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What is short-term memory loss?
Opening my drawer, I grabbed a random t-shirt, a pair of shorts and underpants and was about to go to the bathroom to take a shower when I realised that I had only bathed an hour ago. Back to work.
Fafblog is funny
Read Fafblog, though the colour scheme sucks. This post is especially awesome. Within months, and at the vicious urgings of their dictator, Iraqi scientists make an astonishing breakthrough - the creation of deadly weapons of mass destruction fueled by Iraq's dangerously large stockpile of civilians and desert sand! Especially potent when loaded with children and the elderly, the weapons are praised by the Butcher of Baghdad - who promptly unleashes CIVSAND-tipped missiles against Israel and Iran, destroying their capitals and crippling their infrastructures!
Rasterbator
All you graphics nuts probably already know about this but I encountered this again and I still think it is fucking cool. One of these days I am going to upload an image, take a shitload of paper to school, and print. You essentially get a multiple page mosaic of whatever image you upload to the Rasterbator, which you can print. The Rasterbator! It is cheap (if you can steal somebody's printer, and even if not), yet so fucking cool to have one in the room. Be sure to check the forums. I thought this was very cool. But my heart and soul tells me I must have this in my room: 
Make Your Own Glow-in-the-Dark Paint
(stolen from the SA forums) 1. Combine a 1:3 mixture of Ascorbic Acid (Lemon Juice) and Household Clorox into a .5L plastic bottle. 2. Cap the bottle and place it in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. The temperature of the water should not be hot enough to melt the plastic of the bottle. 3. Remove the bottle and pour the contents into a mixing bowl. 4. Mix in one 1 ½ cups of Household vinegar 5. Add a small amount of dry watercolor casein (the color will be reflected in the luminosity) 6. Using a wooden mixing spoon stir these ingredients for 5 minutes or until casein has disintegrated 7. Let cool in the refrigerator for a few hours, soon you should see a dim luminescence even in daylight 8. Soak soluble objects in the concoction and let dry either outside or in a dryer What You Need: • 1/3 L Ascorbic Acid (Lemon Juice) • 2/3 L Household Clorox (Bleach, essentially) • 1 L Plastic Bottle • Tap Water • Medium sized mixing bowl • 1 ½ cups Household Vinegar • Children’s watercolor dry stick (casein) It's not my fault if the mixture explodes and kills the children.
It rains only when you least expect it
One of the worst things about living in Singapore is the rain. I hate the rain. I hate it even more than the sweltering humidity that has lain many an unprepared visitor low as he steps through the sliding glass doors of Changi Airport, the humidity which he encounters as a blistering wave of warm air that blasts into his nostrils, his eyeballs, his ears, his mouth, and every orifice you can think of, leaving him agape with shock. Within moments his bodily fluids begin draining out of his armpits for no biological purpose other than to stain his shirt. At once dehydrated and nauseated by the omnipresent moisture, the gasping foreigner enters a taxi feeling relieved by the airconditioning even as he is perplexed by the strange variant of English the taxi driver uses. Inevitably, as soon as he steps off the taxi into any unsheltered space, it starts to rain. He swears loudly that the gods of Singapore are the elder gods, vengeful gods, and they hate him. He is right, insofar as they hate everybody. While the sprites that run the weather here are capricious, their temperaments are contained within some very strict limits. These limits I term "unpleasant" and "more unpleasant". Being a weather forecaster here must be the easiest job in the world. It is always warm, it is always humid, and it is always raining on some part of this 693 sq km island. This makes travel no less nerve-wracking. The skies themselves are often little indication of what is going to happen next. Sometimes when it is overcast, and thunder is an ominous drumbeat in the distance heralding the coming of a storm, and everybody is scurrying around clutching their umbrellas to their chests, the clouds seem so quickened with water that one feels it surely must rain soon. It doesn't. It can stay that way for hours. At other times when the sky is an azure desert with nary a cloud in sight, rain can strike without the barest warning, usually when I am in some location where the nearest cover is miles away and I am wearing my favourite shirt. It will only stop when I arrive at the aforementioned shelter, sometimes so suddenly that, other than the petrichor emanating from the rapidly drying grass, there is not a trace of evidence it had rained at all. It was another sort of rain I saw when I walked out of class: a dim, gray, soddy, depressing downpour that looked like it had been going on for days and may go on forever. I looked up at the heavens and saw there was no break in the clouds whatsoever, no comforting pinprick of sunlight; instead the sun made its presence known only as a sickly fluorescence that casted no shadow. The rain had washed away all colour from the world. To adapt to this wet, monochrome universe, I rubbed my bloodshot eyes, the result of four hours of sleep. I had woken up with an "Hello"; I went back to snatch a few seconds of sleep with a "See you later". But I never saw anybody later. I was too tired , and it was raining, and all the colour was gone. It was still raining when I stepped off the bus, home.
The Way of the Tiger
There are a shitload of conspiracy theories about Israel, some insane, some not so insane. Cisoux once told me about a Jon Stewart skit (I think) about Jews being able to teleport, and we laughed. It was a ludicrous concept; why would they need teleportation when they are all ninjas? Only yesterday they assassinated a leading Hamas operative by rigging his car in Damascus, Syria, which blew up with him in it after he left his house. I mean "The explosion in a Damascus suburb killed Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil, a leader of the Hamas military wing, in what was described by an Israeli commentator as an intricate operation in hostile territory and an example of Israel's long reach." (Emphasis mine.) and "Israel tried to kill Mashaal in 1997 with poison darts, but botched the assasination." Obviously shuriken. If you still aren't convinced that all Jews are airborne ninjas dropping from the skies blowing up reactors and assassinating random Arabs, how about this story? They're just showing off here. "After months of careful planning, Shin Bet (Israel's elite internal security force) finally managed to steal, modify, and replace Ayyash's cell phone. The next time it rang, Ayyash answered - and promptly had his head blown off." According to James F. Dunnigan, (some sort of military commentor and author or something), Israel is the third most powerful nation militarily in the world in terms of combat power, behind only the USA and China. A population of just seven million people is no weakness when all of them are ninjas!
Well, it's stopped raining now
I woke up feeling horrible, to the discordant symphony of rain and alarm clock, and decided that I did not want to travel to school so I could listen to a lecture on ethics (more discordance), which, as far as I can tell from the Powerpoint slides the lecturer has released, was exactly the same as every other ethics class I have taken in this school already. So fuck school. I shall do all the excerebrose bullshit I have not done enough of: staying at home, rolling around in bed, thinking of nothing but why the fuck I am rolling in bed when I could be stamping through the world this moist afternoon, then realising that no, there is nothing I want to do more than be holed up in this room with the unwashed cups and creeping ants and unfolded sheets, with eyes that see nothing but ceiling and ears that hear nothing but the meaningless chatter of Chinese pop radio DJs. I am looking forward to a day of solitude and sloth.
Death and Boredom at 4 am
I should have gone to bed after I put the phone down, but I didn't. Instead I went and finished reading the copy of Reefer Madness I borrowed. So much of the world sucks, I thought to myself, as I closed it an hour and a half later, and shoved it into my bag. Upon packing it and other books to bring to the Jurong Point library after school in the afternoon, I realised I haven't returned Catch-22 on time, which means I now owe the government money. Reefer Madness is a pretty good book, if a little bit short. I borrowed it for the porn, but it was the least gripping part of the whole book. (The last third of the book, "An Empire of the Obscene", details the porn industry in the United States and charts the rise and fall of Reuben Sturman, the man who led the revolution.) There was very enjoyable storytelling, backed up with painstaking research and interviews, and I though Schlosser presented his case very well. I still couldn't sleep, so I hopped around the Internet, looking for things of interest. This was a bad mistake, almost as bad as the time I typed "Abortion" into the Google image search. I saw a surveillance video of a man kissing his girlfriend goodbye as she entered a lift. The lift doors closed, and the young black man reached into his jacket and pulled out something small and dark that I could not recognise at first because of the graininess of the video. He put the thing in his mouth - and unloaded a pistol round through his skull. I saw another video, this time a Japanese news clip about two men jaywalking on a Beijing expressway. It was bizarre. They climbed over the fence and walked even though every lane had a vehicle moving at a high speed. One of the men seemed to realise this, so he panicked, and started running, right into the path of a car and boom, crash, ouch, he flipped into the air and something erupted from his body, a skyward projectile, as he lurched in a bloody trajectory. The clip stopped and I said: "Shit." I will probably wait for the green man when I cross the road today. (Still, it was not all bad, as I discovered a fun new word today. Litotes: a figure of speech in which the speaker emphasizes the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite, eg. "no small loss" and "not a bad play". The chances of me using this word: nil.)
Public Service Announcement
This is really, really quite old (it was newsy in 2002), but I reckon it's never too late for announcements like this. If you use your computer mainly for web surfing you probably only use a minute portion of your computer's processing ability. Why not use your leftover CPU cycles for science? Join Stanford's initiative to understand protein folding at Folding@Home and do your part to find a potential cure for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Plus, the advancement of knowledge is a good in itself, no? I have it installed and I do not notice any adverse effects. Download it here. Those of you who think gene research is the devil can pick another Internet-based distributed computing project of your liking here. One that may interest some of you is FightAids@Home (PC only I am afraid until Phase 2). Too Much and Too Little: The Site that Specialises in Two-Year-Old News
Mmmm. Milk.
I am writing this from my university's main library while waiting for my friends to pick me up for dinner at Boon Lay Market, one of many places I did not know existed until now, because I am as daft as a rabbit. Right now, I am bored out of my mind. At least it is quiet here, the soft tapping of fingers on keyboards and hushed whispers are all the sounds around me. It's been a long day. I would have gotten A for a midterm if I hadn't changed one answer. I should have known reckless change is a bad thing. But you know the old adage: one shouldn't cry over spilt milk. It is not productive. Instead, you should beat the shit out of the guy who spilt your milk, especially if it is for your mother. This modification of the cliche may be more cliched than the cliche itself. Anyway. I think this is what is termed "stream-of-consciousness" writing. Or a soliloquoy. Speaking of milk, I am thirsty, but milk encourages pimple growth, I hear. This gives me an idea. Here are three helpful tips for the rest of you: 1. Do not try to milk a bull. 2. Hyphenate adjectival phrases preceding nouns. 3. Beware bald professors. Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP!
Waiter, there's not enough personality in my laksa
WHEN I was working at Streats there was an aunty at the food court there who loved to address her male customers by saying: "What do you want, handsome?"
While I have not been to too many countries, on the basis of what little experience I have had I do believe we Singaporeans have the best food in the universe, if you consider the price-to-taste factor, and more importantly, the frequency-of-explosive-diarrhea-to-consumption ratio.
"Nonsense," retorted another Chinese friend, who speaks only English. Anyway one of the waiters was a spunky kid with spiky hair who buzzed around the restaurant like a defective motorcycle. He jogged to our table, and screeched to a stop with a half-turn like a red-streaked ice-skater, and dispensed the menus with a perkiness that was as uplifting as one of the sugary soft drinks fast food restaurants carry as a matter of course.
I had some good times. R.I.P. STREATS 2000-2004
This may be the most tiring week of my life
Thank God for football tomorrow.
Abortion: The Project
Today I scoured the Internet for information on my project. I wanted to have finished my short write-up by today, but I haven't, because, fuck, I was feeling queasy by the end of my research, which consists of typing random synonyms for "unsafe abortion" into Google. I am reproducing some of the nasty quotes I found because I hate all of you so much.* One: Working from home, or in primitive premises, dukun often induce abortions using herb-based drinks followed by vigorous massage. There is worse. Maria Ufar Ansor, head of the women's section of Indonesia's biggest Islamic Organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), said more dangerous techniques were not uncommon. "They put sticks or capsules of boot polish into the vagina," she said. Two: Evidence from forensic archaeologists have shown us that many primitive societies used various means to induce abortion. These include herbs, poisons, sharp sticks and abdominal pressure. The oldest known medical texts describe abortion methods. Three: Many of the methods used are based on cultural or traditional practices — prolonged, hard massage of the abdomen; repeated blows to the abdomen; insertion of stones, twigs, or sharp wire objects into the vagina and cervix; drinking or flushing the vagina with caustic substances, for example. Four: If the pregnancy was more advanced, the dais would bind a piece of cloth very tightly on top of the stomach, then make the woman do very heavy work, such as stepping on a "dhenki" (a wooden see-saw on which women step continuously to husk grains). This dislodges the foetus. The women in the village have accepted these methods of abortion. "They seem willing to accept the pain," says Chandana. *I'm kidding, I swear.
Catholics Abhor Fruit Sex
Where the hell is my Warcraft 3 CD?
This sucks.
Statistics Don't Mean Anything They Tell Me
Fun Fact 1: I was fucking around at Nationmaster.com when I clicked on Most Militaristic, and found that Singapore was ranked second based on the dollar figure per capita, at $969.92 per person, behind Israel. Fun Fact 2: We greatly value education, because it is known that as Asians, we have Asian Values that impress upon us the importance of having a good education, which is why, in terms of education spending, we are ranked 103 out of 130 countries, at 2.3% of our GDP, behind Namibia, Uzbekistan, and Swaziland. Singapore's literacy rate is 93.2%, ranked 93rd in the world. Strangely enough, we are top in Science and Math aptitude! I don't care if this is old news.
Wifflenotes on Suicide Terrorism
Since I was installing the game Sacred and it looked like it may take a while I decided to check out an article or two. I ended up on the Council of Foreign Relations website and read one of what it considered an essential text, Mishandling Suicide Terrorism, by Scott Atran, which was published in The Washington Quarterly (Summer 2004). It is in PDF format and is about 20 pages long, but it is quite concise, well-researched and backed up by facts, figures and examples, and very easy to read. It criticised the American regime's assumptions in dealing with suicide terrorism, and outlined broad strategies for how to deal with this terrifying enemy. Since I am guessing most of you won't bother to read it here are some of the notes I drew up about his argument, which I liked very, very much. Right now I am also wondering why I don't read my homework so deeply. Basically, Atran argues that
(Many interesting facts were left out! It may be easier to just read the article than my summary!) Indeed, so interesting that I decided to delete the summary I had written.
Dog Shoots Man
...and saves his siblings.
In My Perfect World
1. In my perfect world, words are spelled as they are pronounced in English, and not like what it is now, where the letter U is pronounced "ah" in up, "oo" in bull, "oooo" in true, "yoo" in unit, "eh" in bury, "er" in injure, "ee" in busy, "w" in languish and not at all in fourteen. 2. In my perfect world, my cock sucks itself. 3. In my perfect world, cats are able to talk, and they all sound like Corey from Saved By The Bell. 4. In my perfect world, my curtains match my bedsheets. 5. In my perfect world, there is no sin; nobody can imagine it and thus nobody is preoccupied with it. In my perfect world, nobody offers salvation; for there is nothing to be salvaged. In my perfect world, there is nothing to fear; there is no eternal judgment; no fire and brimstone awaits us; only silence. In my perfect world, the universe has only us; we who are but flickers; but each flickers only once; does it not make each flicker all the more precious? In my perfect world, we cry: If faith is still a leap into the dark let us jump in holding torches. In my perfect world, God is still a jester, but now His jokes would be funny. 6. In my perfect world nobody no God no priest no minister no king no father no teacher no soldier no philosopher nobody at all has a prescription for a perfect world in a perfect world a perfect world is a ludicrous thought.
ORD LOH
Thanks, James.
Slaughter
What I have learnt from the North Ossetia atrocity: 1. The Russians can't deal with hostage situations at all. My God. If you are an hostage in Russia, be prepared to be gassed or shot. Still, I imagine this was likely the worst possible hostage situation any nation could have faced. It is possible this was such a difficult situation that the fact anyone was saved was a bonus. But the brutality shown by the Russians could possibly have made things worse, according to Michael Wines' Week in Review in the New York Times. Kill the hostages before the terrorists get to do so seems to be the Spetsnaz motto. 2. The recent level of terrorist activity has shown an intensity and immorality that I simply do not recall having ever experienced in the last 40 years (especially if you disregard the acts of nation-states, which of course you shouldn't), at least outside of Africa. Mark Steyn, in a recent opinion piece in The Australian, wrote: Sorry, it won't do. I remember a couple of days after September 11 writing in some column or other that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, that's still the difference. We can all get upset about dead children, but unless you're giving honest thought to what was responsible for the slaughter your tasteful elegies are no use. Nor are the hyper-rationalist theories about "asymmetrical warfare". I liked the piece very much even if I don't agree with all of it. It was criticising mainstream news organisations for refusing to take a stand and for being too PC, and said in a breathtakingly honest tone, a tone that seems reserved only for the United States sometimes, about what he termed the "Islamist psychosis", which I will not reproduce here. As it is a newspaper opinion piece after all, it is not complete - after all it reduced the Russian involvement to a single paragraph. But it is important sometimes to disengage oneself from the big picture and examine the point, that edge of a facet of an idea, and this op-eds sometimes do well. Mark Steyn's piece, if not holistic, is at least engaging, and worth a read, and hopefully could spark some debate. But before anyone forgets the Russian role in the Chechnyan war, here are a few links for you. For a quick outline, here's BBC's Q&A about Chechnya. Putin once referred to his 1999 invasion of Chechnya as an "anti-terrorist operation". But you don't fucking invade countries as part of an "anti-terrorist operation". Does that sound familiar? And for what seems to be a very good outline of Russian atrocities that have not been sufficiently highlighted in the mainstream press, here's Chechnya: The World Looks Away by the Crimes of War Project, which features some very good photos, by the way. I have not finished reading the series beyond The Russian Army in Chechnya, but I will do so soon. Here's a quote: To compensate for the low quality of their fighting units in Chechnya, Russian military chiefs have adopted a strategy that tries to copy NATO's policy in the Balkans in 1999: bomb till victory and win without heavy casualties. Interesting question: What do the North Ossetians think of the deliberate targeting of their kids, I wonder? Surely nothing could enrage a people more. It is a mainly Christian republic, which has engaged in an inter-ethnic conflict before, with Ingushetia in 1992, which resulted in 40,000 to 60,000 Ingushetian refugees. The last thing we need in that hellhole is the addition of Ossetian vengefulness into the mix! I also feel sorry for the Muslim minority in that region, which must be under a lot of pressure at the moment. 3. Even now, the conspiracy theories are springing afresh. A sobering report on Arab reactions to the Beslan massacre by the CNN, which reported comments by Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television (the less sensationalist competitor to Al-Jazeera, and it being less sensationalist, meant it gets far less mention in the mainstream press in comparison to Al-Jazeera); Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist and columnist for Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram; and Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (by the way, read the Boston Globe's op-ed by Diana L. Eck called Why Exclude a Muslim Voice where she criticises the US for revoking the visa of Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan in part because he was the grandchild of Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hasan al-Banna). The self-reflection was refreshing. But then I had to read this: Ali Abdullah, a Bahraini religious scholar who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as "un-Islamic" but insisted Muslims weren't behind it. "I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya," said Abdullah. I am not dismissing that possibility, however ludicrous and remote it may sound to me, but how in the name of the God of Empiricist Truth did he come to that sort of certainty while sitting around in a room in Bahrain? *Remember guys, the logical fallacy of appeal to authority: Just because someone is an authority in one area (in this case Salafi theology) doesn't mean he isn't a dumbass in another (investigating sources of terrorist activity, which includes kidnapping and killing hundreds of kids). If all of us would remember this the world would be a better place. Sadly, not. 4. Fuck man, I should be spending all this time on homework.
Hey you guys from the ASOIAF board
When I looked at my traffic for the blog today I said, "What the fuck? Where are all the page views coming from?" Then I saw that one of you had linked my transcription of the Tower of Joy scene from A Game of Thrones to Ran's board. If any of you actually bother to go to the first page of this blog, I'm the guy who used to post under the name Gregor Clegane over there, if any of you remember. Drop me an email at holy001! at bluebottle! dot com! without the exclamation marks if you do.
The Japanese as ever are at the cutting edge of science
I don't even know what to say. Click.
It takes me back
I was blabbering about defamation law or copyright law or something when a Take That song rudely interrupted me, but I continued talking, oblivious and pointless, even when her eyes had strayed above us, beyond, as if searching for a sight to the sound. She raised a finger and silenced me, saying something about it being a Take That song and how she wished her best friend was here, to sing along. "You have no idea how much this brings me back," she gasped, and she smiled. She smiled for a long while; I watched her and said, "Mmmm." So I went home and spent the night listening to a bunch of old CDs.
What is your favourite paradoxical term (oxymoron)?
By paradoxical term (oxymoron) I mean phrases like "open secret", "original copy", "business ethics", "false fact" or "same difference". (I think there is a better term for these but I forget.) I think mine is "social science".
Politics is Anal
Hallelujah. Malaysian ex-Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been released from prison after six years, after a court overturned his conviction for sodomy. Jesus. Sodomy. Now that's a shitty thing to get jailed for. I don't care what anybody says, I cannot see why the fuck anyone should be punished for sodomy, in whatever state, as long as the guys involved ain't sodomising people against their wills, alright. In fact, it makes me angry thinking about it. Fun Fact: Sodomy is illegal in Singapore too.
The Trouble with the Absolute
Whoever thought he had understood something of me had merely constructed something out of me, after his own image. In the end, nobody hears more out of things, including books, than he knows already. For that to which one lacks access from experience, one has no ears. Let us then imagine an extreme case: that a book speaks of all sorts of experiences which lie utterly beyond any possibility of frequent, or even rare, experiences---that it represents the first language for a new sequence of experiences. In that case, simply nothing is heard; and people have the acoustic illusion where nothing is heard there is nothing. ---Friedrich Nietzsche, from Ecce Homo, drawn from translation in Walter Kaufmann's Existententialism from Dostoevsky to Satre -- There was only one catch... and that was Catch-22 "Catch-22," Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, "says you've always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to." "But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions." "'But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you." Yossarian slumped with disappointment. "Then I really do have to fly the fifty missions, don't I?" he grieved. "The fifty-five," Doc Daneeka corrected him. ---Joseph Heller, from Catch-22, on the back-cover of the book I borrowed from the library
I am vengeance. I am the night. I am Batman.
A 6-foot-tall, 275-pound bearded man crashed a children's birthday party in Oak Forest, identified himself as "vengeance," then helped himself to a piece of cake, police said. By the way, whatever has happened to Adam West?
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