"I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately." - George Carlin
***
Now is the time for a revolution in economic thought
"Consider the following passage:
“Most economic theorists have been going down the wrong track. When economic models fail, they are seldom thrown away. Rather they are ‘fixed' - amended, qualified, particularised, expanded and complicated.
“Bit by bit, from a bad seed a big but sickly tree is built with glue, nails, screws and scaffolding. Conventional economics assumes the financial system is a linear, continuous, rational machine and these false assumptions are built into the risk models used by many of the world's banks. As a result, the odds of financial ruin in a free global market economy have been grossly underestimated. By using such methods there is no limit to how bad a bank's losses can get. Its own bankruptcy is the least of the worries; it will default on its obligations to other banks - and so the losses will spread from one inter-linked financial house to another. Only forceful action by regulators to put a firewall round the sickest firms will stop the crisis spreading. But bad news tends to come in flocks and a bank that weathers one crisis may not survive a second or a third.”
This uncannily precise description of the present crisis above was not written by an economist... Modern economists were inherently incapable of understanding such a problem because they assumed that investors were “rational” and markets “efficient”.
These assumptions led inevitably to disaster once they were blown apart. The author who came so close to understanding the true causes of the present crisis was not an economist but a mathematician.
Benoît Mandelbrot, a towering figure of 20th-century science, who invented fractal geometry and pioneered the mathematical analysis of chaos and complex systems...
At the other end of the academic spectrum, we find economists treating ideas from sociology, psychology or philosophy with the same derision and disdain. George Soros is no mathematician like Mandelbrot, but he has repeatedly demonstrated far better understanding of how market economies work than any professional economist by using psychological and philosophical ideas. His books have explained convincingly how false beliefs among investors can create self-reinforcing boom-bust cycles of exactly the kind afflicting the world today. But the reaction to these ideas has been the same as to Mandelbrot's: a complacent refusal among academic economists, regulators and central bankers even to think seriously about approaches that challenge the central orthodoxies of modern economics: that “efficient” markets inhabited by “rational” investors send price signals which, in some sense, are always right...
A control theory approach, used by serious mathematicians such as Nicos Christofides and Shahid Chaudhri, working at the Centre for Quantitative Finance at London's Imperial College, has applied advanced mathematics from aerodynamics and control engineering to analyse financial turbulence without the over-simplified assumptions, such as continuous liquidity, which have caused the recent disasters in risk management and regulation.
But the challenge that existing economic orthodoxy may find most disconcerting is Imperfect Knowledge Economics (IKE), the name of a path-breaking recent book by Roman Frydman and Michael Goldberg, two American economists. Building on ideas of Edmund Phelps, one of the few Nobel Laureate economists who rejected the consensus view on rational expectations, IKE uses similar tools to conventional economics to generate radically different results. It insists that the future is inherently unknowable and therefore that there is always a multitude of plausible models of the way the economy works.
With this obvious, but critically important, change in assumptions, IKE demolishes most of the conclusions of rational expectations. More importantly, it shows that reasonable assumptions about economic uncertainty can produce financial models that give less spurious accuracy than the rational expectations models but are statistically far closer to what happens in the real world."
L'origine de Bert
Friday, February 13, 2009
"Lies are like children: they're hard work, but it's worth it because the future depends on them." - Pam Davis
***
After rich Frenchmen and affairs, more from the EIU's report:
"A word about morality (Please ignore this section if morality is not your thing)
In 2005-08 about 25,000 rich or very rich men (and they were mostly men) decided they wanted to get even more rich. These 25,000 senior executives in the US, European and global financial sector were earning ("earning" is hardly the appropriate word) $1-2mn a year, some were receiving $5-20mn and a few were raking in $25-100mn. But this was not enough for them; they wanted more. They dragged in their wake several other tens of thousands of their employees in the financial sector. Their greed has led to the great economic and business crash of 2008-10 which will diminish the earnings and welfare of billions of people around the globe. These senior executives ought to be arrested en masse for crimes of "criminal negligence" or "criminal greed". But none of them will stand to account. Not one senior financier has said "Sorry", not one has offered to pay any money back. Financiers will receive billions of euros bonuses for their so-called services in 2008. The fat-cat CEO and CFOs will get away with it and even continue to gain huge amounts of money as they are retained or return to high paying positions in the emasculated financial sector. Tens of millions of people in the developed world will be less well off and have less money to spend on consumption; this will in turn hurt corporate profits. Many people will see the values of their life savings in pension funds diminish by 30-80%. People who retired in the last 3- 4 months will have seen their pension value reduced by 30-40%. Their plans for the future of their golden years are destroyed. The savings they had accumulated in pension funds to pass on to children and grandchildren are no longer there. The children will have to do without. Lifelong dreams and plans are shattered. People will have to work 2-3-5-10-15 years longer. Some people in the rich countries of the world have low standards of living and they will be pushed into genuine hardship. Millions of people will lose their jobs and some will suffer health problems as a result. A few will commit suicide. In the emerging markets, hundreds of millions will see their rise into the middle class and lower middle class halted and postponed for 1-3 years. Many more people in these countries are on the bread line and those who were surviving well on $3-5-7 a day will be pushed back into hardship, penury and starvation. Thousands of people will die in 2009-10 who would not have died otherwise. The total financial cost in bail outs and guarantees is currently running at 6-8 trillion dollars but the opportunity cost to the global economy in lost output and consumption will also rank in further trillions of dollars: all this because a few thousand rich greedy men wanted to be more rich and greedy. It's all seems a bit of a shame.
The FBI is conducting investigations about malfeasance and fraud. Few investigations are underway in the UK or Europe. Why? A small handful of executives may get slapped on their wrist or told to pay fines which will be paid off by director insurance policies.
The trillions spent in bailing out the banks and the trillions of destroyed value could have been used in other ways: 20,000 new schools and 15,000 new hospitals could have been built in the USA and Europe; third world debt could have been eradicated; poverty could have been eliminated in Africa and India, but instead the money is spent cleaning up the mess of 25,000 greedy, stupid men. And the negative impact is two-fold: not only was this money not spent on health and education in 2008 but the crisis will ensure that public spending will be more rigorously assessed by cash-strapped governments in 2009-13 and cut back. The people lose out twice.
Short-selling – a cautionary tale
Adolf Merckle, Germany's fifth richest man committed suicide on Monday 5 January. This is a tragedy for the man and his family. Mr Merckle committed suicide after his business empire crumbled as a result of over-leveraging. But the culminating factor was a corporate loss of a suspected 600mn (borrowed) euros gambling on the share price of Volkswagen. It must be said that Mr Merckle was a greedy, selfish man, as are all short-sellers. He betted hundreds of millions of euros that Volkswagen shares would decline and if they did so, this could become self-fulfilling (the shares fall, they are short sold more, fall more etc), and Volkswagen could have gone bankrupt; tens of thousands of jobs in the company and its massive supply chain could have been lost. Mr Merckle and his short-selling friends didn't care about that. The more the price fell, the more they would win. If 10,000 people lost their jobs after working in companies for 5-10-20 years, then tough luck for them. In any case the stupid German government and stupid German tax payer could dole out billions of euros propping up the company and paying out social security payments for the unemployed.
But having bet against Volkswagen, against the Germany budget and the German people, what did Mr Merckle do when he had lost his hundreds of millions in his gamble? Why, he approached the German government to bail him out of course. Disturbingly the state government gave this 24 hours consideration and then thankfully declined to help. Mr Merckle was then left to the mercies of his commercial bank creditors and the game was up.
Short-sellers do not deserve our sympathy. There may well have been many suicides as result of their actions: Hans Schmidt, auto worker at VW for 25 years, loses his job in January 2009 as a result of the short-selling and then commits suicide. His death would not have made so many headlines...
Governments seem to be unaware that bankers do not rescue economies, they rescue banks. They always want to privatise profits and nationalise losses...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the US economy and society from implosion in 1932-37 with Keynesian policies. But it is less well known that he changed track in 1937 when he followed the advice of more traditional economic conservatives who advocated a tighter budget, more tax increases and less social spending; as a consequence a second slump followed in 1937-39 from which the US economy was only saved by the advent of the Second World War... Perhaps the most damaging pursuit of conservative style policies was conducted by German chancellor Heinrich Bruning who sought to implement a balanced budget, tighter taxes and lower consumption just as Germany plunged into the Great Depression: policies which exacerbated economic pain and helped Hitler to power...
On 12 November 2008 [George Bush] declared, "Big government is bad for America." Then one month later, on 20 December, he said, "If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation of the US automotive industry." Indeed. "Big" government, which is no more than the taxpayers and the people, bailed out the US economy after 9/11 and once again in autumn 2008, when the economy was, on two occasions, within 36 hours of complete collapse."
***
After rich Frenchmen and affairs, more from the EIU's report:
"A word about morality (Please ignore this section if morality is not your thing)
In 2005-08 about 25,000 rich or very rich men (and they were mostly men) decided they wanted to get even more rich. These 25,000 senior executives in the US, European and global financial sector were earning ("earning" is hardly the appropriate word) $1-2mn a year, some were receiving $5-20mn and a few were raking in $25-100mn. But this was not enough for them; they wanted more. They dragged in their wake several other tens of thousands of their employees in the financial sector. Their greed has led to the great economic and business crash of 2008-10 which will diminish the earnings and welfare of billions of people around the globe. These senior executives ought to be arrested en masse for crimes of "criminal negligence" or "criminal greed". But none of them will stand to account. Not one senior financier has said "Sorry", not one has offered to pay any money back. Financiers will receive billions of euros bonuses for their so-called services in 2008. The fat-cat CEO and CFOs will get away with it and even continue to gain huge amounts of money as they are retained or return to high paying positions in the emasculated financial sector. Tens of millions of people in the developed world will be less well off and have less money to spend on consumption; this will in turn hurt corporate profits. Many people will see the values of their life savings in pension funds diminish by 30-80%. People who retired in the last 3- 4 months will have seen their pension value reduced by 30-40%. Their plans for the future of their golden years are destroyed. The savings they had accumulated in pension funds to pass on to children and grandchildren are no longer there. The children will have to do without. Lifelong dreams and plans are shattered. People will have to work 2-3-5-10-15 years longer. Some people in the rich countries of the world have low standards of living and they will be pushed into genuine hardship. Millions of people will lose their jobs and some will suffer health problems as a result. A few will commit suicide. In the emerging markets, hundreds of millions will see their rise into the middle class and lower middle class halted and postponed for 1-3 years. Many more people in these countries are on the bread line and those who were surviving well on $3-5-7 a day will be pushed back into hardship, penury and starvation. Thousands of people will die in 2009-10 who would not have died otherwise. The total financial cost in bail outs and guarantees is currently running at 6-8 trillion dollars but the opportunity cost to the global economy in lost output and consumption will also rank in further trillions of dollars: all this because a few thousand rich greedy men wanted to be more rich and greedy. It's all seems a bit of a shame.
The FBI is conducting investigations about malfeasance and fraud. Few investigations are underway in the UK or Europe. Why? A small handful of executives may get slapped on their wrist or told to pay fines which will be paid off by director insurance policies.
The trillions spent in bailing out the banks and the trillions of destroyed value could have been used in other ways: 20,000 new schools and 15,000 new hospitals could have been built in the USA and Europe; third world debt could have been eradicated; poverty could have been eliminated in Africa and India, but instead the money is spent cleaning up the mess of 25,000 greedy, stupid men. And the negative impact is two-fold: not only was this money not spent on health and education in 2008 but the crisis will ensure that public spending will be more rigorously assessed by cash-strapped governments in 2009-13 and cut back. The people lose out twice.
Short-selling – a cautionary tale
Adolf Merckle, Germany's fifth richest man committed suicide on Monday 5 January. This is a tragedy for the man and his family. Mr Merckle committed suicide after his business empire crumbled as a result of over-leveraging. But the culminating factor was a corporate loss of a suspected 600mn (borrowed) euros gambling on the share price of Volkswagen. It must be said that Mr Merckle was a greedy, selfish man, as are all short-sellers. He betted hundreds of millions of euros that Volkswagen shares would decline and if they did so, this could become self-fulfilling (the shares fall, they are short sold more, fall more etc), and Volkswagen could have gone bankrupt; tens of thousands of jobs in the company and its massive supply chain could have been lost. Mr Merckle and his short-selling friends didn't care about that. The more the price fell, the more they would win. If 10,000 people lost their jobs after working in companies for 5-10-20 years, then tough luck for them. In any case the stupid German government and stupid German tax payer could dole out billions of euros propping up the company and paying out social security payments for the unemployed.
But having bet against Volkswagen, against the Germany budget and the German people, what did Mr Merckle do when he had lost his hundreds of millions in his gamble? Why, he approached the German government to bail him out of course. Disturbingly the state government gave this 24 hours consideration and then thankfully declined to help. Mr Merckle was then left to the mercies of his commercial bank creditors and the game was up.
Short-sellers do not deserve our sympathy. There may well have been many suicides as result of their actions: Hans Schmidt, auto worker at VW for 25 years, loses his job in January 2009 as a result of the short-selling and then commits suicide. His death would not have made so many headlines...
Governments seem to be unaware that bankers do not rescue economies, they rescue banks. They always want to privatise profits and nationalise losses...
Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the US economy and society from implosion in 1932-37 with Keynesian policies. But it is less well known that he changed track in 1937 when he followed the advice of more traditional economic conservatives who advocated a tighter budget, more tax increases and less social spending; as a consequence a second slump followed in 1937-39 from which the US economy was only saved by the advent of the Second World War... Perhaps the most damaging pursuit of conservative style policies was conducted by German chancellor Heinrich Bruning who sought to implement a balanced budget, tighter taxes and lower consumption just as Germany plunged into the Great Depression: policies which exacerbated economic pain and helped Hitler to power...
On 12 November 2008 [George Bush] declared, "Big government is bad for America." Then one month later, on 20 December, he said, "If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation of the US automotive industry." Indeed. "Big" government, which is no more than the taxpayers and the people, bailed out the US economy after 9/11 and once again in autumn 2008, when the economy was, on two occasions, within 36 hours of complete collapse."
Post ID: 5168567981228488342
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." - Louis D. Brandeis
***
50 Best Websites 2008 - TIME - When I saw "1 of 51" and that I had to click 50 times, I closed the tab. "Print [version] didn't help"
Tourist Remover - "Remove moving objects such as tourists or passing cars from your photos. Take multiple photos from the same scene and the «Tourist Remover» blends them into a composite photo without any interfering elements."
My Little Stormtrooper on Flickr - "My Little Pony, mixed media"
LollypopBlowjobs.com - See real teens sucking! - ".... a totally new and original concept in teen suckoff films! most of our girls would never let themselves be filmed giving a blowjob!"
They appear to have lollypops filled with white cream
This is why you're fat. - "where dreams become heart attacks"
Temasek Justifies New Chief - "“He is a descendant of the family behind the Goodyear blimp, and so is used to inflating assets and spewing hot air – essential skills for running Temasek.” “Secondly,” he continued, “Mr. Goodyear used to run the world’s largest mining company. So he’s an expert at going down a deep, dark hole and trying to dig up anything of value. Which describes Temasek’s financial situation perfectly at the moment.”"
singapore craigslist > men seeking women - looking for female personal secretary - "our company plan to start a service apt company
we require a female personal secretary to our DIRECTOR...
REPLY WITH CONTACT NUMBER AND PHOTO AND UR EXPECTED SALARY"
Actually I can't tell if they want a whore or a secretary. Probably both
Hug me. I'm a banker. - "My boss and I are going to pretend to have a bonus discussion this week, during which neither of us will be able to keep a straight face. We'll probably erupt into laughter a few minutes in, after which he'll duly hand me a bag of toxic assets and send me on my way.
I need a hug. (Alternately, if you're squeamish about physical contact with a stranger, you could just send me pictures of your breasts. Either way.)"
The Russian president, the guinea pigs and the school girl - "She innocently asked for another guinea pig to keep her own pet company. But it seems that the Presidential Directorate decided that Mr Medvedev had better things to do than worry about pets. Apparently, within hours, government officials arrived at Nastya's village school in Kalitvensky, southern Russia, to tell her off... Nastya's parents bravely decided to email the President again to complain about the treatment of her daughter. This time, they received a different response. Soon afterwards, some more government officials arrived, along with an apology and two new guinea pigs. Local youth committee chairman Sergei Chyuev said: "This shows a complete failure by the authorities to understand real people and their problems.""
The Domino's branch where you can't get a pepperoni pizza - because they only do halal - "If you can't do without ham on your Hawaiian and bacon on your barbecue, prepare to be cheesed off. A big-name pizza store has stopped selling pork products after going 100 per cent halal. The Domino's outlet is replacing ham and bacon with products such as halal spicy beef sausage, halal roast and tandoori chicken and halal pepperoni... Mr Yates, 29, a hospital worker from nearby Moseley, said: 'It's a disgrace, I can appreciate them having it as an option but to have it completely halal is just not on. 'I'm all for racial and religious tolerance but if anything this is intolerant to my beliefs and discriminatory against me. 'I had to travel two miles out of my way to their next nearest branch - I was appalled.'"
GAH
speech accent archive: about - "Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person's linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker. The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded"
Peace in the pipeline - "Researchers at Oregon State University compiled a dataset of every reported interaction (conflictive or co-operative) between two or more nations that was driven by water in the last half-century. They found that the rate of co-operation overwhelms the incidence of acute conflict. In the last 50 years, only 37 disputes involved violence, and 30 of those occurred between Israel and one of its neighbours. Outside the Middle East, researchers found only five violent events, while 157 treaties were negotiated and signed. The total number of water-related events between nations also favours co-operation: the 1,228 co-operative events dwarf the 507 conflict-related events, despite the often fiery rhetoric of politicians, which is in reality aimed more often at their own constituencies than at the enemy."
Oddly Shaped Vegetables Allowed in Europe - "Many of us are learning that the gnarled carrots and funny-looking tomatoes found in farmers' markets actually taste better than the apples that are perfectly formed but tasteless. The European Commission, the parliament of Europe and arbitor of all standards, has now recognised that throwing away imperfectly shaped food is wasteful and is part of the global food crisis... banana: according to the Commission “the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicular to the longitudinal axis . . . must be at a minimum of 27mm”."
The Next Level | Boys With Birkins - "Perhaps you haven't really noticed yet, but fashion-forward men, like my new trinity of adoration — Bryan Boy, Yu Masui and Jean-Paul Paula — have been feminizing their ensembles and pushing past females in the next-level department. And I, for one, am rapt... "Clothes are getting more and more borderless, like the new YSL unisex collection. Women's wear always takes ideas from men's wear, so why can't men's get influence from women's? Anyway, the biggest reason is men's wear is more boring than women's wear!!""
Is it a coincidence two of them are Asian?
Long URL Please | Lengthening short urls so that you don't have to - "Short URLs say little about where they link to. Reduce uncertainty with our plugin, API or bookmarklet"
Apple Patch Day: Gaping Mac OS X, Safari holes - "It's Apple's turn on the Patch Day treadmill and, for Mac OS X users, it's quite ugly. As I write, Apple has released four different bulletins to cover 48 documented vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X ecosystem, a solitary code execution flaw affecting Safari for Windows and four different security problems in Java for Mac OS X. Security Update 2009-001 is quite a whopper, providing patches for holes in a wide range of components, including several open-source implementations like ClamAV and fetchmail."
Be safe. Switch to Mac
***
50 Best Websites 2008 - TIME - When I saw "1 of 51" and that I had to click 50 times, I closed the tab. "Print [version] didn't help"
Tourist Remover - "Remove moving objects such as tourists or passing cars from your photos. Take multiple photos from the same scene and the «Tourist Remover» blends them into a composite photo without any interfering elements."
My Little Stormtrooper on Flickr - "My Little Pony, mixed media"
LollypopBlowjobs.com - See real teens sucking! - ".... a totally new and original concept in teen suckoff films! most of our girls would never let themselves be filmed giving a blowjob!"
They appear to have lollypops filled with white cream
This is why you're fat. - "where dreams become heart attacks"
Temasek Justifies New Chief - "“He is a descendant of the family behind the Goodyear blimp, and so is used to inflating assets and spewing hot air – essential skills for running Temasek.” “Secondly,” he continued, “Mr. Goodyear used to run the world’s largest mining company. So he’s an expert at going down a deep, dark hole and trying to dig up anything of value. Which describes Temasek’s financial situation perfectly at the moment.”"
singapore craigslist > men seeking women - looking for female personal secretary - "our company plan to start a service apt company
we require a female personal secretary to our DIRECTOR...
REPLY WITH CONTACT NUMBER AND PHOTO AND UR EXPECTED SALARY"
Actually I can't tell if they want a whore or a secretary. Probably both
Hug me. I'm a banker. - "My boss and I are going to pretend to have a bonus discussion this week, during which neither of us will be able to keep a straight face. We'll probably erupt into laughter a few minutes in, after which he'll duly hand me a bag of toxic assets and send me on my way.
I need a hug. (Alternately, if you're squeamish about physical contact with a stranger, you could just send me pictures of your breasts. Either way.)"
The Russian president, the guinea pigs and the school girl - "She innocently asked for another guinea pig to keep her own pet company. But it seems that the Presidential Directorate decided that Mr Medvedev had better things to do than worry about pets. Apparently, within hours, government officials arrived at Nastya's village school in Kalitvensky, southern Russia, to tell her off... Nastya's parents bravely decided to email the President again to complain about the treatment of her daughter. This time, they received a different response. Soon afterwards, some more government officials arrived, along with an apology and two new guinea pigs. Local youth committee chairman Sergei Chyuev said: "This shows a complete failure by the authorities to understand real people and their problems.""
The Domino's branch where you can't get a pepperoni pizza - because they only do halal - "If you can't do without ham on your Hawaiian and bacon on your barbecue, prepare to be cheesed off. A big-name pizza store has stopped selling pork products after going 100 per cent halal. The Domino's outlet is replacing ham and bacon with products such as halal spicy beef sausage, halal roast and tandoori chicken and halal pepperoni... Mr Yates, 29, a hospital worker from nearby Moseley, said: 'It's a disgrace, I can appreciate them having it as an option but to have it completely halal is just not on. 'I'm all for racial and religious tolerance but if anything this is intolerant to my beliefs and discriminatory against me. 'I had to travel two miles out of my way to their next nearest branch - I was appalled.'"
GAH
speech accent archive: about - "Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person's linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker. The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded"
Peace in the pipeline - "Researchers at Oregon State University compiled a dataset of every reported interaction (conflictive or co-operative) between two or more nations that was driven by water in the last half-century. They found that the rate of co-operation overwhelms the incidence of acute conflict. In the last 50 years, only 37 disputes involved violence, and 30 of those occurred between Israel and one of its neighbours. Outside the Middle East, researchers found only five violent events, while 157 treaties were negotiated and signed. The total number of water-related events between nations also favours co-operation: the 1,228 co-operative events dwarf the 507 conflict-related events, despite the often fiery rhetoric of politicians, which is in reality aimed more often at their own constituencies than at the enemy."
Oddly Shaped Vegetables Allowed in Europe - "Many of us are learning that the gnarled carrots and funny-looking tomatoes found in farmers' markets actually taste better than the apples that are perfectly formed but tasteless. The European Commission, the parliament of Europe and arbitor of all standards, has now recognised that throwing away imperfectly shaped food is wasteful and is part of the global food crisis... banana: according to the Commission “the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicular to the longitudinal axis . . . must be at a minimum of 27mm”."
The Next Level | Boys With Birkins - "Perhaps you haven't really noticed yet, but fashion-forward men, like my new trinity of adoration — Bryan Boy, Yu Masui and Jean-Paul Paula — have been feminizing their ensembles and pushing past females in the next-level department. And I, for one, am rapt... "Clothes are getting more and more borderless, like the new YSL unisex collection. Women's wear always takes ideas from men's wear, so why can't men's get influence from women's? Anyway, the biggest reason is men's wear is more boring than women's wear!!""
Is it a coincidence two of them are Asian?
Long URL Please | Lengthening short urls so that you don't have to - "Short URLs say little about where they link to. Reduce uncertainty with our plugin, API or bookmarklet"
Apple Patch Day: Gaping Mac OS X, Safari holes - "It's Apple's turn on the Patch Day treadmill and, for Mac OS X users, it's quite ugly. As I write, Apple has released four different bulletins to cover 48 documented vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X ecosystem, a solitary code execution flaw affecting Safari for Windows and four different security problems in Java for Mac OS X. Security Update 2009-001 is quite a whopper, providing patches for holes in a wide range of components, including several open-source implementations like ClamAV and fetchmail."
Be safe. Switch to Mac
Post ID: 1880654272486181394
Thursday, February 12, 2009
skinnylatte on Dubai vs Singapore:
"Someone observed that every Singaporean + every expat that's ever lived in Singapore before Dubai seems to hate Dubai more than anyone else.
I think Dubai hits close to home in many parts. It feels like Singapore. In all the wrong parts, i.e. the parts we hate.
Though it must be said that a key difference between Singapore and Dubai is... it's better to be a foreigner in Singapore than to be local!
The autocracy, the ERP (Salik), the Metro that looks like the MRT (built by the same people), the media regulations, the love and the hate
The scholarship bonds, government run conglomerates; on the surface there are lots of similarities but 2x more racism, 100x less efficient.
The legions of young talented people dying to leave. But yet, hope and optimism in both cities: slowly improving arts scenes, etc.
Just as Singapore has been getting better and becoming more livable in the last 2-3 yrs, I think Dubai might hit that point: maybe in 5.
I still wouldn't live in either city though. I doubt I can ever live in Singapore ever again. Ever. Not for more than two weeks."
"Someone observed that every Singaporean + every expat that's ever lived in Singapore before Dubai seems to hate Dubai more than anyone else.
I think Dubai hits close to home in many parts. It feels like Singapore. In all the wrong parts, i.e. the parts we hate.
Though it must be said that a key difference between Singapore and Dubai is... it's better to be a foreigner in Singapore than to be local!
The autocracy, the ERP (Salik), the Metro that looks like the MRT (built by the same people), the media regulations, the love and the hate
The scholarship bonds, government run conglomerates; on the surface there are lots of similarities but 2x more racism, 100x less efficient.
The legions of young talented people dying to leave. But yet, hope and optimism in both cities: slowly improving arts scenes, etc.
Just as Singapore has been getting better and becoming more livable in the last 2-3 yrs, I think Dubai might hit that point: maybe in 5.
I still wouldn't live in either city though. I doubt I can ever live in Singapore ever again. Ever. Not for more than two weeks."
Post ID: 9010333101168277851
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."
Post ID: 7401878954919791992
"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
***
u r wt u wr:
- 'I'm not wearing any underwear' (Contributed)
- 'Anything boys can do girls can do better' (Misandry!)
- 'Sorry if I look beautiful'
- 'I love bad boys ♥ (PS: Only if you're cute). Naughty by nature'
- 'Not just another cute face'
- 'Milk. You like it'
- 'Spicy number'
- 'Can you hold my drink while I suck off my boyfriend' (Contributed)
- 'I'm a virgin (This is a very old T-shirt)' (Contributed)
- 'I love you ♥ my boyfriend'
- 'I want to make your soul shine'
- 'Sweet summer loving'
- '<-- My boyfriend. My other boyfriend -->'
- 'Fortune cookie'
- 'Angel'
- 'Don't mess with this girl in pink' (She had not a drop of pink on her)
- 'I am proud to be a bastard'
- 'Thinking about you'
- 'If you think I'm NAUGHTY you should see the girl BEHIND me'
- 'Blondes don't pay cover'
- 'All about the girl. Guess'
- 'Tan line prohibited beyond this line' (above breast level)
- 'Animal'
- 'Can't touch this'
- 'Good girls love kisses'
Guy:
- 'I'm a virgin' (Contributed; he was fatter than me)
- 'Looking for Little Miss Naughty'
- 'Lock up your daughters' (2 year old)
***
u r wt u wr:
- 'I'm not wearing any underwear' (Contributed)
- 'Anything boys can do girls can do better' (Misandry!)
- 'Sorry if I look beautiful'
- 'I love bad boys ♥ (PS: Only if you're cute). Naughty by nature'
- 'Not just another cute face'
- 'Milk. You like it'
- 'Spicy number'
- 'Can you hold my drink while I suck off my boyfriend' (Contributed)
- 'I'm a virgin (This is a very old T-shirt)' (Contributed)
- 'I love you ♥ my boyfriend'
- 'I want to make your soul shine'
- 'Sweet summer loving'
- '<-- My boyfriend. My other boyfriend -->'
- 'Fortune cookie'
- 'Angel'
- 'Don't mess with this girl in pink' (She had not a drop of pink on her)
- 'I am proud to be a bastard'
- 'Thinking about you'
- 'If you think I'm NAUGHTY you should see the girl BEHIND me'
- 'Blondes don't pay cover'
- 'All about the girl. Guess'
- 'Tan line prohibited beyond this line' (above breast level)
- 'Animal'
- 'Can't touch this'
- 'Good girls love kisses'
Guy:
- 'I'm a virgin' (Contributed; he was fatter than me)
- 'Looking for Little Miss Naughty'
- 'Lock up your daughters' (2 year old)
Post ID: 2197171946174363798
Wth:
"Hello Dear Friend,
You too can discover practical Biblical principles to becoming Free from debt, achieve financial freedom, and walk in God's daily blessings.
Terry Dean used to be a pizza delivery driver and was over $50,000 in debt on 13 credit cards. It all changed the day one simple Bible passage became real to him.
Today he is an Internationally known Internet consultant with no debts (not even a mortgage), financial freedom, and more than enough to give to his church.
Recently he has put together the complete system from the Bible that radically transformed his life from failure to success...almost overnight.
Find out more about his story and exactly what happened here:
XXX"
Then again, it's not much different from what you'd get at many Megachurches.
"Hello Dear Friend,
You too can discover practical Biblical principles to becoming Free from debt, achieve financial freedom, and walk in God's daily blessings.
Terry Dean used to be a pizza delivery driver and was over $50,000 in debt on 13 credit cards. It all changed the day one simple Bible passage became real to him.
Today he is an Internationally known Internet consultant with no debts (not even a mortgage), financial freedom, and more than enough to give to his church.
Recently he has put together the complete system from the Bible that radically transformed his life from failure to success...almost overnight.
Find out more about his story and exactly what happened here:
XXX"
Then again, it's not much different from what you'd get at many Megachurches.
Post ID: 7254310543379857752
"The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously." - Henry Kissinger
***
My Favourite Periodical:
December 20th:
"It is true that Bollinger has been the Bond champagne of choice ever since "Moonraker" in 1979, but most fans would agree that this was the point when 007 films began to go downhill, becoming increasingly flashy and absurd. Daniel Craig is redeeming the situation somewhat, even though he can be seen driving a Range Rover in "Quantum of Solace" (is Bond picking up the kids from school now?). He should stick to the Aston Martin. Bollinger with Denise Richards or Dom Perignon with Barbara Bach? Need I say more?"
""Oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing""
"The word immodest does not do justice to Mr Sarkozy on such occasions. He does not so much brag about his achievements as offer a running commentary about the wonder of being himself. Being in charge of Europe had been "fascinating, fulfilling and rather easy," he commented at one point."
"Researchers at Durham University... compared the relative difficulty of every subject, and found that no matter which method they used, some subjects really did turn out to be harder than others—so much so that a candidate could expect a result two grades higher in the easiest subject than in the hardest (see chart). The widespread perception that sciences are particularly difficult turned out to be correct—and the order in which subjects were ranked matched closely the perceived preferences of selective universities. Applicants with a clutch of A grades in sociology and similar subjects may be bright; those with As in physics and French are pretty sure to be."
Structuralised violence against arts students!
"In contrast to their American counterparts, most British gays seem relaxed about not having the right to call their partnership a marriage. "It meant we could get the law through sooner. Changing the wording is not really a priority," says a spokesman for Stonewall, a gay-rights lobby group. And speed is not everything: Denmark was the first country to recognise gay partnerships, in 1989, but still does not let them adopt children."
"According to the 1911 Census of British India, the Afridi tribe, having no shrine to worship at, "induced by generous offers a saint of the most notorious piety to take up his abode among them." They then slit his throat, buried his corpse, and built a splendid shrine over it."
"Sex is also to be had at the urs, but less freely. Sufi shrines have always appealed to prostitutes. This is partly because of the Sufis' tolerance of sinners, but also because they make good places to sin. At Sehwan, which has a name for licentiousness, a transsexual prostitute—or hijra—called Ghazala says she came from Lahore, with 15 of her eunuch sisters, to pray and dance. Smoking a cigarette down to its filter, Ghazala, a muscular figure with greying temples, claims: "We came here only to worship our saint." That is an unlikely story."
"In 1949 France banned children's books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a "favourable" light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive depictions of these ills, along with crime, theft, hatred, debauchery and acts "liable to undermine morality" among the young... the main aim of the law—which, remarkably, remains in force today, tweaked in the 1950s to add a ban on incitement of ethnic prejudice—was to block comics from America."
"It was a commonplace of the Soviet era that only people who were slightly abnormal, and utterly indifferent to their own comfort or survival, could find the courage to protest effectively against a totalitarian regime at the height of its powers."
"Scientists used to assume that emotion and rationality were opposed to each other, but Antonio Damasio, now professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has found that people who lose the ability to perceive or experience emotions as the result of a brain injury find it hard or impossible to make any decisions at all. They can't shop."
"Until 1999 Siemens openly claimed tax deductions for bribes, many of which were listed in its accounts as "useful expenditure".
"They seem to believe, as Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University, in England, elegantly puts it, that evolution stops at the neck: that human anatomy evolved, but human behaviour is culturally determined."
"Stanley Ho, a veteran operator in Hong Kong and Macau, has 17 children by several women. Oei Tiong Ham, a tycoon who died in 1924, had 18 concubines and 42 children. The relationship holds good further down the social ladder. Danile Nettle and Thomas Pollet, of Newcastle University, recently showed that in Britain the number of children a man has fathered is, on average, related to his income, the spread of modern contraception notwithstanding."
"Most violence (and thus most murder, which is simply violence's most extreme expression) is a consequence of competition between young, unemployed, unmarried men. In the view of Darwinists, these men are either competing for women directly ("You looking at my girl, Jimmy?") or competing for status ("You dissing me, man?")."
"The idea that rape is an evolved behaviour is even more controversial than the Darwinian explanation of murder. Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, who proposed it on the basis of criminal data and by comparing people with other species, was excoriated by feminists who felt he was somehow excusing the crime. On the other hand, it has become a mantra among some feminists that all men are rapists"
"Getting married and having children—in other words, achieving at least part of his Darwinian ambition—often terminates a criminal's career. Again, that is a commonplace observation. However, it tends to be explained as "the calming influence of marriage", which is not really an explanation at all. "Ambition fulfilled" is a better one."
"A lioness may try to defend her cubs against infanticide, but if she fails she does not plan vengeance against the male who did it. Instead, she usually has sex with him."
"Crime, then, is one field in which women are unequal with men. That does not bother feminists, but perhaps it should. For it might reflect a wider truth which those who believe that the sexes should not merely have equal rights but enjoy equal outcomes will find uncomfortable.
When outcomes are unequal in socially acceptable areas of behaviour, such as employment, it is often interpreted as a sign of discrimination. But people who draw this conclusion rarely consider that the discrimination in question might actually be being exercised by the supposedly disadvantaged women themselves.
A classic example is income. Women earn less than men. Or do they? In fact, younger women do not, or not much. A recent report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a British think-tank, found that British women aged between 22 and 29 who were in full-time employment earned only 1% less than their male counterparts. This age group corresponds for many women to the period when they are single. Once they have found the best available mate, the calculation changes: a woman no longer needs to show off.
In that context, it is less of a surprise that older women are out-earned by their male contemporaries. One reason is that they now care less about the size of their earnings. Of the top 25 ideal employers, as chosen by women, the IEA found that 12 were in the public or voluntary sectors—areas where salaries for equivalent work tend to be lower than in the private sector, though job security is higher and job satisfaction is often believed to be greater. For men, only four employers were in this category. The other reason, of course, is that women usually look after the children. Indeed, the study by Dr Nettle and Dr Pollet which found that reproductive success correlates with men's income, also points out that with women the correlation is inverted. But the IEA study also found that it is women themselves who are taking the decisions about child care. It reports that two-thirds of the women who had not already had a "career break", as it is euphemistically known, planned to take one at some point in the future. Less than an eighth of men had similar aspirations. That, too, would be predicted by a Darwinist.
Although there is a strong argument for making working conditions more sympathetic to the needs of parents of both sexes, the underlying point is that many women—and certainly many women with children—do not care as much about striving ahead in their careers as men do. Men, the report found, are more motivated by pay and less by job satisfaction than women are. If managers, they are more likely to work long hours. They also take more risks—or, at least, are more frequently injured at work.
The consequence, as Len Shackleton, the IEA report's main author, puts it, is that: "The widespread belief that the gender pay gap is a reflection of deep-rooted discrimination by employers is ill-informed and an unhelpful contribution to the debate. The pay gap is falling but is also a reflection of individuals' lifestyle preferences. Government can't regulate or legislate these away, and shouldn't try to.""
"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him.
The questioners were the Gileadites. The slain, an Ephraimite. But no physical difference could distinguish the tribes, so the Gileadite ethnic-cleansers had to rely on linguistic tics.
In a world where a syllable can get you killed, having differently coloured skin is a pretty strong brand of identity."
"The first Western cookbook appeared a little more than 1,600 years ago. "De re coquinara" (concerning cookery) is attributed to a Roman gourmet named Apicius who, legend has it, poisoned himself upon learning that he could no longer afford to eat fancy food."
"Britain and America are the two great cookbook-writing nations, which is not the same as being nations of great cooks. It is precisely because neither country can boast a coherent, admirable, traditional cuisine that cooks have such need of guidance and distraction. Nations with grand cooking traditions produce fewer, simpler cookbooks."
"Revolutionaries tend not to go in for cookbooks. They seem to believe women have more important things to do than slave over a stove."
"By 1944 Irene Veal was advising women how to cook with dried eggs or even with no eggs at all. Her recipe for mayonnaise is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English. "Melt 1oz of margarine in ½ teacup milk, and when the mixture is warm put through a cream machine—the five shilling kind which many of us bought before the war and still, I expect, possess. In about 2 or 3 hours' time add very gently to the cream 1 teaspoon made mustard and 1 tablespoon each salad oil and vinegar. Beat well and serve. If the oil is not available, it does not greatly matter…" In that brief aside "I expect" is summed up the misery of wartime cooking."
"There is polygamy, bisexuality (when one young woman rebuffs his advances, Genji consoles himself with her younger brother who turns out to be "no bad substitute for his ungracious sister") and something very close to incest. Genji is attracted to Fujitsubo, one of his father's consorts, because of her resemblance to his dead mother. Even though she is, in effect, his stepmother, he fathers a child with her."
"Musical productivity—at least among the recording artists who have exploited the phonograph and its successors over the past hundred years or so—seems to match the course of an individual's reproductive life. In particular, Dr Miller studied jazz musicians. He found that their output rises rapidly after puberty, reaches its peak during young-adulthood, and then declines with age and the demands of parenthood.
As is often the case with this sort of observation, it sounds unremarkable; obvious, even. But uniquely human activities associated with survival—cooking, say—do not show this pattern. People continue to cook at about the same rate from the moment that they have mastered the art until the moment they die or are too decrepit to continue. Moreover, the anecdotal evidence linking music to sexual success is strong. Dr Miller often cites the example of Jimi Hendrix, who had sex with hundreds of groupies during his brief life and, though he was legally unmarried, maintained two long-term liaisons. The words of Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, are also pertinent: "I was always on my way to love. Always. Whatever road I took, the car was heading for one of the greatest sexual encounters I've ever had."...
Konstantinos Kaskatis, has shown that Dr Miller's observation about jazz musicians also applies to 19th-century classical composers and contemporary pop singers)."
***
My Favourite Periodical:
December 20th:
"It is true that Bollinger has been the Bond champagne of choice ever since "Moonraker" in 1979, but most fans would agree that this was the point when 007 films began to go downhill, becoming increasingly flashy and absurd. Daniel Craig is redeeming the situation somewhat, even though he can be seen driving a Range Rover in "Quantum of Solace" (is Bond picking up the kids from school now?). He should stick to the Aston Martin. Bollinger with Denise Richards or Dom Perignon with Barbara Bach? Need I say more?"
""Oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing""
"The word immodest does not do justice to Mr Sarkozy on such occasions. He does not so much brag about his achievements as offer a running commentary about the wonder of being himself. Being in charge of Europe had been "fascinating, fulfilling and rather easy," he commented at one point."
"Researchers at Durham University... compared the relative difficulty of every subject, and found that no matter which method they used, some subjects really did turn out to be harder than others—so much so that a candidate could expect a result two grades higher in the easiest subject than in the hardest (see chart). The widespread perception that sciences are particularly difficult turned out to be correct—and the order in which subjects were ranked matched closely the perceived preferences of selective universities. Applicants with a clutch of A grades in sociology and similar subjects may be bright; those with As in physics and French are pretty sure to be."
Structuralised violence against arts students!
"In contrast to their American counterparts, most British gays seem relaxed about not having the right to call their partnership a marriage. "It meant we could get the law through sooner. Changing the wording is not really a priority," says a spokesman for Stonewall, a gay-rights lobby group. And speed is not everything: Denmark was the first country to recognise gay partnerships, in 1989, but still does not let them adopt children."
"According to the 1911 Census of British India, the Afridi tribe, having no shrine to worship at, "induced by generous offers a saint of the most notorious piety to take up his abode among them." They then slit his throat, buried his corpse, and built a splendid shrine over it."
"Sex is also to be had at the urs, but less freely. Sufi shrines have always appealed to prostitutes. This is partly because of the Sufis' tolerance of sinners, but also because they make good places to sin. At Sehwan, which has a name for licentiousness, a transsexual prostitute—or hijra—called Ghazala says she came from Lahore, with 15 of her eunuch sisters, to pray and dance. Smoking a cigarette down to its filter, Ghazala, a muscular figure with greying temples, claims: "We came here only to worship our saint." That is an unlikely story."
"In 1949 France banned children's books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a "favourable" light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive depictions of these ills, along with crime, theft, hatred, debauchery and acts "liable to undermine morality" among the young... the main aim of the law—which, remarkably, remains in force today, tweaked in the 1950s to add a ban on incitement of ethnic prejudice—was to block comics from America."
"It was a commonplace of the Soviet era that only people who were slightly abnormal, and utterly indifferent to their own comfort or survival, could find the courage to protest effectively against a totalitarian regime at the height of its powers."
"Scientists used to assume that emotion and rationality were opposed to each other, but Antonio Damasio, now professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has found that people who lose the ability to perceive or experience emotions as the result of a brain injury find it hard or impossible to make any decisions at all. They can't shop."
"Until 1999 Siemens openly claimed tax deductions for bribes, many of which were listed in its accounts as "useful expenditure".
"They seem to believe, as Anne Campbell, a psychologist at Durham University, in England, elegantly puts it, that evolution stops at the neck: that human anatomy evolved, but human behaviour is culturally determined."
"Stanley Ho, a veteran operator in Hong Kong and Macau, has 17 children by several women. Oei Tiong Ham, a tycoon who died in 1924, had 18 concubines and 42 children. The relationship holds good further down the social ladder. Danile Nettle and Thomas Pollet, of Newcastle University, recently showed that in Britain the number of children a man has fathered is, on average, related to his income, the spread of modern contraception notwithstanding."
"Most violence (and thus most murder, which is simply violence's most extreme expression) is a consequence of competition between young, unemployed, unmarried men. In the view of Darwinists, these men are either competing for women directly ("You looking at my girl, Jimmy?") or competing for status ("You dissing me, man?")."
"The idea that rape is an evolved behaviour is even more controversial than the Darwinian explanation of murder. Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico, who proposed it on the basis of criminal data and by comparing people with other species, was excoriated by feminists who felt he was somehow excusing the crime. On the other hand, it has become a mantra among some feminists that all men are rapists"
"Getting married and having children—in other words, achieving at least part of his Darwinian ambition—often terminates a criminal's career. Again, that is a commonplace observation. However, it tends to be explained as "the calming influence of marriage", which is not really an explanation at all. "Ambition fulfilled" is a better one."
"A lioness may try to defend her cubs against infanticide, but if she fails she does not plan vengeance against the male who did it. Instead, she usually has sex with him."
"Crime, then, is one field in which women are unequal with men. That does not bother feminists, but perhaps it should. For it might reflect a wider truth which those who believe that the sexes should not merely have equal rights but enjoy equal outcomes will find uncomfortable.
When outcomes are unequal in socially acceptable areas of behaviour, such as employment, it is often interpreted as a sign of discrimination. But people who draw this conclusion rarely consider that the discrimination in question might actually be being exercised by the supposedly disadvantaged women themselves.
A classic example is income. Women earn less than men. Or do they? In fact, younger women do not, or not much. A recent report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a British think-tank, found that British women aged between 22 and 29 who were in full-time employment earned only 1% less than their male counterparts. This age group corresponds for many women to the period when they are single. Once they have found the best available mate, the calculation changes: a woman no longer needs to show off.
In that context, it is less of a surprise that older women are out-earned by their male contemporaries. One reason is that they now care less about the size of their earnings. Of the top 25 ideal employers, as chosen by women, the IEA found that 12 were in the public or voluntary sectors—areas where salaries for equivalent work tend to be lower than in the private sector, though job security is higher and job satisfaction is often believed to be greater. For men, only four employers were in this category. The other reason, of course, is that women usually look after the children. Indeed, the study by Dr Nettle and Dr Pollet which found that reproductive success correlates with men's income, also points out that with women the correlation is inverted. But the IEA study also found that it is women themselves who are taking the decisions about child care. It reports that two-thirds of the women who had not already had a "career break", as it is euphemistically known, planned to take one at some point in the future. Less than an eighth of men had similar aspirations. That, too, would be predicted by a Darwinist.
Although there is a strong argument for making working conditions more sympathetic to the needs of parents of both sexes, the underlying point is that many women—and certainly many women with children—do not care as much about striving ahead in their careers as men do. Men, the report found, are more motivated by pay and less by job satisfaction than women are. If managers, they are more likely to work long hours. They also take more risks—or, at least, are more frequently injured at work.
The consequence, as Len Shackleton, the IEA report's main author, puts it, is that: "The widespread belief that the gender pay gap is a reflection of deep-rooted discrimination by employers is ill-informed and an unhelpful contribution to the debate. The pay gap is falling but is also a reflection of individuals' lifestyle preferences. Government can't regulate or legislate these away, and shouldn't try to.""
"Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him.
The questioners were the Gileadites. The slain, an Ephraimite. But no physical difference could distinguish the tribes, so the Gileadite ethnic-cleansers had to rely on linguistic tics.
In a world where a syllable can get you killed, having differently coloured skin is a pretty strong brand of identity."
"The first Western cookbook appeared a little more than 1,600 years ago. "De re coquinara" (concerning cookery) is attributed to a Roman gourmet named Apicius who, legend has it, poisoned himself upon learning that he could no longer afford to eat fancy food."
"Britain and America are the two great cookbook-writing nations, which is not the same as being nations of great cooks. It is precisely because neither country can boast a coherent, admirable, traditional cuisine that cooks have such need of guidance and distraction. Nations with grand cooking traditions produce fewer, simpler cookbooks."
"Revolutionaries tend not to go in for cookbooks. They seem to believe women have more important things to do than slave over a stove."
"By 1944 Irene Veal was advising women how to cook with dried eggs or even with no eggs at all. Her recipe for mayonnaise is one of the most heartbreaking passages ever written in English. "Melt 1oz of margarine in ½ teacup milk, and when the mixture is warm put through a cream machine—the five shilling kind which many of us bought before the war and still, I expect, possess. In about 2 or 3 hours' time add very gently to the cream 1 teaspoon made mustard and 1 tablespoon each salad oil and vinegar. Beat well and serve. If the oil is not available, it does not greatly matter…" In that brief aside "I expect" is summed up the misery of wartime cooking."
"There is polygamy, bisexuality (when one young woman rebuffs his advances, Genji consoles himself with her younger brother who turns out to be "no bad substitute for his ungracious sister") and something very close to incest. Genji is attracted to Fujitsubo, one of his father's consorts, because of her resemblance to his dead mother. Even though she is, in effect, his stepmother, he fathers a child with her."
"Musical productivity—at least among the recording artists who have exploited the phonograph and its successors over the past hundred years or so—seems to match the course of an individual's reproductive life. In particular, Dr Miller studied jazz musicians. He found that their output rises rapidly after puberty, reaches its peak during young-adulthood, and then declines with age and the demands of parenthood.
As is often the case with this sort of observation, it sounds unremarkable; obvious, even. But uniquely human activities associated with survival—cooking, say—do not show this pattern. People continue to cook at about the same rate from the moment that they have mastered the art until the moment they die or are too decrepit to continue. Moreover, the anecdotal evidence linking music to sexual success is strong. Dr Miller often cites the example of Jimi Hendrix, who had sex with hundreds of groupies during his brief life and, though he was legally unmarried, maintained two long-term liaisons. The words of Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, are also pertinent: "I was always on my way to love. Always. Whatever road I took, the car was heading for one of the greatest sexual encounters I've ever had."...
Konstantinos Kaskatis, has shown that Dr Miller's observation about jazz musicians also applies to 19th-century classical composers and contemporary pop singers)."
Post ID: 769337104970786064
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar." - Oscar Wilde
***
Minimum Wage and its implications - "Gary Fields, Professor of Labour Economics and Economics at Cornell University, criticised that the textbook classical model for minimum wage is too ambiguous and it only measures one sector. He recommended that for a better analysis of the effects of a minimum wage policy, a two-sector model should be used. The first sector will have minimum wage coverage while the second sector does not have any. There is possibly mobility between the two sectors... Other possible reasons that suggest that minimum wage does not affect employment (or only minimally) are posited by Alan Blinder. He suggested that higher wages may reduce turnover (perhaps due to an effect like efficiency wages) and hence also training costs. So the cost savings can be used to hire more minimum-wage workers. There is an interesting research by David Card and Alan Krueger whose results are also published in their 1995 book Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage. In summary, they argued that the effects of minimum wage laws on unemployment are minimal or non-existent."
More theatre productions pass uncensored in S'pore - "The MDA says that since 2005, nine arts genres have been exempted from arts licensing. These include instrumental and classical music performances, operas, dances and painting exhibitions."
Seditious mischief-makers know what to do, then!
Batman: Stuck on Responsibility. Why Can So Many Women Relate to the Dark Knight - "Of the three main heroes of the DC Universe, Batman is the one busy fulfilling the role of parent and protector, the one most women in our society recognize and can understand the most... Batman is the protector, the one bound to Gotham, the one who hardly ever rests his vigilance. He's the one who keeps the nightmares away, who restores order and makes sure the children survive. And he can never, ever walk away from this responsibility... He's Sarah Connor, protecting the future in the person of her son. He's Ripley in the exoskeleton protecting Newt. He's Mrs. Weasley, confronting Bellatrix Lestrange, saying, "Get away from my daughter, you bitch.""
Oh crap! Student loses research work - "A British graduate student was left "reeling" after his university threw out a bag of lizard excrement he had spent seven years collecting in the rainforests of the Philippines, he said Friday... "To some people it might have been just a bag of lizard shit," he told Times Higher Education. "But... its loss left me reeling and altered the course of my life forever."... The University has offered him 500 pounds (730 dollars, 570 euros) in compensation and an apology... "Whether it was the largest collection of lizard shit in the world is uncertain," he said. "But it certainly contained the only dietary sample from that little-known species Varanus olivaceus, and probably the most complete dietary record of any single population of animals in South East Asia." "
Temasek takes severe hit - "The investment analyst in Singapore said Ho's resignation was planned for about a year. "I don't think it has much to do with Temasek's performance. This is Singapore, favoured people are not made to resign for performance! I think Singapore leaders are more concerned over the Sovereign Wealth Fund issue. It becomes more difficult to defend Singapore's sovereign wealth fund as a non-state actor with no political agenda if the wife of the prime minister is running it," he said."
Everybody does it - "Given the unstoppable popularity of social-networking sites, it seems that Mr Obama's zeal points the way to a future in which every indiscretion will be scrutinised by employers. Only the very blandest, most media-savvy and controlled people, who have never uttered a controversial sentence in their lives, will be deemed fit to hold public office... Yet the demand for total cleanness could, paradoxically, end up fuelling public disenchantment with politics. The real problem is not the Internet—which merely makes it easier to discover what people have been up to—but the hypocrisy of voters and the media. Mundane immoralities such as extra-marital affairs can already sink careers; dodgy jokes and youthful foolishness are not far behind. Reporters and the public complain about the bland, stage-managed image of politicians and the nefarious influence of the PR industry while demanding, in effect, that only saints be allowed to hold office.
Trashing the Fridge - "It's this sort of practical calculus that has led many who advocate sustainable living to view unplugging the fridge as a dubious practice. They point out that it is likely to result in more trips to the store (which burns more gas, for those who drive) and the purchase of food in smaller portions (thus more packaging). "It's easy to look at your bill and say, 'I'm saving energy,' " Ms. Duke said. "But you need to look at the whole supply chain."... "I realize it's not a big deal in terms of energy use," Mr. Campbell said, but "it doesn't change my mind. I don't like the hum of the thing, and I've discovered I don't need it.""
Idiocy and thinking with your heart instead of your head strike again.
***
Minimum Wage and its implications - "Gary Fields, Professor of Labour Economics and Economics at Cornell University, criticised that the textbook classical model for minimum wage is too ambiguous and it only measures one sector. He recommended that for a better analysis of the effects of a minimum wage policy, a two-sector model should be used. The first sector will have minimum wage coverage while the second sector does not have any. There is possibly mobility between the two sectors... Other possible reasons that suggest that minimum wage does not affect employment (or only minimally) are posited by Alan Blinder. He suggested that higher wages may reduce turnover (perhaps due to an effect like efficiency wages) and hence also training costs. So the cost savings can be used to hire more minimum-wage workers. There is an interesting research by David Card and Alan Krueger whose results are also published in their 1995 book Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage. In summary, they argued that the effects of minimum wage laws on unemployment are minimal or non-existent."
More theatre productions pass uncensored in S'pore - "The MDA says that since 2005, nine arts genres have been exempted from arts licensing. These include instrumental and classical music performances, operas, dances and painting exhibitions."
Seditious mischief-makers know what to do, then!
Batman: Stuck on Responsibility. Why Can So Many Women Relate to the Dark Knight - "Of the three main heroes of the DC Universe, Batman is the one busy fulfilling the role of parent and protector, the one most women in our society recognize and can understand the most... Batman is the protector, the one bound to Gotham, the one who hardly ever rests his vigilance. He's the one who keeps the nightmares away, who restores order and makes sure the children survive. And he can never, ever walk away from this responsibility... He's Sarah Connor, protecting the future in the person of her son. He's Ripley in the exoskeleton protecting Newt. He's Mrs. Weasley, confronting Bellatrix Lestrange, saying, "Get away from my daughter, you bitch.""
Oh crap! Student loses research work - "A British graduate student was left "reeling" after his university threw out a bag of lizard excrement he had spent seven years collecting in the rainforests of the Philippines, he said Friday... "To some people it might have been just a bag of lizard shit," he told Times Higher Education. "But... its loss left me reeling and altered the course of my life forever."... The University has offered him 500 pounds (730 dollars, 570 euros) in compensation and an apology... "Whether it was the largest collection of lizard shit in the world is uncertain," he said. "But it certainly contained the only dietary sample from that little-known species Varanus olivaceus, and probably the most complete dietary record of any single population of animals in South East Asia." "
Temasek takes severe hit - "The investment analyst in Singapore said Ho's resignation was planned for about a year. "I don't think it has much to do with Temasek's performance. This is Singapore, favoured people are not made to resign for performance! I think Singapore leaders are more concerned over the Sovereign Wealth Fund issue. It becomes more difficult to defend Singapore's sovereign wealth fund as a non-state actor with no political agenda if the wife of the prime minister is running it," he said."
Everybody does it - "Given the unstoppable popularity of social-networking sites, it seems that Mr Obama's zeal points the way to a future in which every indiscretion will be scrutinised by employers. Only the very blandest, most media-savvy and controlled people, who have never uttered a controversial sentence in their lives, will be deemed fit to hold public office... Yet the demand for total cleanness could, paradoxically, end up fuelling public disenchantment with politics. The real problem is not the Internet—which merely makes it easier to discover what people have been up to—but the hypocrisy of voters and the media. Mundane immoralities such as extra-marital affairs can already sink careers; dodgy jokes and youthful foolishness are not far behind. Reporters and the public complain about the bland, stage-managed image of politicians and the nefarious influence of the PR industry while demanding, in effect, that only saints be allowed to hold office.
Trashing the Fridge - "It's this sort of practical calculus that has led many who advocate sustainable living to view unplugging the fridge as a dubious practice. They point out that it is likely to result in more trips to the store (which burns more gas, for those who drive) and the purchase of food in smaller portions (thus more packaging). "It's easy to look at your bill and say, 'I'm saving energy,' " Ms. Duke said. "But you need to look at the whole supply chain."... "I realize it's not a big deal in terms of energy use," Mr. Campbell said, but "it doesn't change my mind. I don't like the hum of the thing, and I've discovered I don't need it.""
Idiocy and thinking with your heart instead of your head strike again.
Post ID: 1847596394926089268
"I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward." - John Mortimer
***
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
-- Carol Ann Duffy
(via Lorraine)
***
Valentine
Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.
-- Carol Ann Duffy
(via Lorraine)
Post ID: 8695149537063359631
Monday, February 09, 2009
Bookmarklet for The Free Dictionary
Bookmarklet for The Free Dictionary (drag this to your Bookmarks Toolbar and when you click on it you can enter a word to look up its definition):
Bookmarklet
In raw code:
javascript:var%20q=escape(window.getSelection()),i,ii;if(!q){for(i=0;i<frames.length;i++){var%20fr=frames[i];try{q=escape(fr.getSelection())}catch(e){};if(q)break;else{for(ii=0;ii<fr.frames.length;ii++){try{q=escape(fr.frames[ii].getSelection())}catch(e){};if(q)break;}}}}if(!q)void(q=prompt('Enter%20word%20to%20define%3A',''));if(q)void(location.href='http://www.thefreedictionary.com/'+q);
Bookmarklet
In raw code:
javascript:var%20q=escape(window.getSelection()),i,ii;if(!q){for(i=0;i<frames.length;i++){var%20fr=frames[i];try{q=escape(fr.getSelection())}catch(e){};if(q)break;else{for(ii=0;ii<fr.frames.length;ii++){try{q=escape(fr.frames[ii].getSelection())}catch(e){};if(q)break;}}}}if(!q)void(q=prompt('Enter%20word%20to%20define%3A',''));if(q)void(location.href='http://www.thefreedictionary.com/'+q);
Post ID: 6580243356725605308
From The Economist Intelligence Unit's Global economic outlook 2009-10 (Worst of all, lipstick sales are up)
It is estimated that 12% of multimillionaires who are conducting an extra-marital affair are considering stopping the affair for financial reasons (the source for this is Le Monde, November 28th 2008. Trust the French to come up with this information).
It is estimated that 12% of multimillionaires who are conducting an extra-marital affair are considering stopping the affair for financial reasons (the source for this is Le Monde, November 28th 2008. Trust the French to come up with this information).
Post ID: 7029000103441846658
Sunday, February 08, 2009
"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers." - Scott Adams
***
Browing the Craigslist Personals is great for amusement.
After checking out several categories, I have come to the conclusion that "men seeking women" is the funniest category.
Here are some I like (with comments in italics):
*** Beautiful & Busty Escorts Models For You ***
"We provide the finest and elegant female escorts & models that are of the sweetest and of genuine character. All our girls are interviewed and carefully selected for their beauty, intelligence and friendly personality."
What about their bust size?
Serious - 44
"I am seeking a serious relationship with a nice caring and atractive asian woman. I attach my pic because I don't want you to be suprised. Only serious respond and no men.
*picture of hand holding a penis*"
See, that's what you get for posting cock pics
Any one there to acompany me to Taipei to Vancouver - 35 (Vancouver)
"I am looking for longterm woman friend. I am looking now to accompany me to Vancouver from Taipei (Eva air on 8th Feb: 12 night)."
Okay... It seems in his book, 12 nights is "longterm"
AMERICAN WHITE GUY LOOKING TO MARRY A FEMALE - 22 (San Diego, California)
"I am a 22 year old white guy, I am willing to marry a female, you could get American citizenship. Let me know what it is you have to offer... I am a good guy. I have pictures and a myspace but i am not going to post my pictures on craigslist...
I am just trying to help you out. And help myself out at the same time. I was there in Singapor when i was in the navy and loved it. I am out of the navy now. I am kind of hurting to make ends meet right now."
Hey at least he's honest. Though one could argue that if he has to say he's a good guy, he probably isn't. But if he's out of the navy so soon it was probably a dishonorable discharge.
Would that be you - 27 (Singapore, West)
"I like cooking, and I can cook darn well (fyi I'm not gay)... Not very good looking but should be considerable I presume, coz I don't think I am that hideous looking... Love to be around my loved ones as much as possible, so that not 1 moment is lost in memory (by this I do not mean I am a control freak or some psycho). "
Wah, I die liao
Live Like a Queen - 40 (Orchard Road)
"Here's what I am offering. You will live the life of luxury in our Orchard Road Penthouse Condo where you will have your own suite, you will have the use of a chauffeured 7 series BMW during the day, the use of all of my clubs, you will have five thousand dollars ($5000/ month) as spending money each month, you won't spend a cent on anything, and all you have to do is be my companion (with benefits, of course). If things work out well, I can be a very generous person.
The initial arrangement will be for 6 months, and if we get on, we can extend it. But please speak English reasonably well."
Shit, man. Who won't want?! And maybe he had too many bad experiences with PRCs
SWM Tennessee USA Seeking SF - 57 (Tennessee)
"I am looking for the love of my life. Is it you? No scams or games please.
"
I have no idea what this fella is trying to do, with such a short and meaningless ad
***
Browing the Craigslist Personals is great for amusement.
After checking out several categories, I have come to the conclusion that "men seeking women" is the funniest category.
Here are some I like (with comments in italics):
*** Beautiful & Busty Escorts Models For You ***
"We provide the finest and elegant female escorts & models that are of the sweetest and of genuine character. All our girls are interviewed and carefully selected for their beauty, intelligence and friendly personality."
What about their bust size?
Serious - 44
"I am seeking a serious relationship with a nice caring and atractive asian woman. I attach my pic because I don't want you to be suprised. Only serious respond and no men.
*picture of hand holding a penis*"
See, that's what you get for posting cock pics
Any one there to acompany me to Taipei to Vancouver - 35 (Vancouver)
"I am looking for longterm woman friend. I am looking now to accompany me to Vancouver from Taipei (Eva air on 8th Feb: 12 night)."
Okay... It seems in his book, 12 nights is "longterm"
AMERICAN WHITE GUY LOOKING TO MARRY A FEMALE - 22 (San Diego, California)
"I am a 22 year old white guy, I am willing to marry a female, you could get American citizenship. Let me know what it is you have to offer... I am a good guy. I have pictures and a myspace but i am not going to post my pictures on craigslist...
I am just trying to help you out. And help myself out at the same time. I was there in Singapor when i was in the navy and loved it. I am out of the navy now. I am kind of hurting to make ends meet right now."
Hey at least he's honest. Though one could argue that if he has to say he's a good guy, he probably isn't. But if he's out of the navy so soon it was probably a dishonorable discharge.
Would that be you - 27 (Singapore, West)
"I like cooking, and I can cook darn well (fyi I'm not gay)... Not very good looking but should be considerable I presume, coz I don't think I am that hideous looking... Love to be around my loved ones as much as possible, so that not 1 moment is lost in memory (by this I do not mean I am a control freak or some psycho). "
Wah, I die liao
Live Like a Queen - 40 (Orchard Road)
"Here's what I am offering. You will live the life of luxury in our Orchard Road Penthouse Condo where you will have your own suite, you will have the use of a chauffeured 7 series BMW during the day, the use of all of my clubs, you will have five thousand dollars ($5000/ month) as spending money each month, you won't spend a cent on anything, and all you have to do is be my companion (with benefits, of course). If things work out well, I can be a very generous person.
The initial arrangement will be for 6 months, and if we get on, we can extend it. But please speak English reasonably well."
Shit, man. Who won't want?! And maybe he had too many bad experiences with PRCs
SWM Tennessee USA Seeking SF - 57 (Tennessee)
"I am looking for the love of my life. Is it you? No scams or games please.
"I have no idea what this fella is trying to do, with such a short and meaningless ad
Post ID: 6539190637785119968
Saturday, February 07, 2009
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." - Richard Feynman
***
A friend sent me a copy of the contract MOE made him/her sign [Addendum: detailing some aspects of MOE HR policy]. While some of the (presumably non-exhaustive list of) examples are pretty standard, 2 in particular stand out:
"Examples of Misconduct or Offences
8. Speaking disparagingly of the Government
14. Immoral behaviour"
The problems with the latter are not hard to see (e.g. definition, enforcement etc), so I will dwell on the former, which is eminently unenforceable, as presumably even going: "Aiyoh, Public Transport Council approved a public transport fare hike again! They just want to earn the bus companies profits" could get you a written reprimand, verbal or written warning or worse.
More worryingly, it is pointedly partisan.
If the item were phrased as "expressing political opinions" it wouldn't be quite as bad. After all, one could make a case (even if it is a weak one) that it behooves a public servant to be impartial and non-partisan in making statements which could conceivably (even if improbably) reflect on and politically taint his employer in some way.
Similar(ly weak, or even weaker) cases can be made for disallowing officers from speaking or writing to the press or "accepting any invitation to make or provide materials for any form of broadcast" (at least in an unofficial capacity - I heartily endorse the right of organisations to require that their employees get approval before flaunting their official capacities in non-work situations).
Yet, by expressly forbidding its officers to "[speak] disparagingly of the Government", MOE's obvious corollary is that it is alright to speak glowingly of the Government. One is impelled to make comparisons with Communist regimes, where you could (and were expected to) praise the Party, even if your Trabant was belching smoke and out of style.
Perhaps they have this policy because of what is happening during National Education lessons whose syllabuses, as someone puts it, are about "how Singapore is good and everyone else sucks" but which, I am informed, are avenues for teachers who are pissed off at having to teach Propaganda to psycho their students in the other direction (i.e. pointing out all the regime's faults)
***
A friend sent me a copy of the contract MOE made him/her sign [Addendum: detailing some aspects of MOE HR policy]. While some of the (presumably non-exhaustive list of) examples are pretty standard, 2 in particular stand out:
"Examples of Misconduct or Offences
8. Speaking disparagingly of the Government
14. Immoral behaviour"
The problems with the latter are not hard to see (e.g. definition, enforcement etc), so I will dwell on the former, which is eminently unenforceable, as presumably even going: "Aiyoh, Public Transport Council approved a public transport fare hike again! They just want to earn the bus companies profits" could get you a written reprimand, verbal or written warning or worse.
More worryingly, it is pointedly partisan.
If the item were phrased as "expressing political opinions" it wouldn't be quite as bad. After all, one could make a case (even if it is a weak one) that it behooves a public servant to be impartial and non-partisan in making statements which could conceivably (even if improbably) reflect on and politically taint his employer in some way.
Similar(ly weak, or even weaker) cases can be made for disallowing officers from speaking or writing to the press or "accepting any invitation to make or provide materials for any form of broadcast" (at least in an unofficial capacity - I heartily endorse the right of organisations to require that their employees get approval before flaunting their official capacities in non-work situations).
Yet, by expressly forbidding its officers to "[speak] disparagingly of the Government", MOE's obvious corollary is that it is alright to speak glowingly of the Government. One is impelled to make comparisons with Communist regimes, where you could (and were expected to) praise the Party, even if your Trabant was belching smoke and out of style.
Perhaps they have this policy because of what is happening during National Education lessons whose syllabuses, as someone puts it, are about "how Singapore is good and everyone else sucks" but which, I am informed, are avenues for teachers who are pissed off at having to teach Propaganda to psycho their students in the other direction (i.e. pointing out all the regime's faults)
Post ID: 4819257779583336407
"Furious activity is no substitute for understanding." - H. H. Williams
***
The 10 people most responsible for the recession - "Its proximate cause was a conscious decision by the US Treasury to jeopardise the stability of the world economy in pursuit of an essentially political objective - to show that the Bush Administration was willing to act ruthlessly against at least one big Wall Street investment bank. Until that point, savers and investors around the world had assumed that financial institutions such as Lehman were "too big to fail" and would always be supported by their governments. By shattering this belief Henry Paulson triggered a run on every important bank in the world and caused the sudden implosion of consumer and business confidence seen in the past two months."
You rescue banks, you get bashed for rescuing fatcats. You don't, you get bashed for having political motives. Damned if you do...
Just what is the middle class, and other stuff - "How people view their own income status is the antithesis of Lake Wobegon: Everybody sees themselves as average. Some surveys have found that upward of 90 percent of the population considers itself middle class. But there is also a lot of variation in who professes to be middle class. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center found that only about half of all adults put themselves in the middle class. But four in 10 with annual family incomes below $20,000 called themselves middle class; one-third of those with incomes over $150,000 said the same. Few people report themselves to be rich."
Has Middle America Stagnated? A closer look at hourly wages - "Numerous recent commentaries conclude that it has, at least for "middle America"—the broad swath of people who live well above poverty but well below opulence. These articles are supported by statistics showing slow-growing—even falling—wages, and little growth in household income over the past 30 years. It's a pretty gloomy scenario... Microeconomic statistics showing stagnation, and macroeconomic statistics exhibiting growth, measure "wages" quite differently. When the data are adjusted so that they more closely measure the same conceptual object, the disparity between the microeconomic and macroeconomic statistics largely evaporates, and I find that labor income per hour for middle America has not stagnated. Rather, the economic compensation for work for middle Americans has risen significantly over the past 30 years."
Saudi Arabia opens its doors to tourists... just a little - "In this cool region I was for once glad of my abaya - the long, black gown that all women must wear in public, along with a hijab (headscarf). In Riyadh's 35C heat this was akin to walking around in your own personal sauna. Local men usually wear cool, white robes known as thobes; it seems that the abaya's stifling black is intended to discourage women from leaving home. Women visitors must accept that wearing an abaya is an important part of showing respect in Saudi culture. More practically, not to wear one will open you to abuse on the streets. I certainly felt more at ease when covered up, though I was frustrated by the many restrictions: women are not allowed to drive, use internet cafés or go into many restaurants."
Water is blue ... because water is blue - "The following figure shows a measurement of the absorption spectra of normal and of heavy water, taken from WHY IS WATER BLUE? by Charles L. Braun and Sergei N. Smirnov, reproduced from J. Chem. Edu. 70(8) (1993) 612."
Popular Science books conned us!
No, Nuh-Uh, No Way: The Robo-Urinal - "Allegedly this robo-urinal holds your junk while you pee."
Op-Chart - Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants - "As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years."
The smell of fear is real, claim scientists - "Researchers have found that chemical signals emitted by the body in sweat when scared really can be picked up by others and can trigger fear in their brains. The discovery may help to explain why individuals with phobias such as a fear of flying can infect others who normally exhibit no such worries... Simon Wesseley, psychiatrist at King's College London, told the magazine that studies in the 1960s had shown that injecting people with adrenaline did not make them fearful until the situation became threatening. He said: "You can generate the physical symptoms of fear but people don't necessarily get scared.""
Iraqi woman had 80 women raped to recruit suicide bombers - "A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame."
'Immortal' jellyfish swarming across the world
Will daily sex cure a low libido? - "The absence of sex is a powerful yet subtle foe. It quietly corrodes the most important parts of a relationship — trust, intimacy, passion, respect — and that least analysed of all attributes, fanciability. If left untreated, the lack of sex can even destroy love. I am convinced many people split up because they forget to make love to each other, and love — along with the feelgood chemical, dopamine, that sex generates — dries up... The idea that you could enjoy sex without “wanting” it can be a revelation, but “you just have to put the canoe in the water and start paddling”... It seems, as in so many aspects of marriage, that the answer lies in compromise. The needs of both people be recognised. “Sometimes that means making love to your spouse even when you’re not in the mood,” says Spurr. “You do it because you know it’ll make the person you love happy.”"
Strangely, there're no feminists bashing men for demanding sex as if they own women's bodies in the comments
Bobbie Johnson: Why I'm finished with 'social media' - "Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing about Bale's expletive-laden bullying as a "social drinking sensation". They don't call people giggling about it on the phone as a "social telecommunications sensation". They call it joking, or they call it gossip, because that's what people do. Whether they do it online or offline, down the pub or on Facebook doesn't matter. "Social media" is mainstream - we don't need to claim any more victories for it. So, that's it. I'm sick of "social media experts"."
YouTube - WHERE ARE THE CHIPS??? - "They're big and full and bouncy. A double-breasted burger from Nando's."
They wouldn't be able to do this ad in Singapore for more than one reason.
Straight and to the point. - "I just need to do this without the drama. You know! Genuine conversation and chemistry as the only real requirements. So why craigslist? I can't bring myself to risk any of the current friendships and it's been awhile since the last time."
Two people sent me this. For all you know it's a "Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist" study
F*** My Life - FML : Your everyday life stories. - "Today, I decided to send my boyfriend a pic text of me naked. I accidently sent it to my dad and got a text back saying "You definitely take after your mom". FML.. Today, I had just gotten over the flu and thought I was better. So me and my boyfriend decided to have sex. As I was about to orgasm, I puked all over his face. He was so disgusted that he ended up throwing up on me as well. FML... Today, I was eating ice cream and I noticed some on my jeans so I wiped it off with my finger and licked it. It was bird shit. FML"
I bet half of these are fake
A shallow strategy - "This takes us rapidly to the credit crunch: stretch rules to their limits, don’t worry about systemic effects, don’t think about ethics – and measure success in Ferraris. Game theory has made the financial world in its image, and we are now trying to rescue ourselves from it. Is this book a guide to success in business? Probably not, unless you want to go into competition law, running complicated auctions, utility regulation or military micro-tactics. Is it a guide to life? The trouble lies in its shallow psychology. The games you play and the way you play them change you as a person – today’s game changes the games and pay-offs you will face tomorrow. A focus on the tactics of life squeezes out the important questions of what a good life should be. The financial crisis is also a crisis for economics: why did the discipline fail so spectacularly to predict it? Worse, did it contribute to making the meltdown possible?"
More soldiers committed suicide in January than killed by Al Qaeda
He’s not controversial, just brutally frank - "It can be a hair-raising experience talking to socio-political blogger Gabriel Seah. And we’re not talking about his views on mega-churches as being cult-like, or the fact that he blew famous blogger Dawn Yang’s plastic surgery cover. Rather, it’s the way he tosses his mane nonchalantly as he speaks... “There’s also something that I like to do to other people with my hair,” Seah explained. He tied his hair in a high ponytail, and without warning, whipped his friend’s face. She yelped in pain, and he laughed."
I'm not a socio-political blogger ><
The Psychological Consequences of Money - "Money has been said to change people’s motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance"
PMSBuddy.com - The free online PMS reminder - "PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on "that time of the month" - when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all."
Some guys have all the luck - "It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Developer Ong Jun Da spends about 20 minutes each day picking out attractive Singapore women to add to his iPhone slideshow app SG Girls (iTunes link). As a result of his tireless efforts, SG Girls (US$3.99) now has more than 2,000 pictures of attractive women. More are added each day... Currently, he gets all the pictures from Flickr but he is looking at getting pictures from other sources as well."
!@#$%^&*(). I'm quite sure he's violated some CC licenses in the process of making this application.
***
The 10 people most responsible for the recession - "Its proximate cause was a conscious decision by the US Treasury to jeopardise the stability of the world economy in pursuit of an essentially political objective - to show that the Bush Administration was willing to act ruthlessly against at least one big Wall Street investment bank. Until that point, savers and investors around the world had assumed that financial institutions such as Lehman were "too big to fail" and would always be supported by their governments. By shattering this belief Henry Paulson triggered a run on every important bank in the world and caused the sudden implosion of consumer and business confidence seen in the past two months."
You rescue banks, you get bashed for rescuing fatcats. You don't, you get bashed for having political motives. Damned if you do...
Just what is the middle class, and other stuff - "How people view their own income status is the antithesis of Lake Wobegon: Everybody sees themselves as average. Some surveys have found that upward of 90 percent of the population considers itself middle class. But there is also a lot of variation in who professes to be middle class. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center found that only about half of all adults put themselves in the middle class. But four in 10 with annual family incomes below $20,000 called themselves middle class; one-third of those with incomes over $150,000 said the same. Few people report themselves to be rich."
Has Middle America Stagnated? A closer look at hourly wages - "Numerous recent commentaries conclude that it has, at least for "middle America"—the broad swath of people who live well above poverty but well below opulence. These articles are supported by statistics showing slow-growing—even falling—wages, and little growth in household income over the past 30 years. It's a pretty gloomy scenario... Microeconomic statistics showing stagnation, and macroeconomic statistics exhibiting growth, measure "wages" quite differently. When the data are adjusted so that they more closely measure the same conceptual object, the disparity between the microeconomic and macroeconomic statistics largely evaporates, and I find that labor income per hour for middle America has not stagnated. Rather, the economic compensation for work for middle Americans has risen significantly over the past 30 years."
Saudi Arabia opens its doors to tourists... just a little - "In this cool region I was for once glad of my abaya - the long, black gown that all women must wear in public, along with a hijab (headscarf). In Riyadh's 35C heat this was akin to walking around in your own personal sauna. Local men usually wear cool, white robes known as thobes; it seems that the abaya's stifling black is intended to discourage women from leaving home. Women visitors must accept that wearing an abaya is an important part of showing respect in Saudi culture. More practically, not to wear one will open you to abuse on the streets. I certainly felt more at ease when covered up, though I was frustrated by the many restrictions: women are not allowed to drive, use internet cafés or go into many restaurants."
Water is blue ... because water is blue - "The following figure shows a measurement of the absorption spectra of normal and of heavy water, taken from WHY IS WATER BLUE? by Charles L. Braun and Sergei N. Smirnov, reproduced from J. Chem. Edu. 70(8) (1993) 612."
Popular Science books conned us!
No, Nuh-Uh, No Way: The Robo-Urinal - "Allegedly this robo-urinal holds your junk while you pee."
Op-Chart - Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants - "As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years."
The smell of fear is real, claim scientists - "Researchers have found that chemical signals emitted by the body in sweat when scared really can be picked up by others and can trigger fear in their brains. The discovery may help to explain why individuals with phobias such as a fear of flying can infect others who normally exhibit no such worries... Simon Wesseley, psychiatrist at King's College London, told the magazine that studies in the 1960s had shown that injecting people with adrenaline did not make them fearful until the situation became threatening. He said: "You can generate the physical symptoms of fear but people don't necessarily get scared.""
Iraqi woman had 80 women raped to recruit suicide bombers - "A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame."
'Immortal' jellyfish swarming across the world
Will daily sex cure a low libido? - "The absence of sex is a powerful yet subtle foe. It quietly corrodes the most important parts of a relationship — trust, intimacy, passion, respect — and that least analysed of all attributes, fanciability. If left untreated, the lack of sex can even destroy love. I am convinced many people split up because they forget to make love to each other, and love — along with the feelgood chemical, dopamine, that sex generates — dries up... The idea that you could enjoy sex without “wanting” it can be a revelation, but “you just have to put the canoe in the water and start paddling”... It seems, as in so many aspects of marriage, that the answer lies in compromise. The needs of both people be recognised. “Sometimes that means making love to your spouse even when you’re not in the mood,” says Spurr. “You do it because you know it’ll make the person you love happy.”"
Strangely, there're no feminists bashing men for demanding sex as if they own women's bodies in the comments
Bobbie Johnson: Why I'm finished with 'social media' - "Nobody talks about people down the pub laughing about Bale's expletive-laden bullying as a "social drinking sensation". They don't call people giggling about it on the phone as a "social telecommunications sensation". They call it joking, or they call it gossip, because that's what people do. Whether they do it online or offline, down the pub or on Facebook doesn't matter. "Social media" is mainstream - we don't need to claim any more victories for it. So, that's it. I'm sick of "social media experts"."
YouTube - WHERE ARE THE CHIPS??? - "They're big and full and bouncy. A double-breasted burger from Nando's."
They wouldn't be able to do this ad in Singapore for more than one reason.
Straight and to the point. - "I just need to do this without the drama. You know! Genuine conversation and chemistry as the only real requirements. So why craigslist? I can't bring myself to risk any of the current friendships and it's been awhile since the last time."
Two people sent me this. For all you know it's a "Your chances of getting laid through Craigslist" study
F*** My Life - FML : Your everyday life stories. - "Today, I decided to send my boyfriend a pic text of me naked. I accidently sent it to my dad and got a text back saying "You definitely take after your mom". FML.. Today, I had just gotten over the flu and thought I was better. So me and my boyfriend decided to have sex. As I was about to orgasm, I puked all over his face. He was so disgusted that he ended up throwing up on me as well. FML... Today, I was eating ice cream and I noticed some on my jeans so I wiped it off with my finger and licked it. It was bird shit. FML"
I bet half of these are fake
A shallow strategy - "This takes us rapidly to the credit crunch: stretch rules to their limits, don’t worry about systemic effects, don’t think about ethics – and measure success in Ferraris. Game theory has made the financial world in its image, and we are now trying to rescue ourselves from it. Is this book a guide to success in business? Probably not, unless you want to go into competition law, running complicated auctions, utility regulation or military micro-tactics. Is it a guide to life? The trouble lies in its shallow psychology. The games you play and the way you play them change you as a person – today’s game changes the games and pay-offs you will face tomorrow. A focus on the tactics of life squeezes out the important questions of what a good life should be. The financial crisis is also a crisis for economics: why did the discipline fail so spectacularly to predict it? Worse, did it contribute to making the meltdown possible?"
More soldiers committed suicide in January than killed by Al Qaeda
He’s not controversial, just brutally frank - "It can be a hair-raising experience talking to socio-political blogger Gabriel Seah. And we’re not talking about his views on mega-churches as being cult-like, or the fact that he blew famous blogger Dawn Yang’s plastic surgery cover. Rather, it’s the way he tosses his mane nonchalantly as he speaks... “There’s also something that I like to do to other people with my hair,” Seah explained. He tied his hair in a high ponytail, and without warning, whipped his friend’s face. She yelped in pain, and he laughed."
I'm not a socio-political blogger ><
The Psychological Consequences of Money - "Money has been said to change people’s motivation (mainly for the better) and their behavior toward others (mainly for the worse). The results of nine experiments suggest that money brings about a self-sufficient orientation in which people prefer to be free of dependency and dependents. Reminders of money, relative to nonmoney reminders, led to reduced requests for help and reduced helpfulness toward others. Relative to participants primed with neutral concepts, participants primed with money preferred to play alone, work alone, and put more physical distance between themselves and a new acquaintance"
PMSBuddy.com - The free online PMS reminder - "PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on "that time of the month" - when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all."
Some guys have all the luck - "It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it. Developer Ong Jun Da spends about 20 minutes each day picking out attractive Singapore women to add to his iPhone slideshow app SG Girls (iTunes link). As a result of his tireless efforts, SG Girls (US$3.99) now has more than 2,000 pictures of attractive women. More are added each day... Currently, he gets all the pictures from Flickr but he is looking at getting pictures from other sources as well."
!@#$%^&*(). I'm quite sure he's violated some CC licenses in the process of making this application.
Post ID: 5826564385667651436
Disney's Desperate Housewives / Disney Princesses, Deconstructed
Mother Goose and Grimm:
DISNEY'S DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
BELLE: My husband is an animal.
CINDERELLA: Mine still drives a pumpkin.
SNOW WHITE: My husband leaves me at home with seven little ones.
ARIEL: Mine wants me to wear fishnet stockings.
AURORA: I just pretend I'm asleep.
Addendum: Also see,
Disney Princesses, Deconstructed » Sociological Images (or What Disney teaches you; there's also one on Disney princes)
The evolution of the Disney princess:
Snow White (1937): Her burgeoning sexuality is a threat to another woman, so she's killed. Her only asset, physical beauty, is what saves her in the end
Sleeping Beauty (1959): Betrothed at birth to solidify a political position, she is killed by another woman out of spite. Her owner...ahem...fiance, saves her with a kiss. Again, sex is her only salvation.
Belle (1991): Saves a prince's life. With her only asset, her sexuality.
What Disney princes teach men about attracting women:
Prince Charming (x4): Be rich, charming, famous and good looking.
Aladdin: Be charming, good looking and appear to be rich and famous.
Addendum:
What Disney Princesses teach girls, What Disney Princes teach men about attracting women
DISNEY'S DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
BELLE: My husband is an animal.
CINDERELLA: Mine still drives a pumpkin.
SNOW WHITE: My husband leaves me at home with seven little ones.
ARIEL: Mine wants me to wear fishnet stockings.
AURORA: I just pretend I'm asleep.
Addendum: Also see,
Disney Princesses, Deconstructed » Sociological Images (or What Disney teaches you; there's also one on Disney princes)
The evolution of the Disney princess:
Snow White (1937): Her burgeoning sexuality is a threat to another woman, so she's killed. Her only asset, physical beauty, is what saves her in the end
Sleeping Beauty (1959): Betrothed at birth to solidify a political position, she is killed by another woman out of spite. Her owner...ahem...fiance, saves her with a kiss. Again, sex is her only salvation.
Belle (1991): Saves a prince's life. With her only asset, her sexuality.
What Disney princes teach men about attracting women:
Prince Charming (x4): Be rich, charming, famous and good looking.
Aladdin: Be charming, good looking and appear to be rich and famous.
Addendum:
What Disney Princesses teach girls, What Disney Princes teach men about attracting women
Post ID: 7067536811478513043
"The only thing I like about rich people is their money." - Nancy Astor
***
Valentine's Day 'haram in Islam'
"The state Religious Department yesterday reminded Muslims here that Valentine's Day was "haram" in Islam, which means forbidden.
The fatwa had been declared in 2005, but the warning, said Mufti Datuk M. Tahrir Samsudin, was the department's yearly reminder to Muslims not to engage in un-Islamic activities.
He said such celebrations "involved elements of vice" and violated Islamic tenets and values. He said the Christian elements found in the celebration also did not correspond with Islamic practices."
Malaysia Boleh!
***
Valentine's Day 'haram in Islam'
"The state Religious Department yesterday reminded Muslims here that Valentine's Day was "haram" in Islam, which means forbidden.
The fatwa had been declared in 2005, but the warning, said Mufti Datuk M. Tahrir Samsudin, was the department's yearly reminder to Muslims not to engage in un-Islamic activities.
He said such celebrations "involved elements of vice" and violated Islamic tenets and values. He said the Christian elements found in the celebration also did not correspond with Islamic practices."
Malaysia Boleh!
Post ID: 1612446290200883098
Japan trip - Day 16, Part 5 - Matsushima Bay; Akihabara, Tokyo
"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." - Oscar Wilde
***
Japan trip
Day 16 - 21st June - Matsushima Bay; Akihabara, Tokyo (Part 5)
I then went to Zuiganji Temple. They had caves with many nice statues.
Sign about the more-than-eight-century-old caves
Statues
Don't ask me why there're 2 reels
Long road leading out of the temple grounds
Enmei Jizo (The Guardian deity of longevity), 1863. The statue was modelled after the 117th abbot, tsk.
Whereas the grounds were free, entrance to the complex cost Y700. I decided not to visit yet another temple (even if it was, surprise surprise, a National Treasure) and spend the time walking around the town, and back in Tokyo.
Outside they were giving out free samples of beef tongue (Gyu tan), the local delicacy (thanks to post-War food shortages). This was cooked with black pepper and tasted mostly like beef, except springier and chewier.
It was a bit early, but I hadn't eaten very much during lunchtime (3 scallops and a rice ball, then ice cream a few hours later) so I looked for a restaurant, "Gozabune", recommended by Lonely Planet. Once again, it had failed me, as one woman informed me that there was no such outlet, and someone from another restaurant said it was in Shiogama (a nearby city). So, whatever, I had a Y1500 fried oyster combo at a place with "Cow" in its name (IIRC where I asked about Gozabune; it specialised in beef tongue, but I wasn't really a fan). It didn't hurt that they had an English menu.
The oysters were very fresh (assuredly fresher than in Miyajima). Both sauces were for the oysters (that one was egg mayo was weird).
Barley rice wasn't very special - just normal rice with a bit of barley inside. It didn't do anything for the taste.
It was one of the very few places I'd been to where the miso soup didn't taste the same (i.e. from a huge factory in Japan supply 99.9% of the world's miso soup). The spring onion was very fresh, and the soup was light and refreshing.
Dinner menu. I don't know what sashimi being "raw in this season" means. Maybe they have cooked sashimi in other seasons.
I was still a bit hungry after dinner, so I had fries from a kiosk beside the restaurant. These were light and fluffy. The guy pressed a lever on a machine to squeeze out the fries. I think he was pressing a lump of reformed potato.
Can you tell what is wrong with this vending machine?
On the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, I took a sound recording of the variety of English that is common in English announcements in Japan: what I call Gaijin English: Gaijin English Accent.WAV; it's an unplaceable, off-angmoh accent which you'd expect from an angmoh who'd been in Japan for too many years.
Assorted snacks. The ones on the right look freaky (like alien riceballs)
Back in Ueno, I got my backpack from a locker and then went to my Capsule Hotel in Akihabara.
Besides the main sign advertising a 24 hour 'DVD" shop, notice the banner on the left: "Video & DVD Men's Relaxation Space. 3 hours. Y1000". There're options for up to 12 hours too - Jap men must have a lot of stamina.
"Olive High Society School Club"
"Lingerie Club"
I was quite annoyed by the typos in both signs - Engrish is known for bizarre grammar and word choice, but usually the spelling is alright.
Despite all the alluring signs with tempting services, I eventually reached my Capsule Hotel. Capsule Hotels are primarily designed for businessmen who are out past the last train and unable to get home. They then check into these relatively inexpensive, high-density (see future photographs) establishments to spend the night.
You only get a locker like this to store your stuff. Sufficient for a businessman, but not for travellers (there was a rack at the lobby for bo liao people like me to chain our luggage).
What's the difference between Wonda Wonderful Coffee's "After Shot" and "Morning Shot"?!
I then went to walk around again.
Y1700 watermelons at Hanamasa Prospec Discount Supermarket (24 hour). I shudder to think of how watermelons at non-discount supermarkets are priced.
Japanese Snapple - not made from the best stuff on earth (how shocking).
Akihabara at night - dead
??? manga poster. Wth is "lump of sugar"?!
I had no idea what this dispensed, besides artificial sugar (Calorie Mate), but had a hunch it was food. I am informed this sells canned ramen and oden.
Costume Shop. There's one at Bali Lane
"Octopus Ball Made in Kyo-To" - If these were really made in Kyoto I wouldn't want to eat them.
I then wandered into another 'DVD' shop, intent on finally getting someone his tenga cup.
Half a floor of MILF material, 1 floor of gravure and manga/anime and 2 of adult materials.
Huge U-15 shelf on the gravure floor.
What looks to be a shelf of food and beverage products: cup noodles, green tea, beer, lemon tea and red tea, but look closer. I am particularly amused by "Anaho Super 'Wet'" (a take on Asahi Super Dry). I don't know why lube needs to be packaged in this form though.
Zentai. YES, IT EXISTS.
Used panties.
I was quite excited to see this. I never knew sex dolls were so affordable. Then again there's the freaky manga face, ugh. And on reflection it doesn't look fully articulated (for all you know it's a blowup underneath).
Someone: u see e words beside the 8400 yen
it means "self made hole for specialised use"
I finally got the tenga cup for someone, so I left.
There's a LOT of Dōjinshi at this place. There's "女人向" but no "男人向" (maybe that's porn).
I was feeling peckish, so I went to Matsuya again.
The pork was both better taste and value. Fried stuff doesn't fare well when microwaved.
Almost all Jap eating establishments up to the not-so-cheap level use disposable chopsticks. Maybe it's some law.
Matsuya menu. Mine was the top left.
Various breads. The one on the top right was my breakfast.
I don't yet know if this is Français or Fwancais (Fwench)
An example of subordinate masculinity. The tie makes it less subordinate, I suppose.
After my walk I returned to the Capsule Hotel.
Hotel's floors. I am amused at the distinction between beer and normal vending machines. Women got private shower cubicles, their own computer area and the option of renting a room (as opposed to capsules). How sexist. Then again, knowing how perverted Jap men can get, I don't exactly blame them.
Mycoffin capsule. It's not a real coffin because there's no door (only a blind you can pull down)
The capsule had a TV (but I couldn't hear anything) but no power points inside. Cutting edge technology indeed - for the 1980s!
Usually Jap-style pillows have beans inside. This one didn't.
The mortuary
Me in my coffin, with the blind pulled down
Someone: your display picture looks like some rather sleezy pictures I've seen of passed out girls
PS: I only have 2 more travelogue entries left, but there probably won't be more for quite a while.
***
Japan trip
Day 16 - 21st June - Matsushima Bay; Akihabara, Tokyo (Part 5)
I then went to Zuiganji Temple. They had caves with many nice statues.
Sign about the more-than-eight-century-old caves
Statues
Don't ask me why there're 2 reels
Long road leading out of the temple grounds
Enmei Jizo (The Guardian deity of longevity), 1863. The statue was modelled after the 117th abbot, tsk.
Whereas the grounds were free, entrance to the complex cost Y700. I decided not to visit yet another temple (even if it was, surprise surprise, a National Treasure) and spend the time walking around the town, and back in Tokyo.
Outside they were giving out free samples of beef tongue (Gyu tan), the local delicacy (thanks to post-War food shortages). This was cooked with black pepper and tasted mostly like beef, except springier and chewier.
It was a bit early, but I hadn't eaten very much during lunchtime (3 scallops and a rice ball, then ice cream a few hours later) so I looked for a restaurant, "Gozabune", recommended by Lonely Planet. Once again, it had failed me, as one woman informed me that there was no such outlet, and someone from another restaurant said it was in Shiogama (a nearby city). So, whatever, I had a Y1500 fried oyster combo at a place with "Cow" in its name (IIRC where I asked about Gozabune; it specialised in beef tongue, but I wasn't really a fan). It didn't hurt that they had an English menu.
The oysters were very fresh (assuredly fresher than in Miyajima). Both sauces were for the oysters (that one was egg mayo was weird).
Barley rice wasn't very special - just normal rice with a bit of barley inside. It didn't do anything for the taste.
It was one of the very few places I'd been to where the miso soup didn't taste the same (i.e. from a huge factory in Japan supply 99.9% of the world's miso soup). The spring onion was very fresh, and the soup was light and refreshing.
Dinner menu. I don't know what sashimi being "raw in this season" means. Maybe they have cooked sashimi in other seasons.
I was still a bit hungry after dinner, so I had fries from a kiosk beside the restaurant. These were light and fluffy. The guy pressed a lever on a machine to squeeze out the fries. I think he was pressing a lump of reformed potato.
Can you tell what is wrong with this vending machine?
On the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, I took a sound recording of the variety of English that is common in English announcements in Japan: what I call Gaijin English: Gaijin English Accent.WAV; it's an unplaceable, off-angmoh accent which you'd expect from an angmoh who'd been in Japan for too many years.
Assorted snacks. The ones on the right look freaky (like alien riceballs)
Back in Ueno, I got my backpack from a locker and then went to my Capsule Hotel in Akihabara.
Besides the main sign advertising a 24 hour 'DVD" shop, notice the banner on the left: "Video & DVD Men's Relaxation Space. 3 hours. Y1000". There're options for up to 12 hours too - Jap men must have a lot of stamina.
"Olive High Society School Club"
"Lingerie Club"
I was quite annoyed by the typos in both signs - Engrish is known for bizarre grammar and word choice, but usually the spelling is alright.
Despite all the alluring signs with tempting services, I eventually reached my Capsule Hotel. Capsule Hotels are primarily designed for businessmen who are out past the last train and unable to get home. They then check into these relatively inexpensive, high-density (see future photographs) establishments to spend the night.
You only get a locker like this to store your stuff. Sufficient for a businessman, but not for travellers (there was a rack at the lobby for bo liao people like me to chain our luggage).
What's the difference between Wonda Wonderful Coffee's "After Shot" and "Morning Shot"?!
I then went to walk around again.
Y1700 watermelons at Hanamasa Prospec Discount Supermarket (24 hour). I shudder to think of how watermelons at non-discount supermarkets are priced.
Japanese Snapple - not made from the best stuff on earth (how shocking).
Akihabara at night - dead
??? manga poster. Wth is "lump of sugar"?!
I had no idea what this dispensed, besides artificial sugar (Calorie Mate), but had a hunch it was food. I am informed this sells canned ramen and oden.
Costume Shop. There's one at Bali Lane
"Octopus Ball Made in Kyo-To" - If these were really made in Kyoto I wouldn't want to eat them.
I then wandered into another 'DVD' shop, intent on finally getting someone his tenga cup.
Half a floor of MILF material, 1 floor of gravure and manga/anime and 2 of adult materials.
Huge U-15 shelf on the gravure floor.
What looks to be a shelf of food and beverage products: cup noodles, green tea, beer, lemon tea and red tea, but look closer. I am particularly amused by "Anaho Super 'Wet'" (a take on Asahi Super Dry). I don't know why lube needs to be packaged in this form though.
Zentai. YES, IT EXISTS.
Used panties.
I was quite excited to see this. I never knew sex dolls were so affordable. Then again there's the freaky manga face, ugh. And on reflection it doesn't look fully articulated (for all you know it's a blowup underneath).
Someone: u see e words beside the 8400 yen
it means "self made hole for specialised use"
I finally got the tenga cup for someone, so I left.
There's a LOT of Dōjinshi at this place. There's "女人向" but no "男人向" (maybe that's porn).
I was feeling peckish, so I went to Matsuya again.
The pork was both better taste and value. Fried stuff doesn't fare well when microwaved.
Almost all Jap eating establishments up to the not-so-cheap level use disposable chopsticks. Maybe it's some law.
Matsuya menu. Mine was the top left.
Various breads. The one on the top right was my breakfast.
I don't yet know if this is Français or Fwancais (Fwench)
An example of subordinate masculinity. The tie makes it less subordinate, I suppose.
After my walk I returned to the Capsule Hotel.
Hotel's floors. I am amused at the distinction between beer and normal vending machines. Women got private shower cubicles, their own computer area and the option of renting a room (as opposed to capsules). How sexist. Then again, knowing how perverted Jap men can get, I don't exactly blame them.
My
The capsule had a TV (but I couldn't hear anything) but no power points inside. Cutting edge technology indeed - for the 1980s!
Usually Jap-style pillows have beans inside. This one didn't.
The mortuary
Me in my coffin, with the blind pulled down
Someone: your display picture looks like some rather sleezy pictures I've seen of passed out girls
PS: I only have 2 more travelogue entries left, but there probably won't be more for quite a while.
Post ID: 2984624068192365057
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