The Early Years (2002-2005)

I’ve blogged about my general disdain for PowerPoint before, so I’m glad to see that AmShazam over at MIT has commented on how PowerPoint has been badly used by educators. I remember back in college that almost none of my professors used PowerPoint. I think it was a recognition that there are certain issues with using a business-presentation program as a tool of pedagogy. I remember talking to someone here in Singapore about how great it was that my profs still used chalk, and he acted surprised at how low-tech it seemed. I thought it was pathetic, really, to assume that good teaching must involve the latest technology, without even analysing whether that technology suits the needs of the teacher.

Over in Verbal Energy, Ruth Walker has an article on the proper use of the definite article - i.e. the “the” (not to be confused with the band The The). That made me think: one thing I dislike about English usage in Singapore is the tendency to drop the “the” - for instance, in talking about a speech made by the Prime Minister, some people open with “Prime Minister said…” I’ve heard this may also be the internal style of the British government, so it’s not necessarily wrong, but it certainly sounds unidiomatic, and certainly not the style of formal reporting (the BBC, for one, definitely uses “the PM”).

Been doing some minor tinkering with this blog’s design, and I chanced upon a good web design article by Jakob Nielsen - “Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design”. Basically makes the point that a good interface should get the hell out of the way so that users can get to content. It made me think about the explosion of blogs: sure, in the 90s everyone used flashy Flash sites, but who ever visited them more than once? As it turned out, what was more popular was the plain text and links of blogs - content.

More pics from my travel-writing days. Here’s Bryn Celli Ddu (means “the mound in the dark grove”; best approximation of pronunciation I can muster: bryn keh-HLEE thee) on the island of Anglesey in Wales. It’s a henge, aka a burial chamber, that dates back to the Neolithic era. The stone outside is a reconstruction, with the original sitting in a museum, but the thing I love is that this mound just sits there, without any need for garish signs or explanations. (Apparently, there was a sign in Welsh, but I didn’t see it.) Which is as it should be, I think - why should the past be only explained in terms of the present? Of course, the cairn (wow, I rarely get to use that word - wonder what the family cairn terrier would do if I brought him here?) is quite off the beaten path so it’s not overrun by tourists. To reach it, I hiked from Llanfair P.G.

A review of the White Stripes’ Blackpool Deluxe download-only 3-song EP is up on Delta Sierra Arts.

Very belatedly, I sat down and wrote reviews of two films I caught earlier this year: Under a Tuscan Sun and Spider-Man 2. Both up on Delta Sierra Arts, my reviews site. Will do up my Before Sunset review sometime soon, but until then, you can try The Suburbs Are Killing Us for music from Julie Delpy.

Flipping through blogs, I found this list: Ten signs you’re a drama queen: You say I AM NOT A DRAMA QUEEN! You refer to yourself in the third person. You warn people not to bring drama into your life.

Julian Baggini on modern manners and philosophy: You should not accept or continue a phone call if a shop assistant is serving you. If Jean-Paul Sartre were alive, which he isn’t, and he gave advice, which he didn’t, he may well have shed light on the correct use of a mobile phone using his distinction between thinking of a person authentically as a being-for-itself (être-pour-soi) with will and consciousness, or inauthentically as being-in-itself (être-en-soi), a mere thing. So when we ignore the presence of someone like a shop assistant, treating them as absent and the absent caller as present, we are doing no less than denying their humanity.

From boingboing, the world’s geekiest tattoo. Perhaps on his ankle he could tat “C:>Run”…

Someone on a message board I’m on posted this. Heh. But seriously, it’s coming on Thanksgiving, and I really want to eat turkey - or better yet, turducken. Meat! Meat! Meat!

Here in Singapore we see abalone and think “oh, high-end special occasion food”. This startup in California goes “oh, new biological nano-fabrication processes”. Dr. Belcher has studied the biology of abalones and how the mollusks are able to assemble an extremely hard shell from calcium carbonate and other minerals in an ocean filled with various microbes and contaminants. The result: she and her colleagues have developed proteins that can bind to about 30 different electronic, magnetic, and optical materials, and then assemble the materials into protein structures.

A disparate collection of links: on being made to pay copyright for the citing of Radiohead lyrics… the bear that poops prime numbers… Yoshio Taniguchi’s extension to MoMA has opened; wish I were there… everyone in a kitchen in New York is Spanish-speaking, as anyone who’s read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential knows; clearly the snooty family described here hasn’t caught on… after almost a whole year on hiatus, Kim Jong Il’s livejournal has new content…

Following in the footsteps of the auction of the sandwich with the image of the Virgin Mary, here’s a sandwich with the image of Hello Kitty. Only US$8.49. Of course, that might have been higher if the seller were here in Kitty-krazed Singapore.

More pictures from my travels through England. This is the famed bus shelter in the middle of a roundabout from “Penny Lane”, now converted, inevitably, into a restaurant living off the fame. Here’s the backstory behind “Penny Lane” - as noted in that article, none of the places mentioned in the song are strictly on Penny Lane itself, but rather in the general area known as Penny Lane.

You know, everyone and her grandfather seem to be obsessed with handphones/mobile phones/cellphones here in li’l Singapore. But very few people I meet have the same main criterion as I do, which is: if I drop the phone out of my pocket (fairly common occurence for me), will it still function? Those danged stores won’t let me test the phones that way.

Woohoo! Much as I’ve derided iTunes, I always wanted the store to work in Singapore, and I figured out that as long as you have a US credit card you can shop for tunes online. Mmm. Quality recordings, proper tags. Well worth $0.99 a song.

Next on Fox… When Blonde Superstars With Boyfriends Who Have Been Involved in Wardrobe Malfunctions Attack.

So I took a taxi to work today, figuring that if I’m in a cab I can get some shut-eye. Of course, then I realised my cab driver was one of those drivers who insists on accelerating as much as possible, despite being caught in heavy traffic on the ECP1. You guessed it: much acceleration followed by sharp braking, followed by an increasingly green-looking face. By the time I dropped off at my office I had a hard time walking straight; had to spend considerable time staring at the porcelain of the office loo. They really should equip some cabs with barf bags.

Here’s a funny snarky post on Indian Stallion on Singapore Idol’s Indian-themed episode: So how did they go about it you ask? Well they had the Singapore Idol contestants run around trees that they set up on stage. They also talked in strong exaggerated Indian accents. It’s amazing how they manage to capture the very essence of what the local Indian community is all about with that little skit. Because that’s what we Indians pride ourselves most on - for dancing around trees in our Bollywood movies and talking English in really funny Indian accents.

Here’s a really interesting social psych experiment result: people who think of Superman are much less likely to volunteer for community service than people who think of other superheroes. Suppsedly because they think of Supes and go “well, I can’t measure up”. (From the New Scientist)