civilisationReview

When I first came across this sign about a year ago - and to which I've alluded to in this site intermittently - I was thoroughly taken aback. I kept silent and directed a couple of local Chinese mates whom were with me to take a look at it. After they had read through it, I asked them what they thought about it and if they saw anything amiss. They looked at me as if wondering why I would ask such a question. I smiled, and asked, "What place is this?" "Little India", they responded. "And the information here is about whom?" After a few seconds, as the British would say, 'the pin dropped', and they got it. I've often said a decade ago, that the other ethnic groups became persona non grata the moment the government stated that singapore must always have a Chinese majority. With the SAP school system, the 'speak mandarin it's cool' and 'appreciate chinese culture' campaigns, the Chingay festival amongst others that...

   I remember a cousin of mine being troubled about his fiancee comparing the size of the diamond ring he was considering for her with her friend’s bigger diamond ring. ed: dei (an Indian version of ‘hey’ or ‘oi’) let me ask you something. Is she buying you a diamond ring for the wedding? cousin: Of course not what. We guys are supposed to buy it for them right. ed: Yeah, if you’re the bread winner and she just fell off a buffalo in some village and onto your lap, and you need to prove to her and her family that you can take care of her. But she’s earning more that you isn’t she. You are more on the blue collar side, and she’s on the white collar side. So there’s no reason for you to prove that you can ‘take care of her’ by buying her a diamond ring. I mean, in the past, men might have done such nonsense to prove to the woman and her family that he is capable of taking care of her, or showing her and her family that he is a big shot. But with the equality between m...

This article is rated 18 I (for those whom are 18 years of age and inquisitive only) "Those people spending large amounts of time accessing porn are not having more fun," said Dr Heather Wood. "They are more worried about themselves, more worried about what they are looking at, and report more relationship problems." Four per cent of men aged 18-24 (in the UK) said they used adult sites for more than 10 hours a week, a level which doctors describe as "problematic and potentially compulsive". bbc There are quite a few ways of looking at it. You could say that those who don’t look at porn sites enough, and, um, pleasure themselves whilst doing so, are more prone to premature ejaculation, not being able to ‘do it’ for long enough, and don’t have much of an imagination whilst doing it. You could also say that those who spend too much time doing such things won’t have much of a personality other than one which might aptly present him as nothing more than a ‘...

To those who don’t know, Milli Vanilli, a pop group of the 80s, had its grammy revoked when it was discovered that their award-winning song wasn’t sung by them. They were just lip-synching to a song sung by someone else. This was Frank Farian’s idea - the one who formed and managed the group that was fronted by Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus. Why? Because Farian felt that the original singers lacked a marketable image. Well, according to current music standards, singers don’t generally make it unless they have a particular image do they. I’m not talking about all those sad gits queueing up for American Idol and its other global copies. Such shows will have to select the best copycats - there’s nothing original about the music style of any of these ‘idol’-style contests - whether they look like they had ten too many t.v. dinners in the course of a single movie or were as tone-deaf as William Hung who seemed to have a voice more suited to shouting out orders in a takeaway. It is, aft...

ed's comment on youtube: Well, even legal DVDs are copies aren't they. So should we support the producers who are making billions from copies of movies or Lovefilm who want a share of these billions. The question at the end of the day ought to be if corporations, 'stars', etc, should be allowed to make this much money from copies. Perhaps the answer to this question might go some way in determining whom the real pirates are. Failing to answer this might simply serve to grant particular sectors the exclusive rights to piracy. ed

Damn Microsoft. If they hadn’t blocked my email account, i would have received information on the protests in London yesterday, and would certainly have enlisted. Anyway, some thoughts, ************ note: it was interesting to note that the BBC entitled the related article, 'TUC condemns post-rally violence', but the article mainly quotes police opinions. And the TUC, in the said article, places stress on how the violence ought not to detract one from the main message of the protest. But this is not reflected in the title, or the general content of the article. ************ Said Commander Bob Broadhurst who was in charge of the Met police operation, "All was peaceful for quite a long while but then for some reason one of them made an attack on the Olympic [countdown] clock, we moved in to make an arrest, the next minute they're attacking us and they're trying to attack and damage the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square." - bbc No, i’m not supporting the attac...

(A tiny portion of the following was placed as a comment on a Google forum featuring complains about Blogger's 'save template' function in the back-end not functioning since yesterday - and which explains why my favicon in my art site is not functioning.) Well, that's the thing about capitalism, the richer you allow the fat cats to get, the more they're going to own your means of expression, subsistence, aspiration, and motivation. S/he who owns the means of production, does not only own your means of subsistence, but owns all of the above as well. It is that which enables them to determine the evolution of the human persona. A company being completely answerable to you is dependent on your owning it. The same thing applies in the case of 'democratic' governments doesn't it. Why do people expect to 'own' their governments and not their companies eh? Your condition cannot but get worse until you degenerate enough to think it normal and natu...

When people ask me what sort of music I listen to, I might say, amongst others, “60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.” “Oh! Retro.”, they might respond knowingly. “No. ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.”, I correct them. And if they were to push it with an, “It’s the same thing isn’t it!” Then they’ve asked for it. Dictionary meanings and social meanings can be two different things. On the surface, ‘retro’ would refer to ‘the past’. There is no other value attributed to it. It is just ‘music that was produced in the past’. But when humanity fell for the religious belief that ‘we are living in modern’ times - excluding ed - this meant that quite a few words begin to mean something else as well. For instance, ‘elders’ became ‘old’. ‘Retro’ became ‘kitsch’, ‘passe’, ‘old’, and all of these words became interchangeable terms as well. That’s what happens when people are led to believe that we are living in ‘modern’ times; that we have reached the shores of enlightened times unlike the ‘medieval past’. So ...

"Plans for Stephen Fry to film part of a documentary series in Japan have been shelved after complaints about nuclear bomb jokes in his quiz show QI. The offending episode of QI was broadcast last month and featured a discussion about Tsutomu Yamaguchi - the only person known to have survived both bombings. Mr Yamaguchi was burnt in the Hiroshima explosion - only to travel by train to Nagasaki to be caught in the second attack three days later. During the programme Stephen Fry and two fellow comedians discussed Mr Yamaguchi's survival. Alan Davies suggested an A-bomb had landed on Mr Yamaguchi and "bounced off". And Stephen Fry expressed amazement that the Japanese trains were still running after the blast. The episode prompted a complaint to the BBC from the Japanese Embassy who accused the broadcaster of making light of the attacks. The BBC responded by apologising, acknowledging the sensitivity of the subject for Japanese viewers.” - bbc I’m just waiting for Fry ...