From a friend’s Facebook Funwall:

Learn Chinese in 5 minutes (You MUST read them aloud)


ENGLISH / CHINESE

That’s not right / Sum Ting Wong

Are you harbouring a fugitive? / Hu Yu Hai Ding

See me ASAP / Kum Hia Nao

Stupid Man / Dum Fuk

Small Horse / Tai Ni Po Ni

Did you go to the beach? / Wai Yu So Tan

I bumped into a coffee table / Ai Bang Mai Fu Kin Ni

I think you need a face lift / Chin Tu Fat

It’s very dark in here / Wai So Dim

I thought you were on a diet / Wai Yu Mun Ching

This is a tow away zone / No Pah King

Our meeting is scheduled for next week / Wai Yu Kam Nao

Staying out of sight / Lei Ying Lo

He’s cleaning his automobile / Wa Shing Ka

Your body odour is offensive / Yu Stin Ki Pu

Great / Fa Kin Su Pa

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are a match in heaven, according to gastronomic rules – I mean, recipes.

Think about the humble peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. It contains Brad with a dash of Jolie BUT we’re missing either the pea or the nut.

Perhaps Snoopy could enlighten us on this?

Something from Philosophy lecture today (the text in italics are my own inserted comments, the rest come from the slides)

Source: http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/phihjc/PH1101EGEM1004/index.html


A parable from “The Simpsons”: an episode entitled, “Homer Defined”.

The Springfield Nuclear Power Plant is melting down and (as Professor Frink explains) everyone will die.

Only one man can save the situation: Homer Simpson (who works in the control room of the plant)

Luckily, he is a man with a method. “Eenie, meenie, miney. . . . Moe!”

Homer hits the right button, and everyone is saved.

Homer is then invited to be an inspirational speaker about Virtue - whether it is innate, or teachable, or something you practice.

During the session, Aristotle asks, ‘Do you even know what button you pushed?’

Homer: ‘Sure. Moe.’




And so Napoleon is now inclined to comment:
‘Do not show me a nuclear technician who is knowledgeable. What I want is Homer Simpson.’



Note: the quotes of Napoleon are a running gag throughout this lecture.

Napoleon’s original quote:
Do not show me a general who is good. I want one who is lucky.

So what will Napoleon likely think of scientists?
Do not show me a scientist who is good. I want one who is lucky.

So now you see where the Homer Simpson quote adds up?


Back to Homer Simpson – how do we define Homer?

Homer
/noun/
1. American bonehead
2. ‘to pull a homer’; to succeed despite idiocy.


Synonyms…

Stupid
\adj\ [L stupidus]
1. Slow of mind.
2. Unintelligent.
3. Homer Simpson.

Lucky \adj\
1. Prone to good fortune.
2. Succeeding through chance.
3. Homer Simpson.

Fraud \noun\
1. Imposter.
2. Fake.
3. Homer Simpson.



View episode synopsis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Defined


Adapted from Lecture 8: From Plato to Descartes, by Assistant Professor John Holbo, Philosophy Department, National University of Singapore

I know this sounds sick... but I partially look forward to this year end's reservist, where I can go incommunicado for the week. Any calls: "Sorry, training!" (Raises cellphone in the air) "Can you hear the gunshots?"

Today’s Science of Music test had some pretty… erm… obvious questions – but they were a good giveaway. Some instances:

Which of the following activities can most appropriately be called a scientific activity?
(a) A physicist measuring the energy produced by a piano string when it is struck by a hammer at a certain velocity
(b) A guitarist trying to tighten the A string of a guitar
(c) A piano technician repairing a pedal on a grand piano
(d) A young pianist trying to play a Grade One examination piece on the piano

Which of the following activities is the least appropriate example of technology in music?
(a) An electronic engineer inventing a new type of electronic organ
(b) A violinist devising and constructing a new design for a violin bow
(c) A guitarist creating an innovative new type of guitar body
(d) A song writer composing a new song for a rock musician

Which of the following objects is the least appropriate example of a vibration?
(a) A student’s head nodding repeatedly up and down as he falls asleep during a boring lecture (…!)
(b) A palm tree swaying repeatedly from side to side in a strong wind
(c) A feather falling to the ground from a bird in flight
(d) A guitar string immediately after being plucked

And we have pretty interesting analogies…

An architect designs a house for himself to live in, and produces plans for the house, which a building contractor uses to build the actual house itself. When a compose writes a piece of music for an orchestra to perform in a concert, which of the following has the same relationship to the composer as the building contractor has to the architect?
(a) The composer of the piece of music
(b) The orchestra performing the piece of music
(c) The musical score of the piece of music
(d) The audience listening to the piece of music

Okay this video is overdue - the event took place on 28 September 2007

Brother Adrian Ang demonstrating (at Buddhist Fellowship Dharma Hall) how to break a pencil using a piece of paper, which he folds into half and performs a karate chop on the pencil. Brother Adrian was there to give a talk on The Pursuit of Happiness.

Oh my gosh now there is a Chinese version of Shakalaka Baby from the Bollywood-inspired musical Bombay Dreams*.


Bombay Dreams is penned by one of the best composers in the industry itself: A R Rahman.

On Monday, we watch this BBC documentary about the incursion of China by the Japanese forces during World War Two. What is so striking about this programme is that interviews are conducted with former Japanese soldiers who had been there – men from the former Imperial Japanese Army, Navy and the Military Police. They show photos of their younger selves, followed by an interview with the same person half a century later: harmless-looking old men without the tinge of snarling ferocity the Japanese troops possessed as they went on their rampage through Asia.

The question that the documentary asks is: what caused the Japanese to become so brutal beyond any other barbaric descriptions during the war? They were a civilised and disciplined people. After the Great War, they had brought prisoners-of-war (POWs) from captured German territory in China back to the home islands (Japan was on the side of the Allies during World War One), and they treated the Germans with utmost hospitality and respect that some of these POWs, when eventually released, chose to remain in Japan.

The answer is: the brutal training regiment for Japanese conscripts. The recruits were mostly peasants from the countryside, mobilised for the Japanese war effort. In order to instil discipline into such a large force, the officers decided to impart it there and then. No mistakes were tolerated. Any slight error would be met with a hard blow onto the body, or some other physical torture. Even the interviewees themselves admitted that. One of them even just wanted to die even before he was sent out to fight the war proper because it was so painful to the point of the unbearable, that he hoped to end his suffering there and then. Another interviewee said that, when the instructors were tired, the recruits were told to slap each other. Yes, slap your comrade, your buddy!

They were also mentally prepared for their metamorphosis into killing machines. They were told to think of their captives as ‘not humans’ but ‘animals’, unlike the ‘superiority of the Japanese race’. Hence they used human targets for bayonet practice without any remorse. Their anger boiled easily – they inflicted the rape and massacre of Nanjing and all the other atrocities such as the Sook Ching in Singapore and Malaya because they were angry that the Chinese KMT forces were one to be reckoned with, and brought about many losses within the Japanese ranks. Asked by the interviewer if they had any remorse over their actions, many of the interviewees said, in the present moment, they were, but back then, they did not feel remorseful. We probably cannot blame them, because of the system at home that they were exposed to. They had no choice but to swallow it, or there would be repercussions from the other members in their social group. My lecturer calls Japan the ‘mass cult’: in the name of the Emperor and country anything is sanctioned.

As the video turns to show pictures of massacre and rape victims in Nanjing, and then back to the interview with the retired soldier who once raped and killed these people, I cannot help but feel that sense of overpowering disgust and creepiness: gosh, I am looking at this guy who was a serial rapist and killer. And now he’s old, he looks harmless. If you didn’t tell me he was a soldier then I wouldn’t believe he’d done so.

Later in the evening we watch the first forty-five minutes or so of Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. The movie is just creepy, disturbing. The chaos and unexpected behaviour of the Shanghainese folk as the limousine carrying the British family of three in their outrageous costumes going for a party – suddenly a carcass from the butcher’s swings and strikes the glass of the car without any warning, while the stone-faced head of the family in the pirate’s costume continues to gaze ahead. Chinese policeman clinging onto the limousines: beating Chinese people who happen to get too close to the cars because the street is just damn crowded. A well-to-do Chinese at a party for the expatriates, dressed stately like them, conversing with them in their tongue, eating the same food as they do. See the rifts in Chinese society then?

And then the Japanese troops march into Shanghai. The family tries to flee for the port. Their limousine is trapped in the tidal wave of Chinese trying to flee the oncoming Japanese soldiers. Too slow. They get out. Swept along with the tide. They are separated, as tides do. Water knows no directions. The boy gets into the middle of a parade of Japanese troops marching in. Surprisingly they ignore him – I half-expect something to happen to him for disturbing their formation.

The boy returns to his house. The maid slaps him for impudence, and leaves. The boy remains in the house for months, eating whatever food that is left. Watching the water level in the swimming pool slowly dip until he can retrieve the golf balls that his father has teed into. When he first returns home, he sees that the house has come under the ‘property of the Imperial Army’. We half-expect him to run into a Japanese soldier, or that Japanese troops would come into the house and arrest him. No, that doesn’t happen. But it does later in the movie, after the boy returns home a second time after wandering into the city on his bicycle, after he tries to cycle after a truck carrying expatriate families away.

I am still utterly disturbed by it. I cannot do any work for the rest of the evening.

From Rikke Sandberg on Igudesman-Joo Aleksey Richard's Facebook page:

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

Came across this, so Facebook users be on your guard (taken from a comment by Sergio Tempio on Igudesman-Joo Aleksey Richard's page)

If somebody called bm_tnoo7@hotmail.com adds you to their facebook account DONT accept it because its a hacker. Tell everyone on your list because if somebody on your list adds them you get them on your list he'll figure out your ID computer address. So copy and paste this message to everyone even if you hate them and fast because if he hacks their mail he hacks yours.

PS You can only send a message to a certain amount of people in one go so will have to do it in chunks. Easiest way is to go through the alphabet

PHONE CREDIT LOW? AFRICANS GO FOR “BEEPING”
By Andrew Heavens

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070926/od_nm/africa_beeping1_dc


KHARTOUM (Reuters) - If you are in Sudan it is a ‘missed call’. In Ethiopia it is a ‘miskin’ or a ‘pitiful’ call. In other parts of Africa it is a case of ‘flashing’, ‘beeping’ or in French-speaking areas ‘bipage’.

Wherever you are, it is one of the fastest-growing phenomena in the continent’s booming mobile telephone markets -- and it’s a headache for mobile operators who are trying to figure out how to make some money out of it.

You beep someone when you call them up on their mobile phone -- setting its display screen briefly flashing -- then hang up half a second later, before they have had a chance to answer. Your friend -- you hope -- sees your name and number on their list of ‘Missed Calls’ and calls you back at his or her expense.

It is a tactic born out of ingenuity and necessity, say analysts who have tracked an explosion in miskin calls by cash-strapped cellphone users from Cape Town to Cairo.

“Its roots are as a strategy to save money,” said Jonathan Donner, an India-based researcher for Microsoft who is due to publish a paper on “The Rules of Beeping” in the high-brow online Journal of Computer Mediated Communication in October.

Donner first came across beeping in Rwanda, then tracked it across the continent and beyond, to south and southeast Asia. Studies quoted in his paper estimate between 20 to more than 30 percent of the calls made in Africa are just split-second flashes -- empty appeals across the cellular network.

The beeping boom is being driven by a sharp rise in mobile phone use across the continent.

Africa had an estimated 192.5 million mobile phone users in 2006, up from just 25.3 million in 2001, according to figures from the U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union. Customers may have enough money for the one-off purchase of a handset, but very little ready cash to spend on phone cards for the prepaid accounts that dominate the market.

Africa’s mobile phone companies say the practice has become so widespread they have had to step in to prevent their circuits being swamped by second-long calls.

“We have about 355 million calls across the whole network every day,” said Faisal Ijaz Khan, chief marketing officer for the Sudanese arm of Kuwaiti mobile phone operator Zain (formerly MTC). “And then there are another 130 million missed calls every day. There are a lot of missed calls in Africa.”

‘CALL ME BACK’

Zain is responding to the demand by drawing up plans for a “Call-me-back” service in Sudan, letting customers send open requests in the form of a very basic signal to friends for a phone call.

The main advantage for the company is that the requests will be diverted from the main network and pushed through using a much cheaper technology (USSD or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data).

A handful of similar schemes are springing up across Africa, says Informa principal analyst Devine Kofiloto. “It is widespread. It is a concern for operators in African countries, whose networks become congested depending on the time of day with calls they cannot bill for.

“They try to discourage the practice by introducing services where customers can send a limited number of ‘call-back’ request either free of charge or for a minimum fee.”

There are plenty of other reasons why mobile operators are keen to cut down on the practice. One is it annoys customers, pestered by repeated missed calls.

A second is that ‘flashes’ eat into one of mobile phone companies’ favorite performance indicators -- ARPU or average revenue per user. Miscalls earn very little in themselves - and don’t always persuade the target to ring back.

Orange Senegal, Kofiloto said, lets customers send a ‘Rappelle moi’ (‘Call me back’) when their phone credit drops below $0.10. With Safaricom Kenya, it is a “Flashback 130” (limited to five a day -- and with the admonishment ‘Stop Flashing! Ask Nicely’). Vodacom DR Congo’s ‘Rappelez moi SVP’ service costs $0.01 a message.

MORE THAN MONEY

But beeping is not only about money. Donner’s ‘Rules of Beeping’ suggests a social protocol for the practice.

“The richer guy pays,” he writes. It is acceptable to beep someone if you are short of cash and they are flush with credit. Never beep someone poorer than you.

Never beep someone you are tapping for a favor. You don’t want to risk annoying the person you are trying to win over. Never flash your girlfriend, unless you want to look cheap.

“Most beeps are requests to the mobile owner to call back immediately, but can also send a pre-negotiated instrumental message such as pick me up now,’ or send a relational sign, such as I’m thinking of you,’“ the paper says.

It can go even further than that.

Cameroonian researchers Victor W.A. Mbarika and Irene Mbarika identified a different kind of beeping-powered relational call in a study for the technology association the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

“Lovers often communicate with text messages or beeping’,” said the study. “One party dials another’s number and then hangs up. One ring could mean, I am here,’ two rings, Call me now.’“

And the name they gave this new entry in the beeping lexicon? Borrowing a street slang term for an appeal for sex, they christened it “the booty call.”


* * *


And something else about cellphones since we’re at the topic:


From an email:

When you try to call someone through mobile phone, don't put your mobile closer to your ears until the recipient answers because directly after dialling, the mobile phone would use it's maximum signalling power, which is:

2watts = 33dbi. (4 - 6 dbi is harmless)

Please use left ear while using mobile, because if you use the right one it will affect brain directly. This is a true fact from Apollo medical team.

Laugh your heart out. From an email I received from a friend:

ONLY IN AMERICA


Only in America .....do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in America ......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke. !

Only in America......do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in America ......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

Only in America ......do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

Only in America......do we use the word ‘politics’ to describe the process so well: ‘Poli’ in Latin meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.

Only in America ......do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering. ?


EVER WONDER…

Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin ?

Why women can’t put on mascara with their mouth closed? !

Why don’t you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?

Why is "abbreviated" such a long word?

Why is it that doctors call what they do "practice"?


Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn’t there mouse-flavored cat food?

Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that stuff?!

Why don’t sheep shrink when it rains?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?