Information is not knowledge

Students find call of gadgets irresistible

2011-02-24T00:12:00.000-08:00

THREE out of four of Singapore's tech-mad youngsters may be just a bit too fond of their electronic gadgets, suffering physically and socially as a result.

In a survey of 600 polytechnic and university students, three-quarters admitted to constantly fiddling with their mobile phones and other electronic gadgets.

Many of the respondents aged 17 to 25 checked their phones or laptops every few seconds, and took those gadgets with them wherever they went.

More than two in five, for instance, took their mobile phones everywhere - including the toilet. And one in 50 respondents admitted to getting chided 'all the time' for ignoring those around them in favour of their gadgets.

Miss Christine Tan, a final-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, said her four-man team decided to look into the issue because 'we saw it in ourselves and our peers...where nothing else matters when we are on our gadgets'.

While technology had many proven benefits, like allowing users to work away from the office and increasing productivity, Miss Tan and her team wanted to red-flag what they believed was a rise in the number of young people so compulsively dependent on their gadgets that they suffered negative side effects.

The most obvious were physical pains such as aches in the head, neck and thumbs.

Raffles Hospital clinical director for pain management, Dr Ho Kok Yuen, said he had seen an increase in the number of younger people suffering from chronic pain - a condition earlier seen only in people aged 60 and above.

'Most people who continue using their gadgets do not realise that their usage patterns can have a very serious impact on their physical well-being,' said Dr Ho.

Those with the condition, which is increasingly being referred to as 'gadget over-dependency', may be affected in less obvious ways as well.

According to a New York Times article, those constantly exposed to a deluge of information find themselves unable to focus on tasks at hand, and also face increased stress.

Long-term exposure to a constant diet of text messages, Facebook updates and Twitter posts, say neuroscientists in the Times report, can 'rewire' human brains to the point that key areas such as analytical ability and creativity might potentially be impaired.

Compulsive usage, said psychologist Nicholas Lim, also 'robs you of the ability to know what controls you and what you control'.

This has the ring of familiarity for private school student Lynn Lim, 22.

'A few years ago, I was at an interview for a part-time job, and there was an alert on my phone. I took it out, checked the message and replied because that is what I always do. When I looked up, the look on the interviewer's face was priceless... No, I didn't get the job.

From ST

THE END for the BOOK?

2011-02-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

Borders closes 200 shops as it files for bankruptcy

US bookseller Borders has said it will close 200 of its 642 stores in the next few weeks and has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The firm blamed declining sales and a rapidly changing book market.

According to documents filed with the bankruptcy court in New York, Borders had $1.28bn (£799m) in assets and $1.29bn in debts as of December 2010.

The firm has struggled in the face of fierce competition from supermarkets, online sales and digital books.

"It has become increasingly clear that in light of the environment of curtailed customer spending, our ongoing discussions with publishers and the company's lack of liquidity, Borders Group does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor," said Borders president Mike Edwards in a statement.

Borders will receive financing of $505m from GE Capital to help it restructure.

Declining sales

As the book industry evolves, Borders has continued with a business strategy that focused on adding more stores to its portfolio.

"Books and content just became so available at so many other locations, online and offline, the 'grow, rinse, repeat' mindset just wouldn't work anymore," said Michael Norris, analyst at Simba Information.

In addition, US book sales have been falling.

According to researcher Nielsen, which follows 70% of the US book market, book sales declined from 751 million to 717 million in 2010.

Borders was founded by Tom and Louis Border in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

It was active in the UK market from 1998 to 2009, first as a subsidiary of the US company and later as an independent concern before going into administration.

Chinese online gamer dies after three-day session

2011-02-23T22:12:00.000-08:00

A Chinese man has died after a three-day online gaming session in which he did not sleep and barely ate, reports say.

The man reportedly lost consciousness at an internet cafe on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, Beijing.

He was rushed to a clinic but could not be revived, the Beijing Times said.

The 30-year-old man, who was not identified, was said to have spent more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500; £928) on gaming in the month before his death.

China has more than 450 million internet users, and online games - which can involve multiple users role-playing in a virtual world - are particularly popular with young men.

Researchers say tens of millions of Chinese people - many of them teenagers - are addicted to internet gaming, despite curbs introduced by the authorities aimed at tackling the problem.

Similar deaths have occurred in other nations. In 2005 a 28-year-old man died in South Korea after playing online games for 50 hours without a break.

From BBC

Catholic church gives blessing to iPhone app

2011-02-08T18:04:00.000-08:00

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.
The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as "the perfect aid for every penitent", it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament - in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings - and allows them to keep track of their sins.

It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status - but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.

Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.

"Our desire is to invite Catholics to engage in their faith through digital technology," Patrick Leinen of developer Little iApps told Reuters.

The launch comes shortly after Pope Benedict XVI gave urging to Christians to embrace digital communication and make their presence felt online.

In his World Communications Address on 24 January, he said it was not a sin to use social networking sites - and particularly encouraged young Catholics to share important information with each other online.

"I invite young people above all to make good use of their presence in the digital world," he said.

He warned them to keep in mind that digital communication was part of a bigger picture, however.

"It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives."

Confession's developers, who are based in Indiana, said they took the Pope's words to heart when they were preparing the application for public consumption.

"Our goal with this project is to offer a digital application that is truly 'new media at the service of the word'," said the company.

The firm said the app was developed with assistance from several priests and had been given the church's imprimatur by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana.

A spokesperson from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales told BBC News the app was a "useful tool to help people prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation".

"The Church believes in embracing new technology and this creative app will hopefully help people to make a good confession."

It is thought to be the first time the church has approved a mobile phone application, although it is not entirely unfamiliar with the digital world.

In 2007, the Vatican launched its own YouTube channel.

Two years later created a Facebook application that lets users send virtual postcards featuring the pontiff.

From BBC

Leaders of indigenous Amazon tribes hand a petition to Brazil's government opposing construction of a massive hydro-electric dam.

2011-02-08T15:37:00.001-08:00

Hundreds of indigenous Brazilians are protesting in the capital, Brasilia, against the construction of what will be the world's third biggest hydro-electric dam. An indigenous leader delivered a petition opposing the project signed by more than half a million people. Environmentalists say the dam in the Amazon river basin will harm the world's biggest tropical rainforest.Brazilian Energy Minister Edison Lobao said construction would begin soon.
Mr Lobao said the population which would be affected by the Belo Monte dam would be compensated and resettled.But indigenous leader Raoni said he was convinced the dam would bring "bad things" to his tribe's villages.'There'll be war'

"We don't want Belo Monte because it will destroy our rivers, our jungle and our way of life," he added.
Another tribal leader said he and his tribe had not been given enough information about the project.
Ireo Kayapo said that if his tribe were to be driven from its land, "there'll be war and blood will be spilled".
Wearing their traditional headdresses, tribal leaders delivered a petition signed by more than 600,000 people demanding the government scrap the $10bn project.
Licenses still have to be granted for the actual building of the plant, but last month Brazilian environment agency Ibama gave the go-ahead for the clearing of the land at the site of the planned dam.
The government says the Belo Monte dam is crucial for development and will create jobs, as well as provide electricity to 23 million homes.
The 11,000-megawatt dam would be the biggest in the world after the Three Gorges in China and Itaipu, which is jointly run by Brazil and Paraguay.
It has long been a source of controversy, with bidding halted three times before the state-owned Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco was awarded the contract last year.
Celebrities such as the singer Sting and film director James Cameron have joined environmentalists in their campaign against the project.
They say the 6km (3.7 miles) dam will threaten the survival of a number of indigenous groups and could make some 50,000 people homeless, as 500 sq km (190 sq miles) of land would be flooded.

From BBC

Singaporeans vs Lexus

2011-01-08T20:20:00.000-08:00

The S'porean identity in a globalised era by Debbie Soon, For The Straits Times

IN HIS book Lexus And The Olive Tree, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman argues that there are two countervailing forces in globalisation.

On the one hand, there is 'Lexus', which stands for modernisation. And on the other, there is the 'olive tree', which represents the human need for identity and belonging.

Globalisation often introduces a sense of dislocation. The challenge is how these two countervailing forces can be balanced. Singapore has to balance its global city aspirations with its citizens' need for a sense of rootedness.

Singapore has opened its arms to globalisation. Many Singaporeans have ventured abroad and made successful careers for themselves. The country has also opened its doors to foreign talent, to address flagging birth rates and an ageing population. But many Singaporeans feel a sense of displacement as a result of the influx of foreigners, used as they are to being greeted by a familiar local face at the hawker centre or a familiar local accent at the supermarket.

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) conducted a survey in December 2009 to assess how Singapore citizens were coping with the economic recession. When asked to choose as many as they wished of the six social and psychological strategies of support listed in the survey, 53 per cent of respondents said they would lower their expectations, 48 per cent that they would change their mindsets, 32 per cent strengthen family bonds, and 12 per cent turn to religion. In the search for a sense of surety in the uncertain times brought on by globalisation, Singaporeans will turn to kith and kin and their religion.

Will the identity for Singaporeans change as globalisation continues? How will Singaporeans define themselves in terms of the communal, local or global?

On the level of the communal, it is a natural instinct of human beings to draw close to their ethnic, religious or familial community. There are signs indicating the continuing importance of racial and religious identity in the hearts and minds of Singaporeans.

Where religion is concerned, the evidence ranges from reports of Christian groups scrambling for worship space to the decision by Taoist leaders to conduct a census of their followers to register their growing membership. And where race is concerned, there was the campaign waged by bicultural Chinese against reducing the weightage of the mother tongue in the PSLE, and the concerns expressed by Malays that their community might be shrinking following the release of the advance census data.

Where the family is concerned, the conclusion of the 2009 State of the Family report by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports and National Family Council suggests that most Singaporeans have strong family ties.

At the national level, the 2009 IPS National Orientations of Singaporeans Survey, which measured the emotional bonds of Singapore citizens, found healthy and stable levels of national pride and loyalty.

Singaporeans have managed to combine communal and national identities. The sense of racial and religious identity can in fact bolster the sense of nationhood. Thus, Singapore has so far successfully managed to subsume race and religion into its national identity. As such, there is largely no conflict between racial or religious identity and national identity.

Racial and religious ties build what Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government calls 'bonding social capital' by bringing people together on the basis of similarity. There is also a need to build 'bridging social capital' - which in Singapore's case means fostering better ties between individuals from different racial and religious backgrounds.

The universal nature of music, sport and even food provides platforms for the building of bridging social capital. The gradual broadening of space for political and artistic expression bodes well for the development of other identities.

On the global level, Singaporeans are exposed to cultures outside their country - through the Internet, cable television and other media. But the same technologies provide also the means to build stronger communal and national ties. It is now easier to keep in touch with friends, family and the local scene while abroad. Lexus has provided a means for growing bigger and stronger olive trees.

There is no question that Singaporeans will find something to hold on to as globalisation advances. The long lines for auditions with South Korean talent management company JYP and outside mega-churches, as well as strong demand for National Day Parade tickets, suggest that Singaporeans have managed to find a balance among their communal, local and global identities. The future of the Singaporean identity hinges on the mix we choose for ourselves.

The writer is a researcher with the Institute of Policy Studies.

Academic Excellence in 140 Characters

2010-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

Social Media - Lethal invasion of Privacy

2010-10-02T20:08:00.000-07:00

If you're 20 years old or younger, you probably grew up using computers, cellphones, iPods and Facebook. Photos, for you, are images not necessarily printed on paper. CDs are old hat. You take digital -- digital everything -- for granted.

In such a world, how easy is it to record and be recorded, to share your -- or someone else's -- most intimate secrets by posting them on the Web? All too easy.

Easy gathering and distribution of information are hallmarks of the digital age. They played out all too disastrously for first-year Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi.

Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge in New York on Sept. 22, three days after roommate Dharun Ravi, 18, allegedly made and streamed online a secret video of an intimate encounter between Clementi and another man.

Clementi's body was identified Sept. 29. Ravi and Rutgers freshman Molly Wei, also 18, have been charged with invading his privacy, and Middlesex County, N.J., prosecutors say bias-crime charges are possible.

Clementi even said farewell via Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Clementi's death has spurred fierce debate, on and off campus and on the Internet, about social media, changing notions of privacy, and whether or not what happened was a crime.

Emily Nussbaum, frequent writer on social media and privacy issues and editor at large for New York magazine, said, "I am completely baffled about why people don't make a distinction between what you do and do not post."

But she also sees three important forces at work in this story: "The availability and ease of the technology; the growing normalcy of porn, especially the rise of amateur porn, in which you post sexual images of yourself or others, and the social networking change in people's attitude toward privacy."

Neil Bernstein is an adolescent psychologist in Washington and author of "How To Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do If You Can't." He sees two trends converging: the "dilution of intimacy" brought about by the new media, and what he calls "behavior contagion," or the tendency of people to do what those around them are doing.

The Web can connect people in strong, healthy ways, Bernstein said. But the dark side is that our notion of intimacy may be diluted.

"There's a decreased empathy that sometimes comes with social media," he said. "Because they're online, people will consider themselves intimate with people they don't really know at all. And this has an impact on relationships."

Then there's "behavior contagion." All around you, your friends and acquaintances post information once thought "private": names of boy- or girlfriends, social plans, secrets.

Technology does change attitudes, and fast. "When phones became cameras," Nussbaum said, "every friend you had became your paparazzo. All the previous ethical boundaries about taking photos of someone else without express permission, which used to be seen as an invasion of privacy -- that's all but gone now."

Which leaves all of us vulnerable. Rob D'Ovidio, associate professor of criminal justice in the department of culture and communications at Philadelphia's Drexel University, says that low-cost, miniaturized recording technology is "entering the widespread public domain."

In the past, we needed to worry only about Big Brother: government and corporate entities with the power to gather and manipulate private info. "Now," said D'Ovidio, "we're in the era where we have to watch everyone, including other consumers, our colleagues, our classmates -- we have to watch everyone from now on.

"Big Brother has trickled down to the Everyperson."

Opportunity -- and temptation -- to misuse social media are everywhere. "The will to betray, the will to deceive, is out there," said Gary T. Marx, professor emeritus of social science at MIT. Social media simply make it easier.

Also involved is the culture of "pranking," with its overtones of humiliation, harassment and bullying. According to the Associated Press, since 2003 in the United States at least a dozen children or young adults between 11 and 18 have killed themselves after some form of cyberbullying. Perhaps best known is the case of 13-year-old Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., who hanged herself in 2006 after getting MySpace messages supposedly from a boy breaking up with her. The messages were really sent by the mother of a friend.

Much of the Internet debate focuses on whether what happened to Clementi amounts to a hate-crime against gays. Hayley Gorenberg, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a national gay-rights organization, said she was "terribly saddened" but not at all shocked to learn of Clementi's death.

"We know the rates of suicide among LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) youth who do not feel supported are sky-high," she said. "Social media can be a fantastic source of support for youth who feel isolated, but the potential is there for depersonalization that removes perpetrators from the face-to-face interaction."

Based on an article in Times Union, a US-based online newspaper.

The impact of the Social Media tutorial

2010-09-21T01:49:00.000-07:00

This is what is inside your head after the Social Media tutorial. Freedom huh? Interesting...

Kanye West and How Twitter Has Changed the Way We Communicate

2010-09-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

Its amazing that Kanye West has made an impact on how we conduct ourselves in a media-dominated world. Check out this article about it and also:

Twitter vs Iran Elections

Twitter vs The Rest of the World

Iphone for charity

Egyptian Arrest

Burglars use FB to pick targets

Since the world is presently overloaded with information and as a test on how our discussion has affected you, pls post a SINGLE word that captures the said issue. Remember only ONE word yea....

"Global warming is bulls**t" by Ryanair boss

2010-09-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

If this particular article is marked as an AQ script, it would fail miserably. Why?

Social Impact of the Web

2010-09-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

There are many areas where the internet has led to changes and innovations. The impact of the Web is undeniable and ubiquitous. But specifically what are the different areas that have the most social impact? Identify 3 areas in which the social impact the Web is clearly seen and provide evidence via links or points.

Should I go or should I stay?

2010-08-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

The debate continues on the need of foreign talent:

Inflow of foreigners to slow down

Why foreigners are needed?

The dilemma is in how much we need them and how much social impact that they can have. Can we ever strike a balance?

Where is GP in the world?

2010-08-27T06:39:00.001-07:00

Its obvious that GP is about social and worldly issues. So please leave your link of your article that reflects those topics and issues in the comments below.

Facebook launches panic button

2010-08-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

Facebook has announced it will allow a "panic button" application on its social networking site.

The button, aimed at children and teenagers, will report abuse to the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and Facebook.

Once installed, the application appears on their homepage to say that "they are in control online".

The launch follows months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook, which initially resisted the idea.

Ceop, the government law enforcement agency tasked with tracking down online sex offenders, called for a panic button to be installed on social networking sites last November.

Bebo became the first network to add the button with MySpace following suit, but Facebook resisted the change, saying its own reporting systems were sufficient.

Pressure mounted on Facebook following the rape and murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall by a 33-year-old convicted sex offender, posing as a teenage boy, who she met on Facebook.

Forty-four police chiefs in England, Wales and Scotland, signed a letter backing Ceop's call for a panic button on every Facebook page.

'Reassurance for parents'

The agreement to launch a child safety application is the culmination of months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook.

Jim Gamble, Ceop's chief executive, said in a statement: "Our dialogue with Facebook about adopting the ClickCeop button is well documented - today however is a good day for child protection.

"By adding this application, Facebook users will have direct access to all the services that sit behind our ClickCeop button which should provide reassurance to every parent with teenagers on the site."

Facebook's head of communications in the UK, Sophy Silver, told BBC News that the new app would integrate reporting into both Facebook and Ceop's systems.

"Both sides are happy as to where we have got," she said.

"We still have the Facebook reporting system and by having a pre-packaged application that users play an active part in, you not only help keep them safe, it makes all of their friends aware too, and acts as a viral awareness campaign.

"Ultimately though, this makes for a safer environment for users and that's the most important part," she added.

In addition to the online reporting application, a new Facebook/Ceop page is being set up, with a range of topics that, it is hoped, will be of interest to teenagers, such as celebrities, music and exams. It will link these subjects to questions about online safety.

Click here for the article

What is your privilege?

2010-08-05T01:36:00.000-07:00

This post is for a select group of individuals. You know who you are. Leave a comment about a privilege that you have come to appreciate by Friday the 13th 2359. Sign off with a name that I can associate your identity with. No anonymous posts will be published. All comments will be published on Sunday 2300.

Privilege

2010-08-03T00:46:00.000-07:00

Below is a song by Incubus. What do you make out the song to be? Support it by referencing to the lyrics. The audio is playing on the iPod at the right. If you are distracted by the 'moving' images , just choose the next track (it contains no images).

Isn't it strange that a gift could be an enemy?
Isn't it weird that a privilege could feel like a chore?
Maybe it's me but this line isn't going anywhere,
maybe if we looked hard enough, we could find a backdoor.
(find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your privilege. (chorus)

Isn't it strange that the man standing in front of me
doesn't have a clue why he's waiting, or what he is waiting for?
Maybe it's me, but i'm sick of wasting energy.
Maybe if i look in my heart I could find a backdoor.
(Find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your
That is your privilege.

(Find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your privilege. *2

Safire article

2010-08-02T20:42:00.001-07:00

This is the link to show the actual article.

Want a liveable city? Make it child-friendly first

2010-07-20T21:50:00.000-07:00

Refer to the article below about how living in Singapore can be improved.

Singapore not as perfect as it seems, according to urban planning expert

By Tan Hui Yee

SINGAPORE is often cited as one of the world's more liveable cities, but a stroll through Kampong Glam, Little India, Tanjong Pagar and other downtown areas led one visiting expert to a more muted conclusion.

Yes, there is much the Republic is doing right, much the rest of the world can envy, but the country is falling down in one key area - it is not thinking small enough.

Child-sized, to be precise, because cities must first be liveable for kids before they can be liveable for all, according to urban planning consultant Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, who was in town recently for the World Cities Summit.

And while Singapore is clearly streets ahead in terms of its crime rate, the walks around town she undertook over four days showed up other problems.

She found that traffic in downtown Singapore is a tad too heavy and street- level crossings inadequate for children to wander around on their own.

In her view, a city needs to facilitate such independent access for children if it wants to be truly liveable.

Child-friendly cities thrive because everyone needs fundamentally the same things, like an accessible environment and rich social life. By focusing on meeting the needs of children - one of the most vulnerable and physically weakest groups in the community - the city can get its basics right.

But that does not mean ever more kiddie rides, cartoon murals or playgrounds.

'The ideal play area for children is the city itself,' says Dr Crowhurst Lennard, 65, the founder of the International Making Cities Liveable Council, which is based in Portland, Oregon.

Generally, it is a bad idea to relegate children to just children's facilities because they learn best when able to freely mingle with and observe adults in an everyday setting. And catering to children is not that hard.

'On a simple level, it is a matter of walkability. Children have to be able to get around safely on their own as early as possible and explore their environment.

'That means it has to be safe not only from traffic, but also a good socially safe environment where there are familiar adults along the way who recognise them and speak to them - people of different ages,' she said.

So, buildings, roads, parks and street furniture should be designed to inspire imagination, invite exploration and serve multiple uses.

For example, steps should be comfortable enough to invite seating, walls should be low enough to be 'climbed on, sat on, or walked along', and window ledges and planter ledges should be broad enough to double as seats. Meanwhile, public art should welcome children instead of being plastered with 'no climbing' or 'no touching' signs.

'All kinds of public art should be meaningful and understandable to children. They should tell children about the history and traditions of the city. And they should be able to be played on.'

She cites, as a good example, the bronze sculptures of The River Merchants by local artist Aw Tee Hong, which details the lives of traders by the Singapore River when the island was under colonial rule. Passers-by continually stop to touch the sculptures and clamber on to pose for photographs.

And our bright shiny malls, centre of much of Singapore life? They get a firm thumbs down.

Malls are increasingly becoming meeting spots and teenage hang-outs as they are being planned around transport nodes, but Dr Crowhurst Lennard says they are 'not ideal' as a public space given the restrictions on what can occur there.

Instead, an open, flexible public space does better at engaging young minds.

'It can be used as a market in the morning, for festivals in afternoon and on a quiet (evening), just for sitting out and relating to people...It can be used for a school performance or some kind of local community festival.'

She thinks child-friendly environments make everybody's lives - especially older folk - easier. This is because they have 'very similar needs to children' - like being within walking distance to cafes, shops and libraries or other social nodes where they can interact with people as their social circle shrinks with age.

Yet, the quality of social life is all too often overlooked by city planners too engrossed with the hardware of their cities. 'Liveability' is regularly confused with 'standard of living', she says.

The latter refers to better health care, educational standards and a more comfortable environment that comes with higher incomes.

Meanwhile, liveability 'has more to do with quality of everyday social life, the interactions that we have every day and the quality of those interactions'.

In her view, a poor neighbourhood with abysmal sanitation could have a socially richer quality of life than a wealthier one with its plumbing systems in order.

'The trick is to try to figure out how to reclaim that rich social life and still keep our high standards of living,' she says.

Some cities get it right, although the one she cited might surprise - the seething tourist hot spot of Venice. Yet she notes that the 'museum city' actually hosts rich social networks supported by gracious infrastructure.

'While some people are richer, some poorer, they live side by side, everyone takes the same public transit and walks the same streets,' she says.

These social networks are based on Venetians' own home campo - the square they grew up in or live in - rather than their job or status.

The networks are strengthened by their shared memories of the city as well as the stories that collect around its landmarks.

'A community exists only when people know each others' stories. I would have to know all about you, where you grew up, what your childhood was like, who your parents were and who you played with in order for me to feel that I were part of your community or you were part of my community'.

Parents expand this community when they share memories of the city with their children. But the task becomes 'much harder' when the cityscape changes very fast - as it does in Singapore. The loss of a social landmark, like a long-reigning coffee shop, would then feel like a 'death in the family'.

She feels cities must have continuity in some measure: '(You need) social life that children take part in as they get to know their city.'

Ideally, a city should also have mixed-use environments, old and young from all walks of life working and playing in the same district. Such an integrated concept is regaining currency as urban planners realise the fallacy of zoning regulations that create buzzing business districts by day and dead zones by night.

In the United States, where middle-class families spent decades fleeing the cities for the suburbs, people are 'realising they have to bring the population back to the downtown area, and people are beginning to move back'.

'(People) want to be within walking distance of cafes and restaurants and nightlife and the resources of the city,' she says. 'This will be a trend for the future.'

The growing complaint in Singapore that only the well-off can afford to live within or close to the city as homes are so expensive gets a sympathetic response.

'That is not a good solution,' she declares, as it creates a rather skewed environment.

She thinks housing quotas for different income groups could help right the balance in the same way the Housing Board sets quotas for ethnic groups in each block and precinct.

In such an inclusive environment - where young and old, rich and poor, different ethnicities live together - people learn to 'negotiate with each other...and appreciate each others' values'. And it is these environments that will best meet the social needs of children - and ultimately, society.

'We need to live in as equitable an urban environment as possible,' she says. 'We need to live in a district where we all experience the diversity of our society as much as possible.'

Foreign Talent - Should we stay or should they go?

2010-07-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

These 2 articles relay some differences in their viewpoints.

1) Foreign Talent by Melissa Sim http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Office/Story/A1Story20100503-213783.html
2) Little choice by falling birth rate by Vince Chong

What do you think are the roles of non-citizens in Singapore?
To what extent do you see non-citizens contributing to our society and on what levels? (eg. social, economical and political )
What are our roles as citizens when communicating and working with non-citizens in Singapore?
What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of policies aimed at helping non-citizens integrate into our society?

Twitter means so many things...

2010-07-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Twitter has definitely changed the world in leaps and bounds but this article from Guardian dispels many myths. One is that the popularity of Twitter is not propelled by teens. This insight by a 15 year-old seems to be ground-breaking to Morgan Stanley. Why so?

Rockstar: Only "Terrible Parents" Buy Our Games for Their Kids

2010-05-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Radio personality and Rockstar producer Lazlow Jones has a message for people who buy Rockstar games for their kids: "You're a terrible parent."

Rockstar games are awesome. They're also most definitely not for kids. From Grand Theft Auto to Manhunt to the new Red Dead Redemption, just about everyone agrees that these are games that parents should keep far away from their children. And for those parents who do let their kids play them, because they don't know any better or they just don't care, Rockstar has a message: You suck.

"Our games are not designed for young people," said Lazlow Jones, who hooked up with Rockstar in 2001 by writing and performing in radio segments in Grand Theft Auto 3. "If you're a parent and buy one of our games for your child, you're a terrible parent."

"We design games for adults because we're adults," he continued. "There's a lot of kids' games out there that we're not interested in playing. Just like you enjoy watching movies and TV shows with adult themes and language and violence, that's the kind of thing we seek to produce."

He claimed that despite its reputation, Rockstar gets relatively little "pushback" from rating boards, although he noted that the videogame industry in general faces far greater challenges than other media when it comes to producing mature content. "If you tell a gritty crime drama with violence and profanity and call it The Sopranos you're handed a load of awards to put up on the shelf," he said. "You do the same and call it a videogame and you'll have certain organizations up in arms."

But times are changing and Lazlow thinks Rockstar deserves a lot of credit for "pushing the boundaries" of what's acceptable in videogames today. "I think ever since GTA IV came out and there were such rave reviews by major publications saying that this is actually art the restrictions about being politically correct have largely fallen away," he said.

Source: TheEscapist

S'pore: Lowest child mortality

2010-05-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

PARIS - SINGAPORE is ranked first in the world for the lowest estimated rates of children under five who die each year for 2010, followed by Iceland, Sweden, Cyprus and Luxembourg.

In the United States - whose ranking has dropped from 20th to 42 since 1970 - the mortality rate is nearly double the European average. But the proportion of under-five children who die each year across the globe has dropped 60 per cent over the past four decades, according to a study published Monday.

In the last 20 years this salutary decline has accelerated, with the number of deaths among newborns, infants and one-to-four year olds falling from 11.9 million to an estimated 7.7 million in 2010, the new figures show.

That remains a staggeringly large number of young lives lost, many to preventable diseases and overwhelmingly in the world's poorest nations. A child born today in Chad, Mali or Nigeria is nearly sixty times less likely to see her or his fifth birthday than one born in Scandinavia. And progress still falls short of the trajectory needed to meet the UN's Millennium Development goal of slashing child deaths globally by 66 per cent between 1990 and 2015.

But the decline in under-five mortality is still an encouraging achievement, and suggests further progress is possible, the report says. Even at the current rate of improvement, there are 31 countries on pace to meet the UN benchmark for 2015, including Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia and Egypt.

All told, 54 of the 187 nations examined in the study are poised to reach the goal. In 1970 there were more than 200 under-five deaths for every 1,000 live births, the measure used to rank nations in this grim index. By 1990, that list had dwindled to 12, and today no country crosses the 200-death threshold, according to the study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

'One of the biggest achievements of the past 20 years has been this incredible progress in countries that historically have had the highest child mortality in the world,' said Christopher Murray, Director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and co-author of the study. --AFP

Source: ST (24 May 2010)

Game Addicts Arrested for Starving Baby to Death

2010-05-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

3-month-old Starves to Death While Parents Spend Hours in Internet Cafes

Gaming addiction turned horrifically tragic as the three-month-old daughter of a Korean couple starved to death while her parents were caring for a virtual daughter during a 12-hour MMOG session.

The couple, identified only as "the Kims" due to Korean privacy laws, had met in 2008 over an online dating site and subsequently married and had a child. The husband, 41, and the wife, 25 were both unemployed, living with the parents of the wife. Both spent most of their time at 24-hour internet cafes, notorious for crowds of gamers and dense cigarette smoke, even during the pregnancy. The couple called the police in September to report their daughter's death after returning from a 12-hour gaming session.

The autopsy results were chilling. The child, who had been born prematurely, died of malnutrition. The couple also admitted to feeding her rotten powdered milk as well as spanking her whenever she cried. The child was generally neglected in favor of an online daughter over the Korean MMOG PRIUS, which was consuming much of the couple's play time at internet cafes while their daughter was left alone and unfed.

South Korea has had serious problems with gaming addiction, which has led to a number of deaths via exhaustion in the past few years. "There's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict," Dr. Kim Sang Eun of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital said. The problem is reportedly even higher in Korea due to the nation's 95 percent broadband access, and the fact that there are more mobile phones in South Korea than there are people.

While obviously an extreme example, it is nevertheless one that cannot be ignored. Fortunately, most gamers aren't this irresponsible, but it's still a very real risk in our world.

Source: ABC News (4 Mar 20101)

Is Singapore the worst environmental offender?

2010-05-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

ST - A NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) study which ranked Singapore as the worst environmental offender among 179 countries has drawn a sharp response from the Government, but its authors are standing by it.

The study, jointly done by NUS and the University of Adelaide, found that Singapore's headlong rush into developing a modern megalopolis over the last 30 years had taken a terrible toll on its natural environment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, however, has slammed the 16-page paper - which looks at relative environmental impact of countries - for not taking into account the 'unique circumstances of each country'.

Responding to queries from The Straits Times, a ministry spokesman said that the study was based on a proportional environmental impact index, which is defined only in terms of total land area.

'As such, countries with limited land size which have high intensity of land use would be necessarily disadvantaged in this proportional index,' said the spokesman.

'Correspondingly, the main indices which contributed to Singapore's poor ranking were contingent on total land area. For example, natural habitat conversion, which is the area of human-modified land divided by total land area, unfairly penalises Singapore's high urban density.'

In response, Professor Corey Bradshaw, 38, director of ecological modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and one of the paper's three authors, was adamant that the data spoke for itself.

'We didn't make it up,' he said. 'It's publicly available data so anyone can look at this.'

The study, which took about three years to complete, was published by peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE.

Professor Navjot Sodhi, 48, from the NUS department of biological sciences and co-author of the paper, said Singapore's rapid development in the last 30 years has seen it lose 90 per cent of its forest, 67 per cent of its birds, about 40 per cent of its mammals and 5 per cent of its amphibians and reptiles.

The study is thought to be the first in the world to adopt a new rating system which looks only at environmental indicators such as forest loss, natural habitat conversion, marine captures, carbon emissions and biodiversity.

As the index focuses on modern environmental impact, it 'ignores some elements of historical degradation such as deforestation in Europe', the authors said in the paper. It therefore 'might penalise developing nations more heavily'.

Although a country like Brazil, for example, has chopped down more rain-forests, Singapore, proportional to its size, has wreaked greater destruction as nearly all its forests have made way for urbanisation, explained Prof Bradshaw.

He added: 'Singapore's development over the last 20 to 30 years has meant that it has done the worst damage to its environment.'

Developing and developed nations such as South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Netherlands were also penalised by the proportional index.

While Singapore fared poorly in terms of proportional environmental impact, it is too small to figure in terms of global or absolute environmental impact. For that, the 10 worst countries are: Brazil, the United States, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.

The authors conceded that Singapore was something of an anomaly as it is a city state, and a fairer comparison would be between it and other cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.

The negative rating is not the first Singapore has received in environmental studies.

The Republic has frequently been cited as having one of the highest per capita carbon emissions globally by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics to the US government, factoring in data such as carbon emissions from bunker fuel, aviation and refining processes.

Latest EIA data taken in 2006 indicated that Singapore emitted 141 million tonnes of carbon emissions, ranking it as the 33rd-highest emitter of greenhouse gases among 215 countries.

Singapore - which adopts a measurement standard that does not include bunker fuel, aviation and refining emissions, which is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines - puts its own carbon emissions figure as 40 million tonnes.

In this year's Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, Singapore did better, coming in 28th with 69.6 points. Iceland fared the best with a score of 93.5 and Sierra Leone came in last with 32.1.

Speaking to leaders at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended Singapore's environmental record, saying it had taken environmental issues seriously since its independence more than 44 years ago.

He said Singapore had recently set a voluntary and domestically funded target to reduce emission growth by 16 per cent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, subject to a globally binding climate change deal.

He described this as 'a substantial commitment which will entail significant economic and social costs'.

Source: Straits Times

Last Week in Reality

2010-05-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

APRIL

26 MON
Look, No Hands The jail term meted out to a 69-year-old magician who sexually assaulted his 12-year-old apprentice has been upped from six to 10 years. The jail term was increased after an appeal from the prosecution. The offences were discovered by chance when a neighbor saw the man walking around naked in his flat while the boy was inside.

27 TUE
The Time Of Sands Marina Bay Sands was finally opened to the public, at the auspicious time of 3.18pm. 36,000 patrons, many Singaporeans, gathered to try their luck on the opening day. Locals had to pay their $100 levies before being given a queue number to wait for their turn on the casino floor. In return, they received a commemorative silver coin, and were treated to free food and entertainment as they waited.

28 WED
Sports City? Hosting the first Formula 1 night race and the inaugural Youth Olympic Games has rocketed Singapore into second spot at the Ultimate Sports City awards. The award, given out by the UK’s Sport Business Group, recognizes a city’s quality as a host of sporting events. The ranking is based on sporting events held in the past, and also considers future events to be hosted. This is Singapore’s first appearance on the list and only Melbourne was ranked higher.

29 THU
Ultra Beatdown Two men are in court, charged with beating up a full-time National Serviceman. The 18-year-old was abducted and brought to a cemetery at night where he was beaten by six men, one of whom carried a samurai sword. One of the men is the father of a 14-year-old girl who was the girlfriend of the NSF, and the beating was delivered in an attempt to end the relationship.

30 FRI
The Birds And The Bees The Ministry Of Education has called for transparency from schools that engage a third party organization to complement their sexuality education program. Six vendors have been approved to provide the service, and they will be required to make the information they provide available to the public. The MOE’s stance on sexuality education avoids making calls on abortion, masturbation, and oral or anal sex, and does not promote homosexuality, promiscuity or sexual experimentation.

1 SAT
I Do Two A new service launched by the Ministry for Community Development Youth and Sports allows Singaporeans to search through marriage records. Names, part of the NRIC numbers and the marriage date of the two parties can be obtained. This information might be relevant for dating agencies, private investigators and anyone who wants to ensure that their partner is not already married. To prevent abuse of the system, each user is only allowed two searches a year.

2 SUN
Assassins Freed Street Wars comes to Singapore on May 10. For a fee of $50, participants are given a hitlist of people who need to be "taken care of," and they have three weeks to rub them out using H2O as ammunition. The only weapons allowed are water guns and water bombs, and the targets are other players of the underground game. First played in New York City five years ago, "assassins" can perform the jobs alone or team up with other like-minded killers to snuff out competitors with a squirt of water.

Source: IS Magazine

The impact of iPod

2010-05-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

China clears murderer after 'victim' shows up alive

2010-05-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

The following 2 articles shows the impact of wrongful punishment. What is the difference in the reporting of the same issue?

BEIJING - A CHINESE man who spent nearly 10 years in jail for murder has been cleared after the supposed victim reappeared alive and well.

Zhao Zuohai was jailed in 2002 for murdering one of his neighbours in a village in the central province of Henan in October 1997, Xinhua news agency reported late Saturday, quoting a court statement.

The neighbour went missing after the pair had a fight in October 1997, the report said, and Zhao was charged when a headless, decomposed body was found 18 months later.

Zhao was initially sentenced to death, but this was commuted to 29 years' imprisonment, Xinhua said. The supposed victim, Zhao Zhenshang, returned to the village April 30 and after confirming his identity, the court cleared Zhao Zuohai of murder on Friday, the report said.

Zhao Zhenshang, 56, told Xinhua he and Zhao Zuohai had been good friends, but fell out over a woman and money. He said he fled the village after hitting Zhao Zuohai, fearing his revenge, Xinhua reported, and stayed away as he had not earned much money and felt ashamed. A villager said that during Zhai Zuohai's time in prison, his wife had remarried and two of his children had been adopted.

Henan Provincial Higher People's Court has ordered an investigation into the case and said the judges responsible for the original verdict would be punished. --AFP

A Chinese man who spent almost 10 years in jail for murder has been freed after his supposed victim was found alive.

Zhao Zuohai had a fight with his neighbour, who then disappeared, and was charged when a headless, decomposed body was found 18 months later.

The miscarriage of justice came to light when the neighbour, Zhao Zhenshang, returned to his village in Henan province to seek welfare support.

He had fled after their fight because he feared he had killed Zhao Zuohai.

Mr Zhao's conviction for murder was reportedly based mainly on a confession. His brother said police had forced him to drink chilli-tainted water and set off fireworks above his head to extract one.

Correspondents say convictions in the Chinese court system are strongly dependent on confessions, motivating police to use force to get one. Henan Provincial Higher People's Court has ordered an investigation into the case and the original judges will be punished.

Mr Zhao was initially sentenced to death for the crime, but the sentenced was commuted to 29 years in prison. While he was in jail, his wife remarried and several of his children were adopted. --BBC

Facebook chats exposed

2010-05-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO - FACEBOOK on Wednesday temporarily shut down its online chat feature after a software glitch let people's friends in the online community see each others' private chat messages.

For a 'limited period of time' chat messages and pending friend requests could be made visible to friends, according to Facebook.

For peeks at the usually walled-off information, Facebook users had to manipulate a 'preview my profile' feature in a particular way, according to Facebook. 'When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function,' a Facebook spokesman said in an email response to an AFP inquiry. 'We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests.'

Chat was back in action for most Facebook users by 1900 GMT (3am Thursday Singapore time) and it was expected to be working across the website after.

'We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented,' the Facebook spokesman said. The software glitch struck as the world's top online social-networking service is increasingly scrutinised regarding the privacy of members.

Slightly more than half of adult users of social networks have posted 'risky personal information' such as birth dates or children's photos to profile pages, according to a Consumer Reports survey titled 'Social Insecurity'. The survey indicated that 23 per cent of Facebook's users 'either didn't know that the site offered privacy controls or chose not to use them.' --AFP

Click here for article

Old folks in S'pore an asset to their families

2010-05-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

Study finds they give more help than they receive from their families, compared with the elderly elsewhere in Asia

By Carolyn Quek

COMPARED with old folk in other Asian states, the elderly in Singapore are contributing both practically and financially to their families, according to a 2008 global ageing study by Oxford University.

Unfortunately, they also get less support of the same kind from their children and grandchildren.

Said British gerontologist Sarah Harper, one of the researchers behind the study: 'We have this idea that older people are a burden on our society but that's because we tend to look at it through our tax system, that they are not in work.'

This is far from the truth, because the study showed that older people still made significant contributions towards their loved ones at home, she said yesterday, in presenting the study at a conference by the International Consortium for Intergenerational Programmes.

Around 1,000 seniors each from various places worldwide were asked if they had given financial and practical support to their family members over a six-month period.

The study also asked respondents - aged above 55 - if their children or grandchildren had done the same for them.

The results showed that older folks in Singapore were giving more help to their children and grandchildren than the other way around.

Twelve per cent of Singaporean respondents said they offered support such as shopping for groceries, or helping their children clean the house.

On the other hand, just 9 per cent of them said their family members had either shopped or cleaned house for them.

In Asia, the Philippines had the most seniors who gave practical help, with 40 per cent, and China the lowest, with 3 per cent of grandparents saying they helped out.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Malaysia and South Korea were included in the study as well.

Singapore was also one of three Asian countries where the elderly respondents offered more practical support to their children and grandchildren than otherwise. The other two were the Philippines and South Korea.

In terms of financial help, the younger generation in Singapore ranked third worst when it came to giving money to their parents, with only 18 per cent of respondents saying their children had given them money.

South Korea ranked the best, with 67 per cent of seniors saying they received money from their children, followed by Malaysia with 56 per cent; the Philippines with 40 per cent; India with 35 per cent and Hong Kong with 29 per cent.

In South Korea and the Philippines, the older generation gave the children as much financial support as they received from them.

Some 6 per cent of Singapore seniors also said they contributed financially to their children and grandchildren.

Professor Harper said yesterday on the sidelines of the four-day conference which ended yesterday: 'When we look at what's happening in families, we see that older people are making a large contribution.

'They are giving money to their children and grandchildren, they are providing care and they are also providing practical support.'

In his closing remarks at the conference, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Lim Boon Heng said that he hoped to see more creative programmes encouraging intergenerational bonding being developed.

'As these seniors renegotiate the terms of their old age, so must other generations renegotiate their relationships with them,' the minister, who is in charge of ageing issues, added.

Click here for the article in the ST on Apr 30 2010

'Long-term harm' of too much TV for toddlers

2010-05-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

The more TV a toddler watches, the higher the likelihood they will do badly at school and have poor health at the age of 10, researchers warn.

Go to BBC to read the original article.

RETIREMENT VILLAGE

2010-04-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

Spotted in the ST Forum....what do you guys think?

Home > ST Forum > Story
Apr 19, 2010

RETIREMENT VILLAGE

Pulau Ubin an ideal choice

THE Government should look into the possibility of creating a retirement village on beautiful Pulau Ubin. I am sure it will be well received by senior citizens.

The small island, untouched by development, can be a resort-like green retirement village where the clean atmosphere, fresh breeze from the sea and lovely beaches will make for a healthy and relaxing environment in the golden years of life.

For families visiting their aged parents on weekends, it will be wholesome fun and a refreshing break from the chores of urban life.

The young can also spend the day on the island, cycling or going on a nature walk.

Jeffrey Tan

Apr 29, 2010

Retirement villages not best way for S'poreans

MR JEFFREY Tan ('Retirement village: Pulau Ubin an ideal choice') and Miss Angeline Elysia Tan ('The hope') meant well on April 19 about introducing retirement villages for senior citizens.

Certainly, more can be done for senior citizens to have a meaningful and wholesome life in their twilight years.

But the idea and concept of placing them on an island or in a village is not one that should even be considered, no matter how well we develop such a place with easy accessibility for visits thrown in.

At a time when we are encouraging our young to be filial and look after their ageing parents, conveniently packing their parents off to an island or village is not the solution. Spending quality time with their parents and looking after their welfare is.

And because many today are all too often busy with their career and own family, it makes more sense to live with, or at least be near, their parents.

It may be true that senior citizens will benefit from the peace and tranquillity of an island or a village.

However, by the same token, it will ultimately detach them from their family and the Singapore they worked so hard to help build.

Victor Khoo

'Why not Sentosa?'

MS TAN ENG LIAN: 'Pulau Ubin reminds me of Alcatraz. The one-time island prison off San Francisco, California, was a place where hardcore criminals were banished, ultimately dying a lonely death. If we want a retirement village, why not Sentosa? It is a resort island and who else deserves it more than our senior citizens? While there is peace and quiet in such a village, senior citizens can access a resort brimming with life and bright lights as well. The aged will cherish their golden years even more. Their children and grandchildren will have good reasons to visit them too. A retirement village must be a place where people can look forward to living happily, not a forgotten island where they may feel they have been dumped. Better still, if we provide comfortable homes for the aged, rebuilt and renovated, at all suitable void decks, those who do not live in retirement villages can enjoy the option of living nearer their loved ones.'

'HDB estates should incorporate retirement villages.'

MR SAY KIN TONG: 'I am 52 years old and when I retire I would prefer to live in a retirement village within an HDB estate. As one ages, one prefers living in a community of all ages, not alone with a group of elderly people waiting to see who dies first. HDB estates should incorporate retirement villages so elderly people can live among young families, particularly their own. The villages need not be complicated. The first few levels of blocks in an estate can be designated the village. When elderly citizens are ready to move in, the change will not be traumatic because they will still be in a familiar neighbourhood. The Government will save on land resources as well.'

'No Pulau Ubin for me.'

MS TAN LEE KHENG: 'My vision of a retirement village is a place where I can live on my own yet when I step out of my home, there are people (eventually friends) of my age to socialise with. Like-minded people who think nothing of telling the same stories over and over. Stories our children are sick of hearing yet again. Play mahjong or computer games, or line-dance with friends, happily laughing at our mistakes, arthritic fingers and stiff bodies. We will be in our league. I expect to be able-bodied, and perhaps take a bus or train to visit my children when I feel like it. Maybe go window shopping or have lunch with friends outside the retirement village. Maybe baby-sit occasionally. A retirement village should give me and my grown children privacy and freedom, and accessibility to each other and facilities. A 365-day dose of beach and nature would be suffocating. So no Pulau Ubin for me.'

Spare some change,please

2010-03-29T01:32:00.001-07:00

Members of Parliament (MPs) will be meeting next month to debate proposed changes to Singapore’s political system. Among the changes proposed by the Prime Minister and his ruling People’s Action Party are changes to the Non-Constituency MPs scheme, a cooling-off day before the General Elections which sees a ban on campaigning, and tweaks to election contingencies. In the spirit of democracy, we, too, would like to propose the following (nothing political, of course) and request our esteemed MPs to debate them in the chamber.

Muay Thai training for female SQ cabin crew
After seeing that viral video of an SQ steward clobbering a drunk passenger, we think that—in the spirit of equality—it’s time the SQ girls got in on the act, too. They are the face of the airline, after all. We’ll send them to Commando Camp (conveniently located in Changi) for a quick Ranger crash course, where they can pick up some choice assassin skills. Once trained and airborne, there won’t even be a need for them to hide weapons like knuckle dusters in their hair buns or nunchucks up their sarongs. The next lout to screw around in the cabin will get his nuts smashed in by one of these lethal weapons.

A new approach to dealing with total diplomatic immunity.
That’s right. Let’s not pussyfoot around if a member of the diplomatic corps here gets into trouble with the law. Next time if an envoy, ambassador, charge d’affaires or any other person with a fancy job description mows a poor innocent down in a fit of drink-driving boorishness or assaults someone for correctly pointing out they’re tossers for parking in a handicapped zone, we shame the pants off them. Diplomatic immunity only means immunity from prosecution, which means we can do other not-so-nice things to them. Like making them stroll along Orchard Road in a diaper, pacifier and helicopter cap; forcing them to dance to Electrico; or forcing them to watch endless looped videos of Twilight: New Moon.

Farce up the S-League even further
It’s supposed to mean Singapore League, but really c’mon, is it? There are teams from France, Japan and China, and two of the local teams are from the uniformed groups. Plus one of the sides is the national under-23 football team. So yes, it is a joke; and no wonder the national team is struggling. But instead of completely overhauling the S-League, why not just add to its absurdity by expanding it. “Expansion” team No.1 is a squad of ditzy D-list model wannabes who have slept with Jack Neo. Team No.2 is made up of guys barred from the casino (they need something to do). And No.3 features a roster of Bangladeshi workers currently in between employers (they’ll kick butt, for sure).

Source: IS Magazine

Last Week In Reality, Mar 26, 2010

2010-03-29T01:25:00.000-07:00

MARCH

15 MON
The Law Benz? A man refuses to pay a $30 dollar parking fine, feeling that he has been unfairly targeted because of his luxury car. Wilson Ang, 23, drives a Mercedes SLK convertible and received the fine at Circular Road for not displaying a parking coupon. He claims that none of the other cars in the area displayed coupons either, but none of them received fines.

It’s Just Fire Petroleum giant Shell assures environmentally conscious Singaporeans that a flame emanating from a chimney at their new Pulau Bukom complex is not hazardous. The spectacular flare is produced by the burning of waste products and produces only carbon dioxide and water.

16 TUE
Pole Position Parking poles will not be used in driving tests any longer. Responsible for a generation of drivers who learned to park by looking at stickers on their rear window, they have been dropped in favor of a more realistic parking scenario.

17 WED
Maid-guyver An Indonesian maid is wanted by the police after she assaulted her employer’s 15-year-old daughter with a bowl and threatened her with a knife. She proceeded to tie her up with a telephone cable and escaped through the kitchen window of the third floor condominium unit.

18 THU
Stealing Beauty A woman is in court facing up to 14 counts of theft and causing hurt by poison. Vicky Herman Quek, 44, targeted older men who appeared affluent and wore Rolex watches. After chatting them up she would invite them to have drinks with her. Spiking the victim’s drink with sleeping pills, she waited till he fell asleep before making off with everything of value. Much of the money she stole was spent on beauty treatments.

Hot Attire A woman in Jalan Bukit Ho Swee woke up to find her laundry on fire. It was caused by an upstairs neighbor who covered her kitchen windows with newspaper to prevent people from looking in. Some of the newspaper caught fire, found its way out the window, and set the clothes ablaze.

19 FRI
Unfriendly Fire Two people have been arrested on suspicion of selling illegal weapon parts for use in M-16 rifles commonly found in the Singapore army. The shop owners are from the military surplus market at Golden Mile Food Centre, usually referred to simply as "Beach Road." Parts available include firing pins, retaining pins and blank attachments. They are harmless on their own, but may be used to build a functioning weapon if other parts can be obtained.

Source: IS Magazine

Iranian women bloggers lauded

2010-03-29T00:42:00.000-07:00

PARIS - INTERNET giant Google on Thursday joined a top journalists' rights group in rewarding a collective of Iranian women bloggers for their reporting on last year's post-election unrest.

The online journalists of women's rights blog we-change.org were given the 'Net Citizen' award, a new prize by Google and French media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to defend freedom of expression online.

Dozens of the Iranian site's contributors have been detained for reporting online on huge anti-government demonstrations that broke out amid claims of fraud in Iran's election, RSF said.

'The Iranian women's movement has always shown resistance... Now the movement is bringing its experience and methods of working democratically into cyberspace,' said one of its members, Mr Parvin Adalan, accepting the award at Google's Paris offices.

Google and RSF said in a statement that the site, formed in 2006, 'has become a point of reference for information on women's rights in Iranian society', and 'Iranian cyber-feminists have created new spaces for expression'. 'Female online journalists show the world the abuses of power suffered in recent months by demonstrators and the population in general' in Iran, they said.

Among others shortlisted for the prize was Mr Tan Zuoren, a 55-year-old Chinese journalist jailed for five years for his reporting on poorly built schools that were destroyed in the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, south-western China. -- AFP

Source: AFP

TV 'ban' for Aussie toddlers

2009-10-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

SYDNEY - CHILDREN should not watch television until they turn two because it can hurt their language development and ability to concentrate, according to new guidelines for Australians.

The government recommendations, expected to be released next week, also say that children aged two to five should watch no more than an hour of television a day, The Australian newspaper reported Monday.

The draft guidelines, which have been designed for childcare centres but also offer advice for parents, are intended to help curb the spread of the obesity epidemic which has left Australian children heavier than ever.

'Based on recent research, it is recommended that children younger than two years of age should not spend any time watching television or using other electronic media (DVDs, computer and other electronic games),' they say.

'Screen time... may reduce the amount of time they have for active play, social contact with others and chances for language development,' a draft copy of the guidelines obtained by The Australian said.

'(It may) affect the development of a full range of eye movement (and)... reduce the length of time they can stay focused.' The government would not confirm the report, saying that the guidelines were still being finalised. -- AFP

- From Straits Times 12th October

Singapore youths addicted to games

2009-10-05T02:47:00.000-07:00

SINGAPORE students spend 27 hours a week playing video games like Maple Story and World of Warcraft.

The statistic, uncovered by an ongoing National Institute of Education (NIE) study, is raising concern over the impact of such games, and the extent of gaming addiction here.

The three-year study, the biggest of its kind in Singapore, is looking at more than 3,000 primary and secondary school students' gaming habits, and will be finished at the end of the year.

NIE declined to reveal more about it pending an analysis of the results.

One thing is clear though: Singapore youth really like video games.

Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lui Tuck Yew, who revealed the 27-hour statistic at a Singapore Press Club event last month, said he was 'quite surprised and a little bit shocked' that the figure was so high.

From ST

God Bless This Gadget

2009-08-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

IF YOU HAD TO CHOOSE ONE WEAPON for fighting the next religious war, you could do worse than to pick an iPhone. . In recent months, the foot soldiers of religion have come out with a bevy of new programs designed to win converts and make religious practices more accessible. For those of the Jewish faith, iBlessing helps in figuring out which blessings go with which food, ParveOMeter keeps track of the t- waiting times between eating meat, and dairy, and Siddur gives prayer times based on one's GPS coordinates. Devout Roman Catholics will appreciate iBreviary, which pulls up and displays complete missal and principal prayers in Spanish, French, English, Latin, and Italian.

Ever since Galileo, the relationship between technology and organized religion has been uneasy. The printing press helped spread the Gospel and win new adherents to Christianity, but it also greatly undermined the Catholic Church’s information monopoly. To avoid repeating this mistake, religious organizations are embracing cutting-edge communications technologies, hoping to stay on

the right side of the next technology revolution.

Less than a year ago, the Vatican deplored "the age of the Internet and the mobile," in which, according to Cardinal Lombardi, the pope's spokesman, it's "more difficult than before to protect silence and to nourish the interior dimension of life." Since then, the pope has changed his tune. "Young people have grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication, and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turning to them as means of... forming networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and, opinions," he said in May.

Thank the Vatican's younger cohort for this turnaround. Paolo Padrini, a 36-year-old Italian pastor and a Vatican insider with a knack for technology, is the developer of iBreviary, the first iPhone application officially approved by the Vatican. Padrini launched the ambitious Pope2You site, which aggregates the Vatican's presence on various social networks. It boasts cutting-edge social-media components, including an iPhone application that keeps its users updated with the pope's recent speeches and activities and a You Tube channel that features papal video addresses. A site called Wikicath delivers the pope's messages "in a new way, interactive and hypertext, through a platform built in the Wiki style."

Not to be outdone, followers of Islam have begun battling over religion online almost as vehemently as they used to clash in the streets of Baghdad. Even mobile-phone ringtones are emerging as important affirmations of religious identity. So many people have been downloading verses from the Qur'an that a Muslim organization in India saw fit to issue a fatwa declaring it a sin to interrupt the tone before it has finished the verse.

As the Vatican has discovered with its Wikicath site, posting boring texts online doesn't guarantee thousands of followers. Lately the site seems to elicit little comment. If Vatican officials continue to haunt Facebook and Twitter, though, they're bound eventually to absorb the new-media culture. Whether the young crowd will have moved on by then is another story.

By Evgeny Morozov from Newsweek July 27, 2009, p.11

1) What is the tone of the writer towards the use of technology in religion?

2) What is your own opinion about the issue? What do you think are its pros and cons? Relate your answer to your own experiences.

Word of The Week

2009-08-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

im·per·vi·ous
adj.

Incapable of being penetrated: a material impervious to water.
Incapable of being affected: impervious to fear.

Word of The Week

2009-08-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

trepidation

n.
1. fear; apprehension; nervous trembling

The nursery school students were filled with trepidation when they saw the other children in their class dressed in their Halloween costumes.

The trepidation of the students before the class play was very apparent as their hands were trembling and some were perspiring.

Animal Activists blamed for fire

2009-08-04T16:41:00.001-07:00

VIENNA - A MASSIVE fire at the Austrian holiday villa of Novartis chief Daniel Vasella was criminal and the handiwork of a British animal protection group, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

'It was a criminal act,' the Novartis spokesman told the Swiss tabloid Blick, adding there was 'no doubt' that Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was behind the arson.

'The situation with SHAC has completely degenerated,' he said, adding: 'We take the security of our officials very seriously.' Austrian police have said the fire was probably started purposely but have not confirmed this as yet.

The blaze at Vasella's holiday home in the small Tyrolean village of Bach was discovered around 3.30am on Monday by a German holidaymaker, who woke after hearing a muffled bang and saw the neighbouring house in flames, according to the police.

He immediately alerted the fire department and it took about 100 firefighters to douse the flames. Nobody was injured, police said.

Two sides of the villa were seriously damaged but the extent of the damage was unknown.

Swiss media reported that Mr Vasella, who was not at the villa at the time of the fire, and his company had already been the target of repeated attacks by the SHAC.

This group, which campaigns against animal testing, is believed to have been behind the desecration last week of Vasella's mother's tomb in the eastern Swiss town of Chur.

They also torched company cars and destroyed a Novartis sports facility in eastern France.

An SHAC member, Debbie Vincent, warned of more attacks in an interview to La Tribune daily. -- AFP

This article was reported in ST today. What do you think of the reporting? Do you think the activists have gone too far? Justify your answer by referring to your own experiences/observations.

Word of the Week

2009-07-13T06:39:00.000-07:00

im·pugn
n.
im·pugned, im·pugn·ing, im·pugns
To attack as false or questionable; challenge in argument

Example: The opposition team intended to impugn their opponent's record by listing their inexperience and dubious background as obvious flaws.

Interesting Ads

2009-07-13T06:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some interesting ads that you need to decipher its meaning. The first few ones are easy. How about the last few ones starting from the psychiatrist? What can you INFER from the ads? Please state your comments about the last two. See whether you get it.

Word of The Week

2009-05-06T03:07:00.000-07:00

Hey beautiful people.....I'm starting a word of the week to highlight interesting words which you can use for your essay or even impress your friends with your new found vocabulary. We might be lucky if these words appear in your Paper 2 exam! Anyway some of the words are selected from the word list of your articles so keep a lookout.

prec·i·pice

1. An overhanging or extremely steep mass of rock, such as a crag or the face of a cliff.

2. The brink of a dangerous or disastrous situation: on the precipice of defeat.

Example: The team managed to score a point at the precipice of defeat to maintain their unbeaten run.

The Funeral of Common Sense

2009-04-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:

Knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm:

Life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults are in charge not children)

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of an 8 year old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate, teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch, and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student, but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims,

Common sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common sense finally gave up the will to live, after a women failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common sense was preceded in death, by his parents, truth and trust

His wife, discretion

His daughter, Responsibility

His son, reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers

I know my rights

I want my rights

I want it now

I’m a victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on if not, join the majority and do nothing.

From BBC Radio Stoke's Mid-Morning show, presenter Stuart George who mourned the death of 'common sense'.

What do you guys think? Is it really true that we have lost common sense to the graveyard?

Writing To Reach You

2009-04-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a song by Travis which appeared in one of the good podcasts that you guys did. I dig this song too cus the tune is infectious and the words are cool....they feel so sincere as if you can feel what he is actually feeling inside....emo but good emo....

Every day I wake up and it's Sunday

Whatever's in my eye won't go away
The radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anyway
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
It's good to know that you are home for Christmas
It's good to know that you are doing well
It's good to know that you all know I'm hurting
It's good to know I'm feeling not so well
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
Do you know it's true
But that won't do
Maybe then tomorrow will be Monday
And whatever's in my eye should go away
But still the radio is playing all the usual
And what's a Wonderwall anway
Because my inside is outside
My right side's on my left side
Cause I'm writing to reach you now but
I might never reach you
Only want to teach you
About you
But that's not you
Do you know it's true
But that won't do
And you know it's you
I'm talking to

What do you guys think the song is about? Is it about a break up? Or did he jus woke up on the wrong side of bed...and what IS the wonderwall that he is referring to?

Family

2009-04-06T07:40:00.000-07:00

"Funeral" is a new TV commercial launched by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) which looks at relationships in a different light, through a woman at her husbands funeral. Ultimately, the TVC celebrates the beautiful imperfections that make a relationship perfect. Another excellent piece of film work by Yasmin Ahmad.

Project Wonderful

2009-04-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

The video is from Google's Project 10^100, a platform for people to help others. People across 42 countries submitted their ideas for making the world a better place -- and Google has committed $10 million to turning up to five of those ideas into a reality.

You guys can also gain inspiration from CNN's Impact Your World.

Women's Aid Ad: Isn't it time someone called cut?

2009-04-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

The actress Kiera Knightley made this video about a pressing social issue. What is it? Can we relate this to anything in Singapore??

What Is Web 2.0?

2009-03-30T03:57:00.000-07:00

Web 1.0 was focused on a relatively small number of companies and advertisers producing content for users to access—some people called the web at the time the “brochure web.” Web 2.0involves the user—not only is the content often created by users, but users help organize it, share it, remix it, critique it, update it, etc. One way to look at Web 1.0 is as a lecture, a small number of professors informing a large audience of students. In comparison, Web 2.0 is aconversation, with everyone having the opportunity to speak and share views.

Web 2.0 embraces an architecture of participation—a design that encourages user interaction and community contributions. You, the user, are the most important aspect of Web 2.0—so important, in fact, that in 2006, TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year” was “you.” The article recognized the social phenomenon of Web 2.0—the shift away from a powerful few to an empowered many.

“We can’t be device centric...we must be user centric.”

—Bill Gates, MIX06 conference

Many Web 2.0 companies are built almost entirely on user-generated content and harnessing collective intelligence. The significance is not just in having user-generated content, but in how it is used. Google—the leading search engine and Internet advertising company—sends its users to user-generated websites by considering what users collectively have valued in the past. For websites like MySpace^®, Flickr™, YouTube and Wikipedia^®, users create the content, while the sites provide the platforms. These companies trust their users—without such trust, users cannot make significant contributions to the sites.

“A platform beats an application every time.”

—Tim O’Reilly

The architecture of participation is seen in software development as well. Open software is available for anyone to use and modify with few or no restrictions—this has played a major role in Web 2.0 development. Harnessing collective intelligence, communities collaborate to develop software that many people believe is better than proprietary software.

You, the user, are not only contributing content and developing open source software, but you are also directing how media is delivered, and deciding which news and information outlets you trust. Many popularblogs now compete with traditional media powerhouses. Social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia allow users to recommend their favorite sites to others. Social media sites such as Digg™ or Reddit enable the community to decide which news articles are the most significant. You are also changing the way we find the information on these sites by tagging (i.e., labeling) web content by subject or keyword in a way that helps anyone locate information more effectively. This is just one of the ways Web 2.0 helps users identify new meaning in already existing content.RSS feeds (Chapter 14, XML and RSS) enable you to receive new information as it is updated—pushing the content right to your desktop.

The rise ofsocial networks has changed the way we interact and network. MySpace— the largest social network—has rapidly become the world’s most popular website. Other popular social networking sites include Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Second Life—a 3D virtual world where you interact with others via your online persona called an avatar.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content has been the key to success for many of today’s leading Web 2.0 companies, such as Amazon, eBay and Monster. The community adds value to these sites, which, in many cases, are almost entirely built on user-generated content. For example, eBay (an online auction site) relies on the community to buy and sell auction items, and Monster (a job search engine) connects job seekers with employers and recruiters.

User-generated content includes explicitly generated content such as articles, home videos and photos. It can also include implicitly generated content—information that is gathered from the users’ actions online. For example, every product you buy from Amazon and every video you watch on YouTube provides these sites with valuable information about your interests. Companies like Amazon have developed massive databases of anonymous user data to understand how users interact with their site. For example, Amazon uses your purchase history and compares it to purchases made by other users with similar interests to make personalized recommendations (e.g., “customers who bought this item also bought...”). Implicitly generated content is often considered hidden content. For example, web links and tags are hidden content; every site you link to from your own site or bookmark on a social bookmarking site could be considered a vote for that site’s importance. Search engines such as Google (which uses the PageRank algorithm) use the number and quality of these links to a site to determine the importance of a site in search results.

Source:

http://www.deitel.com/eBook/WhatIsWeb20/tabid/2483/Default.aspx

https://php.radford.edu/~tlc/wordpress/

De Bono's Six Thinking Hats

2009-03-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

"Six Thinking Hats" is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of a decision, and spot issues and opportunities which you might otherwise not notice.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint, and this is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at problems from emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoints. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to change, don't make creative leaps, and fail to make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and people used to a very logical approach to problem solving may fail to engage their creativity or listen to their intuition.

If you look at a problem using the Six Thinking Hats technique, then you'll use all of these approaches to develop your best solution. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book "6 Thinking Hats".

How to Use the Tool:

To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality of your decision-making, look at the decision "wearing" each of the thinking hats in turn.

Each "Thinking Hat" is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

White Hat:
With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.
This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.
Red Hat:
Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
Black Hat:
When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.
Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.
Yellow Hat:
The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

Green Hat:
The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here.
Blue Hat:
The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

A similar approach is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors) or different customers.

http://www.learnerslink.com/questioning_card.htm

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

Media coverage of Innova's A-level results

2009-03-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of clips featuring Innovians excelling in the 2008 A-levels:

Channel 8

Suria

PODcast resources

2009-02-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

Hey beautiful people....

Here's a couple of resources that are IMPERATIVE for your podcasts:

Audacity is D place to download this simple audio software to record your podcasts.

PartnersInRhyme is a website that provides royalty-free music and sounds for you to use in as your intro, outro or background music. Lots of cool sounds as well.

Cool like ol' skool.

Enjoy!

Facebook to own info?

2009-02-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK - TENS of thousands of Facebook users are protesting new policies that they say grant the social-networking site the ability to control their information forever, even after they cancel their accounts.Facebook's new terms of use, updated Feb 4, largely went unnoticed until the popular consumer rights advocacy blog Consumerist.com pointed out the changes on Sunday.

That prompted a clarification from Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, although the new terms remain in force. Mr Zuckerberg told users in a blog post Monday that 'on Facebook, people own their information and control who they share it with'.

When someone shares a photo, a message or a status update telling friends what they are up to at the moment, they first need to grant Facebook a license so the site can pass that information along to authorized friends, Zuckerberg said. Without the license, he said, Facebook wouldn't be able to help people share information.

Zuckerberg said the new terms are necessary to reflect the fact that friends may retain a copy of that message or other information once a user shares it with them.

'Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message,' Mr Zuckerberg said. 'We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like e-mail work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.' Mr Zuckerberg did acknowledge that Facebook, which boasts 175 million users around the world, still has 'work to do to communicate more clearly' about how information is shared on the site.

The rapidly growing site has had several run-ins with users over its short history.

In late 2007, for example, a tracking tool called 'Beacon' caught users off-guard by broadcasting information about their shopping habits and activities at other websites. After initially defending the practice, Facebook ultimately allowed users to turn Beacon off. -- AP

JC vs Poly

2009-02-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

A RECORD number of school leavers fresh off the O-level boat have made it to the polytechnics this year.

And, continuing a trend that began a few years ago, many of these poly students did well enough in the O levels to have gone to a junior college (JC), but chose a polytechnic education instead.

About 20,640 of these school leavers have been posted to the five polytechnics, where they will earn diplomas in three years. The intake is 800 more than last year.

The new high comes despite there having been fewer O-level candidates last year than in 2007. As a consequence of that dip, the number posted to the polytechnics, JCs, Millennia Institute and the Institutes of Technical Education under the Education Ministry's Joint Admissions Exercise was also smaller.

The polytechnics' gain shrank the overall intake for the JCs, and also for Millennia Institute, where students take the A levels after three years. (See chart.)

One school leaver contributing to the tilt in favour of the polys is former Anderson Secondary student Ranjini Visvalingam, 17, who scored six points in her O levels. She could have made it to just about any junior college, but opted for Republic Polytechnic's biomedical science course.

Noting that her friends have queried her choice of a polytechnic over the more academic junior-college track, she said: "But I've already decided what I want to do – get an advance diploma in biomedical science and go on to Monash for a degree – so there is no need to go to a JC."
Melbourne's Monash University has a programme with Republic Polytechnic where students get on a fast track to a degree.

In response to the demand, the five polytechnics have opened up 25,700 places, about 700 more than last year.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic raised its number of vacancies by 150 to 5,250.
Republic Polytechnic principal Yeo Li Pheow has seen a 60 per cent leap in applicants who made the poly – the newest among the five – their first choice.

And they are coming in with stronger grades too.
"It's definitely a good sign for polys that students eligible for JC choose to go to the polys. It's a personal choice they make," he said.

Among the 18 JCs, the high-end ones have had no change in intake size, though a few, like Serangoon and Tampines, have smaller intakes this year.
The heads of JCs and of Millennia Institute contacted are not overly concerned that their schools now seem less popular.

Millennia Institute's Tan Chor Pang said a core of students will always pick the A-level route, which is still regarded as better preparation for higher education.
But he conceded that the JCs and Millennia Institute can do more to court potential students; the polys, he said, "are more aggressive and define their courses in a very attractive way, being up to date and relevant to industry. Students are attracted to that".
He added that this year's single intake for JCs might have also shrunk the demand for JCs.

Previously, students admitted provisionally could try out JC life until the O- level results came out in March, but "in the absence of the first three months of JC, there is no longer a natural platform to experience JC education", he said.

Ms Helen Choo, the principal of the mid-tier Tampines Junior College, said students may be going to the polytechnics because they are focused and know what they want, be it mass communications or hospitality studies.

JCs' future intakes could be uncertain, she said, given declining enrolment resulting from a declining birth rate and an explosion of choices for school leavers.

Yishun Junior College, on the other hand, took in slightly more students this year, just under 600. Vice-principal Wong Mun Wah said the JC's efforts at selling itself as a "value-added" school have paid off, as has the flexibility in subject combinations that it gives its students.

janeng@sph.com.sg

Where the O-level students have gone

Number who sat for the O levels

2008: 36,640
2007: 38,450

Number posted to their next school under Joint Admissions Exercise

This year: 34,400
Last year: 34,800

Number posted to junior colleges

This year: 11,008
Last year: 11,484

Number posted to Millennia Institute for the three-year A level course

This year: 344
Last year: 696

Number posted to polytechnics

This year: 20,640
Last year: 19,836

Number posted to ITE

This year: 2,408
Last year: 2,784

NOTE: The figures are calculated based on rounded-off percentages provided by the Ministry of Education and may not be exact numbers.

The Last Lecture

2008-07-26T07:13:00.001-07:00

Warmer Climate - Snow Patrol

2008-07-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

What does this song mean to you....

Tell me if im going crazy,
but everything you said amazed me,
seems too easy on the ear to,
be something i should adhere to.

You told me to just simply wonder,
rather than take shelter under,
an open my heart to the thought that,
life is something you're not caught at.

Too easy to get lost in progress,
i didn't see you there in that dress,
then suddenly the world seems so small,
we'd fit it all inside our front hall,
Edison would spin in his grave,
to ever see the light that you gave,
don't want to take it nice and slow here,
don't want to waste a minute more dear.

The universe just vanished out of sight,
and all the stars collapsed behind the pitch black night,
and i can barely see your face infront of mine,
but it is knowing you are there that makes me fine.

Maybe its the warmer climate,
maybe i'm a smarter primate,
maybe its the beer i'm drinking,
maybe i've stopped over thinking,
baby you're the words and chapters,
the sweetness in the morning after,
you are the cry that turns to laughter,
you're the hope that ends disaster.

The universe just vanished out of sight,
and all the stars collapsed behind the pitch black night,
and i can barely see your face infront of mine,
but it is knowing you are there that makes me fine.

But the universe is just an empty space,
and all the stars can disappear without a trace,
i'm so glad that this has taken me so long,
coz its the journey that made me so strong.

What is Emo?

2008-07-13T21:56:00.001-07:00

Is fall out boy emo? Does wearing eyeliner and black clothes make you emo? Click on the picture to see the fashion requirements of an emo.

See what these people think what emo is? Click me!

How emo are you? Find out here...

2008-07-13T21:54:00.001-07:00

1. Your girlfriend just broke up with you. Do you...
a. Find another girl
b. Weep
c. Write a song about it

2. How many times a day do you cry?
a. 5-7
b. 8-11
c. As many times as The Killers diss Pete Wentz

3. Who is in your MySpace top 8?
a. Panic! At The Disco
b. Top 8 is so yesterday. I have 16.
c. My friends from the Fall Out Boy fan club

4. Where do you buy your pants?
a. Hot Topic
b. In the women's department
c. I raid my little sister's closet

5. How many piercings do you have?
a. 2
b. 3-4
c. 3 for every part of my face

6. How many pairs of Converse shoes do you own?
a. One for every mood I might go through
b. One for every band in the Honda Civic Tour
c. One for every friend on MySpace

7. Your glasses are...
a. Prescription
b. Buddy Holly via Rivers Cuomo
c. Not coming off unless I can get My Chemical Romance to sign them

8. Your hair is...
a. Dyed black
b. Full of product
c. Impairing my vision

9. How often do you change your MySpace picture?
a. Ten times a day
b. Every day after TRL
c. Not until the next 30 Seconds To Mars concert

10. I save money by...
a. Cutting my own hair
b. Shopping at thrift stores
c. Never spending more than $15 on a concert

Mostly A's
You are just barely emo.
Stop being such a poser.

Mostly B's
You are decidedly emo. You might not squeeze into little girls' pants, but you still know the importance of a good cry.

Mostly C's
If Pete Wentz, Brendon Urie and Gerard Way walked into a bar, you'd still the most emo person in the room.

Emo = Suicide ? ?

2008-07-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

This article reports that a suicide of a 13 year-old girl in the States is linked to the 'emo' culture. Do you agree?

Click on the article for the full report.

Emo fans fight back....

2008-07-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

Emo fans here defend themselves....do you feel that the music that you might be listening is to be blamed for Hannah's death?

Click on the pic for the full report.

DoveCampaignForRealBeauty

2008-07-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

Check out these cool videos on the constructions of beauty....

However...Nevertheless.....On the other hand....

Plastic Surgery Addiction - A Body Image Problem Within Our Society

2008-07-09T06:41:00.000-07:00

Despite the prevalence of beautiful plus size models, and movements to boost self-esteem, many women and young girls are preoccupied with negative feelings about their body image. Moreover, with the onslaught of reality programs documenting plastic surgeries, some people rely on a knife to achieve their ideal appearance.

Plastic or cosmetic surgery is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, facial and body injuries may cause a deformity, which can only be corrected by means of plastic surgery. Additionally, cosmetic surgery can be a lifesaver in the case of extreme obesity. On the flip side, some people – especially females – are too consumed with looking pretty and having the perfect body. Because the perfect body is unachievable, these people may have continual plastic surgeries with hopes of finding personal satisfaction. To onlookers, these persons are beautiful. In spite of that, an unrealistic view of their body says otherwise.

Unfortunately, two-thirds of plastic surgery patients are repeat patients. Having the initial cosmetic surgery is the hard part. However, once the first surgery is complete, it is easy for the patient to seek more enhancements. Typical plastic surgery procedures include breast augmentations, nose jobs, cheek implants, liposuction, and so forth. Granted, not everyone who has more than one plastic surgery is addicted. Growing up, some people have a healthy dislike of certain body parts. Perhaps they have an unsightly nose. These persons resolve to correct the dislike when funds are available. On the other hand, persons addicted to cosmetic surgery demonstrate a measure of psychological problems.

To a certain degree, everyone is self-conscious and has insecurities. Yet, some people suffer from a condition known as body dysmorphic disorder. Persons with this condition can be extremely good-looking, but view themselves as ugly. They equate happiness with beauty. Thus, to achieve a happy state, they undergo repeated cosmetic surgeries. Unfortunately, people with this disorder are never satisfied with their appearance. Hence, cosmetic surgeries are never-ending.

Signs of Cosmetic/Plastic Surgery Addiction

Plastic surgery addictions are usually easy to detect. Obviously, patients who have had countless cosmetic surgeries, either on the same body part or on different body parts, are typical addicts.

Addicts commonly obsess about specific body parts of an admired celebrity. For example, a patient may request Angelina Jolie's lips, Jennifer Lopez's backside (butt implants), Naomi Campbell's cheekbones, and so forth. Plastic surgery addicts consider these celebrities the epitome of beauty, and will go to any lengths to achieve their desired qualities. Yet, addicts fail to realize that each person has unique features, and trying to tailor our looks behind someone else's is a recipe for disaster.

Ethics Code

Do plastic surgeons contribute to plastic surgery addictions? The answer to this question depends largely on who is asked. Granted, plastic surgeon’s primary role is to perform surgery, and not provide counsel to persons suffering from a psychological problem. Still, if a surgeon detects a destructive pattern, isn't refusing to perform an operation in the best interest of the patient? Rather than support multiple cosmetic surgeries, physician should decline, and refer the patient to an excellent psychologist.

By V.C. Higuera, published Aug 18, 2006 (http://www.associatedcontent.com)