civilisationReview

Guardian: Lance Armstrong doping scandal: Q&A  Look at it this way.  If every athlete was to self-dope with an equal amount of ‘performance enhancers’, and one amongst them wins gold, wouldn’t that still be a reflection of the athlete’s ability since they all start on an equal ‘performance enhanced’ footing? Putting it in this context, if all cyclists in the races Lance Armstrong took part in was to self-dope, and Lance still won gold, wouldn’t that still mean that he has an added innate ability to win it over others whom also self-doped? Everything is a ‘performance-enhancer’.  Whether it be training, or to having the right supplements, or to having the right regime to deliver gold medals in their barrowfull.  To say that one supplement is alright, and another isn’t, is just another way of saying that we have to level the playing field where everyone takes a common type of supplement.  Where one takes an uncommon or ‘banned’ type of supplement, the supposed...

Well, how is this happening.   Conspiracy theories aside, i’d say that one of the significant contributors to the degeneration of language, and hence, thought, is the young serving as a significant and vocal market force, and playing a major role in the evolution of the content of the net, with it largely being determined by the Americans whom are advanced enough in capitalism to reduce and produce people whom are nothing more than mere consumers and trend-followers. Is it any wonder that ‘awesome’ and ‘weird’ and ‘cool’ have become the verbal arbitrators of what is acceptable and what isn’t?  There is no argument, no rationale.  All we are assailed by is a barrage of OMGs and WTFs and LOLs.  Like I was saying to my companion, V (chinese girl from singapore) is that the more extensive the vocabulary, the greater the meaningful means by which we can comprehend reality.  I compared american-english to the chinese-english (for instance, called ‘singlish’, in s...

With the Christmas dinner done, writer Will Self says that the UK's collective new year resolution should be to bring an end to the national obsession with food. Are you full yet? Stuffed? Fit to burst? I do hope so. After all, no-one but a Scrooge with an eating disorder would wish people to stint themselves over the festive season. bbc: a point of view: the neverending culinary merry-go-round (the following was sent as a comment to the BBC with regards to the above article) Frankly, i think the Brits eat too much meat during the season....and at other times as well, but i can understand that to some extent as it does help keep one warm.  But then again, i substituted the traditional Christmas Turkey with smoked salmon and a bit of chicken roasted in muld wine.  It went down well.  I also did away with the traditional christmas sweets and calories with just a couple of chocs from a tin of 'Roses'.  I then proceeded to wash it all down with half a glass of tradi...

I suppose the belief that the end is nigh is due to people wishing for a world without Mondays....and feeling impotent enough to not do something about it themselves ~ ed bbc: Mayan prophecies: Life after the (non) end of the world On the other hand.....those who openly state that only idiots believe that the world will end today base their self-confidence in the fact that they can never be proven wrong. ~ ed bbc: 'Mayan day of apocalypse' arrives (the comments beneath the bbc article is worth a read...for it's priceless wit that is ;) ed

Yes. Quite. For the simple reason of pitting ‘white’ vs ‘others’ without distinguishing between white British vs white European at crucial points of the ‘analysis’ on the BBC - which has a tendency to give ‘Editor’s Pick’ ratings for xenophobic comments . (click on image below) In the first para, 86% were said to be ‘white’ in 2011 with 45.1 describing themselves s ‘white British’. However, when it comes to the graph indicating ethnic change from 2001-2011, there is no distinction between ‘white British’ and ‘white European’ or ‘white Other’. All we have are distinctions on the basis of colour. ...Britain is a ‘white country’ despite the ethnicity of its white inhabitants. In other words, ethnicity only matters if you’re not white. With this colour distinction made between ‘white’ vs non-whites, the analysis immediately moves on to stating that ‘fewer than half of London’s residents were white British’. This will tend to reinforce the notion that the rest were non-white - which ...

I said a while back in an article on a2ed.com...or was it another site...anyway, that getting the ipod nano was stupid and a half as you were getting far less space for far more cost, and encouraging the capitalist gits to learn from that and screw you similarly in other arenas. It also trains the masses to be focused on the superficial, i.e. ‘size’ in this case, and thus makes them more susceptible to superficial sales strategies in the future...which is already happening. Anyway, there's no reasoning with consumers these days. They are the peasants of 'modern' times, and all they require to serve as evidence of their 'intelligence' is the ability to make enough money to pay even more for products simply because there is some brand affixed on them, and their ability to get a job and reproduce their stupidity via their progeny.  Being thus underdeveloped, they also become unable to appreciate greater evidence of intelligence.  Hence, over time, intelligence can actu...

It's interesting to know that xingapore's cable and broadband companies are sort of partnering with China's telecom firms like 'hwa wei' as well. Wonder when these people are going to grow up, get egalitarian, and stop sticking to their own - and stop caring about falling chinese birth rates as if that is an issue in what is supposed to be a multicultural state. And, by the way, the U.S. has issued alerts against Hwa Wei and ZTE as security threats and possibly linked to China's government and military. related article on BBC - China's love-hate relationship with what is foreign Singapore, after all, is going to fast-track china's citizens into taking over the rest of the region But i suppose in the chinese supremacist state of xingapore, that is not a problem. (calling it a ‘chinese supremacist’ state is not an ‘opinion’ but a matter of definition, i.e. stating that singapore must always have a chinese majority; that our 'mother tongue will be mand...

A linear tabulation of age only counts when wear-and-tear, biological age, amongst related others, are taken into account.  The Perspective For instance, Chinese culture has been tabulated to be thousands of years old, going back to the Shang, or Hsia.  Egyptian culture has been dated to be even more than that.  Western contemporary culture has been dated back to Greece.  But that isn’t true, logically speaking, albeit it be true chronologically. When it comes to culture, its age can only be determined by the continuity of a culture of antiquity to the present in terms of perspective.  When there is a major shift in culture, and the people began to go along a path that people of a previous era would not have if they had continued along their path, then we can say that their cultural age starts from zero at the point of the major transition, or shift away from an earlier and dominant mode of thought. This perspective for instance, and ed, is not borne of ‘Singapo...

This is my first test video using the HD Hero Pro 2 - doing a quick spin around the neighbourhood....beautiful experience to remember. It is not the raw video but a compressed version. Not too bad. The Image Stabilisation isn't too good. But, passable. The colours, though, are rich, natural, and scenes are crisp - especially so in the original uncompressed video. If you like to watch it, you could select the 'hd' option. The music you hear is that which i played via my mp3 player whilst doing this video:) I added the same music to the video later. ed

A court has banned sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the US while it decides on the firm's patent dispute with Apple. Apple has claimed that Samsung infringed its design patent and copied the look of its popular device, the iPad. - bbc I find this, ‘who took whose ideas’ situation between Apple and Samsung quite the big joke.  Where do you think Apple and Samsung got these ideas from?  People known as ‘employees’.  And whilst these ‘employees’ can get sacked, retrenched, retired, etc, Apple and Samsung keep making money of their ideas don’t they.  And the exploiters controlling both companies make tons of money as well don’t they.  And let’s not forget that both companies, amongst all others, will be trawling the net looking for ideas in forums, design trends, beta testers, people suggesting new ideas, etc, etc, etc, and taking their ideas without paying them a cent either.  In other words, these exploitative corporations get 'their' ideas by out...