A story of a line

Well, I'm not the one telling it. But it's a good story and one worth thinking about. Go check it out. It's a hell of a lot better than those saccharine forwarded e-mails that pollute the Net.

In other news...

The Good:
Monarchy doing something useful? w00t! Props to King Abdullah!
As we all now know, pot makes you swim faster. I suppose it also helps if, like Phelps, you happen to be genetically engineered to be the supreme ultimate swimmer. But fear not, the playing field will be evened, because science prevails! Man, those things need to be in the Olympics.

The Bad:
This is not a happy time for pirates the world over. Notably in Beijing, and, horror of horrors, Sweden! Oh, teh noes! Piratebay, where are you??

The Ugly:
A good, if somewhat depressing, summary of the present state of Malaysia.

And since I'm here, the funny:
Books I'll probably never read, though I'm ashamed to say I do have a copy of manga Hamlet. It's painfully bad.
By the way, who's old enough to remember this?

Kami o kiritai

One of the fun things I find about spoken Japanese is its sheer brevity. And Jap, like most languages, will have it's fair share of homonyms, hence the title. On the way to Jap class yesterday I thought up that sentence, with the intended meaning of "(I) want to cut my hair." Then it hit me that those exact same words can mean "(I) want to kill god(s)".

I like Japanese :-D

Religion + Movie critique = Epic fail

Seriously, why is it that with these people, everything under the sun is a Zionist plot?



Harry Potter!? Come ON, he's as Zionist as Yorkshire pudding! Just how messed up in the head do you have to be to think Harry Potter is the messiah. 4:30 - "As you can see, he has the same traits..." WTF?! How many speccy messiahs do you know suffering from teenage angst? What does it take for something NOT to be a Zionist conspiracy?

Now, I know that since the time of Plato, it's been standard procedure in a tyranny to keep the people united by giving them a common enemy but this is just nuts. No, seriously. I am led to doubt this video by the sheer mind-numbing absurdity of it. I haven't seen anything this stupid since the last time I read a Malaysian newspaper. Would somebody who understands Arabic please confirm that those subtitles are correct?

Ramblings of a White Witch sympathizer

I never liked C S Lewis. I think his books are rubbish, especially Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe. While I will freely concede that he is indeed a skilled writer with a talent for creating immersive fantasy worlds you can lose yourself in for a few hours, I am not in the slightest bit impressed with his sense of narrative structure, and found the whole business of "have faith, and the Lion will come and save everybody on a minor technicality which was conveniently overlooked by an apparently inept (though rather hawt in the movie) nemesis" sorely lacking in storytelling skillz. I don't know about you, but I find something deeply unsatisfying about an epic struggle between good and evil where victory is won against all odds by the better rules lawyer, bolstered by a dose of that most convenient of all deus ex machina devices, magic.

Another thing really ticks me off about C S Lewis - his role as Christian apologist. At the age of 30, he gave up on rational thought and turned from atheism to the Church of England and has been a favourite poster boy ever since. I attended the Alpha Course while in university to satisfy my curiousity re: Christianity. It's very telling of the intellectual bankruptcy of Christianity if the best they can do is shove C S Lewis' lack of resolve in my face. Even more so if the best argument he could come up with is the argument from morality.

I had just gotten acquainted with C S Lewis' Universal Morality last night, over a pint in the pub (which, as we know, is the only real way to discuss philosophy) which appeared to me to be trying bang a fifth wheel onto a car. For those who don't know about it, Lewis basically argues that the apparent manifestation of certain "universal" moral traits suggests that a higher being is behind the creation of said traits. In his own words:

These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

Oh, the pomposity... The moment this argument was laid out to me, I was led to doubt. Call me a cynic, but I catch a whiff of bullshit anytime anyone talks about a "Law of Nature" from anything other than the standpoint of mathematics and/or the physical sciences. For the sake of my being able to keep my lunch down, we'll stop abusing the phrase "Law of Nature" in this childish manner and stick to calling it by it's appropriately fanciful name, universal morality.

Now, there's any number of ways to rip this silly idea to shreds*, I went with Occam's Razor, looking at the development of our social norms from the evolutionary standpoint to show that there's simply no need for the concept of a universal morality to create the illusion of it's existence.

Think of these social norms, these unwritten rules of behaviour, as memes. Just like genes, what it takes for memes to survive and prosper, the three magic words, fidelity, fecundity and longevity. Does it not follow that, of the possible rules and rituals for a society to live by, there is a small subset of rules that serve to help said society survive and prosper? Other rules don't do so well or simply do not really serve the greater good of the societies in which they are practiced, e.g. Female circumcision, polygamy/polyandry**, use of phallocarps***, ferret legging, etc. As such, such practices, though they still exist, are viewed as bizarre or downright wrong by the rest of us, who haven't been held back wasting time and resources on them.

As history takes it's course, we find that, of the original set of societies, each with their own sets of memes governing behaviour, some will rise, some will fall, and a few will prosper. Those that prosper will have the memes accepted as "right" by the largest number of people - the utilitarian ideal given form by the forces of evolution by natural selection. The unquestioning masses living by these memes will have their sense of morality defined by these memes. Many individuals will become those gormless conservatives who will tell you that certain things are morally wrong "because it's just wrong". Be that as it may, we see here that what we take for granted as right or wrong are simply illusions. What is real is that what we call right or wrong are simply the right mix of memes governing behaviour that allow a society to be stable enough to survive and prosper. And at no point is it ever necessary for a sky fairy to plant such notions, i.e. universal morality, into our heads.

Consider the anthropic principle. Take a dozen men, have them each pray to their own deities, then shoot them all in the heads with a dozen guns but only eleven bullets. Somebody's going to feel he was obviously praying to the right god, but the fact of the matter is that the praying had sodall to do with his survival. In the same way, the notion of a universal morality, while cute and , in a way, appealing to simple-minded, insecure people who fear the cold touch of existential angst, is a completely unnecessary fiction.

Now, the brevity of my argument here is owed to the assumption that whoever reads it has some measure of understanding of the mechanism of evolution by natural selection and, of course, a little about memes. Alas, the bloke I was discussing this with last night, does not. So meh. This is just me recording my thoughts on the matter for my own benefit, because I'm rather pleased that I managed to come up with this on a gut full of awesome Thai food, Carlsberg and Hoegaarden. So much for getting my chubby arse back under 82kg.... :-(

Addendum: I just read that again and realised I'm being a bit harsh to Mr Lewis. Public understanding of evolutionary biology has made leaps and bounds (well, except among Republicans, of course) since C S Lewis' time, and his position, while still wrong, is based upon an ignorance of matters scientific quite typical of the period. The point still stands, though, so I'm not bothering with editing the above post more I already have.

* Here's a nice one that Google popped up pretty quick.

** Not really a good idea with a species equipped with all the biological hardware to produce males and females in more or less even numbers.

*** Go on, Google it. You know you want to.

Shock! Horror! Eh?

I just laughed when I saw this. Long story short, if you cannae be arsed to clicky the link:

- Malaysians suck in bed. No, not literally! I mean, Malaysians can't get no satisfaction. 2 out of 3 men and 3 out of 4 women are dissatisfied with their sex lives, apparently, placing them number 6 of 13 countries surveyed in the Asia-Pacific Sexual Health and Overall Wellness Survey, conducted by Pfizer.

- Singaporeans are even worse off, at number 8. Nya, nya, nyaaaa...

This didn't strike me as terribly surprising, seeing as the general impression one gets of the two countries is that Malaysia bears the unfortunate taint of widespread theistic religion, bringing with it the usual intellectual consequences and, of course, sexual repression. And Singapore, hell, everyone knows Singaporeans are generally too stressed out trying to earn moar money to enjoy some sweet lovin'.

What really surprised me was who was at the bottom - Japan! JAPAN?! zomg wtf r u kidding me?? From the country that brought us THE most diabolical pornography on this side of the planet? The same people who regularly redefine Rule 34 with every new manga? The nation that tried* to outdo 2 Girls 1 Cup? Where you can hire a woman of negotiable affection dressed up as Hello Kitty? Where you can take a train ride through THIS?

You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking it's like... wasabi.

At first you take a little, then you get used to it, so you take a little more... Then by the time you're say, 50, you've got to check underneath your wasabi to make sure the sushi's still there. Same thing with Japan and sex. They've been so open and had so much of it that what it takes to satisfy them defies normal human imagination. Well, that's the closest thing to an explanation I can come up with.

If anyone out there comes up with something better, I'm willing to hear it. For now, my cats are in dire need of a bath...

* And succeeded. I really shouldn't bring up something like this just after having lunch. Don't ask me for details.

Mysteries...

... that I'll probably never know the answer to. Starting with this picture:


1) How does this man pee? Is using urinals even an option anymore?

2) How does he poop? Does he need help? Upon sitting, does he completely engulf the toilet seat? How does he wipe his nether regions?

3) How does he even put his clothes on? Can one, with a physique like that, actually reach down to tie one's shoelaces?

4) How does one reach this unfortunate state of being? Is it really just a case of too many calories + too little exercise? Is it an unfortunate accident of genetics? What do people like this actually do for a living?

5) Is it even physically possible for this man to engage in sexual intercourse?

If anyone out there has any answers, do tell, coz I don't think I'm going to be pursuing this line of inquiry any further...

Wha...?

Is that... Taiwan they're pissing on?

Ah, well, since I'm here, here's a bunch more fun pics I nabbed off the vast sea of teh intertoobs...

Oh, and I consider myself fairly open-minded, and I love Japan and everything but sometimes even I have to ask, wtf?

Ah, fun, fun, fun.... Promise a serious post soon...

V-day for singletons

Fuck you, Facebook. No, really, fuck you...

From that guy on the 5000 yen note

I'm not sure if he's still on it, though. Anyway, I'd read Inazo Nitobe's Bushido: The Soul of Japan and came across this paragraph:

Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane things? He is the shosei (student), to whom the earth is too small and the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of Bushido.

I just laughed when I saw that. Not because I disagree or find it a preposterously simplistic view of the university student* but because of the sheer contrast with a previous encounter with the shosei, found in a book written by no other than the bloke on the 1000 yen bill, Natsume Souseki (after whom my cat is named). But of course, the book is I am a Cat, and here's what the shosei looks like there, from the very first page:

I am a cat. As yet I have no name. I've no idea where I was born. All I remember is that I was miaowing in a dampish dark place when, for the first time, I saw a human being. This human being, I head afterwards, was a member of the most ferocious human species; a shosei, one of those students who, in return for board and lodging, perform small chores about the house. I hear that, on occasion, this species catches, boils, and eats us...

Shortly after that, if appeared that this particular shosei found our protagonist too small and scrawny to be worth eating and flung the poor devil into a clump of bamboo grass. Man, I love that book. If you haven't read it, do. You might find yourself tempted, like me, to learn Japanese because of it.

* In my experience, university students are usually found at the bottom of pint glasses in the Student Union pub. Or urinating on your doorstep. Or your car. Ah, British education...