After finishing more than 3/4 of my cough medicine, i looked at the beer bottle bottle of cough mixture for the first time yesterday. I began to wonder why the label on the bottle had so much fine print. I gave up trying to find the alcohol percentage after awhile. Instead it read "Two 5ml spoons, three times daily. Take after food.".

Considering that i took the medicine just before i slept, i think i followed the "take after food" part of the instruction quite nicely. The only problem was with "Two 5ml spoons". I had absolutely no idea what 5ml spoons look like. So what i did was to fill up a shot glass of cough mixture and swallowed it.

Somehow, i get the feeling that two 5ml spoonfuls does not make a shot. Maybe that explains why i've finished 3/4 of my cough medicine when i've taken it only three times.

Came across a rather different take on christianity heaven and hell in a forum thread at Internet Infidels. Eudaimonist's post reproduced wholly here.

Excerpt :
Your First Six Days in the Afterlife

The trip starts at your death. You feel yourself elevate to a place of darkness and clouds. Is this Hell? you wonder. But, no... you hear singing coming from the direction of a sparkling fortress-city at the edge of your sight. You float closer for a better view. Its massive walls are square in shape, and it sparkles ostentatiously as if encrusted with many gaudy gemstones. The city is lighted by a giant flickering lamb-shaped streetlamp. ["The city had no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb." -Revelations] That's rather tacky, you think, but who am I to question God's taste in decorations? It takes you a whole day to float to one of the gates. Now begins Day Two.

You are greeted at the gate by what must be a male angel, who wears flowing white robes and carries a flaming sword. He asks you: Have you sworn total obedience and servitude in your heart to Yeshua as your Lord and Savior? Who the flying f...flip is Yeshua? Oh! Right... that's the original name of Jesus. Whew! You almost thought you chose the wrong religion. You breathe a sigh of relief.

Yes, you respond, not wanting to blow this, I accepted Pascal's Wager. I figured that being a Christian would be my most pragmatic course of action. That didn't come out right. Why did I say that? But it was the truth.

Right you are. In you go. The angel steps to one side, nearly singing a feathery wing with the flaming sword.

Well, that was easy, you think, and you enter the city. You briefly recall your mother telling you: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is, but you shut the thought out of your mind. You wonder if your atheist relatives and friends are around, but you don't see them anywhere. Where is everyone, anyway? You follow the sounds of singing. This takes you a whole day. It is now Day Three.

You enter a giant courtyard in which thousands, maybe millions -- physics doesn't seem to apply here in the usual way -- of people are prostrate before an entity that seems to flow from one form to another. Sometimes the entity is an old man on a throne, sometimes a dove, or a lamb, or any number of things. Must be the Big Guy. Yeah, must be. A chorus sings His praises, and the rest bow and scrape before Him. You look for people you know, but you feel a strong compulsion to prostrate yourself and abase yourself before this mighty being.

Eventually you spot your sister, a believer, and you crawl over next to her. She died several years ago, so she must know what is going on here.

Hi, Sis. Is this Heaven? you mumble.

Yes, and that's a good thing. A very good thing. she whispers back, giving you an urgent and meaningful glance. Strange, she doesn't seem joyous. She seems to be warning me of something.

Who else is here? Any atheists we know?

She shakes her head. They are down there. She points down through the translucent gold floor. Far, far below is a flaming pit. A chill runs through your soul. You can't make out what is going on down there, but it doesn't look good.

The Chorus sings their joy that those who refused the servitude of God are now suffering by the lack of His presence. You try to be joyful too, but you are choked by a sorrow you can't contain. You try to hide this from He who sits on the throne. Thus begins Day Four.

You bow and scrape, and bow and scrape, and bow and scrape. You try singing praises under your breath to improve your spirits, but it doesn't cheer you up. You feel guilty that you aren't blissfully happy. You try to imagine an eternity of servitude... and you can't fit your mind around the thought. You don't want to anyway. Best not to think about it. Best to have faith, not thought. Thought is dangerous. I am nothing.

You attempt a few more quiet words with your sister. Is this all that happens in Heaven? We just serve and worship? I always imagined that we could do all the things we wanted to do when we were alive.

She glanced at me sharply to be quiet. Don't question this, she said very quietly. Do you want to end up down there? Free will still exists in Heaven. You can still end up in Hell.

Your eyes open wide with fear and you tremble.

We are here to Serve and Obey. Nothing more. God doesn't like selfishness. We are nothing, God is everything.

You gulp. This isn't what I bargained for when I accepted Pascal's Wager. Why ever did I do that? Why did God want pragmatic people like me anyway? Here begins Day Five.

You sneak peeks at God. Why does this being want such abject submission? Why all the praises? Why the songs of joy over the torments of the non-believers? Why is thought so dangerous here?

You bow and scrape and bow and scrape, and finally you cannot take it any longer. An eternity of this? Worshipping this monster?

You stand up and scream, No more! No more! This is wrong!

Your sister tries to quiet you and pull you back to the floor, but you resist. It's a good thing that you are here, she says. A very good thing! Please have mercy, oh Lord!

However, God is unmoved by any request for mercy for the rebellious. You feel yourself descend through the floor towards the flaming pit. Your sister sheds a tear, but quickly starts to sing songs of joy that you are now suffering in Hell...

Day Six. You are in Hell. Nearby you see Socrates having a spirited discussion with Ayn Rand. Gandhi strolls by, gives you a pleasant glance and a nod, and strikes up a discussion with one of the Buddhas. Several people dance nearby. You realize that these people never accepted Pascal's Wager, and never would.

My poor sister, you think. My poor sister. Will she ever join me?

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: Eudaimonia ]

Hmm... i'm thinking. Sandralicious put up an advertisment for a date. Closing date for applicants is June 11. Successful applicants get a date package of four course home-cooked dinner by the pool together with a night swim! So.. i'm thinking. That's what i do best afterall. Um... thinking that is, not applying for dates, duh!

Sandralicious's date advert was an inspiration from Triple Period who is advertising himself also for a date. I'm thinking about this too. No, not thinking about applying for Triple Period's date, he specifically asked for female applicants (i know that sounds mild, so i'll reiterate here in brackets, i'm not gay).

I was more like thinking if they (Sandralicious and Triple Period) could like tally up their advertisements and go out on a date (together). Matchmake in blogosphere! Sweet.

Obtw
Sonntag - Sunday
Montag - Monday
Donnerstag - Thursday
Freitag - Friday
Samstag - Saturday

What language is it?

*Update*
A direct link to Sandra's advertisement.

Thanks Sandra, for linking.

Hello blogders from Sandralicious.
*Update end*

It puzzles me. Some people simply cannot tahan (tolerate) me carrying my lil fan all around. But whenever i set the fan on a table, they would invariably pick it up and start fanning themselves. In fact, how much they rant about me and my lil fan is directly proportional to how likely they are to pick up my fan to use for themselves. Weird.

For me-self, personally, i do not see any ramification in carrying a lil fan and using it as per desired. It would have been no different from carrying an umbrella and using it when it rains or shines. Do not be surprised though, that there are people who refuse to carry umbrellas no matter the weather conditions. So i guess its only reasonable that there are people who don't carry lil fans to fan themselves.

But i think most of the people are actually put off by the pictures of lil dancing monkeys on the fan rather than by the fan itself. The childish looking lil fan seem to be of a stigma that parallels pink shirts or pink t-shirts on guys. No, i'm not asking guys to wear pink underwear here, not that it matters if no one is gonna see it though...

But surely stigma can only arise when something is different from the norm. So if not many people around beloved sing.ah.pore carries lil fans, what difference does it make if the fans had lil pictures of dancing monkies as opposed to pictures of mountains forests and valleys?

Apparently, sore-throat and durian mixture is a recipe for disaster. I've had sore-throats that were so bad that the very act of speaking is painful. During those times, i would consciously avoid speaking at all. But this time round it is different. There is no difficulty in speaking (from a certain perspective). But the voice just couldn't get formed. The loudest i could go, is not much louder than when i'm whispering to the guys (gals) behind the fastfood counter.

Don't ask me why i do that. I just naturaly drop my voice to a whisper when ordering at fastfood counters. Especially so if it is kind of noisy. Maybe i'm just evil, making the guys (gals) life at the counter difficult.

I've lost my voice... translate that to mandarin... that's not good : D

We had a lot of durians for dinner today. Um... yeah, we had nothing but durians for dinner. So much that we couldn't finish the durians. Me being, sick and having sore throat, eating durians wasn't really the wisest thing. But durians, who could resist the king of fruits.

Salsa Lessons : Day Three

My plan to oversleep didn't work. I think it was mainly because of the alarm clock that i set. I went off to slumberland at 1800, and the alarm clock rang at 1830. Dragged myself out of bed when snooze kicked in at 1850. Propelled out of the house at 1900, and stepped into Serangoon MRT at 1915. For those of you who don't know, walking from my house into the MRT in 15 minutes requires very fast walking.

Anyway, when i woke up, i discovered an sms waiting in my handphone. It was from Karate Kid to confirm if the meeting is at same time and same place. We always meet up before heading to the dance studio. I told her that i was gonna be late and she said to go up to the studio alone.

It was good, except for the fact that i didn't know where the studio was exactly. My biggest problem with directions is that i am happy to just follow around, without taking note of the surroundings, when there's someone to lead. Fortunately, i did manage to find the place before going to too many wrong places.

The salsa lessons, i realise, were good opportunities to hold the hands of the pretty girls. There were many times i continued holding onto the girl's hand when we were supposed to be litsening/looking at the instructors. Not that i purposely want to keep on holding the hands, but it sort of pop as a realization later that "oh, i'm still holding to her hand...". Not that the girl couldn't withdraw her hand if she felt uncomfortable, i rationalized.

But it is game theory. The reason why i didn't withdraw my own hand was that it is an indication that i'm uncomfortable with the girl holding my hand. Which would also likely be the reason why the girl did not withdraw her hand too. Not the most flattering thing in a dance, you'll trust me on this.

So if i forgot to release the girl's hand, i'll just keep holding onto the hand. Oh... i apply this procedure with only one girl :p Hypocrisy, yes, but c'mon, gimme a break :)

I wasn't in office today. Went to a Java Tech Forum. The forum, which was more of advertising talks, touched on training courses for upgrading. I thought the turn out would have been made up of two groups. One group would have been sleazy old uncles who led a life of IT, happily married with wife and kids, and for reasons of survival, had to come and take a look at the training courses offered.

The other group would have been young nerds with glasses that are one inch thick and who have the world's most beautiful girlfriends and their girlfriends would make a sexy growl everytime they took off their boyfriend's glasses. I know i am not qualified to stereotype against nerds, but at the same time, i object to such disqualifications, being part of the group and all make me qualified, or so i believe. And no, i do not have a girlfriend, much less anyone to growl sexily when taking my glasses off. I'm an exceptional nerd... or was it abnormal?

It turn out that the turnout was quite different from that i imagined. Babe watch activity was everywhere. My colleague kept pestering me to pass her my stack of name cards so she could pass to babes i had an eye for. I thought it was kinda stoopid to do that, so when she commented that there were some handsome guys there, i turned the offer around.

If i knew babe watch activity would be so high, i would have brought my camera and act some 'seh' and pretend to be the official camera man for the event. With babe watch on hyper-active, today would have been a beautiful day, except that i am sick. Sorethroat and feeling weak all over, happens with fever. And there's still salsa lessons to go. I'm thinking of whether to go, but the "arghhh" is that it is a paid kind of thing. Taking an mc kind of wastes lotsa money.

Maybe i'll just sleep on it first. And when i wake up, i'll probably have overslept. And when Karate Kid asks me why i didn't go, i could just say that i overslept. Quite a lame excuse considering that she might be reading this...

Anyway, on my way back just now, there was this guy who for some reason thought that i'll buy whatever he was intending to sell, stepped right into my path. Kind of inconsiderate, considering i might have knocked into him, bowl over, crack my head on Bishan cement, bleed in twitching spasms and spent an eternity in hell ya noe. Thinking back, i should have hit his head with my packet of chicken rice.


But then.. that might mean i have to buy another dinner for the day :( Then again, i might get free dinner and lodging too...

Begging the Question

is one of the those phrases where some people hear often, probably even say often, but know little of its origins and usage. We commonly see phrase "begging the question" being used in place of or meaning as "raises the question".

Eg: Steven strips himself down to yellow boxers on tv. This act begs the question of what consists of acceptable levels of censorship (or non-censorship in this case).

This might seem to be a correct use of the phrase begging a question, but it is not. It is a result from not knowing what the phrase, "begging the question" means. The act raises additional questions but does not beg any questions. So what does begging the question really mean?

"Begging the question", also known as circular reasoning is one of the thirteen logical fallacies identified by Aristotle in his Sophistical Refutations (Sophistici Elenchi). It is a fallacy of presumption. It presumes the conclusion which is at question in the first place.

The following is an example of begging the question:

"Murder is morally wrong. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong."
The presumption made here is that abortion is murder. Which was really what was at question when this point was being made.

Dear blogders, please do not use the phrase "begging the question" unless you're refering to logical fallacies. If someone makes a circular reasoning in his/her arguments, he/she is begging the question. But if a situation raises questions, then it is what it is, raising questions.

Went to watch Starwars yesterday. The show imo is over-rated. Almost everyone who watched it said it was George Lucas best yet. But it seems alot of it is just hype and long waits. It seems mediocre at best. How old was luke skywalker in episode four? In the span of around thirty years, yoda turned from fighting fit gremlin into one that was dying from old age. A drastic change for something that lives 300+ or was it 400+ years.

We watched at Golden Village yesterday. Anyway, my brother came late for the movie yesterday. My auntie was waiting outside the cinema with the ticket. Then the staff saw my auntie waiting and asked her to pass the ticket to them and go in to watch. Aliasing by phone call, all my brother had to do when he arrived, was to ask the staff if there is a ticket for G15 (or some ticket like that) in cinema 4 for him. And they gave my brother the ticket and let him in. I would say this is a rather exceptional and good service.

You've probably seen the phobia list. A list of all the available scientific names in alphabetical order. Here's a different ordering. A list of all charted fears called the fear list. So now you can look for your fear and find out the scientific name.

Some funny stuff too.
Excerpt :
"Fear of the Pope is Papaphobia. The fear of puppets is Pupaphobia. And the fear of being tickled with feathers is Pteronophobia. So, by extrapolating between these three names, I imagine that Papapupapteronophobia might suffice in naming the heretofore unnamed fear of being tickled by an insane Pope puppet armed with feathers. (Yes, I know that nothing in my newly-coined word states a quality of madness, per se. But still, I imagine this particular holy terror of a tickle-monster puppet would, indeed, be quite insane. It's not Catholic-bashing, or anything like that. It's just a gut-feeling I have. If you wanna prove me wrong, go ahead. But your research model and methodologies should be scientifically sound and your resultant data should stand the test of independent replication. So there. And you'd best beware if you suffer from, say, Hellenologophobia — the fear of complex scientific terminology.)

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is, I think, the product of someone's very twisted and sadistic sense of humor. This gratuitously over-long word has been coined to define the "Fear of long words." Can you imagine the torturous effect on the poor phobe who is given this clinical diagnosis of his or her very real disorder? ("What's that, Dr. Stein? I'm... I'm hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobic!? ACK!!!") Fer chrissake, that's just downright mean-spirited and cruel."

Woke up today with some fuss. Apparently, a huge moth seem to have taken up residence in the house. It was the same moth i saw a couple days ago, resting on the balcony's wall. It had flew away when i approached it. But it was back again by last night. Well... i assume that it's the same moth since all moths look the same to me, and the size of it made it kind of peculiar.

My brother and i then switched on only the balcony lights, and operated under the cover of darkness. Considering that he was gearing up in army uniform for reservice or something, it did seem kind of weird. But it seems flourescent light is a whole lot different from flickering light.

I did consider taking a bamboo stick to poke at it, to egg it towards the balcony light. But then decided against it becoz the moth might actually be a visiting relative in the form of a spirit-moth. Why would i want to chase away relatives, rite?

There are those who would say that if i didn't believe in gods up there, i shouldn't believe in spirits and ghosts. It is the same rational, that there is no evidence for such things. And it's almost the same as me asking a christian why he/she is afraid of ghosts. If so sure of their beliefs they are, then they wouldn't mind watching horror movies.

The question is of course on me, not on them. So i rationalize. Given the Pascal's wager, the positive wager for spirit-moths existing demands more immediate bidding than the positive wager for god. For the moth is flying around in the house and scaring the wits outta me, while eternal damnation is still some time away.

The key to the dilemma would than be in the intepretation of the moth. Is the moth a spirit-moth or really god flying in the house? Then i would appeal to social consequences and peer pressure. Believing that a moth is a spirit-moth, makes me superstitious while believing that a moth is god speaking to me, kind of makes me a looney, even by theist's standards.

Then what if the moth is really just a moth? What moral obligations then does it hold me to not make an attempt on the moth's life? Once again i would question the validity of the assumption that a moth that is neither a spirit-moth nor god would turn me into a psychopath.

I remember a story, about either Confucious or one of his disciples. It talked about a guy blowing out the candles to study in darkness so the moths won't fly into the flames. Fatal attraction. The moral of the story escapes me quite, but it seems to teach that moths are really harmless little creatures. Not much harm in letting it breathe some of the oxygen in my house before heading out to the harsh world out there rite?

Well... for those who didn't know, i didn't go for the big walk despite wanting very much to go. The thing was, i got picked in a lucky draw for a free event of magic the gathering pre-release tourney that falls on the morning of big walk. Since the price of the tourney was like ten times the price of the big walk event, there's no prizes for correct guesses on which event i went to. Oh well.. so much for now. ZZzz

Oi... if i say kawaii = zero it means no girls who look cute okie. It doesn't they all look bad. There are plenty of other looks, other than kawaii, to look nice, like pretty, fashionable, mature etc etc. Its just personal preference. And like in Salsa Lessons : Day One i said i can't remember if any girls were kawaii, i was refering to my poor memory being due to drained, tired, sleepy, hungry okie. I didn't say any girls looked bad or anything.

Salsa Lessons : Day Two

Not everyone who came for day one came back for day two. It's not cheap, $100... $120 for those who didn't bring an opposite gender friend. The female percentage still outnumbered the male percentage though. Since the class was smaller, i got a better look at the girls this time round. One was rather kawaii and looks very young. (Um... too young for me. oi, my main purpose is to learn salsa okie) Oh well..

Anyway today, we were supposed to be taught three moves. But we're kind of slow learners and the instructors mangaged to teach two only. Towards 2130, the instructor stopped instructions and went like, "Ok guys, take the lead.". Meaning we dance whatever we wanted, but salsa lah, and the instructors try to spot and correct mistakes, with regular shouts of "Ladies, change partners."

All seems well except that 2130 is kind of a magical time for me. Headache starts to set in, drowsiness and a natural high. I know it sounds exaggerated. But i'm not. Exaggerating that is. All that comes to me at 2130, when i start to become sleepy. I'll call it the Camatose Myopia state. My bwain bwain bwain brain starts to retard and i become slow in everything that i do. Coordination, agility and response.

And when response went down, letting me take the lead isn't really the best learning tool. Other couples began doing one basic step and one manoeuvre, my partner and i were like doing one basic step, and another basic step then one manoeuvre.

There is still a problem with the music. It just rolls of my ears. I cannot identify the begining beat of the music. They sound absolutely the same to me! How does one differentiate the 'one' from anything else? Or was there no single 'one' and the girl trying to identify a 'one' for me too musically inclined?

There is a some sort of salsa gathering tomorrow at the union square (i don't know where it is). But at the moment, i'm not thinking of going since i'm going for the magic the gathering new set's pre-release tourneys, which takes up the whole day draining my bwain for the night. Then there's 10km of big walk the next day. Not to mention the Camatose Myopia state. But i'm tempted to take my camera to sneak a video to show the curious what salsa looks like. Maybe if karate kid wants to go...

Salsa is a motor skill thing. And to improve motor skills, one has to practice. Hmm... practice... yawn... bwain.

Caligynephobia
Fear of beautiful women

Cynophobia
Fear of dogs (I wasn't always afraid of dogs, until one chewed on me)

Dikephobia
Fear of justice (recently affecting bloggers?)

Glossophobia
Fear of speaking in public or of trying to speak

Gynephobia or Gynophobia
Fear of women

Heterophobia
Fear of the opposite sex (I wonder if a sex change operation will make the person fearful of the sex he/she was originally from.)

Thanatophobia or Thantophobia
Fear of death or dying

Venustraphobia
Fear of beautiful women

Wa piangz... really nothing left to blog liao. Like everywhere also kena fire... Blog this sue me, blog that too cheem, blog religion boring. From infantile to political (i got write political stuff O_o) to incomprehensible... Turn on babe watch radar, and become labelled as sexually frusrated pervert. Yes... i was am labelled as sexually frustrated by a rather fond friend. But since she's a fond friend, i'd let it pass. Oh.. pervert i add myself one lah.

So blog my daily life lah. Today i wake up 6am, brush teeth then went to the sofa to snooze for 15mins after that... oh wait...

Saw on mobile tv earlier this morning some people doing parachuting and bungee jumps. Saw them free falling in the sky my 'pi gu' (pinyin) also fall with them. I cannot imagine why anyone would do such a thing. When i was at gold coast dreamworld, i took this ride which my fond friend called 'tiu lao gei' (canto: suicide machine). So spend lagi lots of money liao, every ride must try atleast once rite?

The ride seemed simple enough. It goes up vertically for i donno how high lah, and then drops back down. Sweet, it'll be over in less than one minute. Problem was, a couple of the machines was spoilt and the queue for the sole operating machine took like an hour.

Our turn came and i was seated and the chair began to rise. My feet disintegrated the higher it went. When it reached the top, it gave a playfully long pause making me wonder when the descent would begin and whether i would be caught by surprise.

The descent came, and the chair swooshed to the bottom. The acceleration of the chair was slightly faster than the acceleration of freefall. Freefall 10ms or soemthing right? The effect was that i became freefalling in my straps. The chair fell from my pi gu as i fell together with the chair. My heartbeat went from bok pok, bok pok to bokpokbokpok instanteanously.

Well, i'm never ever going to do anything that's gonna involve freefalling for more than one second. But thinking back, i think i should have jumped from the top diving platform back when i was having swimming lessons instead of chickening out.

The flooble chatter box was taken off because it is kind of slow to load. The rest of the clickables underneath the box gets hidden until flooble is fully loaded or is reported as error. I thought the comments would be sufficient or something. Also was hoping to steer blogders from flooble into comments coz no one writes comments one leh.

There's been quite abit of "hee hur hoo har" (i can't translate that, sorrie) on the singapore singaporean blogosphere lately, and its turning into a blogonetwork. Some bloggers like to term the blogonetwork as community. But that is not correct wat. When talking about computers we always say network one mah. Like we say network card, not community card. Local area network, not local area community. Right?

So what do i mean by blogonetwork. By blogonetwork, i mean there's alot of interaction between bloggers. Like, there's the post for the desperate (male) single who still wants Chiobus by Suspicious Bastard and the post for the desperate (female) singles who still wants Yandaos EBs by Janice. Obtw EB stands for Eligible Bachelor and "According to Law of Janicism, Not Married is Eligible".

Then there's also parlay between big time blogger like FinickyFeline and new time blogger Rockson. The episode started with FinickyFeline talking about online personas she would hypothetically date. Anyway, this Rockston guy, the balls force must be with this young pai kia padwan, asked FinickyFeline to date him so he could make her shiok until meow. According to Cowboy Caleb at a Tomorrow dot sg article, meow not enuff, need to purr. And then FinickyFeline replies. So Rockson padwan is suddenly left with the choice of choosing "ku ku chiow bo beh chow" (no horse run) or ku ku chiow all the bei chow liao (all the horse run away already). (Translations here are non-babelfish.)

Then there's the blogger community (ya i noe, but no longer talking about computer liao mah), talking about real life stuff like Singapore's bloggers' convention and bloggers like Celly and Sandra bundling into a stunning babe package (well i assume the package is stunning since individually they are stunning too) for a interview with the newspaper.

Then there's un-coordinated (atleast it seems un-coordinated to my simplistic mind) but conscientious (i donno wat this is, but sounds like a good word to use) effort at yelling at advertisers. mr brown says !@%$#%@ to banks and Little Miss Drinkalot says [Toot] you to yellow pages.

Speaking of mr brown, he has a light saber leh. He didn't exactly say he is on the dark side of the floss. But if he is not on the dark side, then he must be on the wrong side. One less ally and one more enemy. My loyal blogders would advise me, "you siao ah? mr brown also enemy? you never recieve the Xiaxue Doctrine is it?".

Oh ya hor... like that den i apologise unreservedly first loh. Paiseh lah. But if not "overwhelming force" ah, and only got one lightsaber then i not scared. I got fan okie, my fan can deflect light saber one.


Ooo... Wookie hand. Okie... a balding wookie hand then.

Oh.. look a pink lightsaber. Xiaxue supporter! I knew it. j/k.

(Disclaimer, i have nothing against Xiaxue, nothing against Xiaxue supporters, nothing against pink, i'm not a taxi snatcher)

(Disclaimer number two, i apologise unreservedly for anything that seems defamatory to anyone)

There are those who disagree saying that it is an impossibility that human beings will be tagged with RFID chips. Such tagging would make tracking of individuals possible causing the loss of privacy to the extent of bedrooms and toilets. However, such technology already exists, and it is only waiting for some insane officials to endorse it in a country kind of scale.

Excerpt from Implanted ID chip finds way into ERs, bars :
"Harvard Medical School's chief information officer, Dr. John Halamka, had himself injected with a VeriChip identification microchip in December, the company announced on Friday."

obtw, friday is a friday that occured quite sometime ago. The article was on 24th January 2005.

You might be thinking, no official would be insane enough to attempt such things, implanting chips into every citizen. Which is quite right, not every citizen would be implanted. Let me present a hypothesis on how such a "project" could come to pass. This is just a hypothesis, please don't sue me.

Let's say in a small country, where almost everyone is living comfortably. Some official comes up with a "point scoring" project and says, "Hey let's inject everyone with RFID chip. Can reduce crime rate leh."
"Huh? Sure cannot one. People would object.
"Can one. Just tell them if they dun take the injection, they have to leave. Then they will have no choice.
"But ourselves leh? I dun want my wife to find out when i go out for hanky panky leh."
"Simple lah, we say gahmen officials should not be injected loh. Wat if enemy get control of our computer and track us. Then they can throw a missile in our face leh."
"Ya hor, gahmen officials exempted for national security reasons, okie lah, project go ahead."

So you see, under such a hypothesis, normal citizens can be injected with RFID chips.

Excerpt :
"The practice has drawn criticism, however. Privacy advocates worry the technology would make it easier for the government to spy on its citizens and for marketers to identify customers and bombard them with sale pitches. Others object at a gut level, equating human RFID chips with the "mark of the beast," a demonic symbol described in the Bible."

Huh? Mark of the beast? But hor... the mark of the beast is the number "666" leh. RFID used in such cases likely to be unique id wor. So how, only one guy with number 666 leh. But why say the RFID chip is mark of the beast? It could be mark of god wat (the bible says god marks his followers, i guess he is forgetful or something).

Anyway, unless those angels come equipped with RFID chip readers, i think they'll be hard-pressed to find out who to kill. Alternatively, they could resort to tradtional methods of marking by tattooing the number 666 on non-believers. Aiya, like dat then safe liao. We just need to tell the angels that they see tombalek (upside down) can liao. Its actually the number 999. Whew.

I left the office at around 1200 to try and get an medical certificate (mc). I took a taxi to quickly head down to the polyclinic near my house. Reached the polyclinic at 1230, and got a queue number. But the guy at the counter told me that doctors are out for lunch and will be in only by 1400. The guy told me to come back to the polyclinic, with the queue number at 1330.

I could imagine myself bleeding and dying and asking to see the doctor and that guy tells me, "sorry, its lunchtime.". But then the guy did asked me if i could wait until 1400 to see the doctor. I guess if i say i couldn't wait, they'll have put me to A&E and expect some large amount upfront.

Anyway, since i was gonna die, i thought i might as well die good looking. I took the MRT to the next station to get a haircut. I returned to the polyclinic at 1325 with a much shorter hairstyle but still not good looking enough to die.

When i arrived back at the polyclinic, my number was already up on the board, but has already been skipped to the next guy. When that guy left, i came up to the counter half expecting her to ask me to get another queue number. Fortunately, she seem sympathetic enough. Jenny, thank you, you were an angel.

I think queueing up for the doctor makes me nervous or something. Had to try and regulate my breathing less i fall into hyper-ventilation once again. But its so hard to breathe slowly when you're running out of breath...

Fortunately, i didn't hyper-ventilate. When i left, it was around 1430. The doctor hadn't even bothered to give me panadol. "Drink lots of water." he said. I went home, drank all the water that i could stomach and tried to sleep the fever out. But it was no use, i think my temperature increased and i was sweating and losing sleep.

So i fished around my bag, produced two panadols, ate it and went back to sleep. It did seem to help after taking my self-prescribed medication, managed to get some sleep. So much for litsening to the doctor.

The radio talked about the younger generation and language today (yes, the radio talks, amazing ain't it.). It makes me remember a time, when i asked one of my cousins, on why she doesn't want to speak cantonese. "Why should i speak cantonese?" she replied in mandarin. Indeed, why would anyone want to learn cantonese when so many people in sing.ah.pore doesn't speak cantonese? So why should i disagree with her?

Except that language is a part of culture. And to not see a need for a mother tongue, is to give up those cultural roots. Perhaps many people cannot relate cantonese to cultural roots, i will use an analogy. Think of an asian, who speaks only in english, and refuses to communicate in his/her mother tongue, and proclaiming that she does not understand the language, even though she might know bits and pieces of it. It doesn't matter what race the person is, chinese, malay, anything. These are the people we call kentang (potato).

One might argue that it is a person's own right to choose his/her own language. It is truly uneasy when a person can't speak his/her own language. But to deny it totally, to not see a need for culturally defining roots, that which makes a cantonese, cantonese and not just chinese; now that is alarming.

Or perhaps the barrier to language is enormous. People may feel embarassed when they speak poorly. And thus refusing to speak and thereby restricting learning opportunities. The only way to learn a language is to speak in it (reading and wrting aside, it is possible to communicate adequately in just verbal form). But i'm sure we didn't feel embarassed when we fell down when we first learned to walk. Or maybe we did, but we kept trying. Or perhaps we kept trying to walk despite embarassment because of encouragement given by parents/guardians.

I call out to all people who have siblings, friends or people around you who may speak poorly in a language, not to laugh at them, not to make cruel jokes (you'll be surprised at the amount of jokes that are cruel) which makes them feel like giving up. But to simply correct them, letting them know the correct grammer/verb/noun/anything as a form a encouragement.

The big boys and girls of sing.ah.pore blogosphere are planning to hold a convention for Bloggers sometime in July. The are calling out to the community at tomorrow dot sg to think of a name for the meet up. Many people have added comments, there are quite a few suggestions, quite a few duplicates.

Personally, i think a short and catchy name would work best. For example, Singapore Blogger's Convention. Such a name is self explanatory, easy to acronym, easy to remember, and easy to reference. Like "SgBC 2005". Why use a catchy name? Why not use something like, "We tried to think of a name but we couldn't decide on one so we are calling this just Bloggers meeting." Such a name is catchy for awhile. But everybody would just give a name they feel fitting when talking about it rather than using the full actual name.

Sing.ah.poreans are very fond of making acronyms, doesn't matter if it is appropriate and some don't even bother to differentiate between speaking and writing. WTTTOANBWCDOOSWACTJBM, is not a very good to remember acronym.

Also i do believe that more than just bloggers would turn up. Blogders, fans and probably gahmen spies in the form of plain clothes 'mata' would turn up too. I could imagine such a meeting, with a long banner (in addition to the chosen name) proclaiming "Why are you worshipping the ground we blog on?" (This was proposed in one of the comments at tomorrow dot sg). Aside from that, maybe there'll be handouts of balloons with HCL, H2SO4 (not sure if i got the chemicals correct anot, its been awhile) printed on it.

And we probably should have mascots in pink, blue and yellow cow suits, T-shirts with words like "@#$%^&*, I didn't snatch your taxi!" and probably end off with a group photo of the largest sexyblogger project.

But i guess the biggest setback to such a proposed gathering (with t-shirts, mascots, balloons and all) is funding.

Salsa Lessons : Day One

Went for my first ever dance lesson. And it was salsa. Personally, i don't think getting into fast beats is a good way for a beginner to learn dancing. But since salsa being salsa, i thought i'll give it a try. Just be glad i didn't think of belly dancing at that time. And if you've never seen me physically before, me belly dancing is just gross, imo that is.

Karate Kid enrolled together with me in the class. Frankly i think i would have been more comforatable partnering her. But then it would also have been awkward. Comfortable and awkward, what am i talking about? Well, i guess initial partnering, the touching and standing close, would have been awkward. Afterall, we seem kind of agreed on the exceptionally high level of violence that would emerge when we're close enough. But after the intial awkwardness, i believe i would have been more comfortable dancing with someone i knew.

I initially had fears that they would make us do detailed introduction. Fortunately, the introductions required were not more than what a person would do when asking someone for a dance. The other fear was that the females would be few and wearing sexy outfits like those we see in dancing competitions on tv. That would have been too distracting. Again fortunately, singaporeans are more conservatively dressed and the quantity of female outnumber the males in the class.

I've always known that i was not good with hand-eye, hand-leg, leg-ear, whatever combination coordination. Basically, i'm clumsy on the agility/coordination scale. But i never thought i would become a block of wood on the dance floor.

My first impression about dancing is eye contact. That one must maintain constant eye contact with the partner with a plastered smile, to so called "make a connection". But apparently, looking so deeply into the girl's eyes at such close proximity (close enough to kiss) is pretty unnerving for them. One of the girls even said i was scary. But then she was the same girl who asked me if i came with a girlfriend...

Anyway, as more steps were being introduced during the lesson, i lost myself and could no longer look into any partner's eyes. I was gazing into the realm of numerical, one, two, three, what the hell, five, six, seven. Was there an eight? Maybe that extra step is why i'm always fumbling. Or maybe it was the missing four that's the cause

I can't remember if there were any kawaii girls in the class. I was so drained, tired, sleepy, hungry and my bwain bwain bwain brain was in a constant state of catatonic hiccup. Considering that i did not fall prone and twitch in uncontrollable spasm, i tink i did pretty well.

*sigh* Salsa is so difficult. I need more practice.

PS: I took up the class to learn slasa, not to find girls. I am pure one okie. Um... you can start vommiting about now.

Since tomorrow dot sg is being touted as two weeks in advance dot sg. Five Minutes w lbandit shall be known as the fastest news reporter for certain events regarding IMH (Institute of Mental Health).

IMH is no longer. It is now called Buangkok Green Medical Park. Atleast i assume that's the purpose of changing the big signboard which used to say IMH to BGMP. And not even the staff was informed on the matter. Only when patients told them did they know that their own signboard at the mainroad had changed.

Cool huh? The bandit was faster than even internal administration.

Is God There?

A dear friend forwarded to me an article by Selwyn Hughes on an article titles "Is God There?". I apologise first, if Mr Hughes is Dr Hughes instead, but his biography at everydaywithjesus dot com doesn't acknowledge it. So i'm not exactly sure. Anyway, the article is pretty lengthy, so i'm not putting it onto this blog. If anyone wants the email, i could send it to you.

Excerpt
"It would be good if we could begin right away by affirming that there is a God — it would be a solid foundation beneath our feet — but I realise that some may not be able to do this with confidence. To them, God is either vague or unreal, or they are not sure He even exists."

Now, i could accept a writing that goes like "There is God.", but i cannot accept a writing that goes like "...there is a God.". The first writing is a person reiterating his own beliefs, that there is a thing called "God". But the second phrase is simply imposing one's opinion that if there is a god, it has to be my god. The proper casing would therefore be "...there is a god.".

Excerpt
"Atheists and agnostics often ask the question: “Can you prove that God exists?” When I am asked that question my reply is usually along the lines of: “No, I can’t prove that He exists any more than you can prove He doesn’t exist, but I can show you how you yourself can have it proved.”"

This is what analysts of debate call the burden of proof. The person making a positive assertion, would have the responsiblity of proving it. One does not need to prove that god does not exist, because it was never proven to exist in the first place. An example here would help illustrate. I could say that there is an invisible elf who tickles us whenever we laugh. That is why we laugh. Now give me evidence that such an elf does not exist or i will have to say the elf exists. (note thatyou can only prove laughter has other effecting symptoms, but not that the elf is non-existent) Unreasonable, no?

Excerpt
"Consider this scenario for a moment: imagine looking at a glorious sunset with a friend who momentarily has his back turned to it and you say: “Just look at that beautiful sunset.” What would your response be if he said: “Prove it to me”? Wouldn’t you say: “Well turn around and it will prove itself to you”? Then what if he persisted: “No, I won’t turn around. Prove it to me”? Is he being fair?"

The analogy is quite an unfair analogy itself. If said friend did in fact turn around to look at the sunset, he could still have done so under the premise of non-believing that a sunset is occuring but with an open-mind to look at the evidence that is presented. Where is the 'glaring' evidence that we could turn around to even look at before we decide to believe or not.

Asking a person to believe in a positive assertion without providing evidence or support for it, would then require a more appropriate analogy than that given. It would be more like :

"Just look at that rainbow colored sunset." says me.
"Where?" says friend.
"You have to believe in it to see it." says me.
"But how can i believe in something that you cannot show to me?" says friend.
"You're going to hell if you don't believe it.Have some faith, try believing even if it is ludicrous, and dun ask questions about it." says me.

So does rainbow colored sunsets exist or is that credulity?

Excerpt
"How could a universe such as this, I reasoned — a universe filled with a cosmic orderliness that stretches from the molecule to the furthermost star — come together by chance? And how could this orderliness just happen to stay together by chance throughout the millennia?"

There are pre-suppositions associated with this argument.
One, the universe is created by something.
Two, the universe, without god is entropy.

True, with my limited knowledge in physics i cannot answer how the universe came about. Some one with knowledge on vacuum particle might be able to. But bringing god into the question answers nothing but creates more questions. What is god? How did god create the universe out of nothing? By twidding his fingers? What did god do before he created the universe? Why did god create the universe? Did he become bored? Who created god if everything has a cause.

If a theist can accept that god was not created and simply exists, why can't he/she accept that the universe was not created and simply exists. Point two assumes that natural laws cannot exists in this world without god. How can anyone be so sure of that? Personal opinion?

"There are, of course, many who regard the concept of God as an exceedingly simple explanation of everything, and who regard scientific elucidations as either incomplete or ponderous. However, that is a self-delusion. Such views are generally held by people who do not understand the scientific method. Indeed, to believe that the assertion that God is an explanation (of anything, let alone everything) is intellectually contemptible, for it amounts to an admission of ignorance packaged into the pretence of an explanation. To aver that 'God did it' is worse than an admission of ignorance, for it shrouds ignorance in deceit.", Oxford Chemistry Professor Peter Atkins

Excerpt
"Job, after hearing these strong words, was left in no doubt that God was all-powerful.

Of all the things to quote in the bible, the story of Job was quoted. And no less that it was talked about when talking about suffering of mankind. The assumption here was that god is good. How does one determine if god is good? Personal opinion? To say that the bible says god is good is circular resoning, for the bible is god's word. Saying oneself as good and writing it into a book doesn't make one good. One need to show it through actions. And god using Job to gamble with satan doesn't show for goodliness (read the bible).

Excerpt
"The attraction of this ... is enormous. If you are a god, you can make your own rules and nobody can argue with you. Laying down the law is, after all, one of the privileges of divinity. Unlike Christianity, there are no “Ten Commandments” or a “Sermon on the Mount” to provide moral guidance"

Here, Hughes was refering to advocates of New Age. Like him, i do not believe anyone is god. But he is making the argument of morality. That morality comes from god. Then the question to ask would naturally be, what if one day he discovered that god doesn't exists? Would he become immoral and go around killing people? The answer would be no. Because as learning social beings, we want to live in harmony and not kill people (do not unto others what you would not others do unto you, confucius observed). Morality is a result of humans living together, and it has no meaning beyond humankind. What use would god have for human morals?

The ten commandments are not always the ten commandments. There are around 380+ commandments in the bible, and no where is it stated that the current ten commandments are the ones to be followed. Who makes the decision to select those ten out of the many commandments from the bible? And on what basis did he make such decision? Divine inspiration? Or personal opinion?

Excerpt
"To go through life and not know Him is to have existence without meaning."

It is truly unfortunate that there are people in this world who find life meaningless in the absence of a god. I'll quote from some bulletin board.

The question:
"What gives life meaning? Family, friends, wealth, etc. These are the common responses of the anti-theist. Yet, what if you were to lose them? Where would meaning be found?? Within yourself? Unless we have some trancendent purpose no matter how hard we try our search for meaning will ultimatly let you down."

The response:
"Yes, you can lose them, that's why they are so precious to have. What is more valuable, something that is rare or something that you can have anywhere, all the time, with no fear of loss? The fact that our loved ones can be taken from us, and our own lives will end someday, gives meaning to the time that you have to live, and gives value to the few moments you have to enjoy the company of others. This need for transcendence is just an unwillingness to accept mortality.

If a finite period of time is meaningless, why is an infinity of time meaningful? If my earthly life is meaningless, how does extending that out to infinity give it meaning? Infinity times zero is zero."

Somewhere along the way, people lose sight of the fact that religions are made by people, for people. And it is but one of the ways in which people use to deny the definite eventuality of a finite and very mortal life. It would be nice to live forever. But in the advent that we cannot live forever, it is this, the one and only life that we have, that is precious and meaningful, that we must cherish.

Much of the arguments were extracted from Christianity : Bogus Beyond Belief.

"...and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up." (Rev 8:7)

"And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth..." (Rev 9:4)

Although i'm a sucker for all things love story, it shall be known that i should not eat a tua bao (big pork bun) when watching the (fairytale) mtv by . Its such a sad story that i lost my appetite for the delicious tua bao.

Unfortunately, I can't get screenshots of the mtv out, the computer is stupid enough to recognise the screening area as the screening area and refuse to generate pixels for the printscreen. @#&*.

Last night, i was at some fast food restaurant ordering some food, and the girl at the counter was looking kind of pretty. After i ordered the food, the girl brought the food to me. Wow, counter plus delivery service. She set the food on the table and sat down and to my horror, she started eating my burger.

"I don't get to come out that often" she explained. Poor girl, overworked and probably hungry. Since she was kind of pretty, i didn't really mind her eating my food, kind of like a date you see.

Well... it was a pretty wierd dream. Hadn't had dreams which i could remember for quite some time already.

The profound effects of religion on reproductive cycle indeed. Here's some old news from Ananova May 2004. Article reproduced below.

From Ananova :
Childless couple told to try sex

A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

The University Clinic of Lubek said they had never heard of a case like it after examining the couple who went to see them last month for fertility tests.

Doctors subjected them to a series of examinations and found they were both apparently fertile, and should have had no trouble conceiving.

A clinic spokesman said: "When we asked them how often they had had sex, they looked blank, and said: "What do you mean?".

"We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate."

The 30-year-old wife and her 36-year-old husband are now being given sex therapy lessons while the university clinic undertakes a study to try to find out if there are more couples with a similar lack of sex education.

In my eternal vigilance, i must remember never to fine tune babe watch radar to only pick up kawaii.version.japanese, less the kawaii.version.singaporeans all turn into sadako.

Met up with taekwando kid and pigsticker for a game of pool in Ang Mo Kio yesterday. Time has wasted the long nights of practice when i was in on-campus hostel in Gippy. Though i could easily blame it on the balls, the balls were kind of bigger, heavier.

Anyway, i spotted this girl in red at one of the smaller pool tables. She had ear phones plugged in and was placing the balls all around with her hand to make practice shots. And she was alone >:) Muhahahaha

No, nothing evil came of it. I thought i might have gone over to ask her to give it a game though. Speaking of giving games, i think "give it a game" is kind of a peculiar phrase, which i've only ever heard one guy in Gippy say. I can imagine back here in beloved sing.ah.pore, we'll say something like :

"Want to play a game?"
"Want to play together?"
"Want to give me a game?"
"Want me to give u a game?"

Well, that last one-liner does sound very arrogant. But overall, i think i still prefer "want to give it a game?". Reason being it sounds more objective. Its kind of like, we've got the equipment all set and ready here, let's fully utilise it less the balls, cue, table feel lonely, and that we, as human beings playing the game, is only instrumental to a game being played.

That, in my opinion, would have been more play game, less "kao lui" (canto: flirt). But then, for a girl to get such a line, she would believe it to be anything but just a game.

I guess for the less bold, waltzing up to a girl and asking her to "give it a game" would surmount to leaping off the cliff, because of the fear that the girl might in fact be waiting for her boyfriend. So instead of asking for a game, you could ask, "are you waiting for a friend?" Then you could ask for a game if she says no.

Do note that it is only appropriate that you already have a table for yourself. That is your table is empty and unplayed, but you're still paying for it while you're trying to "kao lui"! This is to help allay any suspicion that you have no money and wanna play pool by joing games.

Since most of us are not rich, it is only prudent to ask the girl to close her table and to join you at your table, assuming that the girl agreed to give it a game that is. Unless you really just want to just "give it a game", then play at her table and return to your own table at the end of the game. Kind of stylo macho, pui.

Just another thought. If the girl said yes, she was waiting for a friend. You could still ask for a game if you do the stylo macho thing. But don't come looking for me if the boyfriend hum tum (beat) you. Unless of course, if the friend is another girl, then i'll grant you my phrase, "What a beautiful day!"

I had a sms conversation with Taekwando Kid a couple days back. Or was it yesterday? Anyway, I'm not particularly in favor of sms conversations. Reason being i use mandarin character setting for my handphone. Which means i get to use only 70 characters per sms, even if i'm tapping it out in English. So it is kind of hard for me to send lengthy responses, thus explaining why i like to avoid sms conversations.

I was sms-ing him to say that i had someplace to go, and could only have a short dinner with him. I went like, "Fast dinner still can lah."

He went like, "Huh? How fast you want? Like spaceman eating toothpaste?"

Right. That's pretty fast. Um... Besides the correlation between spaceman & toothpaste, spaceman & fast, toothpaste & fast, spaceman & toothpaste & fast being beyond me, i think it kind of made sense. Weird, no?

Found the PSC scholar, but the site seems to be broken into by a password guesser.

Made available by Tomorrow dot SG's article brought to you by Wannabe Lawyer. His post regarding the incident.

Huichieh also talks about it.

How not to argue

Name: ---------------
Gender: --------
Deduced age: ----------
Status: Student in some university presumably of beloved sing.ah.pore.
Alias: articwind
Post regarding: Holier than thou?

One of the more important points in making arguments is credibility. And providing links or quotes for people to examine the evidence/topic for themselves is a very good way of advancing credibility. Unfortunately articwind didn't provide a link to whatever he was talking about.

Excerpt :
"There was this topic on this PSC scholar and his blog. Apparently this scholar posted some racist stuff on his blog. So there was this huge argument in the thread abt who's right or not. I was standing on the side that tried to put forth the idea of:
a) Its your own [Toot] blog. You can post images of you having sex with the dog next door for all the world cares
b) People are trying to bunknife(bao toh in hokkien) him to relevant authorities due to jealousy
And my personal opinion that:
a) Singaporeans are ALL racist.
b) Some people just don't get the idea."

The post was about some of his own comments made in some forum regarding some scholar blogger making some racist comments causing a whole lot of argument on some thread in said forum, and said comments (by articwind) did not receive well from other forum patrons. And yes you guessed it, i'm not particularly interested in this part, but its some form of introduction to get my own typing fired up.

One of the steps towards presenting a case for argument is not to contradict oneself. Exemplarily shown by "I was standing on the side that tried to put forth the idea of:". One cannot be both abstaining and voicing at the same time.

Confusion in point idea "a", "Its your own [Toot] blog.". Articwind believes that a blog is personal and therefore up to the individual to do as he/she wants. Indeed, a blog does belong to the individual, and said individual can upload anything he/she wants. But the content would then in public space, and a person is responsible and accountable for whatever he/she says. Articwind is confusing the right to expression, with the right to free expression, and the right to controlled expression (which is something one should adopt when living in beloved sing.ah.pore.).

Too much coverage in opinion "a", "Singaporeans are ALL racist.". The word "all" is very tricky, and putting it in bold doesn't help. Always avoid using the word all in arguments. Doing so would result in having to make justification for exceptional cases. Always be prepared for exception and replace "all" words with "many", "most" and the like.

Coverage is ok for opinion "b", "Some people just don't get the idea.". However, blatant disregard for your opposers would only sell oneself as closed-minded and unable to accept new perspectives to evaluate and form better judgment. But then again, the coverage was ok because of ambiguity, maybe he was referring to some opposers rather than all opposers which forms some part of the population.

Definition of "flame"
A flame is an attack on someone made on a personal level in public space.
Example :
"You're stupid." is a flame.
"What you said is stupid." is not a flame.
"Is that your nose or is that a cancerous growth?" is a creative flame.

Excerpt :
"Anyway, the whole thread were filled with people coming in and flaming me..."

Which is not very surprising considering that he just flamed a population of four million as racist. He shouldn't have complained that people are flaming him when he flamed an entire country.

Excerpt :
"But what I do not condone is speaking something which is correct for the sake of it being correct and the social norm. Who decides this social norm? Society. Everything that is correct, like not smoking, not sporting tatoos, not being racist, yada yada, is decided by who? Society."

To borrow a phrase from Celly, "what the fyuck"! Who, if not society, decides society's social norm? You? To borrow a phrase from Xiaxue, "pui"! C'mon, there are jokes that are more funny.

Ok, enough of flaming. The point is, articwind's perspective on social norm is self-biased. What he refers to as social norm, is a population of pro-gahmen people who believes in holy and righteousness, in his opinion. But what of him/her who is on the other side of the fence? Does deviant behavior not constitute as a social norm for upstart youngsters? Is defiance and deviation as social norm possible?

Fallacy of blurring distinction. By labeling that which he/she disagree with a generic term like social norm, one can attempt to stigmatize the voice of opposers in a nasty "You just one part of the large mindless mob.". In a proper argument, one should give opposers adequate lee-way to make their points. This is one way of improving one's own credibility.

Who then decides the social norm? A very good question. Its people. They are people who learn from experience and desire a life that is amicable. Individually, they choose a course of action that facilitates such a life. Together, these people would then form what is being stigmatically labeled as social norm.

PS: Although i'm criticizing articwind's biased perspective on social norms, and he mentions social norm as "... not sporting tatoos ...". I have nothing against tattoos. Those are not my words.

I was looking at some forum thingy yesterday and i noticed a tiny link to a quiz which supposedly tested a person's proficiency in English using a certain methodology. I clicked on it, and it brought me to "OK Cupid dot com. The quiz was indeed at Ok Cupid, except that OK Cupid was some kind of a dating website.

I thought i'll jusy do my quiz and leave the rest of the website alone, but it turned out that OK Cupid required an account with it to get the results of the quiz. I signed up for it and then began looking through the other quizes, which is kind of interesting.

The following is a screenshot from OK Cupid, on my scores for the quizes.


Look at that, i'm gonna die at the age of 69! Living life as a haughty and intelligent Jewel Thief who looks and acts more like a boy next door! And i'm an English GENIUS! Cool, my ang mo way no pray pray one ok. I'm pretty bad at identifying gays, and much worse at identifying virgins. I thought i would have scored something like 88% on the Slutty test, but i was more like half that. I guess wanting nookie does not equate getting to do it. Oh well...

Today's 91A bus ride was a little different. The girl who i was always sitting behind, together with her indian colleague, i assume they are colleagues since they greet each other on the bus every morning. Anyway, both of them stopped patronising the bus service for quite a couple months already. But today, the girl was on the bus, in that same seat, the one that would be in front of me. Sorry if anyone is hopeful, today's post is not about the girl.

Babe activity seems to be better on the bus these days. There's one who will always take up a seat closer to the center of the bus, and there's another one, who is a real hottie, came to the back of the bus today. As i was gluing my eyeballs onto real hottie, someone tapped my shoulder. I turned, look, fail to recognise or even see who tapped me.

The stranger went like, "You're from 1GSMB right?" (This indicates that he knows me from army days. But i don't know him...)
I was like, "Ya"
He was like, "You remember me?"
I was like, "No" (Kind of monosyllabic, he's not a girl afterall)
He was like, "I'm Tan Soon Chee"
I was like, "Will you stop bothering me, i'm trying to oogle the gal over there."

No, i didn't say that. Actually I was more polite.

I went like, "The face and name seems familiar"

He went on and on about other names, also from army days, to see if i can ring any bells. The fact is that, although we were from the same company, I was from vehicle repair. He was from component repair. So it doesn't come as a big surprise that i don't really recognise him other than a vague name to a vague face. Afterall, he wasn't "my batch".

He then talked about our storeman, Puuvan, who turned from obese into muscular hunk.

He went like, "Puuvan become very handsome right?"
I went like, "He became very thin."
He went like, "Ya, very handsome right?"
I almost went like, "What the hell, i'm not gay! How would i know handsome anot?"
But instead i went like, "More muscular. Very fit"

Then he came to another familiar name, he went like, "You know Caleb?"
I was like, "Ya Caleb, i know."
He was like, "How come u remember Caleb but not me?"
I was like, "He bible one mah, of coz i remember."
He was like, "Yayaya, he bible one. I also bible one mah. You saw me carrying the bible all the time one."
At this point, i didn't really know how to respond. So i replied as truthfully as possible, "Ya, very poor thing hor?"

I could have gone like, "Ya i also bible one."
Then he would probably have gone like, "Issit? U from which church?"
Then i would have gone like, "I'm not christian. I'm an atheist. I read the bible to prove your beliefs wrong."

But of course that wouldn't have been very nice. He was afterall more or less a stranger. Like i don't like people coming up to me to convert me, i don't go around trying to deconvert people.

I couldn't have guessed his personality, reaction and reactance. What if he suddenly realised that all he ever believed was a delusion and turned psychopath and went on a killing spree? Wouldn't the blood of innocents be on my hands? What if, without afterlife, he failed to reognise that the meaning of life is in life itself and as a result fall into depression? It would still have been alright if he commited suicide, but what if he died of heart attack resulting from depression? Would i not have become the one to push the dagger to his throat?

Well, since it is only his second day at work, i think it best not to stress him too much.

I was reading up on atheism when i came across Pascal's Wager at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. If you're not interested on going through the link, i'll give a brief introduction to Blaise Pascal's, seventeenth century mathematician, argument for believing in god (Catholic god, but i guess it applies to all christianity) in the form of a wager. The argument, known as Pascal's Wager, has since become one of the more famous argument in the philosophy of religion.

The wager is rather similar to Game Theory, except that it is a single person game. Pascal forms the wager that one could wager for god to exist or wager for god's non-existence. However a person wagers, the payoff would be determined by whether god exists anot.

Excerpt :
Suppose that you have two possible actions, A1 and A2, and the worst outcome associated with A1 is at least as good as the best outcome associated with A2; suppose also that in at least one state of the world, A1's outcome is strictly better than A2's. Let us say in that case that A1 superdominates A2. Then rationality surely requires you to perform A1.

Pascal's wager operates on three premise. The first premise is that of superdominance of one choice over the other. In simpler terms, it would become, "You've got nothing to lose in believing if god didn't exist and something to gain in believing if god does indeed exist.". The following is the table of payoffs.



However, we should note that:
Excerpt :
Without any assumption about your probability assignment to God's existence, the argument is invalid. Rationality does not require you to wager for God if you assign probability 0 to God existing.

Pascal then reduces the complexity of probability to either god exists or god don't (50%). The fallacy can be made clear by saying that 4D is 50% chance, win or lose. But we all know that (disregarding 2nd price and below) at four digits, the chance of winning is 0.01% rather than 50%.

Excerpt :
But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite. It is all divided; wherever the infinite is and there is not an infinity of chances of loss against that of gain, there is no time to hesitate, you must give all...

In the last premise, Pascal says that it is worth to gamble finite life for infinite prize, simply because of infinite rewards. As given in the following formula.



Excerpt :
However, Duff 1986 and Hájek 2003 argue that the argument is in fact invalid. Their point is that there are strategies besides wagering for God that also have infinite expectation — namely, mixed strategies, whereby you do not wager for or against God outright, but rather choose which of these actions to perform on the basis of the outcome of some chance device. Consider the mixed strategy: "Toss a fair coin: heads, you wager for God; tails, you wager against God". By Pascal's lights, with probability 1/2 your expectation will be infinite, and with probability 1/2 it will be finite. The expectation of the entire strategy is:



A rather funny take on the fallacy of the argument.
Excerpt :
That is, the ‘coin toss’ strategy has the same expectation as outright wagering for God. But the probability 1/2 was incidental to the result. Any mixed strategy that gives positive and finite probability to wagering for God will likewise have infinite expectation: "wager for God iff a fair die lands 6", "wager for God iff your lottery ticket wins", "wager for God iff a meteor quantum tunnels its way through the side of your house", and so on.

The problem is still worse than this, though, for there is a sense in which anything that you do might be regarded as a mixed strategy between wagering for God, and wagering against God, with suitable probability weights given to each. Suppose that you choose to ignore the Wager, and to go and have a hamburger instead. Still, you may well assign positive and finite probability to your winding up wagering for God nonetheless; and this probability multiplied by infinity again gives infinity. So ignoring the Wager and having a hamburger has the same expectation as outright wagering for God. Even worse, suppose that you focus all your energy into avoiding belief in God. Still, you may well assign positive and finite probability to your efforts failing, with the result that you wager for God nonetheless. In that case again, your expectation is infinite again. So even if rationality requires you to perform the act of maximum expected utility when there is one, here there isn't one.

And the moral implications of wagering for god?
Excerpt :
Clifford 1986 argues that an individual's believing something on insufficient evidence harms society by promoting credulity. Penelhum 1971 contends that the putative divine plan is itself immoral, condemning as it does honest non-believers to loss of eternal happiness, when such unbelief is in no way culpable; and that to adopt the relevant belief is to be complicit to this immoral plan.

I think blogger dot com had a hiccup or something. I had an unusually high traffic for yesterday and today. Most of which, i assume, came in from clicking on the "Next Random Blog" link. Oh well.. whatever works.

After several months of searching, i finally found a replacement for my broken fan in a par-sa-ma-lum (seasonal roadside hawker, not very accurate translation). I even bought a backup in case this one breaks too. >:) Muhahahaha. Now i am armed and dangerous and keeping cool :p

A couple days back, i was in the lift of my house, going down to ground floor. I was going out for dinner, coz mom didn't cook that day. Somewhere at some level beneath my level, the door opened and a lady entered with her dog.

The lady didn't register on babe watch radar (sorry, no offence meant) coz i was all eyes on the dog, that is in close proximity. I quickly tried to think of a way to make the lady rein her dog in closer to herself. The light bulb flashed, and i thought of something.

No, i did not exit the lift. Instead, i went like, "Ahhhhh.... Dog!". Which was meant to make the lady think that i am afraid of dogs and to get her to rein the dog in. But then, i really was kind of afraid. It felt like i had a knife in my belly, and someone is grabbing the hilt and playfully twisting it. Convert that pain to fear, that's how i felt. Paralyzing.

The lady went like, "You afraid of dogs ah?", reining in her dog at the same time.
I went like, "Well... i got bitten by one before."
She went like, "Not this one, this one very friendly.", which was kind of true, coz the dog didn't bark at me.

I do remember a time when i kind of loved these dog things. I then had flashbacks of a scene where there were two girls in school uniform walking pass a dog. The girls bent down to pat the dog's head as they walked pass the dog.

I didn't know what came over me. I guess it is a male kind of thing. If little girls aren't afraid of dogs, why should i be. So i squatted down and reached out to pet the dog's head. I half expected the canine to eat up my hand. But the dog was as the lady said, friendly. It even tried to stand on two leg, putting its front paws on me and attempt to lick my face.

Well.. if anyone is curious to know, i didn't eat the dog alive : D