Strike 2!

Nicholas Lazarus, the Young PAP blogger who called all of us who criticized the ministerial pay increase “Green Eyed Monsters” (HERE), has once again come up with a gem.

The Alternative Vision for Singapore (and I mean Alternative!)

Imagine men walking hand in hand with other men down Orchard Road, kissing, fondling and making out.

Instead of teachers dealing with boy-girl relationships, teachers would have to deal with boy-boy relationships.

Then, you might have the homosexuals all over Asia descending upon Singapore to flaunt what they cannot in their own countries.

I’m mildly surprised that he, being a “litigation lawyer in private practice” as he so mentioned in his earlier post, can still have such logically flawed arguments, especially ones posted online for the world to see, as well as under the YPAP header. “Mildly” due to his previous post.

Letting his homophobic biases take precedence over his reasoning seriously does not bode well for his reputation. From what I’ve seen, I for one, would not like to have such a lawyer represent me in court. Besides, the post itself isn’t much more than a statement against gays, without any justification nor analysis. How is such open discrimination allowed? A while ago there were bloggers charged under Sedition Act for racist remarks. Sections 3.d and 3.e say

(d) to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the citizens of Singapore or the residents in Singapore;

(e) to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore.

Although i can’t say that what he wrote is equivalent to what the charged bloggers said, or that it can even be classified as seditious, baseless blatant discrimination proves nothing about the spoken, but says everything about the speaker.

Secret Sauce

http://www.ironiccharacters.com/

If diethylene glycol (DEG) can sneak into countries in toothpaste and cough syrup, it might as well sneak around in plain sight on T-shirts.

Saint Pierre

Saint Pierre
3 Magazine Road, #01-01 Central Mall
Singapore 059570
Tel: 65 – 6438 0887

This quaint restaurant located at Central Mall, near Velvet Dragon, serves great French cuisine, although at the typical French serving sizes. Stepping in, i was be greeted warmly by the service staff. From then i could tell that this would not be a simple dining experience. The table was laden with tall wine glasses, champagne flutes and other glassware, making me worry that a careless knock would create disaster. It’s not everyday that you have staff who provide such attention, as well as intimate knowledge of their craft, from the Sommelier to the Silver Service Waiters offering bread and cheese. First up was the amuses bouche, which consisted of Foie Gras Crème Brûlée, Garlic Soup, Prosciutto Moouse on Asparagus, and Crouton with Summer
Vegetables.

For starters there was Coquille Saint Jacques Grillee (grilled hokkaido scallops on gold leaf with salsa,

classic pan-fried foie gras with caramelised green
apples and old port sauce,

and Truffle Pasta among others.

Besides what was in the menu, the staff offered a selection of items that certainly made things a little different for regular customers. Lime Sorbet was served after the starters to cleanse the palate.

Mains included Wagyu Beef

Epaule D’agneau Confite (braised lamb shoulder)

Homard a la Marocaine (pan-fried atlantic lobster) and Grilled Cod from France. As they didn’t have enough Cod, we were offered Turbot instead.

For dessert, there was Flourless Belgian Chocolate Cake served with ice-cream which was very good. They have a mint version as well, inspired by the After-Eight chocolate mints.

Bully – part 2

From Channel News Asia:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/290930/1/.html

Survey finds 20% of primary school students experienced bullying

……

Among the 165 primary school students surveyed, more than 20 per cent experienced bullying, of which 65 per cent suffered verbal abuse and 42 per cent were physically bullied.

However, six out of every ten students surveyed said they felt angry when bullied.

……

A while ago there was another report that bullying “went up marginally to 3.7 cases for every 1,000 students.” which i commented on in a previous post HERE.

In the previous article, Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew said,

“We are mindful that for every incident that is reported, there may be a small number or a certain number that may not be reported.”

So it seems that the “small number or certain number” is actually 54 times more than the initial findings of 0.37%. Interesting that there can be such a gargantuan difference. The first report was using MOE’s statistic (0.37%), whereas the new statistic was by the Singapore Children’s Society. However, the new report does raise some questions. We can logically conclude that physical bullying in of a higher level than verbal abuse, and therefore those that have been physically bullied have also been verbally bullied. So if “Among the students surveyed, more than 20 per cent experienced bullying, of which 65 per cent suffered verbal abuse and 42 per cent were physically bullied.” what of the other 35% of the those who experienced bullying? Even if you reject the assumption that all physical bullying is accompanied by verbal abuse as well, the numbers still do not add up. Are there other kinds of bullying besides verbal and physical that aren’t being mentioned?

Secondly, if “six out of every ten students surveyed said they felt angry when bullied.”, doesn’t it mean that 60% of students (and not just 20%) have been bullied before? How else would they have felt angry? If the sentence is phrased wrongly and actually meant to say “they would feel angry when being bullied”, it also makes no sense that 40% would not feel angry when being bullied.

I feel that as a mainstream news medium, CNA has the duty to be diligent in providing a complete picture of a news item, and not leave such obvious gaping holes.

Edison

By the way, Edison wasn’t the first to invent the vacuum light bulb. Joseph Swan did.

Legolisation

http://www.pictobrick.de/content_en/pictobrick.html

Build a mosaic out of legobricks!

Drawings can’t eat

Geek Terminal

Geek Terminal
55 Market Street
#01-01
Singapore 048941

Yesterday i ventured to the much hyped Geek Terminal near Raffles Place MRT for dinner. The place has a pretty sleek decor, and i do appreciate the tables having a slot below the surface to stow away the laptop when the food comes. The power circuit tracks running along the floor is definitely cool, however having huge LCD televisions running advertising is quite the turnoff. When i was there, it was quite empty, with perhaps 4 tables with people in the main dining area. Weekday nights are probably low traffic periods in the CBD. I feel the chairs could be better, despite them being specially made to be stain-proof, as it is more of a lean back kind, and not suited to dining where you would probably want to sit upright. Food is reasonably priced for that kind of establishment, with finger food and coffee at $3-$5, and pasta under $10. I had the set dinner, which consisted of Lobster Bisque Soup, first time trying it and it turned out to be not my kind of food, Prawn Salad, which really was salad unlike the usual fruits drowned in mayo, Chicken Kebab, good, Grilled Salmon, cooked medium meaning raw at the core and covered in too-strong lemon sauce accompanied with mash potatoes and mixed vegetables.

Sounds yum, but somewhere in there was a ninja that wrecked havoc in my digestive track and more or less incapacitated me for the rest of the night, not to mention a long and arduous stint in the toilet. Wasn’t lunch cos the lunch kakis weren’t afflicted and i didn’t have anything else. What a bad ending to any meal.

Balloons

You know how when as a kid, when you got hold of a balloon you’d start to wonder if you had a lot more you’d be able to fly? Well, somebody recently did it.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/10/flying.lawn.chair.ap/index.html

Photo credit: CNN

BEND, Oregon (AP) — Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Passive Amplifier

http://www.scienceandsons.com/ph2.php

Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone inventively exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibles* (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers)