Science and Faith

Yes, I was reading one of my regular blog and it link to this website about Science and Faith. I think this is a great post and it is not one of those lengthy debates but an outpouring of frustrations on things that have been proven and shot down that should have been laid to rest long ago. It is great to talk about it in religious class but not as a challenge to science.

On one of the comments, there is something called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a parody, using the approach by certain religious zealots to justify the existence of a new “God”. Pretty funny, go read it here~!

While on the same subject, I read about a certain church. Due to a natural refrain from helping to advertise, increase count or whatever you like, name is withheld but it is easy to know which church I am referring to. A blog about it, a newspaper article and finally a wikipedia entry.

The lost blogs....

I used to surf blogspot, skimming through blogs after blogs, stopping to read at certain blogs that I feel are interesting or good. It may be informational, technical, personal blogs or whatever attracted me.

Now, I am speed surfing blogspots as I am hitting pages and pages of advertisments. It is like a free blatant advertising website with all sorts of keywords. This is to hope that google will pick up the page and then links to it and hopefully reach some potential customers. All these are making blogs reading difficult and inconvenient.

I hope that blogspot can clear out fake blogs like this and I can go back to surfing other people’s blogs

Blogger for Word

Found this new utility for blogspot. Seems to be pretty useful as you can use Microsoft Word to blog. This makes blogging slightly easier as you can certainly blog on Word, do your editing etc “offline” before publishing it.

Certainly saves the problem of errors in blogspot, losing your blog as what happened to A because you still have your original Word document. But you can always use back the normal blogspot to blog.

Good and Bad Experience found in the same restaurant

Renn Thai Restaurant in Suntec City

A and I went to Renn Thai last night for dinner. We decide to give the restaurant a try as the food seems nice and prices are reasonable.

The food is indeed good as it tastes quite good and value for money. Environment is not bad and a bit cozy. This is the good experience encountered in a new restaurant.

The bad side? Be prepared to wait up to at least 40 minutes for your food. Yes. 40 minutes. You must be thinking that I probably waited for 10-30 minutes outside the restaurant queueing inclusive. Sorry, this is totally wrong! The restaurant was half full and most of the customers are already served. A and I only ordered 2 main dishes and 2 drinks but it still took an amazing 40 minutes for them to serve a main dish and 10 minutes later to serve the other dish. Halfway through my meal, I decide to order the mango salad first which I forgot to order earlier on. 20 minutes after it, both A and I finished our meals already and the wait for a mango salad took so long, we decide to cancel the order and leave.

You maybe thinking why I rant on for so much while I only listed the good side of it. Hey, the food is the only redeeming factor here. This is a restaurant which has its main branch in Ngee Ann City and is located at Suntec City. Such poor service is not exactly tolerated. We spent 1.5 hr in the restaurant, just to have a 10 minute meal. This is absurd.

Please do not patronise this restaurant unless it is near empty or you are not hungry yet. then again, why are you in a restaurant if you are not hungry?

Breakdancing Transformers

I was a transformer fan since young but was gradually weaned off as stories get more and more boring? or whatever. Drawing is getting worse and the storyline is getting bad..

Anyway here is a short clip of a dancing soundwave! I do not like the preface of saying the Decepticons has won and took over the Autobots' base. But I like the music and the dance. Marvellous piece of animation! Keep up the good work!

Breakdancing Transformers!

Celebrity Blog... Has blogging reached its low??? or is it about the mentality of ppl reaching a new low?

The Singapore blogging scene seems to come alive with famous celebrity blogs. I am not putting the names here so it will add on their google search results. Not that I am jealous but I feel it will certainly help if the count does not increase.

I went to a few such blog sites, only 1 or 2 I feel are worthy to be mentioned. Some are really brainless and I do not see the appeal. And it seems to be the majority of these blogs are seeking attention rather than blogging. Also, some are shirking responsibilities from what they wrote. I believe you should be responsible for what you write, own up your mistakes etc.

A famous example is that someone apparently with the vicious intent to impersonate a China blogger (who is of a certain fame) and used it to attack a Singapore blogger. This Malaysian blogger who is a pal to this Singapore blogger slammed the impersonator. When it was alerted to him that it was a sham and he was tricked into response, he grudgingly put up a disclaimer to claim what he wrote at the time was true as what he believed. He only mentioned that it was blogged under the assumption that the English version of the blog belongs to the China blogger. I feel that he should not just said it was under the assumption that it was true but instead put out an apology. This can certainly be grounds for a defamation case.

Also, some blogs only show the shallowness of the so called celebrity bloggers. I am not expecting them to sprout political, artisitic or whatever high class musing of things everytime. I admit that the blogs are for personal thoughts and feelings but I feel they are surprising shallow. I can understand that if they want to blog abt daily happenings, how they feel abt things (which I do also) but when it hits important stuff, I shudders and cringes at the shallowness of it. I am not implicating I am a 'deep' person but those views are left better to oneself and proclaiming to the big audience out there. Either blogging reached a low or the voyeuristic nature of singaporeans and people reached a new low?

All this make me feels a bit reluctant to blog anymore..

PS : Taken off from a particular blog, a comment which i feel similar to my sentiments and definitely breach the subject much better than me! Some sections are censored off not to reveal too much. If you recognise this is your comment and want me to take it off, please let me know =P

There's all this debate that since it's XXXX's own blog, it's her own right and freedom to publish what she wants. But therein lies the conundrum: since she has somewhat gained a measure of celebrity through a combination of injudicious writing and shameless narcissim (imho), and receives a considerable amount of visitors to her site whether out of curiosity or to get off, isn't it up to her to maintain a sense of responsibility (however alien) about what she writes?
True enough, it IS her own blog. she does have the freedom to blog what she really feels. No one is denying this. She is free to describe in lurid and tasteless detail XXXXX, however insulting or tactless it might be. She is obviously trying to live up to her trite proclaimations to 'be real' and whoever she was 3 years ago, even if it offends a part of the singaporean online community.
After all, she IS XXXX right? she has 250 people (or more?) to seek comfort and head-patting from. who gives a flying fuck about the rest eh? Apparently her XXXXX (high intelligence) did little in helping to ruminate on the repercussions of such statements. perhaps she thought being a da mei nu and overdosing on pinkness was enough to alleviate the impassioned reactions to her controversial post.
"With great power comes great responsibility" cliched, but it rings true. When elevated to a certain position (XXXXX, in question, arguably an A-list blogger, heh), the people around you start watching. Some will observe, some will react, some will emulate. The responses of the people who notice you are myriad, and it's impossible to list them all. It's merely social dynamics, and the reason why the term "social graces" was coined.from the time her blog received some extensive media publicity (in comparison to mine, which to date has only 300 visitors sadly), it stopped being private and a personal diary. it became a platform for expressing her views publicly.
If she really wanted to express herself freely, without regard and with all privacy, couldn't she have resorted to writing a personal diary or created a blog that you'd have to suscribe to or something? The possibilities are endless, if she possessed this mysterious quality of 'social graces'. one suspects her true intentions and realises her immense vanity, when you read the method and articulation of her writing. Then again, it might all be done on purpose just to generate more publicity for herself. Hence the adage, 'any publicity is good publicity'

Oh my god! The manipulative bxxxh!

Music to the ears?

With mp3 players getting more common and cheaper, it is common to see lots of people plugged into their audio devices and listening to their favourite songs. In the era of walkmans and discmans, they are not so common as they are expensive, bulky and to listen to more songs entitle a lot of carrying discs and tapes around with you which is inconvenient and does not look fashionable.

Now with even handphones offering space and capability to play mp3s, almost every1 is able to plug in to their own mobile song playing device.

Now, here comes the trouble. with a vast majority plugged in, 2 common scenarios occur.

First, you will literally get blasted away by them, sadly to say, not by your own devices but by others. Some people can set such a loud volume that the whole bus or train can hear what they are listening to. Are they deaf or they have already turned deaf by their own devices? They are so irritating!!

Second, most people set the volume to an acceptable level but however, it effectively turned them into virtual deafs. Yesterday and today, I have encountered similar incidents. Those virtual deafs are unable to hear requests from other people to move aside so they can exit the trains. This lead to frustrated people to squeeze past them while they still pay no attentions. Encountered twice from yesterday and today, both time I realised the deafs are plugged in but both cases, the deafs are female. I wanted to tap their shoulders, to gesture to them to take off their earphones and ask them to move aside. Due to them being ladies, it was kinda inappropriate for me and I let it go.

Here, I promise to myself that I will let them know whether the deafs are male or female!