The Early Years (2002-2005)

A 7-day alarm clock, to take into account unusual schedules - like those of college kids. A James Bond-style hidden camera. You pay peanuts, you get monkey SWAT team members.

It’s Ratzinger, who was the front runner. This bit about the new Pope is interesting: Joseph Ratzinger, 77, one of the heads of the Vatican leadership, a conservative and a close aide to the late pope. He deserted from the German army during World War II. He is well versed in Jewish issues and admitted that “a certain insufficient resistance by Christians to this atrocity (the Holocaust) is explained by the anti-Judaism present in the souls of more than a few Christians.” (Link)

Do you hate corporate-speak? So do lots of people: Warshawsky, a “recovering jargonaholic,” said he hopes to rehabilitate otherwise smart business people who pollute their communications with terms like “results-driven” or “paradigm shift.”

Over at SPASTIC, the Society for the Preservation and Acknowledgement of Subjunctive Tense In Communication, there’s a post that captures what annoys me about Gwen Stefani and Eve’s “Rich Girl”: they changed the nice subjunctive of “If I Were a Rich Man” to “If I was a rich girl”. Does no one respect the subjunctive tense? It’s my only peeve about Sophie B. Hawkins’ “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover”.

Reason has an evaluation of Ayn Rand by Cathy Young, 100 years after her birth, noting how “Objectivism remains, for most people, a way station on a journey to some wider outlook”. These two extracts struck me:

What’s with Blogger and the dreaded “500 Internal Server Error” page these days? At least their support sent me a nice message when I e-mailed them yesterday, saying I apparently have to clear my cache and cookies. Wired compiles a litany of complaints, including the double-post problem (Blogger sometimes get stuck at the Publishing… 0% page - so you go back, hit Publish again, voila, double the pleasure)…

The Singapore International Film Festival recently kicked off, and Tokyo Godfathers screened last Sunday morning. I’ve seen it on DVD already, and it’s a great film - it really speaks to the power of anime.

Maybe of interest only to an urban-planning wonk-wannabe like me, but this New York Times article discusses the possibility of building a light-rail line across 42nd Street. I think it’s a good, or at least intriguing, idea - I remember being stuck for a good half hour on the M42 between Fifth and Sixth… they still need a Second Avenue Line though.

As a person who can’t endure long car rides without the need for frequent rest stops, I think it’s funny that Paula Radcliffe stopped to relieve herself in the London Marathon - and still ended up setting a world record. (The article uses “spend a penny” as a euphemism for using the toilet - now that’s a phrase I haven’t heard in ages.)

Sometimes Singapore seems like it’s populated by anorexics. I know, I know, the pressure to be thin exists in many developed countries: it’s at the heart of Bridget’s insecurities in Bridget Jones’ Diary, teenage girls write to their Goddess Ana in America, and so on, but when I was in Boston or New York or London, I don’t think I ever felt it to be as pervasive as it is here.

How the Onion is written. Looks like Herzog and de Meuron have another success in their revamp of the Walker Art Center. Making fun of the New York Times’ wedding page. I can’t read this Japanese page (literally - Asian fonts aren’t installed on my computer), but it’s got lots of pictures of old Singapore, such as this one of Victoria Memorial Hall. Intriguing. Speaking of which, on the 2nd floor of Shaw Tower on Beach Road, there’s a nice set of photos of old Beach Road, back in the days when the Raffles Hotel was actually a hotel by the coast. A dictionary of Singlish.

Would you use this loo?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Alfie, Get Carter, and The Italian Job together are three of the coolest roles ever. Michael Caine was one cool SOB back in the day. And the modern remakes of all three pale in comparison.

On Salon, Thomas Bartlett mentions the Music Lab experiment at Columbia: A research team led by Columbia University sociology professor Duncan Watts is conducting an experiment called Music Lab … an experiment that involves a lot of free MP3 downloads. After signing in and answering a few questions, you’ll find yourself on a page listing 48 songs. If you click on a song, you’ll hear a streaming version of it, along with a prompt to rate how much you like it. After answering, you’re given the option to download it (free and legal) or to move on. I’ve listened to a handful of the songs, all of them by bands I’ve never heard of, and so far haven’t found them particularly good. How the experiment works, and what the Columbia researchers are actually measuring, isn’t explained anywhere on the Web page. (Link, may be premium)

I’ve realised that I don’t talk enough about music on this here blog; I know I maintain a pure reviews site, but sometimes that’s too much writing when all I want to do is note how good some songs I’m listening to are, or just want to talk about bands that have excited me. So, here’s a partial list of tunes I’ve heard and liked lately:

A really good, really funny film. Laconic.

Whatever happened to Trivial Pursuit? According to Slate, Google and the game’s lack of repeatability did it in. By the way, winning in the specialist Trivial Pursuits (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) is like winning in exhibition games. Unless you’re playing the Genus edition, it doesn’t count.

I just bought James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds, which articulates nicely a fundamental belief of many economists (it explains why I don’t believe in managed mutual funds, for instance). I’ve always been a fan of Surowiecki’s columns in the New Yorker, and the book’s great. Even in my brief reads on the subway there’ve been a few bits that struck me… the idea that the best ideas do not require everyone to buy into them, but simply require that there is a means to aggegate judgements:

Decided to bite the bullet and change this blog to use CSS and DIV tags instead of tables. Hence the new look. Tech geeks will also be pleased to learn that this page has been rewritten to be XHTML compliant. There’re other behind-the-scenes changes.

Apparently, you’re not allowed to sell your frequent flyer miles to others. This strikes me as strange. I guess that’s why the folks at Jet Set Travel are so antsy about the system.