Spare some change,please

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

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

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

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

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

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

im·per·vi·ous
adj.

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