Daily Reads Jan 31

• Foreign Doctors – Should we err on side of caution?

  from nofearSingapore

• Reaching out to our youths

  from Singapore Patriot

• Globalization steals my job

  from BEYOND SG

• The various dimensions of the drug and death penalty problem

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• Kallang roars again!

  from Singapore Patriot

• On Real Life & TV

  from Mr Wang Says So

• How to Choose Your Own Destiny

  from The Legal Janitor

In The Mood For Love – The Art of Stopping and Smelling the Roses

No one really knows when poems started appearing in the metro, underground and train stations all around the world. Some cognoscenti’s swear the first poems surfaced in Moscow during the mid eighties in the Electrozavodskaya in the Moscow underground. Others credit the British who once ran a crazy project simply called Poems in the London underground.

The idea was simple enough. Over a few experimental months, the London Arts Council and two poetry publishers would support some posters with poems to be read by commuters and exhausted shoppers, alongside adverts for duty free cigarettes, cars or holidays in Spain. The commentators were pretty vitriolic,

“Far-fetched if not preposterous….” said one.

“The exposure of an obscure and esoteric passion” wrote another.

But curiously, the public loved it. Now, the scattering of poetry about in public places has been adopted by mass transport systems in New York, Paris, Dublin, Tokyo, Shanghai, Moscow, and in capital cities in Scandinavia. Poems on the underground are now assumed to be part of the urban landscape, a model for primary school projects and a subject for Ph.Ds in media studies and semiology.

Daily Reads Jan 30

• Some Information on the Tochi Case

  from Singapore Angle

• The War on Drugs

  from Singapore Angle

• [Rant] Horror Disguised as Good News: World-Class…

  from To Fix a Mocking Peasant

• Freeing Your Speech

  from Mr Wang Says So

• Another death sentence… Subscribe to My sketchbook…

  from My sketchbook

• Huh, ASEAN? Does it really matter to us?

  from theonlinecitizen

• The Void Deck-Open and Inclusive?

  from The Anti-Neo-Democracy Theorist

• Reservists’ Sentiments

  from this lush garden within

• Last call for Singapore’s Crazy Horse (Financial Times)

  from Yahoo! News Search Results for singapore

Early Morning Jan 29

Death Penalty

• The Death Penalty: Questioning Ourselves

  from Singapore Angle

• Why we ought not to have a mandatory death penalty…

  from Coffee and Cigarettes.

• A Cry For Decency

  from Pseudonymity

• Justice is Blind.

  from Die neue Welle

Thailand

• Singapore Breaks ‘ASEAN Code’ By Hosting Thaksin

  from SingaporeSurf

• Meannie Friends?

  from Singapore Life and Times

Other

• Charity under siege

  from Singapore Life and Times

• They don’t just burn your pockets

  from To Fix a Mocking Peasant

• Pork lard – successfully banished!

  from Richard Seah’s Health Promotion Blog

• Closure of this blog

  from i speak

Daily Reads Jan 27

• Complicity in the senseless murder of a young boy

  from theonlinecitizen

• Samsui Women Not Eligible for Workfare Bonus

  from Holland Village Voice

• Bloggers question Tochi’s execution

  from theonlinecitizen

• Performing law

  from Yawning Bread Sampler

• Van Nguyen Died for your Sins: Executions as Public Communication

  from Imagethief : Singapore

• Why We Should Care…

  from Wanderings, Musings and Happenings from Ian on S

• Singapore Patriot

  from A Xeno Boy in Sg

• The Problems of Law

  from Mr Wang Says So

• Singapore too conservative to have unbridled horseplay?

  from nofearSingapore

Fahrenheit 451 – Intellectuals, We Dam Well Need Them So Singapore!

In Fahrenheit 451, a 1966 film, based on Ray Bradbury’s classic, director Francois Truffaut paints a frightening vision of a dystopian future, where firemen don’t put out fires – they start them to burn books. In this world books are evil. In this future scope, society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal – a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad and anything resembling intellectualism and philosophy is simply corruption.

Fire Captain Beatty (the main protagonist boss) explains it this way, “Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs…. Don’t give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

The main character, Guy Montag, bears the number 451 on his helmet. Coincidentally, this is also the temperature at which books ignite. Montag seems to be a robot of sorts, a machine simply following orders.  His mission to destroy homes contaminated with books is mandated by the government. Though he initially seems moderately content with his job and his life, Montag’s mind reflects the condition of his futuristic society: empty.

Reply to Soci regarding Tochi

Serious allegations have been made against this website. Specifically, Soci of Singabloodypore has made the following statements:

(Click for full image, see here for entire post)

While this is not the kind of post i enjoy writing, it is necessary that I deal with these allegations as these comments malign the integrity and reputation of the IS.

Evening Reads Jan 26

• Wither thy Singaporean Dream

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• Ignorance is not Virtue

  from Wanderings, Musings and Happenings from Ian on S

• Amara Tochi to be Hung at Dawn

  from i speak

• Haughty Horses and Clueless Crocodilians

  from Cooler Insights

• Why Denmark doesn’t need trans fat labelling?

  from Richard Seah’s Health Promotion Blog – The Alter

• Nigerian faces execution in Singapore without family…

  from Singapore Election Watch

• Medicine Makers and Medicine Takers

  from To Fix a Mocking Peasant

• UN expert calls on Singapore not to hang Nigerian on drug charges, says breaches rights

  from UN News Centre
  

Daily Reads Jan 26

• If I Am Not Sick, Why Do I Need Medicine?

  from Wanderings, Musings and Happenings from Ian on S

• Adventures of Elite Girl ep0025
• Why is marriage a criterion for maternity leave?

  from Coffee and Cigarettes.

• Speech at Parliament Sitting on 22 Jan – Dr Fatimah…

  from P65 Blog

• Singapore Feels Heat On Economic Agenda

  from SingaporeSurf

• Old rules apply in cyberspace

  from Singabloodypore

Offbeat

• Mrs. Lee suffers mosquito bite, 20 doctors and SIA mobilised

  from Singapore Donkey

The Great Divide – Hopes and Fears in a Brave New World.

The great divide in my life isn’t about whether computers are going to take over the world, or whether globalization is going to dumb us all down into faceless nuts and bolts. It’s about my relationship with my 20-year-old TV.

Manufactured at an age when TV’s still had the courtesy to pretend to be furniture, it’s encased in real wood veneer and shutters which slide shut and lock with a tiny brass key. Quaint, you may say, only because you never had to hold a coat hanger in one hand and a co-axial cable in another while massaging them furiously to figure out the final score on a football match into the 60th minute – that’s the only way to get a picture from my TV when she goes on the blink. She lives by her own rules, she has a mind of her own.

Recently I have been toying with the illicit idea of getting a new TV – you know, one of those sexy ultra thin ones that don’t even see the need to pass off as furniture because through the years, they have sashayed their way into the privacy of our living rooms and claimed their right to intrude upon our lives. That, at least, is what the technocrats keep telling me, “you can’t stand in the way of progress,” even though anthrax, bird flu, SARS and Polonium didn’t look much like progress when you got real close to them.

The Great Experiment Called City Living

If you are wondering why the word “Urban” doesn’t sound English, it’s because it has everything to do with an ancient city called Ur. Located in Southern Mesopotamia, present day Iraq – at its zenith 4,000 years ago, over 30,000 people clumped together to work, live and play in Ur.

Today Ur is universally recognized as the first urban experiment in city living and very successful was Urland. Ever since then, our species has continually defined cultural, economic, political and technology diversity through their cities. Think Paris – the image of the impressionists and the fin-de-siecle which fills the senses with evocative smells of freshly baked baguettes – and you will get an idea of what I am trying to convey. It’s a linchpin – a peg – a capstone of how we make sense of who we are in relation to an ever changing world.

Cities have always fascinated me – I remember with fondness during my university days, building 1/142 scale model skyscrapers out of card board and subjecting them to wind tunnel tests to simulate the effects of 100 mph tornadoes. It was part of my thesis on wind dynamics; the whole idea of lower Manhattan spreading out on my table jostling for real estate next to my half eaten pizza simply blew my mind away.

Daily Reads Jan 25

• GST increase: Does One plus One equal Two?

  from Inspirations & Aspirations

• Report on the P65 Dialogue on GST implications

  from theonlinecitizen

• Would ANYONE Be Homeless By Choice?

  from Mr Wang Says So

• Raising fees the lesser evil

  from Hear ye! Hear ye!

• A Jihad on Backwardness

  from Singapore Angle

• Economic nationalism is very much alive

  from Perspective Unlimited

• Yet Another “Hub” Word

  from Ridzwan.Com

• Non Sequitur Economics II: The Gini in Arabian Nights

  from Singapore Angle