Balderdash

Failure

2012-01-18T23:53:00.001+08:00

And... Once again I am unable to finish a travelogue before commencing another trip!

Links - 16th January 2012

2012-01-16T22:14:00.002+08:00

Man ignores drowning boy, not knowing it was his son - "The father's apathy resulted in the death of his six-year-old son. Later, he filed a lawsuit against the neighbourhood committee over the boy's death, demanding a compensation of 470,000 yuan (S$96,841)"
Ahh, China!

Why bigger is not always better - "“Breast augmentation, if done well, can be a life-changing operation,” he says. “Some women are very introverted before the operation and feel so much more comfortable about their bodies afterwards. Many women who don’t have an awful lot of breast tissue just don’t feel particularly feminine. Just look at the number of padded bras sold around the world. “The idea that people want to look like Dolly Parton when they come for breast augmentation is very far from the truth. The vast majority simply want to feel good and look natural”"

Stradivarius may be bit of a fiddle at more than $1m, say researchers - "In an experiment, concert violinists were unable to pick out two Stradivarius violins from modern instruments, based on their sound alone"

Islamic Minister, MPs, PPM and religious groups condemn UN Human Rights Commissioner - "Statements by visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay calling for a moratorium on flogging as a punishment for fornication and criticising the Muslim-only clause for citizenship in the Maldivian constitution have been widely condemned by religious NGOs, public officials and political parties... Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari told local media that “a tenet of Islam cannot be changed” and flogging was a hudud punishment prescribed in the Quran (24:2) and “revealed down to us from seven heavens”... “This is a very serious problem. You can’t say flogging is a form of violence against women”... Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Ahmed Faiz noted that the constitution placed limits on free speech and the right to free expression “cannot be used under any circumstances outside of Islamic principles or in violation of a tenet of Islam”"

The Burning House - "nothing can replace Lache [my teddy bear] who saw me through all the difficult turning points in my life: surviving the 7.2, 1977 earthquake in Bucuresti, moving 10 times over a 25 year span, losing my dad to ALS, breaking up and being broken up with. Lache is with me in Zürich, as I try to adapt to a completely different culture. He’s resting in the closet in a thin pink mesh fabric bag my mom made for him. After I’m dead, I want to be cremated with Lache. I feel guilty for taking him with me but I hope he will understand I don’t want either one of us to be alone"

More sex might lead to younger appearance - "A study from Scotland's Royal Edinburgh Hospital states, frequent sex can make a person look up to seven years younger... "When one is in a good, harmonious relationship, and the couple are able to deal with the stresses through mutually satisfactory ways, including ‘sex,' it seems obvious that the person is going to feel less stress," Thompson said. "Therefore (they are) likely to feel better and look younger than those who are unhappy or stressed." Sidney Westervelt, sophomore in family and consumer science education, said when she feels better she tends to feel younger; however, she has reserved feelings regarding using sex as a beauty routine. "I would not have sex for simply that reason," Westervelt said."
From another report on the study: "Casual sex with different partners, or cheating, did not slow the aging process, the researchers say. In fact, Weeks says, it may cause premature aging from worry and stress. The sex doesn't work without a good relationship"

Jedi Church - Jedi Religion and Jedi Faith - "The Jedi Church recognises that there is one all powerful force that binds all things in the universe together, and accepts all races and species from all over the universe as potential members of the religion. Join the Jedi Church today! Our church had 21000 unique visitors last month. The Jedi Church is a good force in the universe."

NUS Business Leads - October 2005 - "Q: Why did you want to be an SOE writer?
Eunice: To be honest, it was for the $100 reward per interview.
Q: Having gotten a glimpse of the life of an entrepreneur, do you want to become one, and why?
Eunice: No, because being an entrepreneur is not as fulfilling to me as it is to others. I rather spend the time on my family and leave the "entrepreneuring" to my boyfriend.
Q: How has an education at NUS Business School played a role in your current decision, and in helping you pursue your aspirations?
Eunice: I met my boyfriend here."

Why there's no such thing as sex addiction - "I’ve publicly challenged the validity of sex addiction, and this has brought me trouble. I’ve been accused of being “evil”, “dangerous” and “heartless”. Sex addiction therapists have attacked me — I’ve even been accused of being a sex addict myself, told that I am in “denial” about the danger of my own sexual desires... It hasn’t been recognised as a bona fide disease by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders... there are a dozen or so competing definitions and no two psychotherapists who apply the concept in the same way... There are many embedded moral concepts in these definitions, all of which suggest that sex is dangerous, shouldn’t be “enjoyed too much” and that something that creates imbalance in a person’s life is inherently unhealthy. However, people like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa made single things the overwhelming focus of their lives — and yet these lives of “imbalance” are not judged unhealthy... Nobody in history has ever died from wanting sex and being unable to have it. Wanting something that you don’t have and being dissatisfied, even sexually, is a condition that people around the world deal with every day. They cope with it without losing control, without lying, cheating and manipulating, and without proclaiming themselves an addict... Porn exposure is almost universal in men and if it had the destructive effect that doomsayers claim, we would be awash with sex crime, and every day would look like the erotic chaos of Carnival and Mardi Gras... a diagnosis of sex addiction is used to somehow absolve men and women (though mostly men) of all responsibility for their actions that is, in my opinion, the most malign feature of the sex addiction industry... Sex addiction tells people that sexual desire is a destructive, weakening thing, and that the only way men can control their sexual desire is to excise it, and ring it with fear and prohibitions. But sex is not a disease. In fact, it’s good for you... If male sexuality is inherently addictive and dangerous, then a healthy male is one who has no sexuality. That’s a frightening and emasculating concept"

Women pay to remove ‘ugly’ demons - "The paper reported confessions by two stewardesses that they did not mind taking the exorcism beauty treatment as long as it did not cloud their religious beliefs or harm their body. The paper, however, quoted Kelantan Mufti Datuk Mohamad Shukri as saying that there should be an in-depth study on the method used to ensure it did not go against the tenets of Islam"

Simon Doonan’s Eating Guide for Gay and Straight - NYTimes.com - "“Gay chips are baked,” he said. “Straight chips are deep-fried. It’s that simple”... I ate the way a lot of straight men automatically do: with gluttonous, meat-and-cheese-and-avocado-mad disregard for the repercussions. If I wanted to slim down after the holidays, he suggested, I should try to eat like a gay man... One of the tongue-in-cheek propositions of Mr. Doonan’s new book, “Gay Men Don’t Get Fat” (Blue Rider Press, $24.95), is that the vast range of the world’s culinary options can be boiled down to two core categories: gay food and straight food. Seeking out a balanced diet of both is the savviest way to stay svelte. Think of it, if you must, as bisexual eating... “Gay foods are more decorative; they’re more frivolous,” he said. “The macaron craze is the ne plus ultra of gay fooderie. I can’t believe any red-blooded straight guy can even walk into a macaron shop. If you wanted to ruin a politician’s career, just publish a picture of him shopping for macarons”... Meanwhile, Mr. Doonan freely uses “lesbian” to describe certain earthy, healthful foods. “Organic olive oil, thick porridge, heaping helpings of wheat germ,” he said. “A crusty loaf of whole-grain bread is both ferociously lesbian and wildly heterosexual”... “I love sweeping generalizations,” he said. “Sweeping generalizations are the key to everything, and they invariably contain nuggets of truth. Sometimes infinitesimally small nuggets”"

Cee Lo Green changes John Lennon's 'Imagine' lyrics to push pro-religion views - "The singer sang "all religion is true" during his NYE performance in New York"

The incident at Petrich - "The incident at Petrich, named after the Bulgarian border town Petrich, which was shortly occupied by Greek forces, occurred on 22 October 1925. It allegedly started when a Greek soldier ran after his dog, which had strayed across the border from Macedonia; thus, it is some times speculatively referred as the War of the Stray Dog"

Naturalism and Its Limits - NYTimes.com - "Accepting the naturalist slogan without looking beneath the slick packaging is an unscientific way to form one’s beliefs about the world, not something naturalists should recommend... One challenge to naturalism is to find a place for mathematics. Natural sciences rely on it, but should we count it a science in its own right? If we do, then the description of scientific method just given is wrong, for it does not fit the science of mathematics, which proves its results by pure reasoning, rather than the hypothetico-deductive method... Dismissing an idea as “inconsistent with naturalism” is little better than dismissing it as “inconsistent with Christianity... any theory can be applied in an unscientific spirit, as a polemical device to reinforce prejudice. Naturalism as dogma is one more enemy of the scientific spirit”

Moral Pornography | Philosophy Now - "Here at least, at last is wrongness pure and simple: Let us despise it with all of our moral might. Further magnifying this effect is that the alleged perpetrators are under lock and key. They are completely in our power, so our feelings are able to find the most concrete and satisfying expression imaginable. Not only can we call these men whatever names we please but we can, and do (in letters to the editor and blogs) call for their death, even by torture... There is vicarious pleasure to be found in the verbal and virtual stoning of these monsters... Just as patriotism is ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ righteousness diverts attention from run-of-the-mill wrongdoing. We can feel innocent by comparison to the miscreant. Dare I say that we thereby enact the salvation story: the lifting of our guilt by its imposition on another (who is, furthermore on the amoralist account, in fact without sin)? More: the catharsis of denunciation is a source of self-satisfaction that makes us feel morally superior"

The veil, the chair and the virtue police - "Some Nour Party candidates and Salafi politicians have been speaking as though the extremist Islamification of Egyptian society is just around the corner... a Hadith by the prophet Mohamed forbids women from wearing perfume outdoors... Salafis call for separating men and women in burial places as well, while one Yemeni Salafi cleric proclaims that women should not sit on couches and chairs because they are Western inventions that allow women to relax and spread her legs, inviting demons to engage with them sexually... While many are dismayed by the stric Salafi rulings, the more politically savvy say they saw it coming. “Political Islam is a cover for social and sexual tension,” says Saed Sadek, professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, who believes that Salafi politicians consider women an easy target. “After their sweeping success in the parliament, Islamists will start to tweak and alter divorce laws, custody and women rights”... Sheikh Mahmoud Amer, a Salafi figure in Damanhour, stated that voting for a non-praying Muslim, a Christian, a liberal, a former NDP member or a secular candidate is religiously forbidden... Ahmed Farid, board member of the Salafi Call in Alexandria, added that Islam doesn’t recognize liberalism or absolute freedom in all aspects of life: economic, political, social and sexual. Sheikh Hesham al-Naggar, Nour Party candidate in Sharqiya called for a fight against secularists. “We will deter secularism like we daunted the crusaders”"

u r wt u wr - 15th January 2012

2012-01-15T23:47:00.002+08:00

u r wt u wr:

- 'Make love not babies'
- 'I ♥ nerds' (the boy beside her was quite so)
- '[Eye chart layout] -something - to kiss me. Salaud. Do u luv me?'
- 'I make bedtime fun'
- *picture of bicycle*
- 'Save a horse, ride a cowboy' (I doubt any would want her to ride him)
- 'Little Dracula -cartoon girl with fangs, horns and tail reading a book "how to bite"-'
- 'ravishing' (repeated many times)
- [Woman in her 40s] 'Status has changed to single'
- 'Your must have. Morgan de toi'
- 'Your dream'
- [Back] 'Heartbreaker Rome 71'
- 'Dropped your bikini? It happens. *picture of woman in water in distress* For secure swimming always ask for Mavi brand swimwear' (I had to ask her to let me read the last sentence)
- 'Not so innocent *pic of tweety*'
- 'You - me = sad'
- 'Be my superstar *cartoon representation of girl taking photo*'
- 'What's this funny feeling inside' (indigestion, maybe?)
- 'Smile please'
- 'Put on your gold lipstick kiss me'
- 'Make my day ♥'
- 'Lady' (maybe she was insecure, or didn't think people would know at first glance)
- 'I've been -good- really I -have-'
- 'I'm so very unhappy'
- 'Love. The only story -something- Flirt with Romeo -something-'
- 'I'm the bomb' (the words were in a bomb) (as usual this was false advertising)

After a certain length, fake eyelashes make you look like a mutant

Guys:

- 'Make love not babies'
- 'Boobies make me smile'

A "Banned ad" that was really "banned"

2012-01-12T11:00:00.000+08:00

Links - 11th January 2012

2012-01-12T09:15:00.000+08:00

"People see weakness in a woman and they want to help. They see weakness in a man and they want to stamp it out" - Norah Vincent, Self Made Man

***

Lan Guage (Lahn Gwij) - "Wah Lan. Wah lan eh! Simi lan?! - Varying degrees of saying "What the ****""

Can high salary curb corruption? - "Most highly paid bosses head the most corrupt organisations, according to bribery survey"

Singapore University hacked - "The hackers alleged they were spurred on after an error message generated by probes of the website stated:"If you're trying to use the SQL error message to dig for juicy information, get lost.” "I made it my personal goal to get in and r*pe their sorry asses for the message," the hackers said."

Economics blogs: A less dismal debate | The Economist - "Forbes once called blogs “the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective”. Previous publishing revolutions, such as the advent of printing, prompted similar concerns about trivialisation and extremism. But whatever you think about the impact of blogging on political, scientific or religious debate, it is hard to argue that the internet has cheapened the global conversation about economics. On the contrary, it has improved it"

Shocked woman dies at own funeral after heart attack - "Started screaming as mourners gathered around coffin saying prayers for her soul"

Ex-SLA exec paid underage girl for sex, jailed 9 months - "Deputy Public Prosecutor Fu Qijing said the onus was on grown men to exercise caution and check the age of their sexual partners"
Subsection (4) of section 140 of the Women's Charter:: "Subject to subsection (5) and notwithstanding anything in section 79 of the Penal Code (Cap. 224), a reasonable mistake as to the age of a girl shall not be a defence to a charge of an offence under subsection (1)(i)". In other words, if she shows you a fake identity card, you still go to jail (unless you're under 21)

The Subjectivity of Wine - "Brochet invited 57 wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn't stop the experts from describing the "red" wine in language typically used to describe red wines... He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings"
The scam of wine!

5 Inspiring Religions That Worship Penises | Cracked.com - "At Min's temple, worshipers would rub the leaves of the Egyptian lettuce plant (Lactuca serriola), some varieties of which are tall, straight and round, and which would emit a milky white sap. Yep, they masturbated lettuce."
Unsurprisingly 2/5 are Japanese

Nonsense on stilts - "Life in Mexico must be an absolute living hell. Why else would millions of desperate Mexicans endure the following to try to reach those California fields?... Yet it turns out that if Mexico is a living hell, it is an extremely happy living hell. Robin Hanson recently cited research that shows Mexico is the second happiest country on Earth. I claim that Mexico is a country with very low utility, full of very happy people. Think of ‘happiness’ as “personality,” and think of ‘utility’ as “living conditions”... So what are the policy implications, should government officials try to maximize happiness or utility? I’m a utilitarian, so naturally I favor utility. Do you really want to defend a policy goal that implies there’s little point in clearing land mines from Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, because happiness always reverts to a set-point?... families without children should move next door to child molesters. Why? Because houses are much cheaper, indeed $14,340 cheaper if within 0.1 miles of a child molester in rural Virginia"

Freakonomics » Why Is “I Don’t Know” So Hard to Say? A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast - "I really have come to believe teaching MBAs that one of the most important things you learn as an MBA is how to pretend you know the answer to any question even though you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. And I’ve found it’s really one of the most destructive factors in business — is that everyone masquerades like they know the answer and no one will ever admit they don’t know the answer, and it makes it almost impossible to learn."

No One Who Lives In New York Is Really From New York - "In its first incarnation, which peaked during the 1840s, American Nativism had a distinctly anti-Irish character... they promulgated lurid propaganda about Catholics (their occult infant-sacrifice rituals and the like) that helped whipped up violent fury among the “native born” population. Througout the period, riots flared up across the Northeast, especially in New York (a recent fictionalization is the Martin Scorcese film, Gangs of New York); destruction of Catholic property and loss of life usually followed"
Perhaps this can tell us something about racial integration today

“This picture just makes me smile. Great photographs do not need to be serious, they just need to evoke emotion.” (LIFE)

Ask Veronica: Is it true black people can't get lice?

My Student, the 'Terrorist' - ""If we are engaged in a war against terror—and we most certainly are," FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon publicly claimed, "then Syed Hashmi aided the enemy by supplying military gear to Al Qaeda." The government had caught a "quartermaster." Despite the sensationalism, the government had been forced to admit it was not actually accusing Hashmi of supplying military gear himself; "quartermastering" consisted of allowing an acquaintance with luggage to stay in his apartment. "Military gear" in the luggage amounted to raincoats, ponchos, and waterproof socks."
"In her numerous pleas on behalf of Syed Hashmi, Jeanne Theoharis curiously neglects to mention that in addition to helping furnish al-Qaida with waterproof socks, his material support thereof extended to violating the U.S. export ban on night vision equipment. Next time a coalition soldier gets killed in the dark, she and her amen corner can take pride in their small but significant facilitation of whitewashing the enablers of his assailants"

From the Mailbag | Regretsy - "Rather than have the violin returned to me, PayPal made the buyer DESTROY the violin in order to get his money back"

BBC chief: male musical tastes more 'intellectual' - "The head of popular music at the BBC, Lesley Douglas, has sparked controversy by suggesting that men "tend to be more interested in the intellectual side of music", while their female counterparts' relationship with the art form is one rooted in emotion."

Are economists selfish? A lit review - "There is a selection effect for economics majors, who are less likely to donate than other students, and that there is an indoctrination effect for non-majors but not for majors"

Does Apple service stolen phones? - "What happened instead turned out to be a case of instant karma, when Apple refused to help Barkley and ended up giving away a phone to the man who may have stolen Barkley’s, or bought it from the person who did"

25 Everyday Things You Never Knew Had Names - "13. Paresthesia. The pins and needles feeling you get when part of your body falls asleep. Bonus! This is known as obdormition."

Angry Belgians Are Taking Action Over Ikea’s Cheap Meatballs - "Restaurant owners in Belgium are so angry at the low prices in Ikea’s in-store cafeterias that they have begun sending homeless people to eat there"

Muslims and the Koran: In the beginning were the words | The Economist - "When it comes to parsing holy writ, there is one big difference between Islam and most other text-based faiths. Barring a brief interlude in the ninth and tenth centuries, and a few modern liberals, Muslims have mostly believed that the Koran is distinct from every other communication. As God’s final revelation to man, it belongs not to earthly, created things but to an eternal realm. That is a bigger claim than other faiths usually make for their holy writings. The Koran may be interpreted but from a believer’s viewpoint, nothing in it can be set aside... What can be debated in most Muslim countries differs hugely from what is discussed in the West... Egypt’s leading advocate of a liberal reading of the Koran—Nasr Abu Zayd, who died in 2010—was denounced as an apostate, forcibly divorced from his wife and had to spend his later life abroad... [in] several British campuses... scholars say they find it hard to get funding for work that threatens orthodoxy... if people expect Islam to change into something like liberal Christianity—treating scripture as a useful but fallible aid to belief—they are wrong. As Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer, says: “If you say the Koran is a human text, then you cease to be Muslim”"
Is this seditious?

Burned by Maria Ozawa - "Filipinos almost got a gift this Christmas when a supposed Facebook page by the Japan-based porn star Maria Ozawa reported that its owner would be or was already in the Philippines. Moreover, Ozawa had declared that she would be auditioning any willing male Filipinos this January 2012 for an upcoming porn film involving bukkake with her. Of course there was a great number of male Filipino fans who were more than willing. The likes on the FB page soon hit more than ten thousand and Twitter was almost roaring with Filipinos' joy over Ozawa's promised visit. Alas, the joy was short-lived as it was discovered that the FB page was fake"

I had sex with my grandmother regularly - "You were young, hot and horny, and could not control your raging hormones and sexual desires"
These are quite lame exculpatory factors

Citeology - Projects - Autodesk Research - "Citeology looks at the relationship between research publications through their use of citations... These citations are represented by the curved lines in the graphic, linking each paper to those that it referenced"

Linguistics: Babelicious! - "Expansion simplifies language... Big, spreading languages have fewer of these features. They have fewer case-markings on nouns. Verbs are less likely to vary with person, place, time and so forth. Mandarin, for example, has no obligatory past tense at all; an extra word can come after the verb to indicate it happened in the past, or this can be left to context. By contrast, Yagua, spoken in Peru, has an obligatory five-way distinction. Past-tense verbs must show whether the event happened a few hours ago, a day before, a week to a month ago, and so on. The number of speakers of each language correlated best with morphological complexity, better than the area the language is spread over or the number of neighbours... “simple” people with primitive technologies do not speak simple languages"

A good description of many Internet arguments

2012-01-11T09:49:00.003+08:00

"I don't understand why this stupid argument is going on for so long. It reminds me of that HK serial drama they aired several years ago. Well, at least that show was interesting. This argument is simply bo liao."

France/Spain 2011 - Day 12, Part 2 - Santiago Cathedral Museum

2012-01-10T23:16:00.000+08:00

"The only thing sustainable about organic farming in the developing world is that it sustains poverty and malnutrition" --- CS Prakash, Indian bio-technologist

***

France/Spain 2011
Day 12 - 28th March - Santiago Cathedral Museum (Part 2)

Next was the wonderful cathedral museum. Unfortunately despite this being a major, touristed site, everything was in Spanish.

The first part of the museum I'd been to was the crypt, and it was horrible. It was mostly reconstructed musical instruments.

"Reconstruction of the choir teacher Matthew promoted by the council under the patronage of His Excellency the Fundación Pedro Barrie de la Maza project according to the doctors and ramon ramon Yzquierdo tunez hill perrin 1999"

"Horses of the epiphany of the choir"

Figure of St Matthew

God scolding Adam & Eve

Crowned seated image of Santiago

Tympanum of the Epiphany (?)

Annunciation, with bosomy Mary

Pieta

Removal of the bells from the Cathedral of Santiago

Story: "In the 830s a wandering hermit named Pelagius discovered a tomb which was taken to be that of the Apostle James the Greater, and the rest is history! A small church was built to house the tomb but was destroyed by the awful al-Mansur on one of his rampages in 997. The dreadful little man then had Christian slaves carry the church bells from Compostela to the Great Mosque of Cordoba. 240 years later, in 1236, Fernando III ("The Saint"), King of León and Castile (1198 - 1217 (King of Castile) - 1230 (King of León) - 1252 (54)), probably another dreadful little man, captured Cordoba and had Muslim slaves carry the bells back to Santiago."

Dream of St. Joseph

Olifant of Alfonso XI. An olifant is an ivory hunting horn made from elephants' tusks.

"Immaculate"

St Francis of Assisi gets stigmata

St. Michael weighing souls

St Anne, Virgin and Child

The art was in general better than what I'd seen before, but I still hold the opinion that Iberia missed out the Renaissance.

I then exited the museum proper.

Tower from Cloisters

These were the largest cloisters I'd been in, I think.

Basin in centre

"Mors Sceptra Ligonibus S Aeovat"

Bells

There were some other rooms. The first had 2 altars (?) and some tombs.

Altar (?)

Tomb of Alfonso IX of Leon

Another altar (?)

More tombs at the side

Scallops flanking an enthroned King
The plaque reads "Scallop"

Altarpiece of the life of the Apostle James

Santiago at the Battle of Clavijo, 1677. Plata. Portuguese school of Anonima.
Guess who Santiago is trampling under his horse's hooves?

Processional monstrance (vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host)

Cape of the Holy Apostle

Crest on wall

"Pestle and the masked" tapestry

There were some Flemish tapestries which were not bad, and a Goya.

"Gallardette of the flagship in the Battle of Lepanto"
A souvenir from Lepanto: woo hoo!

Links - 10th January 2012

2012-01-10T14:00:00.000+08:00

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better." - Andre Gide

***

Count the Cost Before You Say I am an Atheist - "The viciousness of people who say they are followers of the man who said turn the other cheek and love your enemy has scarred me... Almost all (all but 2) of my Christian friends have abandoned me. I don’t blame them. I have come to see that our friendship was held together by fidelity to certain beliefs. Remove the beliefs and the friendship dissolves"
Comment: "When they say that you were never a "true Christian" do you ever tell them that they were never a "true friend"? My criteria for friendship doesn't include someone's religious status"

he/she | \/Death^kimono\/ - "Because I tell them cock jokes or talk about my sexual experiences, suddenly it’s a free for all to comment when they see my boobs at an angle or to use any chance they get to offer their dicks for me to suck, or even that it’s alright to tell me how u disrespected your marriage or your gf with random potential STD risks and expect me to give u a hi five with no gloves on? Hey. Fuck off. These are not one or two incidences , this is what I have been getting all my life"

'Pasotto': The Pasta That Is Cooked Like Risotto - "It's brilliant. No enormous pot of water that takes forever to boil; a much smaller volume of stock can intensely flavor each piece of pasta. No second pot for sauce; the sauce forms in the pan along with the pasta. Hello, pasotto!"

Not Now, Skeletor!

Priests brawl in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity as clergy fight over Christmas cleaning - "In the 1980s, monks battled each other with chains and broomsticks over who had the right to clean a particular section of wall and beams"

What does it feel like to have a trophy wife?
When I first saw this page all 4 respondents were anonymous

Brit catches fish that bites men's testicles - "Pacu fish are usually found in the Amazon, where they need their teeth to crack into the tough cases of nuts and seeds. The previously vegetarian fish were introduced to Papua New Guinea 15 years ago to increase stocks. They used their special technique to chomp meat due to a lack of suitable vegetation in the waters."

Neural repetition suppression to identity is abolished by other-race faces - "Human beings are remarkably skilled at recognizing faces, with the marked exception of other-race faces: the so-called “other-race effect.” As reported nearly a century ago... this face-recognition impairment is accompanied by the popular belief that other-race faces all look alike... sensitivity to race begins early at the perceptual level, providing, after nearly 100 y of investigations, a neurophysiological correlate of the “all look alike” perceptual experience"

The British Left Goes Anti-Semitic by Theodore Dalrymple - "Socialist and anti-Semite alike seek an all-encompassing explanation of the imperfection of the world, and for the persistence of poverty and injustice: and each thinks he has found an answer... The liberal intellectual who laments the predominance of dead white males in the college syllabus or the lack of minority representation in the judiciary uses fundamentally the same argument as the anti-Semite who objects to the prominence of Jews in the arts, sciences, professions, and in commerce. They both assume that something must be amiss—a conspiracy—if any human group is over- or under-represented in any human activity, achievement, or institution... The Middle East conflict has given respectability to old prejudices... While one can disagree strongly with the Israeli government’s policies without being anti-Semitic, the selection of Israel alone for a boycott in a world in which atrocity and suppression of freedom are routine must arouse suspicions of pre-existing animus—that is to say, of old-fashioned anti-Semitism... When Professor Mona Baker of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology dismissed two Israeli academics from the editorial board of two academic journals, The Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts, on the sole grounds that they were Israeli, not a peep of protest was heard from British academics, though if she had dismissed the academics on the grounds that they were Syrian, Rwandan Hutu, or Muslim, a great fuss would have ensued"

The Wanderer and His Shadow - "The purely Good Son is never the interesting one: audiences love a tale that ends in redemption or perdition, and the Cain archetype is certainly full of the latter... There is something deeply appealing in a curse, something that speaks to and captivates the human imagination, always sympathetic to the martyr but empathetic to the sinner"

Laser Scissors - "No, the laser can’t cut paper by itself; that’s what the scissor is for. It’s for idiots like you and me who can’t cut in a straight line if the world depended on it."

Man assaults two others over request to borrow pen - "A man asked two others at a coffee shop for a pen and punched them when they replied they did not have one"
This is why I always carry a pen with me

Information for Bankrupts - "Why should I avoid bankruptcy? You should avoid bankruptcy for these reasons: Social stigma on being declared a bankrupt"

The Information War in the Pacific, 1945 - "The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning: “Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people”"
This won't stop those who just want to blame America for everything

Chile exploding churros recipe case resolved - "Chilean newspaper La Tercera has been ordered to compensate 13 readers who suffered injuries when they followed a recipe it published."

Why Do Jews Love Chinese Food? - "The two groups have neither linguistic nor religious nor geographic commonalities. They aren’t known for intermarrying or for intermingling. Both groups are famously insular, and tend to regard themselves as chosen peoples. And yet, there’s a connection. There are lots of jokes about it. There’s even a restaurant in Los Angeles called Genghis Cohen. But the inroad made by Chinese food has been so profound that even sacred dietary laws are routinely broken for this cuisine. A Jewish household that wouldn’t countenance a single bacon bit at home will consume industrial quantities of spare ribs, roast-pork fried rice and shrimp dumplings... Jewish food is the blandest, most boring in the entire world"

Freakonomics: What Went Wrong? - "Examination of a very popular popular-statistics series reveals avoidable errors"

周杰倫公主病《杰威爾官方》Jay Chou "Princess Syndrome" Official MV - YouTube

And the Award for Best Booth Babe Costume at PAX Goes To ...

Level 5 Vegan (Lisa the tree hugger) - YouTube - "I’m a level 5 vegan—I won’t eat anything that casts a shadow"

NTUC FairPrice to pull shark's fin off shelves - "Singapore's largest supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice announced today that it will cease selling shark's fin starting April... One of NTUC FairPrice's shark's fin suppliers, Thern Da Seafood, posted a comment on Facebook that drew much criticism earlier this week. The post, which announced the launch of a shark's fin product at the supermarket chain, also said 'Screw the divers', causing netizens to react strongly... [NTUC] will also be withdrawing all products from Thern Da Seafood"
FAIL!

Dr. Irene cure ED/premature ejaculation by Tuina/prostate massage/juagen 81479948/93928688 - Singapore - Health - Beauty - Fitness - "She then proceeds with prostate massage next to help remove body toxins. Slipping her gloved finger with lubrication gently into my arse, it was not in any way painful as what I would have presumed initially. There was a comfortable tingling sensation as her finger went deeper. (I hate it the last time a doc put her finger in to verify my diarrhoea… ouch!). I feel warmth building up inside as she rubbed with her fingertip to “milk” the toxins. The whole process was a soothing and relaxing one. In fact I see the effects when I remove my bowels back home. It feels different and refreshing. I will definitely return to her again for treatment. She's really an authentic TCM specialist with the desire to help and heal"
???

Misrepresented, Misquoted, Misunderstooded. - "Teenagers, goths and emos should just step aside. People’s Action Party (PAP) members are by far the most misunderstood group of people in the world. It appears as if they can’t say or do a thing without being misunderstood. If they went to a MacDonald’s to buy a Big Mac with extra lettuce and no pickles they’d probably get Fillet o’ Fish."
Politics in Singapore means never having to say you're sorry

Orchard Road ranked the most attractive avenue in the world - "The Champs Elysées came 16th in this study with an overall score of 71/100. "Strolling down the Champs is pleasant. Passers-by approached are friendly and do their utmost to inform the customer. On the other hand, welcome and service in the stores are less friendly. In 40% of cases, the sales assistant showed a sign of annoyance with the mystery shopper. The customer remembers the lack of smiles and sympathy towards him”"

English and Chinese dictionary of the Amoy dialect : Macgowan, J. (John), d. 1922 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
English-Hokkien Dictionary!

Lenovo ThinkPad X220 review - "The 720p webcam served up crisp images of our mug in Skype – so crisp, in fact, that our caller was quick to point out our lack of makeup"

Unreasonable Atheists - "Will the nominee be biased by his or her personal beliefs? Which is really another way of asking Does he or she believe in the same things I do?"

File-Sharing Recognized as Official Religion in Sweden - "Although the formal status of the Church doesn’t mean that copyright infringement is now permitted, the Church’s founder hopes that their beliefs will be considered in future lawmaking"

Slippery Slopes in Action

2012-01-10T11:11:00.001+08:00

"What others think of us would be of little moment did it not, when known, so deeply tinge what we think of ourselves." - Paul

***

What are some historical examples of "slippery slopes" that actually slipped? - Quora

Question: What are some historical examples of "slippery slopes" that actually slipped?

Some claim the following under the 'slippery slope' argument for personal freedoms:

Legalizing gay marriage will lead to polygamy and then bestiality.
Legalizing marijuana will lead to increased use or legalization of more dangerous substances.
Creating a single payer healthcare system will lead to the socialization of more private enterprises.
Use of NDAA to one day indefinitely detain Americans.

And so on….

Does this argument have any historical merit?

Seems to me that legislation has only progressively led to good things happening, not more and more things that the majority of society considers reprehensible. Cases of actual "slippery slopes" that I can think of are instances of progressive changes of what people consider moral and ethical, like civil rights. Not a negative thing.

What are historical things where a bad thing was legislated in the area of freedoms, which lead to other bad things?

My Answer: Your question is problematic, because it presupposes that the starting action and its consequent actions must be bad.

Yet this says nothing about the mechanism of the slippery slope itself, which is what we should be looking at, since regardless of our current evaluations of the moral value of said consequences, the mechanism will be at work anyway.

Consider that what we consider to be good things nowadays were once considered bad, and that what we consider to be bad things now may one day be considered good.

For example take your example of "Legalizing gay marriage will lead to polygamy and then bestiality", and let me add incest on to it too. Yet the principles behind gay marriage (that informed and consenting adults should enjoy identical rights) can also be applied to incest and polygamy, and arguably to animals as well (at least if you're not a vegetarian - killing animals for food is surely worse than having sex with them, and this is without taking into account the suffering that animals go through when raised for human use, which non-vegans are also guilty of). So perhaps one day incest and polygamy will both be acceptable too, even though we currently view them as bad things, and while we could view this as a "slippery slope" to disaster right now, in 200 years they will be viewed as right, proper and just.

Looking at historical examples, we can see similar phenomena.

Thomas Taylor responded to Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (on women's rights) by observing that "in consequence of Brutes possessing Reason, we ought to abstain from Animal Food". In the 18th century this was viewed as a joke but today many people take animal rights seriously.

Similarly, Abraham Lincoln doubtless echoed much Union (and even abolitionist) sentiment in his Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas where he said that he was against the social and poltiical equality of blacks with whites. Among other things, that they should not be voters, jurors or office holders.
Yet today we find these to be uncontroversial propositions.

A more modern example: the New York Times had a good article on this, on Liberal Bioethics

The Failure of Liberal Bioethics

To summarise, there is a procedure where multiple pregnancies are 'reduced' via selective abortion (i.e. aborting one or more of the fetuses). In 1988 a prominent practitioner opposed reducing pregnancies below twins for ethical reasons, but in 2004 he endorsed it for social reasons. In 1980 when in-vitro fertilisation first became available, many feared we would have "spare" embryos being created and/or discarded, but this is precisely what we see today. There are also questions about whether aborting fetuses with Down's Syndrome amounts to eugenics, given how uncontroversial an abortion is nowadays.

Showing attitude on the plane

2012-01-10T08:46:00.000+08:00

"My flight was being served by an obviously gay flight attendant, who seemed to put everyone in a good mood as he served us food and drinks.

As the plane prepared to descend, he came swishing down the aisle and told us that 'Captain Marvey has asked me to announce that he'll be landing the big scary plane shortly, so lovely people, if you could just put your trays up, that would be super.'

On his trip back up the aisle, he noticed this well-dressed and rather Arabic looking woman hadn't moved a muscle. 'Perhaps you didn't hear me over those big brute engines but I asked you to raise your trazy-poo, so the main man can pitty-pat us on the ground.'

She calmly turned her head and said, 'In my country, I am called a Princess and I take orders from no one.'

To which (I swear) the flight attendant replied, without missing a beat, 'Well, sweet-cheeks, in my country I'm called a Queen, so I outrank you. Tray-up, Bitch!'"

Overthinking

2012-01-09T14:22:00.000+08:00

"At his age it’s less argumentative to just say “Yes, dear”. It took my mother-in-law a year to pick out the correct ‘shade’ of white paint for the dining room, and even after the room was painted sh didn’t like it."

(Pickles)

On needing to be Chinese to understand Singapore

2012-01-09T08:45:00.000+08:00

"The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards." - Arthur Koestler

***

A: I really don't understand Singapore society. But I suspect, not being Chinese, I probably never will.

B: So you're saying even though you're Singaporean, Singapore is a strange place to you because the only way to have a truly Singaporean experience is to be Chinese?

Well I am Indian, and I understand Singapore... So either I am lying, misguided or just plain weird! :)

C: I think it's more that the structure of society is constructed by its elites. Without a shared understanding of how they live and think, you can see and follow the structures, but not understand them with that feeling of gut comprehension.

A: I think an understanding of the way Singapore is run would require some understanding of Chinese worldviews and cultural practices, much of which is opaque to me lah.

B: Actually it is not that hard to get a feel of "Chinese" (I presume you mean south Chinese) world views. Just read any of LKY's overpriced ream of toilet paper. That provides, in a nutshell a rather distilled view of what framed the political landscape here.

Frankly I am not that surprised by what is happening here. I came from a city which went through what Singapore is going through now, way back in 1990. I also came from a country that saw a gradual change of political landscape from one dominant party to a true multiparty democracy within the span of 15 years. I am of course referring to my country of birth, India. I see many parallels between Singapore and the city where I was born, Mumbai.

D: A - both * and I are chinese and you can be assured that we find Singapore society to be equally confounding. Yes it draws upon certain limited patriarchal stereotypes of chinese (mostly the confucian tradition) and a large portion of the population have racial prejudices but I don't think the primary problem of Singapore society is chineseness but how the wrong traits have been promoted by the system. There is a more free flowing, tolerant and chaotic characteristic of the chinese that is conveniently suppressed by the dominant ruling power. We are uniquely Singaporean.

B: It is strange to see how much of our political discourse has been dictated by the whims of [LKY].. As a new citizen (despite having done NS), I find that fascinating. We Indians admire Gandhi but almost never ever bring him up when discussing political issues.

E: Mainland chinese would be as similarly befuddled by Singapore society!

B: I find so many people who are angry that Malay is not a compulsory subject. I find that strange. Compelling people to learn a language that is not the common language of the land is a damn dumb thing to do.

I know of many PRC's who think that overseas Chinese have diluted 'Chineseness'.

A: Why cling on to vestiges like the National Anthem, Malay as National Language, and calling the Presidential Residence an 'Istana'? I also agree that Mandarin should be made the National Language. Drop the pretence to multiracialism and admit to the thoroughgoing Chineseness of what is understood as 'Singapore society'.

Any module that purports to teach 'Singapore studies' should also have 'Chinese studies' as a core component.

In my experience the only ones who have really ever understood my writings have been the non-Chinese minorities. So I do believe that indeed, we have been growing up in separate Singapores.

Chinese Singaporeans tend to look at me as if I'm a monkey in their eyes.

F: Not casting any stone, don't you guts realize that traditional Chinese and Malay-Muslims are the most ethnocentric of all Asians? We both dislike other cultures. Admit it. We can put the whole democracy and equality aside, deep down we are raised to always think that we are better than others.

Me: For someone who doesn't understand Singapore society, you sure have a lot to say about it

A: Well much of what I've said about Singapore is opinion that's easily dismissed because I lack genuine insight as a Singaporean Chinese.

Me: I've never seen anyone dismiss the opinion of someone of a minority race because he is not a Singaporean Chinese.

What I *have* seen, though, is people dismissing the opinion of Singaporean Chinese because they are not of a minority race.

G: Just because you don't see something (or refuse to see something) doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Me: Contrariwise, just because you see something (or want to see something) doesn't mean it happens.

I don't think it doesn't happen, but I think the dismissing of 'majority' opinions is a lot more common.

I think nobody should dismiss the opinion of somebody else just because of his race

La valeur de la douleur

2012-01-09T01:38:00.001+08:00

<< Tout ce qui ne me tue pas me rend plus fort >>

La plupart des gens pensent que c'est Conan le Barbare qui l'a dit, mais en fait c'est Nietzsche. Ca vient, je crois, de l'ésprit de puritanisme, selon lequel la souffrance ou la privation sont les biens et la jouissance et le plaisir sont les maux. Nietzsche n'était pas un vrai puritain, mais peut-être le sentiment l'a attiré.

Moi, je ne suis pas d'accord. La vérité est plutôt << Tout ce qui ne me tue pas me fait souffrir >> (c'est plus joli en anglais, je pense). Demandez à quelqu'un quit se fait la chimiothérapie si elle le rend plus fort !

On apprend souvent de nos erreurs et échecs. Pourtant, c'est l'apprentisage qui nous rend plus fort et pas la douleur ou même les erreurs elles-mêmes.

Cicéron l'a dit mieux : << Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit >> ( << Personne n'aime la douleur elle-même ni la chasse ni la veut, tout simplement parce que c'est la douleur >>)

France/Spain 2011 - Day 12, Part 1 - Santiago de Compostela

2012-01-08T22:22:00.001+08:00

"An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't." - Anatole France

***

France/Spain 2011
Day 12 - 28th March - Santiago de Compostela (Part 1)

We set off in the morning for some sights in the north.

We stopped at a bakery for directions (and breakfast): the biggest croissants and pains au chocolat I'd ever seen (0,65€ and 0,75€ respectively). The pain au chocolat was good and had a lot of chocolate. Unfortunately I couldn't say the same for the croissant; for some reason there was more butter in the pain than the croissant.

A house we were forced to drive 5km back so I could take a picture of it. Note the lack of crispness despite it being taken at ISO 100.

Some tower somewhere

We had wanted to see some sites like what one guidebook called the highest cliffs in Europe (San Andres de Teixido). Apparently they're only the highest in continental Europe. In any event we realised we had tarried too long in the morning and would end up returning the car late so we turned back halfway (we would've had to leave at 6 to do everything). Here is a picture of San Andres de Teixido:

According to the Rough Guide, everything in Santiago was closed, except the Cathedral, because it was a Monday. This was mostly alright since I wouldn't have had time to do the other things anyway (I was flying off the next morning) - but I missed out on a treat in a Michelin-starred restaurant because of that.

Carpark with the most confusing parking rates I'd ever seen: the first to fifth minutes were charged at 0,045764€/min and there were different rates for each of the next 5 bands. This carpark also had the smallest lots ever.

Weird Hello Kitty drink. It was super sweet (saccharinely sweet and so suitable for Hello Kitty) and didn't seem to have any real strawberry inside.

"Customer feedback forms are available on request"
In other words, you can complain!

We then checked into the hotel.

Paths of St James in Europe

The city was interesting as every now and then, one would run into:

Pilgrim. Note the scallop shell

I was quite fascinated by this piece of furniture: a stool which could transform into a (short) ladder. More than meets the eye, indeed!

Lamprey tank. The bottom one was thrashing as I came by.

Menu of one place. This was the first Spanish city I'd been to with restaurants with photos (this was related to it being the most touristy town/city I'd been to, beating even Santillana del Mar). It also had the second and third kebab shops I'd seen.

Rainy street

Another rainy street

Seafood in a fridge, just like a Chinese zichar

We then had lunch.

Meatballs with squid. The texture was like hainan curry.

Potatoes with 3 cheeses. The shadow is, I was told, because I was too close.

Bread with tomato

Bread with pork loin and roquefort

Tortilla with bacalao and peppers

Stuffed squid

There was a sample platter with 6.5 cakes we should've gotten - I didn't know each would be so small.

Cake of Three Chocolates

Coconut cake

Ripoff T-shirts: 'No Pain No Glory', 'You'll never walk alone'

Santiago marker

Since everything was closed, we went back for a siesta. Later, I found that local tourist information said a few things were open, though they might've been the minor ones - and the cathedral roof was open till 4:20pm. Ah well, I should just have struck out on my own.

Rua de Entremurallas

Hall

There was strange drink pricing: there was a Coke premium; a can of Coke costs 0,52€ but Pepsi is 0,39€

"Premium Onion Experience"

Pop culture T-shirts

Then, I came upon one magnificent Cathedral:

Fountain and Cathedral

It kept raining and according to a sign, humidity was 95%. No wonder the cathedrals here and in Leon, and in Lugos were mossy.

Corner

The first version of the Cathedral of Santiago dates from the 12th century and was built in the Burgundian style. The French influence is apparent, no wonder it's so nice.

Corner Tower

Praza das Praterias

Fountain

Side of one building

Side entrance to cathedral

Plaza

Plaque about something to do with the Peninsular War (with Napoleon)

Quintana de Mortos

Another entrance to cathedral

Some bui

Smart beggar

People ignoring smart beggar

Grand (if pitted and mossy) facade of cathedral

Monolingual UNESCO sign

Camera stitches of cathedral's main facade (it's the West Facade, but it sure is built to look like the main one)

Manual stitch

Hotel with magnificent facade

Facade from below

No I don't know why St James has that hat odd odd

Through the arch

Facade from side

The cathedral museum was split into two, so I entered the much smaller half first (from below the main facade).

Another building

The road signs indicated picturesque villages all used similar clipart.

Links - 8th January 2012

2012-01-08T12:23:00.000+08:00

"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true." - Sir Winston Churchill

***

Should you give money to beggars? - "The more you give to beggars, the harder beggars will try. This leads to what economists call "rent exhaustion," which again limits the net gain to beggars."

Faecal transplants used to cure Clostridium difficile - "Transplanting faecal matter from one person to another - the thought might turn your stomach, but it could be lifesaving. Some doctors are using the procedure to repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria, which can become unbalanced in some diseases."

UK intern spends 2 weeks as a foreign worker

Study explains why we enjoy others' misfortune - "We feel the other person deserves the misfortune, and that it makes us feel good about ourselves... those with who were assessed with low self-esteem at the start of the project were more likely to be threatened by the overachieving student and to experience schadenfreude. However, the researchers found that regardless of self-esteem, those who felt more threatened by this student also felt more schadenfreude"

eBossWatch - Rate Your Bad Boss, Avoid Sexual Harassment and Bullying - "If you are a job seeker or if you are thinking about making a career change, check with eBossWatch to make sure that you won't end up working for a bad boss in a hostile work environment. eBossWatch gives you an inside look at what it's really like to work with bosses from across the country. Search for your potential boss or employer and see how others have rated that boss"

25 of the Weirdest Adult Sites You Will Ever See
I thought Post-op Tranny Porn was pretty mainstream nowadays, especially compared to the rest

Girl Tells Santa She Wants Dad Home From Iraq, Doesn't Know Santa is Dad - YouTube

SG couple filmed having sex in public! - "A very short while later, the boy got the girl to sit on his lap, and the duo began to move up and down in a rythmic manner."
I'm wondering if there're translation issues

Carnivorous Plant Feasts on Bat Dung

Fail: Virginity Rates of Chemistry Undergraduates - "Chemistry majors are tied for 1st with the mathematicians for their lack of sexual hedonism, but the major take-home message is computer science majors are a bunch of liars"

Dipping bread in olive oil - General Chowhounding Topics - Chowhound - "This is very American, not at all common practice in Italy"
"Whether Italians dip bread in olive oil is just a matter of history. If you read Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars", you'll find that he is appalled that the Gauls (modern day French and Belgians) use butter on bread rather than the more civilized olive oil. To him, a meal of bread, cheese, olives and oil was as good as it gets - he was definitely not an epicure."
"in Portugal, only the poor eat their bread with olive oil because they can't afford butter"

Pankaj Mishra reviews ‘Civilisation’ by Niall Ferguson · LRB 3 November 2011 - "Not content with libelling me, Mishra also systematically misrepresents my new book, falsely alleging a whole series of omissions... Mishra says I don’t mention the genocidal policies pursued by the Belgian rulers of the Congo: in fact, they are referred to twice... Mishra also writes, gratuitously, that I am ‘immune to … humour and irony’. This is clearly his problem, not mine... The London Review of Books is notorious for its left-leaning politics. I do not expect to find warm affection in its pages. Much of what I write is simply too threatening to the ideological biases of your coterie. Nevertheless, this journal used, once, to have a reputation for intellectual integrity and serious scholarship. Pankaj Mishra’s libellous and dishonest article brings the LRB as well as himself into grave disrepute... Now that he stands corrected, Mishra responds that ‘[Ferguson] now unearths a footnote’ citing ‘two obscure Chinese scholars’. I find this extraordinary in two respects. First, the reference needed no ‘unearthing’. It was there, in the source notes and bibliography, for him and other readers to see. Second, David Daokui Li is hardly an ‘obscure scholar’. He is one of China’s leading economists... To say that Professor Li’s curriculum vitae is more impressive than Pankaj Mishra’s would be an understatement"
Even if it were not obviously a disgusting hack job, it is telling when more than half of a "book review" is not even about the book itself. Meanwhile the best that Pankaj Mishra can come up with is alleging that Ferguson's observing that North America would not have its current level of civilization without European colonization justifies the conquest of Native Americans

1980 Star Wars Empire Strikes Back Underoos Underwear Commercial - YouTube

Pakistan maintains top slot in Google search for ‘sex’ - "Pakistan maintained the number one position, followed by India and Vietnam. Islamabad featured in the top 10 cities worldwide to search the word ‘sex’ in September and December 2011. Provincial capital Lahore also featured in the top 10 cities for the months of January, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November and December 2011. The months of February and August (Ramazan) were the only two months in 2011 that did not feature any cities from Pakistan in the global ranking"

Jürgen Habermas: Notes on a post-secular society - "The party of the multiculturalists appeals to the protection of collective identities and accuses the other side of representing a "fundamentalism of the Enlightenment", whereas the secularists insist on the uncompromising inclusion of minorities in the existing political framework and accuse their opponents of a "multiculturalist betrayal" of the core values of the Enlightenment... Pascal Bruckner rejects cultural rights because these would give rise to parallel societies – to "small, self-isolated social groups, each of which adheres to a different norm."(21) Bruckner condemns multiculturalism roundly as an "anti-racist racism", though his attack at best applies to those ultra-minded multiculturalists who advocate the introduction of collective cultural rights. Such protection for entire cultural groups would in fact curtail the right of their individual members to choose a way of life of their own. Thus the conflicting parties both pretend to fight for the same purpose, a liberal society that allows autonomous citizens to coexist in a civilized manner. And yet they are at loggerheads in a Kulturkampf that resurfaces at every new political occasion... Were secular citizens to encounter their fellow citizens with the reservation that the latter, because of their religious mindset, are not to be taken seriously as modern contemporaries, they would revert to the level of a mere modus vivendi - and would thus relinquish the very basis of mutual recognition which is constitutive for shared citizenship"

Why I Advocate For Casual Sex - "When we do not get caught up in how highly our partner regards us because we want a relationship to continue, we are less likely to censor ourselves and can experience a level of intimacy, perhaps not attainable in a relationship complicated by long-term concerns. Engaging in a casual sexual experiences can also help us decide what we need at various points in our lives. What does become clear is that whether we believe that a being single or married will bring us fulfillment, sexual compatibility should be a high priority. Many of my patients have met their long-term partners after having a casual sexual experience with them"

Je t'aime, Paris ! on Vimeo - "J'aime Paris parce que je connais pas New York"

Why Israel is a latke-free zone - "According to Marks, the trade union was instrumental in making the doughnut, rather than the latke, the national Chanucah food. They seized on the tradition of Chanucah doughnuts and encouraged bakeries across the country to sell them. “Most people won’t make them at home and they can generate weeks of work for bakers, people transporting them, and sellers”"

BBC’s choice of a panda for a December woman 2011 sparks a scandal - "Unsurprisingly the feminists were insulted by the fact that all of the individuals featured on the men’s page were people and included those with real achievements, like News of the World journalist Paul McMullan, who exposed the infamous phone-hacking scandal, or the prospective Republic presidential nominee Herman Cain... "When you do faces of the year it's not like Time faces of the year. They've picked slightly offbeat people. It's not David Attenborough or Barack Obama," said the journalist. The BBC representatives also stressed that it was not the first time when animals or animal cartoon characters had been chosen for the annual lists of headline-makers. “In 2009, Benson the Carp, a much-caught giant fish, was August's entry on the male list and last year Peppa the Pig was on the female list for April [2010]," said the BBC"
"would you rather Pippa Middleton or Anders Breivik representing your gender?"
"There are more victims of this year's male list, which incidentally also features a mass murderer and two public figures who (largely) made the headlines by being accused of sexual assault."
"I despair that people have nothing better to do than get outraged about crap like this."
"at least the BBC also provided a list of men of the year, unlike the Guardian."
"this article makes no implication as to being awarded to the highest achieving women of the year. it is an article about which women were in the papers most over 2011."

Le franponais.fr - "Quand les Japonais parlent français comme une vache espagnole..."
Il existe aussi le franponais, comme le franglais !

Nobel Prize has a gender imbalance - "Since 1901, 85 men and 15 women have won, including this year’s trio. To correct the 110-year imbalance, the Norwegians would do well to disqualify men from consideration, at least for a half century"
In return, we should disqualify men from prison
Addendum: Comments: "I say give the Peace prize to a CEO of a big Pharma company. For sure, Pfizer saved more lives last year than the U.N. did - or ever does."
"I am so tired of people painting women as victims, then doing them violence when, for some odd reason, they don't toe the ideological line. The real non-violent position is to let women be who they are, and let women like Albright and Clinton get things done in the real world while you sit home and write about them with impunity."

Why Do You Slash Bread? - "The steam gets trapped and you can get big air-pockets in your bread."

How to make the most of a shared meal: plan the last bite first - "If you are sharing a meal with a companion, how best to make sure you get your favourite mouthfuls? Ethiopian Dinner is a game in which two players take turns eating morsels from a common plate. Each morsel comes with a pair of utility values measuring its tastiness to the two players. Kohler and Chandrasekaharan discovered a good strategy -- a subgame perfect equilibrium, to be exact -- for this game. We give a new visual proof of their result. The players arrive at the equilibrium by figuring out their last move first and working backward. We conclude that it's never too early to start thinking about dessert"

Chinese Magical Hard-Drive - "A broken 500Gb USB-drive that he had bought in a Chinese store across the river... The whole service center was rolling on the floor laughing. This was not the first time someone has brought a disk like that. And the previous drives were also bought in China... It's a 128-MB flash-drive. Working in a "looped" mode - when it runs out of space, it starts overwriting from the beginning. My friend said they're still trying to figure out how did the Chinese do that. Because the drive reports "correct" file sizes and disk-capacity"
Ahh, China. Land of cheats and swindlers. The "victim blaming" in the comments is also amusing

Making money is very easy

2012-01-08T10:42:00.002+08:00

"Ebene Bio-Ray Boost Brain Power Marvel Cap

Enhances Brain Power
Increases brain memory
Improves study results

24-Hour Acupuncutral-like Effects"

Vox populi

2012-01-06T13:51:00.000+08:00

"Populus juxta sanctiones divinas ducendus est, non sequendus, et ad testimonium personae magis eliguntur honestae. Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit."

Spam jumps the shark

2012-01-06T10:02:00.000+08:00

From: *.co.uk

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You know spam has jumped the shark when you get spam about adopting puppies.

France/Spain 2011 - Day 11, Part 3 - Tower of Hercules

2012-01-06T00:05:00.000+08:00

"Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." - H. Mumford Jones

***

France/Spain 2011
Day 11 - 27th March - Tower of Hercules (Part 3)

The next stop was the Tower of Hercules, a former Roman lighthouse from the first century still in use today. In fact it's the oldest lighthouse around.

We skipped one monastery (Monasterio de Samos) as it was not onthe way and would've been a large detour (there were also no big roads near it - not according to the GPS). We could see more of the coast this way.

Opening hours. In July and August it's open till 11:45pm on Fridays and Saturdays!

Sculpture of what appears to be a fat man, and tower in the distance

Tower and approach

Missing person sign. Apparently he got lost on the road to Santiago. Strangely his weight is listed. Even more strangely, no name is provided.

Tower and ramp

Desperate attempt to promote other attractions. From my observations it wasn't very successful.

Celtic cliffs

The wet path to the lighthouse

UNESCO plaque in... Latin?! Maybe this was to underline the tower's origins. Or because they didn't have enough space to squeeze in Spanish, Galician, English and French - so they chose a language no one spoke.

In July and August they take a 15 minute break between 8:45pm and 9pm. Uhh...
Notice also that admission is free for "people suffering any physical or psychical handicap". In other words, if you are unable to climb up the Tower, you will get to go into the Tower for free. Splendid.

"No Hay Ascensor"
What have the Romans ever done for us?

Presumably this is Hercules

"Sea routes of the Roman Empire"

Timeline

Roman foundations

Amazingly, 56% of the Tower is still composed of Roman stone. The Roman building was 44.2m high. Now it's 56.7m.

It and Dover Castle are the only Roman lighthouses surviving till today. This sounds less impressive when you consider that Mare Nostrum was always more important.

Engraving of Tower from 1788

About the rooms

Roman Cupola (I think)

Window

Coast view

Camera stitch

Cold Panorama

The Compass Rose is a fanciful symbol of the "8" Celtic peoples (the Galicians are thrown in to complete the rose).

Coast

Birds

Birds Above Lighthouse 1

Birds Above Lighthouse 2

View from below

Door

Girls posing

Birds and tower

Tower and approach

Statue of Breogán (a mythical Celtic king)

Bounding dog

Guy hanging off street lamp

Guy and dog

Dog

English is less important than the Spanish (Galician takes pride of place), even though the Galician is almost identical to the Spanish.

At a news stand nearby, I saw the first porn I'd seen in Spain. It had also been rare in Italy - perhaps it was a Catholic country thing.

There was an ice cream van near the Tower, but there didn't seem to be an ice cream culutre in Spain - this was the first non-Walls non-Nestle ice cream I'd seen. Incidentally it was excellent, so after Nata I went back for Naranja, even though it was only March.

In the town of A Coruña (which housed the Tower), there was a Praza de Maria Pita dedicated to a girl who killed the English standard bearer in Francis Drake's 1589 attack (in retaliation for the Armada which had set off from here). Amusingly, there was no monument to the Armada.

We then headed to our abode for the night, in the town of Mera.

Scam shoes. Before this bit the ad had consisted of women walking and jiggling outrageously.

The guy at the hotel was very nice. He let me try some liquours before I ordered a full portion.

In 4 languages, they tell you that complaint forms are available. Well done.

Beach stitch

Guy with very burly dogs

They came up to a man's chest
He let me scratch (I assume my note refers to this and not the next dog below, since that wouldn't have been noteworthy)

There's a set of prices for being at the bar, and one set for being at a table - but none for sitting at the terrace.

Another dog

On the boardwalk

Amusing sign: the water is certified clean, and they have "sanitary facilities, no cleaners on the sand" (no soap is allowed outside of the toilets). They also explicitly track coliform and fecal coliform.

Barking dogs in Oleiros. No surprise that the restaurant was closed.

We managed to find a place open at the insanely early hour ot 7:15pm for dinner, though.

Croquetas Caseras (Homemade Croquettes)

Bread. Which was excellent (wood fired)

Calamares a la andaluza (Andalusian Squid)
Andalusian style seemed to be deep fried with lemon juice. Meh. Incidentally this was identical to Greek style.

Setas con jamon (Mushrooms with ham)

Txistorra con patatas (Txistorra sausage with potatoes)

I asked for empanada con zamburinas (pie with scallops) but just got zamburinas.

Tarta carolina.
It wasn't really flaky, and was too sweet.

On the menu I also saw a blast from the past: Vienetta (the Walls layered cake with the cheesy ad from the 90s)

I'd forgotten to take a picture of the night sky at Santillana del Mar. I was able to see the stars in the sky, even though it wasn't dark all around.

I saw a sign for a zebra crossing which showed a duck crossing the road. Huh.

The rule for Spanish seems to be: if it fits on a small plate, it's tapas. If it's bigger, it's raciones.

Singapore has quite a crap food culture. Overseas I walk into most food places and the quality is okay or better.

Parisianiste

2012-01-04T14:06:00.000+08:00

"- Est-elle ridicule, cette femme, avec ses seins énormes ?
- Il paraît que ça se porte encore, en province."

Inequality and Personal Motivation

2012-01-04T10:09:00.000+08:00

"Ah, sweet alcohol. Like a true friend, you replace the anger with better, louder anger." - Randy K. Milholland

***

Kahneman, Greed and Success

"I hypothesized that differences in greed (or "materialism" or "orientation toward money" if you prefer) have a big effect on income. Kahneman has fascinating data to back me up:

Goals make a large difference. Nineteen years after they stated their financial aspirations, many of the people who wanted a high income had achieved it. Among the 597 physicians and other medical professionals in the sample, for example, each additional point on the money-importance scale was associated with an increment of over $14,000 of job income in 1995 dollars!

... Kahneman's insinuation to the wise: Be careful when you wish for the highly improbable.

The same principle applies to other goals--one recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain. Measured by life satisfaction 20 years later, the least promising goal that a young person could have was "becoming accomplished in a performing art."

... When you call lower-income people "losers," you're falsely assuming that we're all racing for the same finish line: material success. But to a large extent, lower-income people are just racing for other finish lines. Leftist outrage over income inequality is therefore deeply misguided. To a large extent, incomes differ because priorities differ. And if poor they don't consider their lack of riches a big deal, why should anyone else?"

Another of the many interesting findings reported:

"Simpler language is better than complex language for making people think you are credible and intelligent."

Addendum:

"McCleland (1961, 1987) has argued that individuals high in n Achievement [Ed: n Achievement being "a recurrent need to improve one's skills and do well according to a standard of excellence"] should do particularly well in a small business, in which all three prerequisites for mastery experiences (personal responsibility, direct feedback, liberty to set and attain challenging goals) are provided. Evidence supporting this prediction comes from research on the effects of achievement motivation on economic success at the individual and at the collective level. For instance, Wainer and Ruhin (1969) found that small companies led by high-achievement entrepreneurs had a growth rate 250% higher than those led by entrepreneurs with low or medium levels of n Achievement. This type of finding has been replicated in other cultures and with different types of entrepreneurial behavior (see McClelland, 1961, for an overview). Thus, Singh and Gupta (1977) found that Indian farmers high in n Achievement had a substantially steeper increase of income-per-acre over 6 years than farmers low in n Achievement, suggesting that the former had been more successful in getting the most (or best) output from their farms than the latter.

Effects of high levels of achievement motivation can also be found in life outcome measures, such as income levels and career paths. McClelland and Franz (1992) reported that n Achievement (but not measures of explicit achievement motivation) at age 31 predicted higher annual income at age 41 for both men and women. Because this study’s sample was identical with the one originally studied by McClclland and Pilon (1983), McClelland and Franz (1992) could test whether there was a direct link between early parental pressure for the child’s independence and mastery, and the “child’s income level at age 41. The correlation between the two variables was positive and significant but dropped to near zero after they controlled for participants’ n Achievement levels. Thus, effects of early emphasis on independence on later income were completely mediated by the achievement motivation measure. There is also evidence that achievement motivation and sociocultural values and constraints interact in shaping life outcomes...

In a very ambitious, successful, and controversial attempt to apply psychological constructs to the explanation of societal, economic, and historical processes, McClel land and colleagues (for an overview, see McClelland, 1987) have used content coding measures developed in implicit motive research to assess motivational needs at the collective level by, for instance, scoring folk tales or children’s storybooks representative of a given culture at a certain historic time, and have used these scores to predict indices of economic success within and across nations, Thus, deCharms and Moeller (1962) found that in the 19th century, an increase of levels of n Achievement in U.S. children’s books preceded an increase in the U.S. patent index by 10 to 30 years. The increase in collective n Achievement correlated at .79 with the increase in the parent index, suggesting that societal emphasis of achievement and mastery when a new generation is in childhood (as reflected in the readers) translates into higher innovativeness when that generation reaches adulthood and joins the workforce. Based on findings such as this, McClelland (1961) argued that collective values of self-reliance and achievement translate at the individual level into parenting practices nurturing independence and mastery, which give rise to increased achievement motivation in the next generation, and thus to the high entrepreneurial activity and innovarivencss that drive the growth of national economies."

--- Handbook of competence and motivation / Andrew J. Elliot

Never too late to mock Bolehland

2012-01-04T00:45:00.003+08:00

"Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence." - Henrik Tikkanen

***

An oldie but goodie from 2002:

Music agency changes name because of pornography link

Phonographic Performance Malaysia has changed its name so people no longer mistake it for a pornography company.

For 13 years since the government agency opened, people have misread its name and misconstrued its purpose, chief executive Tan Ngiap Foo says.

The agency is a music licensing body, which collects royalties for the public use of copyrighted material.

"I have clients who purposely write checks as Photographic Performance Malaysia just to avoid the phonographic word, linking the word with pornography," Mr Tan is quoted as saying in The Star newspaper.

An official at the Consumer Affairs Ministry confirms it has received many complaints about the agency from callers demanding to know why the government is involved in a pornography company, The Star reports.

Mr Tan says he has often been asked how he could head a "dirty" organisation.

The agency's board decided earlier this year to change its name, hoping its identity would no longer be mistaken, Mr Tan said.

The agency is now called Public Performance Malaysia.

France/Spain 2011 - Day 11, Part 2 - Lugo Cathedral

2012-01-03T19:35:00.000+08:00

"I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso." - Rita Rudner

***

France/Spain 2011
Day 11 - 27th March - Lugo Cathedral (Part 2)

We didn't do a full round on top of the town walls, but we did check out the Cathedral of Lugo - just as the drizzle was starting.

The mossiest cathedral I'd seen so far, behind zinc. No doubt this was due to the incessant drizzle. No wonder so many people emigrated fromthis part of Spain.

Altar

Altar and priest

A side door

Chapel of St Miguel

Chapel of "Virxen da O"
Google Translate is unable to translate this (except as "Virxe gives O"), and there're only 990 Google results for it, so I assume it's in Galican.

I thought this was might give a clue as to the chapel's name, but "limosna para el culto de la santisima virgen de los ojos grandes" translates as "alms for the worship of the Blessed Virgin of the big eyes". Yes "big eyes". Go figure.

"In this church the Blessed Sacrament is permanently exposed"

Apparently it's a privilege to expose the Host 24 hours.
Photography was only forbidden during services, which was very reasonable.
The dress code seemed to involve a tie.

I was surprised by the number of services

There was a wonderful museum which opened from 11am-1pm and 4-6pm. The Rough Guide called it "wonderful", but I was thinking of another sense of the word (I was in the cathedral at about 12pm so I'm not sure why I didn't have a look - possibly because of time constraints).

Churros à la française

The lovely plazaview one café had

Besides offering glasses of "vine", this place charges a surcharge for sitting on the terrace, and there are "sheets of claim" on offer (receipts?)

There was a shop selling communion dresses

The same place sold lingerie also. Go figure. Perhaps the concept was to offer a girl everything she needed through her journey in life.

I don't know why I took this.

We then had lunch.

Slightly stale bread: it looks better than it tasted (must've been all the moisture in the air spoiling it)

Usually we'd have gotten a Menu del Dia (menu of the day) but this day we got the Menu of the End of the Week (18€ including coffee - usually there's just dessert, bread and wine/water; there was a beer option here too) and could choose from the à la carte.

Small Scallops

Prawns with garlic

Grilled King Prawns
They seemed about the same size

It seems langostino != langoustine. Faux ami !

The starters were very simple, but then Spanish food in general is simple.

Roast milk fed lamb

Grilled hake

Galican style cod. This seemed to have enough salt to last 2000 years.

The fish wasn't very good, though the other seafood was great. The best fish is still Italian.

The bar-restaurant was as noisy as a Chinese restaurant. And it wasn't even dinner time.

Flan

Diploma of the Friends of the Octopus

The Spanish like small but not toy dogs, and like to dress them.

Spanish fries seem to be cooked only once. Double cooking would improve them (to get the best of both worlds outside and in), and probably make them less greasy too.

More people spoke French in Spain than English.

On M Ravi's challenging of the Constitutionality of the Death Penalty

2012-01-03T14:07:00.000+08:00

"Challenge the constitutionality of the death sentence in Court? Please. Never a hope. Just a bunch of rogue lawyers trying to get some glory at the expense of their client's life.

1. Make it clear beyond all doubt that the death penalty IS constitutional, thereby ruling out all future challenges and

2. Point out all the technical ambiguities (if any) so the powers that be can go amend them."

On Jury Nullification

2012-01-03T08:52:00.000+08:00

(in response to Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No - New York Times)

"I'm uncertain about whether a jury's finding of fact is always conclusive. Certainly, the rule against double jeopardy precludes a second prosecution of the same offence, but the acquittal can be appealed on the basis that the jury's finding of fact are clearly against the weight of the evidence. Awards of damages are the province of juries in Canada, for instance, but can and are revised on appeal. Findings of fact can be vacated and the matter remitted to the jury where inadmissible evidence has been taken into account. In cases like R v Ponting, where the allegation is that the judge has misinterpreted the law, surely the remedy for that is an appeal as well.

At this point then, if the advocacy for jury nullification becomes nothing more than an advocacy for juries to make findings of fact that fly in the face of the evidence, then it more or less amounts to advocating that juries are to act in bad faith. There must be something objectionable about such conduct. Juries making such findings of fact are acting in deliberate dereliction of their duty after all. The power given to (and the duty of) a jury is to find facts based on the evidence, and not by any other means.

Where juries are told that they do not have to do their duty, or can do their duty in a perverse way, can it not be said that the rule of law has been undermined?"

Addendum:

Someone else: "The rule of law seems to be one of those issues in which lawyers, judges and academics have found great difficulty reconciling the conflicting views. I agree that jury nullification may violate a number of principles of the rule of law - but interestingly, the two most popular views seem to be that (1) the rule of law is about procedural justice only, in which case it is merely one of many objectives of the law, and can be compromised for other, more important ones (Joseph Raz), and (2) the rule of law includes substantive as well as procedural justice, so depending on which theory of justice you prefer, jury nullification may respect the rule of law more than strict adherence to procedure (Ronald Dworkin). Unfortunately examples in which the current state of the law flouts one or both conceptions abound. You'd have thought that the law of crime and punishment would have more intellectual consistency than your average roomful of economists, but apparently not."