"Damn, Exercise Liger's up next. Anyway, what the heck is a liger?"
"A liger is cross between a lion and a tiger."
"Seriously?"
"And a tion is a cross between a tiger and a lion."
"And let me guess, a donkey is a cross between a dragon and a monkey?"

"Our base is under attack."
"Unit lost."
"Enemy engineer detected."
"Our hovercraft is full of eels."

Transmission received: "Your mother was a hamster."

Now that I have satisfied my desire for a first hand experience with the penetrating power of the Shaped Charge, being a normal human, now I want a new toy!

I want. A Transcranial Magnet. With an instruction manual.

If you shut down someone's left brain, would you make him feel like "One with the world"?

If you shut down someone's fusiform gyrus and make him watch porn, would he be turned on?

If you shut down someone's mirror neurons, would he empathise with autistic people better?

If you shut down someone's short-term memory, would he appear confused all the time, or would he act on instinct?

Can you make someone feel like he has one hand? Or three hands? Or two left hands?

Can you make someone think that he is really a character in an RPG game?

Can you make someone think that red is blue and blue is red? If he gets used to it, would red soothe him instead of agitate him? Can we then know for sure that "his red" is different from "our red"?

Can you make someone's think that boys are girls and girls are boys? Would that change his sexual orientation? Would that change the way he think of himself?

Can you make someone think that sounds never existed?

Ultimate: Can you make someone think that thoughts never existed?

a > b means 'a' is greater than 'b'. In nursery, the book told us that the > sign is a crocodile. As you know, crocodiles would prefer to eat more, so naturally the crocodile would want to eat the bigger number. I wondered why the crocodile would prefer eating 9 to eating 8, since 8 is "bigger" than 9! (I dunno if you can see the logic behind it... one way to put it, is that when you writing 8 involves more writing than writing 9)

Anyway, one day in nursery, for some reason, I got the impression that the crocodile didn't want to eat so much. And as a result, I scored badly for that piece of work.

So, as an extension to that concept...

a >> b. 'a' is so much bigger than 'b' that some crocodile would rather bite another crocodile's tail to snatch for a bit of 'a'.

a ><> b. a is sufficiently bigger than b for two crocodiles to want to eat it, but not enough to fight for it.

a <> b. Both a and b are so small that the crocodiles can't be bothered.

> a b<. The two crocodiles hate each other so much that they totally don't care about the food.

I am back from Thailand.

Thailand was fun! I'm pretty happy about the stuff I've bought there.

I bought mainly 2 things: A remote controlled car that costs $10, and Red Alert 3 for $24.

Why am I so happy about the remote controlled car? Because it is only about 5cm long, and you wouldn't believe that it's remote controlled until you've seen it work. When I bought it, I got responses like this:

G(some guy): What's that you bought?
X(me): A toy car for $10.
G: [condescendingly]...you bought that?
X: Yeh, it's remote controlled.
G: [in disbelief] ARE YOU SERIOUS?
X: Yep. *proceeds to play with the RC car*
G: Eh! Tell me where you bought it from!
X: Sure. *brings him to the store* Excuse me, do you have any more of this? No? Oops, I guess I bought the last one... [in my mind: MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA]

I did this twice. Just to be a bastard.

The other thing I'm really happy about was the Red Alert 3. $24 for an original. It normally costs about $60 in Singapore. There were games in the same shop that the shopkeeper assures that "if it's not explicitly stated it's in Thai, it's in English" Problem is, the Red Alert 3 packaging stated that it's in Thai. I was a little apprehensive about it initially, but Haoyi assured me that there should be some way to change it to English, so I bought it anyway.

When people saw my purchase, they were comparing, "See, mine doesn't say it's in Thai, so it's in English. You see Xin Yang's one! It says it's in Thai, so I don't know... Eh Yak, are you going to learn Thai while playing this game?" "I'll try to work this out." "If you can't, you basically wasted $24!"

So when I got home, after a few hours, it was indeed in Thai. I MADE it work in English.

The next time they asked, "So, how's your Red Alert 3?"
"It's in Thai, but I managed to make it work in English."
"How did you do that? Mine is in Thai." *NOTE THE IRONY*
"Oh I had to download 3 language files, change the 3 files, edit a config file, and repatch it online. It's harder than it sounds."
"That's nice! How much was your Red Alert 3?"
"$24."
"And how much does it usually cost?"
"$60."
"So you saved $36."
"Yep."


Basically, my purchases were huge ego boosts for me, 'cos I have 2 things that you want but you don't have! Neh neh neh neh neh!

Other than my fruitful shopping trip, the night sky was wonderful. It is basically as though the star map in real time was displayed on Omnimax in HD, only more awesome because 1)there are no lines, 2) it includes planets, 3) as you look more closely you can see more and more stars. As someone said, "You could see Orion wielding his sword."

It's a pity that wonderful night skies always appear at the most inopportune moments. Once was in Bintan, during CCAL camp, when we had to move from our campfire location to our campsite. Another time was in Pulau Tekong, during 5BX. Now Thailand, during our deployment exercise. Damn. Oh well, at least I caught a glimpse of a wonderful night sky, and I know that this is something I can look forward to in future, since the stars will always be there.

In the day, the scenery is beautiful! The ground is mostly shubbery and sparse sundry vegetation or plantation, so once positioned on any small knoll you can see very far. Indeed, you can not only see the hills and knolls 10km away, you can even see the mountains >30km away, with the clouds encircling the hillside. It's a pity that for some reason, I didn't really see the sunset.

You wouldn't believe it, but it is really cold at night. Like, 15 degree celcius that kind. When you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the latrine it is so cold that it is hard to fall asleep again, unless you build a fire next to you. And yes, this IS Thailand.

This post is an attempt to make it sound like a holiday trip to Thailand. If you thought so, I have succeeded. Hurray to me.

I've just learnt that the word "Goodbye" originated as a contraction of the phrase "God be with ye."

God be with ye -> Godbwye -> Goodbye

See! Even then people used "b" to represent "be" and "w" to represent "with"! Contractions are clearly not a modern thing.

In the Star wars world, shouldn't they be saying "Foorbye"?

So nowadays, when we say "bye" when we are leaving each other, we really mean "be with you"?

If I just want you to scram, should I be saying "Debye"?(Wait, that's a unit for dipole moment)

Or if I wish you future success in your political career in Singapore, I should say "Leebye"?

I'llbye sounds pretty cryptic if you ask me.

While commenting on a post, I had this random thought.

Normally, verbal conversations are one-tracked. That is, the participants of a verbal conversation can only engage in one topic at a time, and usually there is a point when there distinct change in topic. I think that this is the case because we cannot listen to others speak while we ourselves are speaking. However, in MSN conversations, multiple topics can be engaged simultaneously, because it doesn't require listening or speaking.

But have you wondered, do deaf/mute people have single topic conversations?

I mean, just because you can't listen and talk at the same time doesn't necessarily mean that you can't watch and gesture at the same time. If that is the case, wouldn't deaf/mute people be more adept at multi-topic convos on MSN?

____________

Another random thought:

In evolutionary biology, traits of beauty are linked with traits that demonstrate health, youth, and in turn fertility. There has been research done on beautiful faces, and by geometrical studies, it has been shown that if certain ratios can be made to obey the golden ratio, the face would be perceived as beautiful. With this model, cosmetic surgery would have a guide as to what modifications would make a person look better.

Now, what about beautiful voices? Since beautiful voices are linked to young-sounding voices, it makes some sense in terms of evolutionary biology. Now, I'm sure someone would have done fourier analysis on beautiful voices before. Are there particular physical properties of beautiful voices that separate them from not-so-beautiful voices? Can voices be modified to sound better?

If there are people who do cosmetic surgery to please their partner, would there be people who would consider voice modification to please their blind partner?

If both beautiful voices and faces are indications of health, youth, and fertility, why is it that not all people with beautiful voices have beautiful faces? (e.g, Ou de yang)

____________

CTW did a 16km route march along East Coast Park. Being the wayang kias we were, we sang extra loud when there were people watching. When a few girls walked past from our left side, Cpt Daniel had to tell us, "Oei, pandan ke hadapan[or how something like that]! (meaning 'face front')".

I told my mother about this, then she said that when she was younger (about 16+) and working near taman jurong, the marching army boys caught her attention, and she watched with admiration as the guys marched past, filled with gusto and spirit as they sang and cheered in unison.

No, really.

"Our higher-ups are very proud of this new equipment which they have procured. In actual fact, it sucks. It sucks so much that we only use it when we have no better alternative."
"Why do you say it sucks?"
"I'm sorry, that's classified."

I recommend you play Fantastic contraption.

Why not?

It's just another planet right?

Not as if planet earth is the only unique thing in the universe. Every point in time is unique. Everyone we meet is unique. Every interaction we have with others is unique. Yet we don't cherish them.

So, why this? From what you've been doing so far, saving the planet isn't consistent with your actions.

... so why not?

It's just a human life, right?

How's a human life worth any more than another animal's life? How do you even judge the worth of a life? People don't judge the lives of everyone equally; it's worth more if they can relate to it and empathise with it, and worth less if they can't. In fact, most people would be more affected by the death of their pet than a fellow countryman whom they can't relate to.

You trust such judgements on the worth of life? Then why preach about the sanctity of life? It isn't consistent with your actions.



Conclusion: unbounded insistence on consistency would get us nowhere, even on the most obvious things.

Common sense is common sense even if they are wrong, because everyone else think that everyone else don't know it is wrong except themselves, and they wouldn't admit it because it's obviously true.

context: YCX and amyas are my godlike juniors, now in j1. based on my impression from 2 years ago, amyas was slightly more godlike. just today,

YCX: did I tell you abt what happened last ct
YCX: abt the first qn
YCX: it was some graphing qn
YCX: find intersections btw Y=xlnx n some other graph
YCX: is sposed to use solve by GC
YCX: dan [amyas] go and do lambert W
YCX: T_T
me: wait.
me: wad is that?

(then i go and wiki "lambert W")

me: HOLY SHIT


AMYAS IS OFFICIALLY BEYOND-GODLIKE.

Watch There She Is!! It's good.

What's the deal with spending 8 hours cleaning arms? Could it be that having a very clean weapon gives you an edge in battle?

__________

Rifleman: The rifleman is the bedrock of the army, also known as the Queen of the Battlefield, despite being male-dominated (thus can be politically-correctly called "rifleman" rather than "rifleperson" or "riflefighter" or "rifletrooper"). He is assisted by the support arms and service support sectors in the neverending battle to defend Blueland, and occasionally Goldland, against the onslaught of Redland Armed Forces(the choice of colour appears to be an indication of our stand in the Cold War). Through the valiant efforts of DSO, DSTA, and BTKinetics, he has been equipped with an increasingly superior technological edge in engagement. The 3G transformation also includes a Battlefield Management System, enhancing situation awareness which is crucial to the outcome of any campaign.

Learns: Dig in, Discipline, Reinforce, Rifle cleaning

Dig in:
Morale cost- 100/200/300/400.
Casting time - 1 hour/6 hours/12 hours/48 hours

Level 1: Shell scrape. +50% Evasion against low trajectory fire, +5% Evasion against high trajectory fire.
Level 2: Fire trench. +80% Evasion against low trajectory fire, +30% Evasion against high trajectory fire.
Level 3: Alternate shell scrape. +80% Evasion against low trajectory fire, +30% Evasion against high trajectory fire, takes twice as long to be overrun, and enables another Rifleman to Reinforce.

Level 4: Communications trench. +90% Evasion against low trajectory fire, +75% Evasion against high trajectory fire, takes twice as long to be overrun, and enables unlimited number of Rifleman to Reinforce.

Reinforce:
Morale cost- none.
Casting time - K+45/K+30/K+15/K

All levels: Increase one rifleman of firepower in occupied knoll.

Discipline(passive):

Level 1: Automatically engages in all-round defence when undeployed.
Level 2: Automatically casts Dig in when asked to occupy a knoll + level 1
Level 3: Automatically casts Reinforce when undeployed and near to a friendly occupied knoll +level 1 and level 2
Level 4: Automatically casts Rifle cleaning when undeployed+level 2 and level 3

Rifle Cleaning(Ultimate):
Morale cost- 100/200/300.
Casting time - 15 mins/1 hour/24 hours
(Casting times stack, also takes 1 minute to uncast)
Level 1: Reduces IA by 50%.
Level 2: Reduces IA by 80%.
Level 3: Reduces IA by 90% + Clean Rifle Effect (Orb effect. Your Rifle is so clean that your enemy's weapons in 500 range would IA out of jealousy, 20% chance of 3.75X critical hit, 15% chance of firing an M203 grenade, 5% chance of firing a MATADOR round, 1% chance of firing an 84mm HEAT round, and 0.1% chance of the enemy exploding out of sheer awesomeness of your clean rifle.)


Bonus:

Your mission readiness is so high that you are on negative 2 hours Notice to Move.

Your ET blade is so sharp that when you put it in your field pack, it cuts through the ET blade pouch, cuts through your field pack, and falls through the centre of the earth and kills everyone in Cuba with the Sharpness Aura of the sharp blade.

Your Ziploc bags are so reinforced that if a sniper tries to shoot you in the back with your field pack on, the bullet would ricochet off your Ziploc bag and fly back at him.

Your Mine-prodder is so free of rust, that it alone can sacrificially protect all metallic objects within a 1 km radius.

Your ET stick fits your ET blade so well, that once you put them together, they cold weld.

Your drills are so good, that when your company does "hentakaki", the entropy is so low when coupled with a tabletop set-up, breaking the hentakaki would make cold fusion spontaneous.

Your fighting spirit is so strong that you always man-pack a full jerry can, just in case you need to do 10 more 24 km route marches.

Your can-do spirit is so great, that you can turn white tape into anything.

You have so much élan that even Redland civilians are willing to obey your FCO.

Your situational awareness is so high that you already know where and when Vincent would lose another ADM safety pin.

This post has a subliminal message embedded in it. Fot the next 6 hours, you will find that you scratch your head more often than you usually do.

Maybe it's only natural to have an identity crisis in Singapore.

Thankfully, we can adapt, and we soon stop thinking about it.

How hard is it to create a group identity? It seems that any experience common to a bunch of people can create solidarity among them. Geography and politics are only two things that can make a bunch of people feel like they are similar. Having a similar race, history, culture, religion, and belief can also create solidarity among people, and cause them to differentiate themselves from the rest. Self-serving bias helps to create negative stereotypes and alienate the others.

Even a lack of communication between arbitrarily assigned groups of people can create solidarity. The inter-house rivalry, inter-class rivalry, inter-school rivalry, and even inter-platoon rivalry surfaces without any system in place to encourage it.

Singapore is an immigrant country. Creating a national identity is almost like trying to create a house identity - the people in them are only similar in that they happen to be in it. Perhaps, we could learn from the house system how this can be done.

In the case of interhouse rivalry, one way to do it would be to limit communication, distort facts about other houses, and finding ways to delude the members into thinking that they are better than the rest. In our context, it would be suicide.

Another way could be to create a unique experience. I don't know how this can be done, though.

It's not possible. But it is the case.

Why not? There are times when things like these happen.

Yet...I don't understand this world anymore. And I truly believed.

It's just... unnatural...

inconceivable...

yet, outwardly inconsequantial...

Could you have imagined that this would happen?

That someday, sometime, somebody is going to blog about something so vague that you have absolutely no idea what he is referring to.

Still, for a moment, you can't bring yourself to doubt that something terrible has happened to him, because the post sounds so emo.

Like, whatever he's emoing about, I sympathise with him.

But still, at the end of it all, you have no idea what you sympathised about. Or whether there is even anything to sympathise about.

Turns out that all it takes are these symbols to make one feel sympathy. It is amazing how by encoding situations with symbols, and by the fact that we react to situations emotionally, we can in turn illicit emotions with symbols.

Even when you can't decode the situation from the symbols.

This video would have been really cool if I watched it when I was 5. Now it's just hilarious.

Gundam


_____

Singapore is where you can find people reading "The God Delusion" and "When Dreams Come True(a christian inspirational story collection)" in the same platoon.

Serving/giving extras is a zero-sum game. If the entire SAF gets 7 extras, nothing will change.

In a 3D world, you need 2 people pointing at something to know where they are pointing at. In a 4D world you'll need 3.

The engineer's mine prodder reminds me of Cardcaptor Sakura's wand/mace. The extended mine prodder reminds me of the wand/mace empowered with "The Sword".

Speaking of which, I was reminded of the shopping malls in Brunei. The biggest mall in the capital is called "The Mall". The second biggest mall is called "The Other Mall". The water village is called "The Water Village".

Which again, reminds me of the fact that a naming competition was held for the budget terminal in Changi Airport. The winning prize was $2000 cash and a 3G mobile phone. The winning name was "Budget Terminal", and some secondary school guy was presented the prizes by the Minister of Transport.

Random thoughts:

Is the street fighter character "Chun Li" really "Li Chun", just that Americans screw up her surname/first name thingy? That would mean that no respectable Chinese would address her as "Chun Li". So maybe in the next streetfighter movie you'll see that all the Americans would call her Chun Li while Chinese call her Li Chun. [It's more likely, though, that they'll all call her Li Chun, since they address Yao Ming properly.]
_____________

Why does SAF give us fried food so often? Because 兵不厌炸(诈).

Why would people sign on to infantry? Because 读万卷书不如行万里路.
_____________

The mission statement in our OPs orders have 5 parts: who, what, where, when, and why.

The Singapore Pledge just lacks "where" and "when".

MISSION:

Who:
The citizens of Singapore

What:
1)Pledge as one united people, regardless of race, language, or religion
2)Build a democratic society based on justice and equality

Why:
So as to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.

Give a man a fish and he can eat fish for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can eat fish for the rest of his life.

Give a frog a fly and it can eat fly for a day. Teach a frog to fly and it can eat fly for the rest of its life.

Fly like a crow. Crow like a pet. Pet like a parrot. Parrot like a duck. Duck from an dart. Dart to a swift. Swift as a swallow. Swallow like a fish. Fish with a fly.

Try to find more nouns that are also adjectives or intransitive verbs (Bear wouldn't work because it's not an intransitive verb).

I think that the SAF is like the sting of a bee.

Why do we swallow food that taste good? The joy from good food only comes from the taste and texture, which are mostly gone before one starts to swallow whatever mash is left of the food. Maybe there are two separate things that we try to do when we eat good-tasting food. One is to taste the food, and the other is to keep ourselves from being hungry. So, when we put good-tasting food into our mouths, we are trying to achieve two separate things at once. However, this suggestion doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny. Even if we eat when we are not hungry, we still swallow the food. I suspect that the reason why we swallow food is because it is the only alternative to spitting out the food that still have some taste. Maybe we could try an experiment with hard sweets that taste sweet on the outside, but have absolutely no taste(doesn't taste good or bad) on the inside(the inside must be soluble and cause no problems when ingested). See if people would spit out the hard sweet once it has no taste.

You are given a map, and the map grid reference (basically the x and y coordinates of the point on the map) of 2 points. You are asked to find the distance between those two points. You only have the map, protractor with ruler, the question paper, the answer sheet, and a pen. Your table is 30cm by 30cm large , the map is 1m by 1m, and the room is so packed that the students' elbows touch each other. How do you find the distance between the two points?

Method one: Plot the points and measure the distance, and convert with scale.

Method two: Find the distance using the map grid reference using Pythagoras' theorem. (Disregard the fact the you do not have a calculator)

Knowing me, I did the 2nd method.

I estimated the hypotenuse of a 110m by 500m triangle without a calculator to be 514m. =)

So happy to be able to use JC math.

If I could bring a pokemon with me into army, I would choose Diglett.

Why?

1. Can help to dig shell scrape, fire trench, MG trench, command trench.
2. Can help to recce.
3. Can set off enemy tripflares at night and screw up their ambush.
4. Can help to clear minefield.
5. Can turn enemy claymores backwards at night.
6. Can summon earthquake and pwn the enemy's firebase.
7. Can overturn enemy combat trains.

Other good pokemon to bring:

Abra: Teleport you everywhere.
Pikachu: Can summon CAT 1.
Espeon: Its clairvoyance would be extremely helpful when people lose stuff.

Bad pokemon to bring:

Magnamite: Screws up your compass.
Hypno: As if everyone isn't sleepy enough already.
Charizard: Not tactical, especially at night.

If the world of Pokemon existed, Pokemon would unlikely be called "Pokemon", and the people's main preoccupation would unlikely be about Pokemon fights.

When we look at the world of Pokemon carefully, we would soon realize that the main difference between the Pokemon world and our world is due the amazing contraption called the Pokeball. When a Pokeball is thrown at any object, it would store that object into itself, while the mass and weight of the object completely disappears.

So in the Pokemon world, a Pokemon is basically... just any creature that can be found in the wild, and Pokemon trainers are people who bother to put them into Pokeballs. The word "Pokemon" supposedly stands for "pocket monster", but the thing is, those creatures are capable of being fitted into pockets only because of this invention called "Pokeball", and not due to any special characteristic of their own. It's as lame as calling all animals CageAnimals or all water BottleWater, just because they can be stored in cages or bottles respectively.

In the world of Pokemon, energy is not conserved. If you lift up a Pokeball with an Onix, then release the Onix at the top, store the Onix back into the Pokeball and repeat, you'll get a free energy generator. If anyone can ever invent something like a Pokeball, the world would probably be consuming energy without giving two hoots about oil prices and global warming. A world unbound by energy constraints seems pretty good.

Warfare would be damn different with Pokeballs. If timed bombs explode in Pokeballs, then people would be able to carry unlimited amounts of ordnance, so you could pretty much have a Tsar bomb hidden in a purse. If they don't, then the whole world is pretty much immune to nukes, considering that Pokeballs are damn cheap.

No matter how powerful your armoured weapons are, you have to be wary of MGs that fire Pokeballs 'cos it's instant KO for anything to get hit by it.

If two Pokeballs hit each other, and one of them enters the other, how would you know which Pokeball entered which Pokeball?

A war would only involve Commandoes bringing an entire army of Pokeballs into the enemy capital.

As I think more and more about it, Pokeballs sound like damn frigging imba things to have.

Why are plane mirror images laterally inverted and not vertically inverted?

It actually has little to do with the plane mirror.

Suppose I say, "Show me that a mirror image is laterally inverted."

What you would probably do is:

Step 1: Show me two copies of a piece of paper with the letter 'b'
Step 2: Place one of them in front of a plane mirror, with the letter 'b' facing the plane mirror
Step 3: Place the other one next to the mirror image, with the letter 'b' facing us.

Then, it is easy to see, that the mirror image shows the letter 'd' while the paper shows the letter 'b'.

However, let us examine what you did in step 3: you rotated the piece of paper about the vertical axis. Is that the only way which you can make the piece of paper face yourself so that you can read it? Clearly not. You could rotate the piece of paper about the horizontal axis as well. In that case, you would get a letter 'p' while the paper shows the letter 'b'. Now, isn't the mirror image now vertically inverted?

When we compare the real object and the mirror image, nothing dictates that we can't rotate the object about the horizontal axis to make it face us. The crux of this problem is in identifying that in our common experience, in order to make an object that originally faced forward face us, we would rotate it about the vertical axis.

Thus, the image of a plane mirror being laterally inverted is NOT a physical property of a plane mirror. It is due to the way you rotate the object to make it face yourself.

Random excerpt from a rare 20-minute breakfast conversation (usually we only have about 5-10 minutes to eat).

"Anyone wants another piece of bread?"
"Hey, we still have some time left! Why aren't you eating more?"
"This is not like water parade, where you can always drink more if you drink slowly."
"This reminds me of Zeno's paradox."
"What's that?"
"In order to move from one point to another, you must move half the distance in a certain amount of time. But after halving the distance, you'll still need to halve the distance again in a certain amount of time... so on and so forth."
"Basically it's just sum GP to infinity."
"Yeh, the paradox is resolved by removing the assumption that an infinity number of steps must take an infinite amount of time."
"It's beautiful that infinity can be actually be described by a particular number with a particular sequence."
"OMG this must be the most intellectual conversation we've had for the past few weeks!"
"Guys, we need to fall in soon."

Exeunt.

SHAG. Wake up at 6 am, finish live firing at 9 pm, clean weapons until 4 am, sleep from 5 am to 6 am.

There is this prefix called "meta", which seems to indicate self reference. For example, meta-ethics is philosophy of what-ethics-is (as opposed to what is ethical), meta-mathematics is the philosophy of what-mathematics-is, meta-humour is humour based on other humour sources...So I extrapolate that blogging about blogging about blogging is called meta-meta-blogging.

Interestingly, when you are meta-meta-blogging, you are also meta-blogging, since you are blogging about meta-blogging, which is blogging.

This leads me to conclude that when one says that he's blogging, he could really be doing an infinite number of things: blogging, meta-blogging, meta-meta-blogging... and (meta-)^infinity blogging.

Guess what I have been doing for the past 15 minutes. I have been meta-(meta-)^infinity blogging. Oops! I just meta-(meta-)^infinity+1 blogged! Oh no! Not again! Would Georg Cantor please tell me what I've been doing for the past 16 minutes?

I'm back, and I missed home more than I thought I would.

I hereby add one more condition to the definition of "Knowledge": you must actually remember it!

Which is why people know they have to bring something, but they don't bring it.

I'm an ORC. My life for the horde.

Here is to wish everyone all the best to them for whatever path they are given.



Oh gosh.


3 weeks confinement!

See you again then!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee...

I find the words "you" and "we" particularly interesting. With the inclusion of these words, the writer of a sentence would appear to be making a connection with the reader. I'm not sure if it's just me, but reading a blog full of "you" and "we" just feels different from reading non-fiction. It fascinates me that if someone were to write an entry containing "you" and "we", even after he/she's dead, a reader would, for a moment, think that the writer is alive and interacting with the reader.

It is a strange feeling to be looking at pictures of my father in BMT. He was 18 then, younger than my current age(which is 19, to facilitate my future rereading of this blog). A trivial but important thing about age is that if you are younger than someone, you would always be younger. But when you access the past through memory of others or your own, or through artifacts, it enables you to look at the actions and mindsets of elders when they were young from a slightly more mature and modern perspective. It is quite refreshing that while an elder of the present is more experienced and mature than you of the present, you of the present can be more experienced and mature than an elder of the past.

It is also quite amazing to meet someone of the same age who lives in a different generation and environment from us. Remnants of them reside in the memories of the elders. There are so many 19 year olds around us.

I am glad that there are many who blog about their lives. Provided they do not delete their blogs (or blogspot doesn't crash like a diary-x), they provide the newer generation an outlook of their lives when they were much younger, if the younger are interested. (Oh yes, NLB is archiving popular blogs, good for all!) I mean, wouldn't you be curious if you could read your parents' petty squabbles with their classmates, or random rants about homework/particularly irritating people when they were, say, 15 years old? Or even more cute, with the benefit of hindsight, your kid could read how you had a crush on someone, while your spouse(his dad/mom) is still completely oblivious. Reading their blogs side by side would be like real time action for them. (Though there would still be a lot of self-censorship, since it's a public domain after all.)

Sometimes I do find it easy to forget that a 50 year old elder hasn't been 50 years old for 50 years. If the youths of the future do get access to their parents' blogs, those youths are going to have a heck of a time reading their parents growing up. I know, my children wouldn't have a chance, since I don't blog much about my life anymore.

Some grammatical rules are not always followed. One example I cannot help but notice is that conjunctions are not always used to join sentences together. The full stop and exclamation mark are supposed to end a sentence, and a sentence is to be begun with an uppercase character, but- Alas! this is also not always the case.

By the way, I am the most humble person in the world. (The fact is that I am the most humble person in the universe, but I only claim to be the most humble person in the world. This just shows how humble I am - never mind the extremely high likelihood that the only people in the universe are in this world.)

It is my humble opinion that one should perhaps refrain from the use of weasel words, as they can occasionally cause the sentence to be- in many people's view- unnecessarily lengthened. It is also not impossible to show that any proposition, when sufficient padded with weasel words, can become so shrouded in uncertainty that it may not convey enough meaning. The use of weasel words may therefore be considered as dishonest, since the user pretends to make a proposition, yet gives him/herself such a large error margin that he/she can perhaps never be wrong.

Jam.

Hohoho look what I've found on the net: KI Tuition!!

I'm interested to know who "May" is, and whether she has found clients yet.

Points to note:
-$60 per hour is bloody expensive for May's qualifications. For the sake of comparison, a Physics Olympiad absolute winner with teaching experience and a degree charges $50 per hour to teach physics.

- "It is likely that a maximum of five hours (in total) will be needed only"... While I understand that the tutor is talented enough to master all aspects of KI in just five hours, I'm afraid that those who need tuition aren't.

Ok, ok, I shan't talk too much; after all, she's has scored 'A' consistently for KI while I haven't. But damn, if she gets a client, she'll be earning in an hour what I earn in five days. Yes, civilian May, go ahead and laugh.

Oh, and I'm very happy about my A level results.

A not-serious-but-critical review of "The Prince" by Niccolo Machiavelli. [You could interpret this fragment in 2 ways, but obviously only one is correct]

When I read "The Prince", I felt like I was reading "FAQ about Princedom". Take note of the length and title of each chapter, and you might agree with me.

Personally speaking, Niccolo Machiavelli is a damn cool name (though "Machiavalentova" would sound cooler), and he makes interesting comments like "It is far safer to be feared than to be loved" and "Fortune is the mistress to half of our actions yet leaves the control of the other half to ourselves", which makes anyone who quotes him feel good. Still, that doesn't immunize his work against critical review.

Since the knowledge of government is a posteriori knowledge, we would expect much of the arguments to be inductive. One example of such argument in his book is:

P: In all the places I have been to and from all the historical documents I have read, inherited Princedoms are more stable than new Princedoms.

C: Therefore all inherited Princedoms are more stable than new Princedoms.

Of course, in his book, this is not so clearly spelled out. He simply states that inherited Princedoms are more stable than new Princedoms, and gives one case of such(although if you look at the example he gave, you can clearly see that it is a hypothesis contrary to fact). That is a weak inductive argument. An example of a strong inductive argument in support of the statement "all inherited Princedoms are more stable than new Princedoms" would be:

P1: Princedom A is inherited, and Princedom A is stable.
P2: Princedom B is inherited, and Princedom B is stable.
-
- (ditto)
-
-
Pn: Princedom n is not inherited, and Princedom n is not stable.
-
-
- (ditto)
-
PN: Princedom N is not inherited, and Princedom N is not stable.

C: Therefore all inherited Princedoms are more stable than new Princedoms.

We can see that making a table of stable/unstable princedoms and comparing their characteristics would make a more convincing argument than just stating a couple of examples, which Machiavelli had done. Nowadays, tables of statistics are necessary for political studies. Just look at all the papers that support the "monadic democracy peace theory". If you put Machiavelli's book next to those papers, "The Prince" would just seem like a collection of opinions. However, note that in his dedication to the Italian Prince, Machiavelli claims that the things he had written in his book are what he has learned and known through a great deal of suffering, danger and hardship. This is supposed to give all the statements in his book the backing of authority on the subject, but this still leaves much of his statements open to doubt.

One example of another type of argument he uses is as such:

If you use mercenaries, there are two possible cases. Case one: the mercenaries are too cowardly and stupid to be of any use in war. Case two: they are so courageous and smart that they would plot against you in war. You do not want either things to happen, therefore you should never use mercenaries.

Clearly a fallacy of false dichotomy.

I apologize in advance to anyone who might be offended by my lack of intellectual humility, but I do wonder how this book became a classic. If this book were so good, why didn't the Italian Prince keep it properly in a secret closet and use it to conquer and control other princedoms, rather than letting it be read by everyone? Kinda interesting, isn't it?

Summary: Quite nice to read, but not very reliable.

There are vegetarian foods that are designed to imitate the look, taste and texture of meat. Generally speaking, these foods are highly processed, and are not a healthy substitute for meat. By hasty generalization, I generalize that the vegetarians who eat such foods are not doing so for health reasons, but for the sake of compassion.

Some people question whether the vegetarians who eat these sort of vegetarian food really become vegetarians for the sake of compassion, since they are still have the desire to eat meat. However, I do not think it is problematic. The desire to eat meat does not necessarily imply a desire to take lives. I suppose their motto is "When the buying stops, the killing will too." If you have issues with vegetarians who eat imitation meat, I'll suppose you'll have issues with people who eat imitation sharks fin too.

One loophole in the motto "When the buying stops, the killing will too" is that stealing shark's fin soup is actually fine, since you are not buying it. You also can't be said to be contributing to the demand of shark's fin, since you have the desire but not the ability to eat shark's fin. So one way to eat shark's fin and be environmentally friendly about it is to steal shark's fin soup from the restaurant.

I've once thought about this: how do the people who make and sell imitation meat know what they taste like? Then I recalled that one doesn't have to be a vegetarian to sell or make vegetarian food. Generally speaking again, most of the people who sell Muslim food are also Muslims, so maybe that explains why there isn't halal imitation pork on the market yet. (I await the day that one can order "nasi babi" without getting hollered at.)

So if we follow the standards of vegetarians, it seems like only the next thing to do to get the cannibals to make and sell imitation human meat. After all, having a desire to consume human meat doesn't imply a desire to kill humans. My eldest sister once said, "To know if a French restaurant is good, you must see if the French patronize it." Therefore, if you see many cannibals patronizing an imitation human meat restaurant, you'll know if it's really good. Of course, a small problem comes in when you want to find out which people in the restaurant are cannibals.

If imitation human meat becomes a hit, I wonder if the stem cell researchers would try to catch up by introducing consumers real human meat into the market. Sounds interesting. Would you want to try human meat?

Random:

We had orange for dessert during lunch at live range.

Sarge is still called sarge in NS.

If you really want to hardcore your studies, when you dream, you should only spend your time doing math. This is because mathematical knowledge is a priori, so no matter what crazy situation you find yourself being thrown in, a mathematical proof that's right in your dreams would be right out in the real world, unless you made mistakes.

If you ever suspect that you are trapped in Plato's cave, you should get a mathematics degree. Even if some guy decides to drag you out of the cave and bring you to the "real world", your degree will still be recognized! Sad for the people who study medicine and astronomy; all their mugging will go down the drain.

There is a platoon sergeant called "Valentova". I think Valentova is a cool name. Maybe it's cool because of the -ova suffix.

Alwynova.
Xiamanova.
Alexova.
Clementova.
Mitchellova.
Lincolnova.
Jimrova.

Random:

Yes, I do think that Zheng Ning is damn chio.

And I would like to see a tanned Alwyn with crew cut and black rimmed plastic spectacles.

Chairs are bad for the environment. This is because in the production of chairs, metal ores are dug up, trees are cut down, and fossil fuels are burned during the production of chairs. All these lead to the degradation of the environment. Not only that, chairs themselves also degrade the environment after they have been discarded. Burning chairs releases toxic fumes in to air, leading to air pollution. Plastic and metal chairs can take a long time to degrade in the landfills, and even after they degrade, they leech poisonous substances into the groundwater, which eventually flows into the seas, leading to water pollution.

Water pollution poisons fish. At a first glance, this appears to be bad news for fishermen. However, we must recall that even though the fish may be subject to poison, most can actually still live in polluted waters. Those fish that get adversely affected are the larger predatory fish, as the small amounts of poison from the fish they eat tend to accumulate in their bodies, and their population will drop. As water pollution tends to kill the larger fish more, there would be less big fish to eat the smaller fish. As a result, the fish can multiply even faster since there are less things gobbling them up. Therefore, water pollution actually leads to an increase in the fish population in the seas, and hence water pollution is good for fishermen.

Therefore, we can safely conclude that chairs are good for fishermen. Since fishermen are part of the country, what's good for the fishermen are also good for the country, and since chairs are good for fishermen, the government ought to give tax incentives to encourage factories to produce more chairs.

My last blog post as a civilian.

During last year and for the small bit of this year combined, the events that have occurred were somewhat bizarre. Although I really wanted to be in the National Team, I didn't quite see myself in it, so the whole Olympiad experience has been rather surreal. Some events that are pretty unlikely happened anyway. It has been hard to make sense of a lot of events, and I figured it would be easier to just take things as they come by. This could be why I'm not quite as anxious about NS as my parents and siblings and friends are.

I'm hoping to take the two years in army as a chance to learn as much as possible. Although I wouldn't expect NS to be a bed of roses, I'm sure that it would be an enriching and enlightening experience.

I remember in J1, Zilin told me that she was crossed with someone, because he commented on a lousy essay being "something that even an ITE student can come up with", and I didn't know why that comment pissed her off. I went back to my mother and sister, and they immediately picked out that it was derogatory to ITE students. That incident had left me thinking how horribly narrow my perspective had been all these while. Having spent 4 years in RI, I was not exposed to the people from neighbourhood secondary schools and ITEs, and had formed prejudices against them unconsciously. Hopefully, by being exposed to people from different strata in the society, I can gain a broader perspective of things.

In any case, for girls and people from countries without conscription, working for the military must sound pretty exciting. I mean, some ang mohs take a year off to work in an office or do community service in Africa after they graduate from High School, serving the military (especially in a combat position) probably sounds quite refreshing. I agree that life in the military is not something everyone wants to experience, but then again, it's not something everyone gets to experience.

People say that it's a waste of two years, but hey, compared to average lifespan of 80+, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. And for the RJ guys who are complaining that the girls in their batch don't look pretty, serving NS means that you're not going to be in the same batch as them again in university. We would go to university in the same year as Koh Zheng Ning!!! Doesn't that alone worth 2% of your lifespan?

Hanging around with a new bunch of people is going to be a test of my social skills yet again. I shall try to do better than I have done before. If I succeed, it could be rewarding.

Maybe I'm still young and idealistic. NS has a proven track record for turning people into cynics, but well, at least if I do, when I read this post again, I get to laugh at myself!

Ok, see you in at least 3 weeks. NS has a proven track record for killing blogs too, so I may not see you again after all.

Went back to school today in RI uniform. I initially intended to crash some J1 lectures, but I forgot to consider the fact that it's Wednesday, and the J1s end school early. Thus, I didn't get to crash any lectures. However, I got to screw around in CCA Feste. Sadly, Dr Chan banned a lot of demonstrations (partly my fault), so it wasn't very exciting.

I asked a teacher if the RI and RJC merger means anything for them, he said that the school didn't tell them anything. Apparently, RI and RJC weren't planning to announce it; it just so happened that some reporter got the scoop, and the schools had to tell them some things "so that [the reporters] have something to report, else they anyhow report then even worse right?"

Talked to Mrs Lim, my ex-former physics teacher. She said that she is thinking of suggesting to the school board that they hire a trainer for Physics Olympiad. If it follows through, then we'd have NUSHS and Ricardo to thank for raising the standards of the Singapore National Team. I'm sure that if RJC can afford Air Conditioned classrooms and an unused Plasma TV in the Library, they would be able to afford a trainer.

And this batch of J1s are very lucky. They have the Campus Super Star 2 finalist: Dance Queen Koh Zheng Ning! DAMN CHIO! I didn't dream that I'll get to see her in real life... *drool...*

Recently I watched an interesting debate. It was a debate on whether people should go for cosmetic surgery. Egypt was the proposition, and Korea was the opposition. The irony is that Egypt is an Arab Republic, while Korea is almost the Land of cosmetic surgery. I was sniggering all the way when the Korean representative was saying "Cosmetic surgery is the product of the misogynistic standards of beauty that men have set for women, yet many women still continue to subject themselves to such self-mutilation." As the judge pointed out, "It was as though the Korean women have suffered years of oppression by men, simmered their indignations for all these while, and took this debate as an opportunity to lash out at their tormentors."

Breaking news! RI and RJC are merging, but RGS opts out. Since both RI and RJC are both so dear to me (though more dear to those not under EESIS), I feel obliged to indulge in wild speculations about this matter from the perspective of an average Rafflesian. Oh wait, I'm already an alumnus.

Now the merger of RI and RJC is really nothing but the restoration to the 1970's times. You could also claim that it is a copycat of the HCI merger. Either case, this announced merger not really a ground breaking idea(on hindsight at least). They started planning since 2004, the year which HCJC and TCHS (THE Chinese High School) merged to form HCI and started abusing their status by sending their J1 athletes to play B division. This exploit was fixed by the Singapore Sports Council the following year, so revenge is out of the question.

Of course, when large organizations act, it is usually not out of goodwill or for old times' sake. On the news, they representatives claim that the merger between RI and RJC means less admin work for both sides. However, I suspect that in reality they are going to get a lot more admin work, since they will have to gather feedback about this new thing, propose changes, and evaluate the feasibility of the proposals. 2008 will be a tough year for the teachers of both schools.

Surely there are some other benefits? RI doesn't need to rent the track and Multipurpose Hall from RJC any more; they just need to apply. RI prefects can go to RJC to book people who cut queue in the RJ canteen and 7-eleven. RI prefects and RJC councillors can alternately summon each other for match support (or they might even merge too, but I highly doubt so). RI boys can go study in the RJ library and RJC people can go to sleep in the RI library. Of course, VERY importantly, as mentioned by Ho Wen Jun, a larger pool of teachers. RI boys who are very 'on' could crash RJ lectures during Research Education (does it still exist? I really hope not) on the grounds that they are, after all, from the same school. From the looks of it, RI-RJC merger appears to benefit RI more.

Let's take a look at the CCAs. If RI and RJC merges, then they can have 6 year CCAs. This wouldn't be very much different from the status quo for Sports and Performing Arts CCAs. Clubs and Societies have a problem, though. RI Clubs are, frankly, war machines to help RI win competitions. RJ Clubs, on the other hand, are interest groups. Interest groups and war machines operate in a different manner, in the sense that minions of war machines are more elite and motivated than members of interest groups. You put the minions into the war machine, tell them what to aim for, and they will work hard at it, because they can see the goal. Interest groups don't have a goal unless they set it. "We love chem! Yay! ... Now what?" (Really, the natural thing to do is to cast an invulnerability spell on the members, and put them into a Chem Preparation Lab. I can guarantee unanimous support for the above proposal, unfortunately it is not entirely feasible.)

On the surface it doesn't make sense to merge Clubs from RI and RJC together, since they are so different. But we could promote the RI Science Club into a 6 year club, and split it into divisions for each Olympiad. From the crushing defeat at SPhO, RJC ought to realize by now that they REALLY need a war machine if they want to "reign supreme in ev'ry sphere". Currently an RI quiz team member can look ahead and see "NUS Physics", "Eureka", "VJC" etc. Stretching it to 6 years would simply be bringing (an) additional goal(s) into their line of sight. I foresee a side effect though. I suspect that some RJC Clubs currently survive partly because of their perceived elite status. When RISC is pushed to 6 years, some of the RJC Clubs may lose some of their stronger members to RISC, and the perceived elite status will be removed. This may kill off some RJC Clubs.

And of course, this plan wouldn't work if RJC don't hire trainers for the proposed 6 year RISC. RJC, please hire trainers. You've seen that it makes a difference. Since you wish to scrap A levels, you'll need to have something else to show that you are still good enough to do that a few years from now.

Speaking of the scrapping of A levels, it's not for the whole college. The scheme is called "Raffles Diploma" (a rip-off from NUS High), but it is a continuation of Raffles Academy (A two year programme for an elite group of Secondary 3 and 4 students). Only 100+ students will be doing Raffles Diploma per batch. Note that each batch of RJC has 1200+ students. Quoting statistics, in 2006 A-levels, 912 RJ students scored at least three As or more (the highest number among all the junior colleges). I think this pretty much justifies that the top 100+ students from RJC will pwn A levels anyway.

Some people are wondering why RGS is not in the merger. I'd suppose it's no surprise to Rafflesians. RI and RJC are next to each other. RGS is in the middle of somewhere else. You can't even take a direct bus from RI to RGS(Correct me if I'm wrong). And to RI boys, RJC is just RI with girls. It's almost the same uniform, crest, school anthem and school cheers. RJC was born when it was split from RI in 1982. RGS was split from RI in 1879. Big difference. Claiming that two schools so far apart physically, historically and culturally are one would sound superficial.

Besides, you'll need to change the School Anthem, since the melody of anthem is such that you'll only need to hear it once to know that it wasn't composed for girls. Compare "Come heed the call Rafflesians all" and "With God to guide the way". And I wouldn't expect the RGS girls to sing the line "The Sons of Singapore", when their own song has so many "Sisters" in it.

After RI and RJC merges, what shall it be called? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Raffles Institution(RI). Just reverting back to the same old thing. No harm done, really.
2. The Rafflesian Institute(TRI). Good for mocking Hwa Chong. TRI is also oxymoronic because TRI consists of two schools instead of three.
3. Raffles School(RS). "School" doesn't sound impressive enough for me. I'm sure it wouldn't impress the very school that coined the term "Raffles Academy".
4. Raffles High School(RHS). Sounds like a rip-off of NUS High. RHS also stands for "Right Hand Side".
5. Raffles College(RC). Sounds very nice, but RI+RJC doesn't qualify as a college, unless it teaches undergrad courses. It would be near impossible, but if they do try, it would be very interesting indeed.

Blog didn't die after 3 weeks. Whee!

As usual, I wouldn't blog about the most obvious things to blog about. I shall blog about a person with an interesting name. Katherine(or Catherine) Wicker. This name isn't particularly interesting. What's interesting is her pet name "Kitty". It's not really a pet name, since everyone calls her Kitty, and if a stranger (unless it be a policeman) asks for her name she'll introduce herself as "Kitty". You meet her for the first time and you go "Hello Kitty!"

It may still be fine right now, since she's 21. But I'll be interested to know the cut-off age after which calling a woman "Kitty" would sound plain weird. This is especially so in Western Culture where they are fine with calling their parents by name. Having your son call you Kitty is seriously... strange. What could be stranger than calling your mom "Kitty"? Calling your girlfriend's mom Kitty.

Kitty the person is quite interesting too. She studies linguistics in university. LIEK O.M.G. COOL. Among other things, she learns conversation analysis(study what the pauses in a conversation mean), voice analysis (find out if two audio recordings are from the same person), and phonology (classify, learn and produce sounds that form words in any language).

Phonology is quite cool! They have a system of classification of sounds by how it is produced, and each sound contains information about the mouth position and the air flow and throat vibration, and words are combinations of sounds. Tonal changes, clicks and inhalations are reflected too. *gasp!*

According to Kitty, this system of classification allows people to state specifically how one accent sounds like, thus helping them mimic and create accents if they want to.

They use big words. "Voiceless Uvular Fricative". Sexy. "Bilabial Implosive". Even sexier. The use of big and sexy words just to describe sounds- something so crucial to a conversation- allows you to kill a conversation with ease.

"What's the difference between 'whee' and 'wee'?"
"Well, 'w' is a voiceless bilabial fricative."

*silence*

Of course, one wouldn't need to use that ability too often. It's just cool to know that you can do it. (A parallel here is that there are people who learn to kill people with bare hands. It's not like they'll be using it, but it's just cool to know that they could if they want to.)

Speaking of sounds, here are a few tongue twisters for Singaporeans! Apparently they are not difficult for the British.

The Dentist's crisps fell into the wasps' nests.

Three thousand two hundred and thirty three twee thistle trees.

Red Loli Yellow Lorry (repeat)
_______

I've been wanting to blog about this for a long time, but I've never gotten down to it.

Some songs are made of long strings of nouns and adjectives. In my opinion, songs like these are demanding to be parodied. Examples include "Once upon a December" and "My favourite things"(in The Sound of Music).

I didn't blog about this before because I haven't thought of how to parody them yet. I would need some help.