The 'coming out' letter of gay RI teacher Otto Fong is probably the most touching, courageous piece of writing I've read in a long time. One can only imagine the pressure he must feel now.
And in a little aside, by now it must be manifestly clear to all that making someone delete his blog post doesn't mean the article disappears. It's the Internet. Du-uh.
Sigh I'm unexpectedly free because stupid LSB cancelled on me.
Friday, September 14, 2007
China's Internet
Chinese web filtering 'erratic'
It's already known that self-censorship, not Chinese censorship technology, is what plays the major role in curtailing controversial discussions online. And if technology is least effective in its censorship when more people are using the Net, then what happens when increasing numbers start going online?
In the 15 Jun 2006 edition of the Economist, an article talks about how PRC propaganda has become less effective because of the Internet. I remember an example of this, something about people participating in an online poll to evaluate a government official's remarks.
I also remember posting a link on this blog about John Howard's Youtube video asking people to refrain from protesting at the recent APEC summit. Which is sort of funny? I don't know, it's just strange to think of a PM posting his own Youtube video alongside bored university students posting videos of themselves doing stupid things. (maybe it's a case of a paranoid PM posting a video of himself doing a stupid thing) It's almost irreverent, somehow. Or maybe I'm just stuck in the old Singaporean mindset of politics as a serious and dignified profession. Hmmm I need to immerse myself in talkingcock a bit more. Or maybe I need to focus on the image of the Taiwanese parliament. Or Bush Jr's face.
Wasn't I talking about China? I need to stop rambling. *yawnz*
China's firewall that tries to sanitise web browsing is much more porous than previously thought, says a study.
The firewall was least effective when lots of Chinese web users were online.
It's already known that self-censorship, not Chinese censorship technology, is what plays the major role in curtailing controversial discussions online. And if technology is least effective in its censorship when more people are using the Net, then what happens when increasing numbers start going online?
In the 15 Jun 2006 edition of the Economist, an article talks about how PRC propaganda has become less effective because of the Internet. I remember an example of this, something about people participating in an online poll to evaluate a government official's remarks.
I also remember posting a link on this blog about John Howard's Youtube video asking people to refrain from protesting at the recent APEC summit. Which is sort of funny? I don't know, it's just strange to think of a PM posting his own Youtube video alongside bored university students posting videos of themselves doing stupid things. (maybe it's a case of a paranoid PM posting a video of himself doing a stupid thing) It's almost irreverent, somehow. Or maybe I'm just stuck in the old Singaporean mindset of politics as a serious and dignified profession. Hmmm I need to immerse myself in talkingcock a bit more. Or maybe I need to focus on the image of the Taiwanese parliament. Or Bush Jr's face.
Wasn't I talking about China? I need to stop rambling. *yawnz*
Descartes and Spinoza
This is all LSB's fault. *blames boyfriend indiscriminately*
I've been reading:
- Roger Scruton's A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd ed.
- Joan A. Price's Philosophy Through the Ages
I'm not a philo person, even though I must say I'm very attracted to philo books, largely because they tend to be on the extreme end of incomprehensible. I've studied some philosophers before, but largely in context of political thought or political ideology, hardly conducive to the mind-numbing finger-gnawing zen state I wish to achieve. My knowledge of philosophy is very very rudimentary.
So I've decided to study them philosophers a bit more systematically, starting with Descartes. I'm giving the ancients a wide berth because (and this is my own theory) they're so distant and difficult to relate to.
I've made it through Descartes & Spinoza, and for the sake of consolidation, have (largely) paraphrased what I have learnt below. I don't know if I've understood everything perfectly, and would appreciate (if any of you make it through) any corrections.
Ok *deep breath* let's do this before I get lazy.
Descartes
The starting point: take nothing for granted.
- What if an evil genius had deceived me into thinking what I think?
- If such a genius exists, then I don't know if this world is real, or if I am myself real.
- How can I know the truth? I cannot trust my senses. I can only trust the 'natural light of reason'.
'Cogito ergo sum.'
- What can I ascertain is necessarily true?
- To start with, the moment I think 'I exist', I must necessarily exist. The thought 'I exist' is self-verifying because I have to exist in order to think that thought.
- It is also necessarily true that I think. For even if I think that I don't think, in that very act of doubt, I am thinking.
Distinction between Body and Soul (Mind)
- I know that I exist as a thing that thinks.
- I find that every other thing about me can change except my ability to think. I cannot conceive of myself as not thinking, but my body can grow old, or I can lose a leg or my sight.
- Therefore my body is not of essence to me; my mind is my essence.
- Therefore I could conceivably exist (as a 'soul') after my body has ceased.
- Therefore, I am a substance which involves thinking; I endure through change. But my physical form is an attribute which can change without altering the substance.
God: The Cosmological Argument
- Something cannot come from nothing; more cannot come from less. Ideas are effects and have causes.
- I do not have perfect knowledge because I doubt. Therefore I am imperfect. Yet I have the idea of perfection (God).
- Where did my idea of perfection come from? My idea of perfection is an effect of something. There must be a cause of this idea of perfection.
- The idea of perfection cannot come from my imperfect self. The idea of perfection must come from perfection, i.e. God.
The Honest God
- Since God is perfect, and since intuitively, we know that deceit stems from imperfection, we know that God cannot be the evil genius we hypothesized earlier.
- Since God does not seek to deceive us, this means that if we use our reason and our senses (given to us by God for that very purpose) to their greatest ability, we will perceive the truth.
Objections to Descartes
The Existence of Error
- If God does not deceive, why does he allow the possibility of error?
- Descartes' answer: Error occurs when we choose to assent to an idea that is not the perceived through the 'natural light of reason'.
- Scruton: "Human error is therefore the necesary consequence of human freedom, and this seeming evil is part of a real and greater good." (33)
The Evil Genius Objection (The Cartesian circle)
- If the perfect God exists, then we know that our God-given faculty of reason will lead us to the truth. However, we only 'know' that the perfect God exists through our faculty of reason. Our conclusion that God exists depends on the reliability of our reason, which depends on God existing in the first place.
The Mind-Body Problem
- If the mind and body are separate, how do they interact with each other? How is it that the mind and body are joined in one person? ie. what is to prevent mind and body from going their own separate ways?
- Descartes: the soul is joined to the whole body through the pineal gland.
- But how can the non-physical mind be joined to the body through a physical gland? Doesn't this return to the question of how the mind can be connected to the physical body (or part of it)?
The First-Person Privilege
- Descartes assumes that while I cannot be sure of the world around me, I have a privileged knowledge of what I think and feel. My mind thinks exactly what it thinks it thinks. Is this necessarily true?
The Illusion of the Idea of Perfection
- Do we truly have an idea of perfection? Or do we merely have an idea of the 'extremely good' or 'extremely desirable'? What does perfection mean?
Spinoza
Substance
- Spinoza was a descendant of Descartes (who was in turn a descendant of Aristotle).
- Recall Descartes' arguments about 'substance'
- Spinoza argued that a substance is entirely self-contained. It depends on nothing outside itself for its existence; it is not caused by anything, but is its own cause.
- Therefore, only God is a substance, for God is his own cause (causa sui).
God: Thought and Extension
- Spinoza argues that God is a substance with infinite attributes, and all God's attributes are infinite. Hence all attributes are attributes of God's. These include the attributes of 'extension' in space (matter) and thought.
- While God might have attributes besides extension and thought, because we are finite, we can only know these two attributes of God.
- Because both thought and extension are attributes of God, we can comprehend God through thought and extension.
God and Nature
- When we comprehend God through extension, we understand him as 'Nature'. When we comprehend God through thought, we know him as 'God'. Because both thought and extension each constitute the essence of God, each "present[s] to the intellect a full and adequate [clearly & distinctly true] idea of what God is." (Scruton, 51)
- God and Nature are the same.
Solving Descartes' Mind-Body Problem
- Since thought and extension are both essences of God, there is no difference between them.
- Our finite minds are part of God's infinite thought, and our finite bodies are part of God's infinite extension.
- Thus we are but expressions of God.
- Thus my mind is the same as my body.
- I perceive my mind and body to be different only because the modes of thought and extension present me with different pictures. When I use the mode of thought to understand myself, I perceive myself as 'mind'; when I use the mode of extension, I perceive myself as 'body'.
- Scruton's analogy: "When I look at a picture I see physical objects: patches of pigment smeared on a canvas. And I can describe these objects so thoroughly as to account for the entire picture. ... the other thing I see: a stag hunt passing before a country house. This too I could describe so thoroughly as to give a complete account of the picture. But the two accounts are incommensurable... I cannot describe the lead hound as frantically pursuing a patch of ochre." (53)
The Problem of Free Will
- Since both thought and matter stem from the divine substance (God), everything happens not by chance but by necessity.
- Thoughts must relate to each other in a series of logical, necessary steps. (eg. mathematical proofs)
- Matter too, must relate to each other in a necessary sequence. Events follow each other ina necessary sequence.
- The implication for humans is that, being mere expressions of God, we too are the effects and not causes, as are our actions and thoughts. Since only God is able to 'cause', we are not able to cause anything, and therefore it would seem that we have no free will.
- If there is no freedom to act or think differently, the idea of morality collapses. To judge someone as good or bad, one must believe that that person could have caused himself to act differently.
Spinoza's Freedom
- Spinoza argues that the distinction between free/unfree is not the same as that between caused/uncaused.
- To react in an emotional way is to react passively because we endure emotions. When I am passive I am therefore not free.
- Since the mode of thought and the mode of extension correspond to each other, for every adequate idea (thought), there is an ideatum (extension).
- Thus it makes sense that a person who is more physically active has more adequate ideas of his behaviour and the causes of his behaviour.
- A free person is one who masters his emotions (passivity) and has adequate ideas about the world. He understands the world better, and thus understands God better.
- The free person who masters his passions understands the world and thus grows to love it. Since the world is God, he also loves God, not in a passive emotional way, but in an intellectual way.
- Thus the way to happiness and freedom is through the refinement of the intellect and the mastery of emotions.
I definitely died while trying to get through Spinoza. Sighz.
I've been reading:
- Roger Scruton's A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd ed.
- Joan A. Price's Philosophy Through the Ages
I'm not a philo person, even though I must say I'm very attracted to philo books, largely because they tend to be on the extreme end of incomprehensible. I've studied some philosophers before, but largely in context of political thought or political ideology, hardly conducive to the mind-numbing finger-gnawing zen state I wish to achieve. My knowledge of philosophy is very very rudimentary.
So I've decided to study them philosophers a bit more systematically, starting with Descartes. I'm giving the ancients a wide berth because (and this is my own theory) they're so distant and difficult to relate to.
I've made it through Descartes & Spinoza, and for the sake of consolidation, have (largely) paraphrased what I have learnt below. I don't know if I've understood everything perfectly, and would appreciate (if any of you make it through) any corrections.
Ok *deep breath* let's do this before I get lazy.
Descartes
The starting point: take nothing for granted.
- What if an evil genius had deceived me into thinking what I think?
- If such a genius exists, then I don't know if this world is real, or if I am myself real.
- How can I know the truth? I cannot trust my senses. I can only trust the 'natural light of reason'.
'Cogito ergo sum.'
- What can I ascertain is necessarily true?
- To start with, the moment I think 'I exist', I must necessarily exist. The thought 'I exist' is self-verifying because I have to exist in order to think that thought.
- It is also necessarily true that I think. For even if I think that I don't think, in that very act of doubt, I am thinking.
Distinction between Body and Soul (Mind)
- I know that I exist as a thing that thinks.
- I find that every other thing about me can change except my ability to think. I cannot conceive of myself as not thinking, but my body can grow old, or I can lose a leg or my sight.
- Therefore my body is not of essence to me; my mind is my essence.
- Therefore I could conceivably exist (as a 'soul') after my body has ceased.
- Therefore, I am a substance which involves thinking; I endure through change. But my physical form is an attribute which can change without altering the substance.
God: The Cosmological Argument
- Something cannot come from nothing; more cannot come from less. Ideas are effects and have causes.
- I do not have perfect knowledge because I doubt. Therefore I am imperfect. Yet I have the idea of perfection (God).
- Where did my idea of perfection come from? My idea of perfection is an effect of something. There must be a cause of this idea of perfection.
- The idea of perfection cannot come from my imperfect self. The idea of perfection must come from perfection, i.e. God.
The Honest God
- Since God is perfect, and since intuitively, we know that deceit stems from imperfection, we know that God cannot be the evil genius we hypothesized earlier.
- Since God does not seek to deceive us, this means that if we use our reason and our senses (given to us by God for that very purpose) to their greatest ability, we will perceive the truth.
Objections to Descartes
The Existence of Error
- If God does not deceive, why does he allow the possibility of error?
- Descartes' answer: Error occurs when we choose to assent to an idea that is not the perceived through the 'natural light of reason'.
- Scruton: "Human error is therefore the necesary consequence of human freedom, and this seeming evil is part of a real and greater good." (33)
The Evil Genius Objection (The Cartesian circle)
- If the perfect God exists, then we know that our God-given faculty of reason will lead us to the truth. However, we only 'know' that the perfect God exists through our faculty of reason. Our conclusion that God exists depends on the reliability of our reason, which depends on God existing in the first place.
The Mind-Body Problem
- If the mind and body are separate, how do they interact with each other? How is it that the mind and body are joined in one person? ie. what is to prevent mind and body from going their own separate ways?
- Descartes: the soul is joined to the whole body through the pineal gland.
- But how can the non-physical mind be joined to the body through a physical gland? Doesn't this return to the question of how the mind can be connected to the physical body (or part of it)?
The First-Person Privilege
- Descartes assumes that while I cannot be sure of the world around me, I have a privileged knowledge of what I think and feel. My mind thinks exactly what it thinks it thinks. Is this necessarily true?
The Illusion of the Idea of Perfection
- Do we truly have an idea of perfection? Or do we merely have an idea of the 'extremely good' or 'extremely desirable'? What does perfection mean?
Spinoza
Substance
- Spinoza was a descendant of Descartes (who was in turn a descendant of Aristotle).
- Recall Descartes' arguments about 'substance'
- Spinoza argued that a substance is entirely self-contained. It depends on nothing outside itself for its existence; it is not caused by anything, but is its own cause.
- Therefore, only God is a substance, for God is his own cause (causa sui).
God: Thought and Extension
- Spinoza argues that God is a substance with infinite attributes, and all God's attributes are infinite. Hence all attributes are attributes of God's. These include the attributes of 'extension' in space (matter) and thought.
- While God might have attributes besides extension and thought, because we are finite, we can only know these two attributes of God.
- Because both thought and extension are attributes of God, we can comprehend God through thought and extension.
God and Nature
- When we comprehend God through extension, we understand him as 'Nature'. When we comprehend God through thought, we know him as 'God'. Because both thought and extension each constitute the essence of God, each "present[s] to the intellect a full and adequate [clearly & distinctly true] idea of what God is." (Scruton, 51)
- God and Nature are the same.
Solving Descartes' Mind-Body Problem
- Since thought and extension are both essences of God, there is no difference between them.
- Our finite minds are part of God's infinite thought, and our finite bodies are part of God's infinite extension.
- Thus we are but expressions of God.
- Thus my mind is the same as my body.
- I perceive my mind and body to be different only because the modes of thought and extension present me with different pictures. When I use the mode of thought to understand myself, I perceive myself as 'mind'; when I use the mode of extension, I perceive myself as 'body'.
- Scruton's analogy: "When I look at a picture I see physical objects: patches of pigment smeared on a canvas. And I can describe these objects so thoroughly as to account for the entire picture. ... the other thing I see: a stag hunt passing before a country house. This too I could describe so thoroughly as to give a complete account of the picture. But the two accounts are incommensurable... I cannot describe the lead hound as frantically pursuing a patch of ochre." (53)
The Problem of Free Will
- Since both thought and matter stem from the divine substance (God), everything happens not by chance but by necessity.
- Thoughts must relate to each other in a series of logical, necessary steps. (eg. mathematical proofs)
- Matter too, must relate to each other in a necessary sequence. Events follow each other ina necessary sequence.
- The implication for humans is that, being mere expressions of God, we too are the effects and not causes, as are our actions and thoughts. Since only God is able to 'cause', we are not able to cause anything, and therefore it would seem that we have no free will.
- If there is no freedom to act or think differently, the idea of morality collapses. To judge someone as good or bad, one must believe that that person could have caused himself to act differently.
Spinoza's Freedom
- Spinoza argues that the distinction between free/unfree is not the same as that between caused/uncaused.
- To react in an emotional way is to react passively because we endure emotions. When I am passive I am therefore not free.
- Since the mode of thought and the mode of extension correspond to each other, for every adequate idea (thought), there is an ideatum (extension).
- Thus it makes sense that a person who is more physically active has more adequate ideas of his behaviour and the causes of his behaviour.
- A free person is one who masters his emotions (passivity) and has adequate ideas about the world. He understands the world better, and thus understands God better.
- The free person who masters his passions understands the world and thus grows to love it. Since the world is God, he also loves God, not in a passive emotional way, but in an intellectual way.
- Thus the way to happiness and freedom is through the refinement of the intellect and the mastery of emotions.
I definitely died while trying to get through Spinoza. Sighz.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
productive day!
I managed to wake at 9am!
I practised both the piano and the violin! The violin especially, since I fully expect to have to retake my Grade 8 exam.
Completed all the admin stuff I wanted to complete!
Bought mooncakes for LSB's family!
Ascertained that the CD I want can only be found at HMV for the exorbitant price of SGD35!
Tortured myself and the apple of my eye and pearl on my palm for a full half hour!
Read secondary literature on Descartes and finally got down to a more systematic study of the history of mental acrobatics!
Researched the UN Secretary-General so as to better spoonfeed my tuition kid!
Managed to listen to Sibelius Violin Concerto D minor!
Planned my schedule for tomorrow!
Damn, you know, usually I only get one of these done each day.
I practised both the piano and the violin! The violin especially, since I fully expect to have to retake my Grade 8 exam.
Completed all the admin stuff I wanted to complete!
Bought mooncakes for LSB's family!
Ascertained that the CD I want can only be found at HMV for the exorbitant price of SGD35!
Tortured myself and the apple of my eye and pearl on my palm for a full half hour!
Read secondary literature on Descartes and finally got down to a more systematic study of the history of mental acrobatics!
Researched the UN Secretary-General so as to better spoonfeed my tuition kid!
Managed to listen to Sibelius Violin Concerto D minor!
Planned my schedule for tomorrow!
Damn, you know, usually I only get one of these done each day.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
spoilt brat
Argh I'm acquiring expensive tastes.
I've fallen in love with a perfume that costs $148 for the smallest bottle (30ml). Sure, Sisley's Eau du Soir might make people sneeze, and everyone else seems to hate the scent, but I really really like it. I've no idea why. It's something about how the scent lingers on... sighz.
And gone are the days when I think spending more than 30 on shoes is splurging. I spent 65 on a pair of rubber slippers! 65! Rubber slippers! 65! Rubber slippers! I could repeat that endlessly and it still wouldn't make sense to me. 65 (!) and rubber slippers (!) just don't go together.
And I bought a pair of painful heels for 90! 90! 90!
Shoe shopping now takes place at departmental stores. And I was *this* close to buying flats for 80 bucks today.
Help me! Maybe I should just get married and live off my poor sad husband :(
I've fallen in love with a perfume that costs $148 for the smallest bottle (30ml). Sure, Sisley's Eau du Soir might make people sneeze, and everyone else seems to hate the scent, but I really really like it. I've no idea why. It's something about how the scent lingers on... sighz.
And gone are the days when I think spending more than 30 on shoes is splurging. I spent 65 on a pair of rubber slippers! 65! Rubber slippers! 65! Rubber slippers! I could repeat that endlessly and it still wouldn't make sense to me. 65 (!) and rubber slippers (!) just don't go together.
And I bought a pair of painful heels for 90! 90! 90!
Shoe shopping now takes place at departmental stores. And I was *this* close to buying flats for 80 bucks today.
Help me! Maybe I should just get married and live off my poor sad husband :(
police monitor figurine protest
Mwahahaha stole these links from LSB's blog.
Anime figurine protesters meet real police
「ODEX倒す！！」: The Making Of
Our drill will thrust through the heavens!
Then again, the figurine protesters are really scary and have superpowers and all, so maybe the police were just erring on the side of caution hehehe...
Anime figurine protesters meet real police
「ODEX倒す！！」: The Making Of
Our drill will thrust through the heavens!
Then again, the figurine protesters are really scary and have superpowers and all, so maybe the police were just erring on the side of caution hehehe...
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Friday, September 07, 2007
Youtube
Howard posts YouTube Apec appeal
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has posted a video on YouTube appealing to people not to join violent protests during the Apec summit in Sydney.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has posted a video on YouTube appealing to people not to join violent protests during the Apec summit in Sydney.
Friday, August 31, 2007
chanting
From Mark Kaplan's blog:
Damn I wish I'd thought of that on my own.
And 'song' and 'chant' is the difference between the pop star on the stage and his screaming fans below. The pop star is quintessentially personality - personality magnified beyond the person. The pop star is more than the person. Whereas his fans give up their personality in imitation and worship. The pop star expresses personality, but his fans surrender theirs to the personality on-stage. The pop star sings (even if he sings badly), but his fans can only chant.
Does this make sense? Or is this because it's 630am and I've no idea where the night went?
‘Song,’ of course, is associated also with expression; to sing is to utter or vocalise – a conscious articulation. Chaunt is something altogether more incantatory, mantric, rote-like. There is something properly mindless about chanting, hence its use in religion, ritual and magic – one cedes the initiative to a word or formula not yours. The momentum of the chant seems to overtake and then take in the individuals who began it. So too does the chant reverse the relation between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ implied in ‘expression’. That is, whereas ‘expression’ is conceived as the inner made outer, something like a chant begins by emptying out the ‘wilfulness’ of expression in deference to some older word or doctrine.
Damn I wish I'd thought of that on my own.
And 'song' and 'chant' is the difference between the pop star on the stage and his screaming fans below. The pop star is quintessentially personality - personality magnified beyond the person. The pop star is more than the person. Whereas his fans give up their personality in imitation and worship. The pop star expresses personality, but his fans surrender theirs to the personality on-stage. The pop star sings (even if he sings badly), but his fans can only chant.
Does this make sense? Or is this because it's 630am and I've no idea where the night went?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
War
At 2 in the morning I discovered hundreds of small, black larvae wriggling in the corner of my bathroom, and I got rid of them.
Afterwards, I made some amusing comparisons and composed a blog entry in my head. I would draw an interesting parallel between my ordeal and the effects of war on soldiers.
Oh it would be entertaining. I'd talk about how I'd gone from reluctantly executing a distasteful task to screaming war cries at the worms. I'd talk about how, instead of making the killing as clean as possible, I had resorted to chemical warfare to dislodge the stubborn ones, using the most dangerous liquid I could find in my bathroom, mouthwash. I'd even dub the mouthwash Agent Blue. I wondered what my boyfriend, who knows well how I hate killing things, would think, and I considered including a 'soldier returns to lover a different person' skit.
I'd make it all witty and humorous and entertaining. Then I thought, how easy it is to compare a war with the de-worming of my bathroom! And suddenly, I lost all appetite for humour.
Afterwards, I made some amusing comparisons and composed a blog entry in my head. I would draw an interesting parallel between my ordeal and the effects of war on soldiers.
Oh it would be entertaining. I'd talk about how I'd gone from reluctantly executing a distasteful task to screaming war cries at the worms. I'd talk about how, instead of making the killing as clean as possible, I had resorted to chemical warfare to dislodge the stubborn ones, using the most dangerous liquid I could find in my bathroom, mouthwash. I'd even dub the mouthwash Agent Blue. I wondered what my boyfriend, who knows well how I hate killing things, would think, and I considered including a 'soldier returns to lover a different person' skit.
I'd make it all witty and humorous and entertaining. Then I thought, how easy it is to compare a war with the de-worming of my bathroom! And suddenly, I lost all appetite for humour.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
where angels fear to tread
There's only one author whom I refuse to pick up again, not because my determination to read has been eroded by boredom or thwarted by difficult prose, but because I don't dare.
A few years ago, I picked up a collection of short stories by Tennessee Williams. Less than 100pgs in, I almost threw the book away, and I'd be a fool if I attempted again. I'll pick my battles thank you, and I'd like one without the emotional scars.
Damn he's good.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
like my mum
Ho hum. I never knew how powerful this genes thing was. I'm exactly like my mum.
430am and I discover I forgot to dump the leftovers into the fridge, don't dare to keep them, so I'm trying to stuff myself with a plate of brinjal and a bowl of fish soup even though I'm not sure if that flavour is my mum's unique style of cooking that is almost a philosophy or just plain decompostion.
Hmmm that was a mouthful.
If I fall sick I'll feel really stupid. But it's just not in my genes to cold-bloodedly and deliberately dump a whole plate AND bowl (just think of that!) of food. Even if it's gone bad. Damn these genes.
Also, if LSB would like to inhabit the same world as me, breathe the same air, stroll in the same green fields, roll in the same hay etc, he might like to give me a wake-up call.
430am and I discover I forgot to dump the leftovers into the fridge, don't dare to keep them, so I'm trying to stuff myself with a plate of brinjal and a bowl of fish soup even though I'm not sure if that flavour is my mum's unique style of cooking that is almost a philosophy or just plain decompostion.
Hmmm that was a mouthful.
If I fall sick I'll feel really stupid. But it's just not in my genes to cold-bloodedly and deliberately dump a whole plate AND bowl (just think of that!) of food. Even if it's gone bad. Damn these genes.
Also, if LSB would like to inhabit the same world as me, breathe the same air, stroll in the same green fields, roll in the same hay etc, he might like to give me a wake-up call.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Itzhak Perlman (Schindler's List)
This one always gets me everytime. Does anyone else here love his violin?
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Different worlds
me: violin exam's at 2pm on thurs, so i hav to practise getting up
early!
LSB: ... u n i, we hav different concepts of time
Someday I'll be part of your world.... *cries*
ASEAN Charter in the news
BBC: Asean agrees on landmark charter
CNA: ASEAN ministers agree to set up human rights commission
Hmmm. I wouldn't be quite so optimistic yet.
Ministers from South-East Asian countries have reached agreement on a landmark draft charter.
The document gives the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) a set of binding rules for the first time in the bloc's 40-year
existence.
The agreement comes after nearly two years of deliberations among members.
It includes a contentious provision to set up a commission monitoring human rights in the region - despite strong misgivings from some Asean
countries....
Diplomatic sources said Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam also had misgivings - fearing human rights probes could result in violations of the group's strict policy of non-interference in each others' affairs.
However the charter is seen as crucial for giving Asean - previously regarded as a mere talk shop - credibility and bargaining power on the world stage.
CNA: ASEAN ministers agree to set up human rights commission
Mr Yeo says: "If there was any disagreement, it's over the actual
language that we use in the Charter. In the end we decided that it's not really the establishment of the human rights body which should be the issue. It's what the body ought to do. That really involves drawing up the terms of reference which all of us can agree to and actually, planning it properly and giving it a life of its own."
Still, Mr Yeo points out that the ministers have also decided that certain things would be left to the leaders to decide.
He says: "The question arises as to how the leaders among themselves will settle disagreements at the highest level, and we as ministers could not be prescribing rules to the leaders because they are a Committee of
Peers. They must decide amongst themselves how to resolve the differences and according to rules they themselves must establish.
"We don't quite know what crisis we will go through in the future, what difficult problems we will face. It is for the leaders, in their own wisdom and depending on their own personal relationship, to work out methods to resolve the differences."
Hmmm. I wouldn't be quite so optimistic yet.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The finest military in the world
US military pondered love not war The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say. Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.
Tolkien and fingernail moon
Ok, I have resolutely put my copy of LOTR aside, so there won't be any long meandering quotes in this entry. Rest easy.
For years now I have spoken of the 'fingernail moon', the tiny bit of moon so named because it looks exactly like a sliver of white fingernail that's just been cut from the rest of said-nail. For some reason that description freaks my friends out. But I stick to it cos I think it's better than the other image such a moon calls to mind - the sly grin of some astral Cheschire cat. Now that's freaky.
And recently, in my nth reading of the LOTR, I discovered a line that would shake my being to its very foundations. So Tolkien wrote, "a New Moon as thin as a nail-paring."
Tolkien saw the same fingernail moon! He saw the same thing! He's totally my soul-mate, and at about 330am, I SMS-ed my incredibly wondrous discovery to my friend.
How could I not have seen that line before?
I worship Tolkien, I really do. Or rather, I worship his voice. It is often sad, often gentle. It tells a tale that's often cruel, sometimes violent, but it is never itself bitter or harsh. Sometimes it is majestic and splendid and heroic, as memorably, in The Silmarillion, but it is always beautiful. It is not a historian's voice, but a bard's voice, telling tales of faraway with both poetry and loving detail.
I am so in love with Tolkien. And my fingernail moon. Though who knows, perhaps there're hordes of people who've thought the same thought. I read somewhere (I forget where) that one of the principal joys in reading is discovering in someone else's mind what one has oft' thought but ne'er so well expressed. (Ok, I'm mixing up the forgotten quote with Pope's quote on wit if my memory serves me well. Which, presumably, it doesn't.)
Nevertheless, if any of you have looked at a moon and thought it looked like a sliver of fingernail, I welcome you to join ma' man, Tolkien and myself in a somewhat strange community, whose diverse and dispersed members have shared at least one thought.
For years now I have spoken of the 'fingernail moon', the tiny bit of moon so named because it looks exactly like a sliver of white fingernail that's just been cut from the rest of said-nail. For some reason that description freaks my friends out. But I stick to it cos I think it's better than the other image such a moon calls to mind - the sly grin of some astral Cheschire cat. Now that's freaky.
And recently, in my nth reading of the LOTR, I discovered a line that would shake my being to its very foundations. So Tolkien wrote, "a New Moon as thin as a nail-paring."
Tolkien saw the same fingernail moon! He saw the same thing! He's totally my soul-mate, and at about 330am, I SMS-ed my incredibly wondrous discovery to my friend.
How could I not have seen that line before?
I worship Tolkien, I really do. Or rather, I worship his voice. It is often sad, often gentle. It tells a tale that's often cruel, sometimes violent, but it is never itself bitter or harsh. Sometimes it is majestic and splendid and heroic, as memorably, in The Silmarillion, but it is always beautiful. It is not a historian's voice, but a bard's voice, telling tales of faraway with both poetry and loving detail.
I am so in love with Tolkien. And my fingernail moon. Though who knows, perhaps there're hordes of people who've thought the same thought. I read somewhere (I forget where) that one of the principal joys in reading is discovering in someone else's mind what one has oft' thought but ne'er so well expressed. (Ok, I'm mixing up the forgotten quote with Pope's quote on wit if my memory serves me well. Which, presumably, it doesn't.)
Nevertheless, if any of you have looked at a moon and thought it looked like a sliver of fingernail, I welcome you to join ma' man, Tolkien and myself in a somewhat strange community, whose diverse and dispersed members have shared at least one thought.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
What the...
I pick up my cell. A lady asks for Elaine in an accent I identify as my friend's fake secretary voice. She's pulled that fake accent on me before, so I gloat and think to myself 'Not this time, you evil friend!'
'Yes, what is this?' I try my best to convey that I am so sick of this, and haven't you anything better to do?
'I am XX from XX bank.'
Oh oh...
'Do you have a moment now?'
I start to waver. 'Er, not really.' Still trying to sound gruff, just in case it's really my friend.
'Ok, I'll call back in the evening. Thanks.'
Oh shit.
Repeat to self a hundred times: My friends are too old to prank call me. My friends are waaaaay too old to prank call me. Dammit we're on the threshold of middle age already! Argh.
'Yes, what is this?' I try my best to convey that I am so sick of this, and haven't you anything better to do?
'I am XX from XX bank.'
Oh oh...
'Do you have a moment now?'
I start to waver. 'Er, not really.' Still trying to sound gruff, just in case it's really my friend.
'Ok, I'll call back in the evening. Thanks.'
Oh shit.
Repeat to self a hundred times: My friends are too old to prank call me. My friends are waaaaay too old to prank call me. Dammit we're on the threshold of middle age already! Argh.
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