aha, I've just had a brainwave.
A god defining itself and its actions as good (as opposed to being good due to complying with some independent standard of good-ness) is about as meaningful as a court ruling affirming the absolute, unconditional and unqualified probity of the entire judiciary to which it belongs.
A god defining itself and its actions as good (as opposed to being good due to complying with some independent standard of good-ness) is about as meaningful as a court ruling affirming the absolute, unconditional and unqualified probity of the entire judiciary to which it belongs.
Post ID: 116019331536718018
"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." - Samuel Butler
***
Someone: i met someone in bkk who reminded me incredibly of you
except for one thing
he's Christian
he was critical
unembarrassed
atas
supremely confident
the kind you want to kick in the bum sometimes just to shut him up :D
Someone else: NJ sucks
my 2 yrs of JC are e darkest years of my life
it felt and looked like i was in a prison then
just look at the barbed wire surrounding the compound of NJ
Someone: there is a ladies toilet that i like to use in the adjoining building to mine. our building toilet on my floor only has 2 cubes and one is currently broken down; the other has very high traffic since it's next to a lecture hall. the strange thing is that the toilet i like to use is never used by anyone wanting to use the toilet. it's always girls walking in and out to check their hair in the mirror, brush their teeth or just futzing with their appearance.
but the nice thing of course is that there is never piss on the seat and toilet paper aplenty.
Me: If you get laid will you change your handle?
the virgin undergrad: i would probably change my handle under 2 circumstances, either when i graduate, or when i get laid.
and since i'm probably gonna graduate in 6 months' or 1 year and a half's time, and if you find me changing my handle between that time, then yes, you would know that someone out there is a very happy man indeed..=)
***
Seen on Young Republic:
A: "The engineering college here is full of girls too! The math department, however... Even in a large lecture where there's a couple of girls, the seats around them are all mysteriously filled. The ratio in most my math classes is somewhere around 0.1, less probably, and sometimes 0. I wonder what the ratio in NUS math is..."
Me: Friend: My friend in Chemical Engineering tells me that there are actually more girls than guys in there.
Me: But the quality all like you lah right?
Friend: *pokes me in the tummy*
Me: *squeal/giggle*
*Everyone within 40 metres looks at me*
There was a silly thing about how some people objected to my description of Hitler as a "Great Leader" (like how we have Great Criminals, and how others popularly acknowledged as "Great" Leaders had plenty of skeletons in their closets too).
Apropos: "Charlemagne, like Hitler, massacred Jews and Pagans. But Charlemagne was a great man and Hitler was a horrible man - this is because of something called perspective."
***
Someone: i met someone in bkk who reminded me incredibly of you
except for one thing
he's Christian
he was critical
unembarrassed
atas
supremely confident
the kind you want to kick in the bum sometimes just to shut him up :D
Someone else: NJ sucks
my 2 yrs of JC are e darkest years of my life
it felt and looked like i was in a prison then
just look at the barbed wire surrounding the compound of NJ
Someone: there is a ladies toilet that i like to use in the adjoining building to mine. our building toilet on my floor only has 2 cubes and one is currently broken down; the other has very high traffic since it's next to a lecture hall. the strange thing is that the toilet i like to use is never used by anyone wanting to use the toilet. it's always girls walking in and out to check their hair in the mirror, brush their teeth or just futzing with their appearance.
but the nice thing of course is that there is never piss on the seat and toilet paper aplenty.
Me: If you get laid will you change your handle?
the virgin undergrad: i would probably change my handle under 2 circumstances, either when i graduate, or when i get laid.
and since i'm probably gonna graduate in 6 months' or 1 year and a half's time, and if you find me changing my handle between that time, then yes, you would know that someone out there is a very happy man indeed..=)
***
Seen on Young Republic:
A: "The engineering college here is full of girls too! The math department, however... Even in a large lecture where there's a couple of girls, the seats around them are all mysteriously filled. The ratio in most my math classes is somewhere around 0.1, less probably, and sometimes 0. I wonder what the ratio in NUS math is..."
Me: Friend: My friend in Chemical Engineering tells me that there are actually more girls than guys in there.
Me: But the quality all like you lah right?
Friend: *pokes me in the tummy*
Me: *squeal/giggle*
*Everyone within 40 metres looks at me*
There was a silly thing about how some people objected to my description of Hitler as a "Great Leader" (like how we have Great Criminals, and how others popularly acknowledged as "Great" Leaders had plenty of skeletons in their closets too).
Apropos: "Charlemagne, like Hitler, massacred Jews and Pagans. But Charlemagne was a great man and Hitler was a horrible man - this is because of something called perspective."
Post ID: 116015344175922653
Friday, October 06, 2006
"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes." - James Feibleman
***
Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE; PINKER VS. SPELKE, A DEBATE
"[Addendum: It is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism. Anyone who takes an honest interest in science has to be prepared for the facts on a given issue to come out either way. And that makes it essential that we not hold the ideals of feminism hostage to the latest findings from the lab or field. Otherwise, if the findings come out as showing a sex difference, one would either have to say, "I guess sex discrimination wasn't so bad after all," or else furiously suppress or distort the findings so as to preserve the ideal. The truth cannot be sexist. Whatever the facts turn out to be, they should not be taken to compromise the core of feminism...]
Three-dimensional mental transformations: the ability to determine whether the drawings in each of these pairs the same 3-dimensional shape. Again I'll appeal to a meta-analysis, this one containing 286 data sets and 100,000 subjects. The authors conclude, "we have specified a number of tests that show highly significant sex differences that are stable across age, at least after puberty, and have not decreased in recent years." Now, as I mentioned, for some kinds of spatial ability, the advantage goes to women, but in "mental rotation,"spatial perception," and "spatial visualization" the advantage goes to men. [Ed: Doubtless this must be because boys are told (only after puberty) that they are good at mental rotation, spatial perception and spatial visualization, but girls are told (also only after puberty) that they are bad at them.]...
The idea that there are cultures out there somewhere in which everything is the reverse of here turns out to be an academic legend. In his survey of the anthropological literature called Human Universals, the anthropologist Donald Brown points out that in all cultures men and women are seen as having different natures; that there is a greater involvement of women in direct child care; more competitiveness in various measures for men than for women; and a greater spatial range traveled by men compared to by women...
It is said that there is a technical term for people who believe that little boys and little girls are born indistinguishable and are molded into their natures by parental socialization. The term is "childless."...
There's an irony in these discussion of bias. When we test people in the cognitive psychology lab, and we don't call these base rates "gender," we applaud people when they apply them. If people apply the statistics of a group to an individual case, we call it rational Bayesian reasoning, and congratulate ourselves for getting them to overcome the cognitive illusion of base rate neglect. But when people do the same thing in the case of gender, we treat Bayesian reasoning as a cognitive flaw and base-rate neglect as rational!"
The thing with the most ardent advocates of political correctness is that they insist on extremes. For example, this group insists that gender misrepresentation in science is entirely due to discrimination rather than innate factors. OTOH, those who maintain that there're innate factors explaining this readily admit that there're sociological factors involved.
Similar phenomena can be observed in other fields, for example Rape and Power. The consensus in the literature seems to be that it is 100% power, but those who take the opposite view do not say it is 0% power.
I have only the vaguest familiarity with the literature on colonialism and its effects, but I suspect there are many with the view that all the failings of the current African states (for instance) are due to the legacies of colonialism (though maybe some will grant that geography is also a factor).
Addendum: Related PC rant
***
Edge: THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE; PINKER VS. SPELKE, A DEBATE
"[Addendum: It is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable. They are not the same thing. Indeed, distinguishing them is essential to protecting the core of feminism. Anyone who takes an honest interest in science has to be prepared for the facts on a given issue to come out either way. And that makes it essential that we not hold the ideals of feminism hostage to the latest findings from the lab or field. Otherwise, if the findings come out as showing a sex difference, one would either have to say, "I guess sex discrimination wasn't so bad after all," or else furiously suppress or distort the findings so as to preserve the ideal. The truth cannot be sexist. Whatever the facts turn out to be, they should not be taken to compromise the core of feminism...]
Three-dimensional mental transformations: the ability to determine whether the drawings in each of these pairs the same 3-dimensional shape. Again I'll appeal to a meta-analysis, this one containing 286 data sets and 100,000 subjects. The authors conclude, "we have specified a number of tests that show highly significant sex differences that are stable across age, at least after puberty, and have not decreased in recent years." Now, as I mentioned, for some kinds of spatial ability, the advantage goes to women, but in "mental rotation,"spatial perception," and "spatial visualization" the advantage goes to men. [Ed: Doubtless this must be because boys are told (only after puberty) that they are good at mental rotation, spatial perception and spatial visualization, but girls are told (also only after puberty) that they are bad at them.]...
The idea that there are cultures out there somewhere in which everything is the reverse of here turns out to be an academic legend. In his survey of the anthropological literature called Human Universals, the anthropologist Donald Brown points out that in all cultures men and women are seen as having different natures; that there is a greater involvement of women in direct child care; more competitiveness in various measures for men than for women; and a greater spatial range traveled by men compared to by women...
It is said that there is a technical term for people who believe that little boys and little girls are born indistinguishable and are molded into their natures by parental socialization. The term is "childless."...
There's an irony in these discussion of bias. When we test people in the cognitive psychology lab, and we don't call these base rates "gender," we applaud people when they apply them. If people apply the statistics of a group to an individual case, we call it rational Bayesian reasoning, and congratulate ourselves for getting them to overcome the cognitive illusion of base rate neglect. But when people do the same thing in the case of gender, we treat Bayesian reasoning as a cognitive flaw and base-rate neglect as rational!"
The thing with the most ardent advocates of political correctness is that they insist on extremes. For example, this group insists that gender misrepresentation in science is entirely due to discrimination rather than innate factors. OTOH, those who maintain that there're innate factors explaining this readily admit that there're sociological factors involved.
Similar phenomena can be observed in other fields, for example Rape and Power. The consensus in the literature seems to be that it is 100% power, but those who take the opposite view do not say it is 0% power.
I have only the vaguest familiarity with the literature on colonialism and its effects, but I suspect there are many with the view that all the failings of the current African states (for instance) are due to the legacies of colonialism (though maybe some will grant that geography is also a factor).
Addendum: Related PC rant
Post ID: 116014928950991397
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