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- FARK.com (It's nice to be seen as the undercutter for once)  Advanced Meditation 101 Hamster weekly update: The Ms Robos have settled in nicely, and have exceeded 90000 spins on their wheel in less than a week. They've even managed to be egalitarian about it, taking turns to kick each other off. Mr. Ham has gamely responded to their challenge by biting away the pedometer wire on his ride, which at last count displayed the grand total of about 300. Befriending roborovskis is a tall order, however - even a honey star is not sufficient to tempt them to one's hand, although they are eager enough to devour them when left in their food dish. Abruptly switching tracks, I haven't been following much of the just-concluded YOG, except the football, and whatever one says about the Haitians, it has to be conceded that they are... professional. And by professional, I mean cynical; Then again, as the years go by, the history books will remember Haiti as the ones who got the silver, and they'll be feted in the same manner as it would be cool to have a bloodthirsty pirate as an ancestor; No-one remembers the honest sailors that walked the plank (or made movies about them). The Games were an eye-opener for me on the state of local footy, and I would be extremely interested to watch this crop filter into the national squad in five to ten years. Hopefully they won't get squeezed out by "instant Singaporean" imports when the time comes... The EPL continued to exert its hypnotic lure, in a logic-defying kind of way. Consider: On the first day, Man Utd 3-0 Newcastle and Aston Villa 3-0 West Ham. A week later, Newcastle tonked Villa 6-0. Wtf? Come to think of it, I should try to model EPL results. Might make for a publication if the findings are not too promising. Current status: P$210/P$200, as United stumbled against Full Ham in addition to Villa's utter uselessness. For this week: P$100 on Chelsea to beat Stoke (at 1.07) - looks as close to a certainty as can occur in practice
I just fixed up a new desktop computer, the provenance of which goes back several months:  More squeak than bite (Larger version) It was back in mid-March... Me: "Hmm... I could use a new computer." Mr. Ham: "Or you could get me a new cage." Me: "Eh." Mr. Ham: "Selfish guardian-owner!" Me: *shrugs* Mr. Ham: *thinking quickly* "But since I'm such a nice hamster... I'll help you with the planning. You're going D.I.Y, right?" Me: "Gee, thanks." A month or so later... Me: "Alrighty, the supplies you ordered have arrived, thanks to occ and alvin. Not too sure of what stuff like the Penn-Elcom H7154K Spring Flex Cabinet Handle and four New BP7003 Step Pedometers is for, though. Nice NZXT SENTRY 2 Accessories 5.25-Inch Touch Screen Fan Controller, I must say." Mr. Ham: "I'll pretend I didn't hear anything but the last part. But thanks." Me: "And don't you think the full tower Chieftec Dragon you had me pick up is a bit... big for today's tastes?"  47.5cm x 20.5cm x 67cm, sixteen kilograms light Mr. Ham: "Aww, shaddap. It's a timeless classic, and I couldn't find anything of comparable quality yet larger, given your piddling budget." Me: "But where are we gonna find enough goodies to use up all that space?" Mr. Ham: "Don't you trust your hamster? I didn't take that mail-order course in Hamster Architec... I mean, Computer Architecture and Hamgineering for nothing." Then...  Seemingly random collection of items Me: "Well, I had to take a few trips down to the Sim Lim Square area and elsewhere to get what you need. The fans and fan grilles I understand, the wires, LEDs and spray paint maybe, but the hinges? The acrylic cutter? The junk PSU? The aluminium siding???" Mr. Ham: "Look, I know what I'm doing, m'kay?"  Doesn't look like much, does it? Me: "But what I really don't understand is the hundred bucks of acrylic you ordered." Mr. Ham: "All in good time, my good man." And...  Can't expect much more from humans  Ahhh this is the last time I hire a man to do a ham's work Mr. Ham: "Hmph. Not up to my extremely exacting standards, but I'll take it."  Completely Unacceptable Mr. Ham: "This is an example of horrible living quarters. Thankfully, this monstrosity will be taken apart as salvage. The base will make a good tool-tray."  Rust-red Primer, then black or yellow Mr. Ham: "Alright, decent spray-painting at least. A mirror-finish is too much to expect, I suppose."  I better get overtime for this Mr. Ham: "Work's moving along alright, thanks to my expertise as an electrical hamgineer." Lots of sweat later...  Looks different from all the computers I've had Mr. Ham: "Wonderful! My new hom... I mean, your new computer's almost there! This calls for a party, and by party, I mean honey stars for me!" I was a little suspicious at this point, but was mollified when Mr. Ham pulled out a leaflet purportedly advertising "Quad core Advanced Hamtech" machines. It's good to know someone at the forefront of technology. After much more tinkering...  I dub thee, Black Dragonhamster  The future of computing Me: "It looks pretty. But it won't boot up." Mr. Ham: "Er. Eh. Yes, you need to install two additional hamster-processors, not enough juice, ifyouknowwhatimean."  They *are* robo-hams Mr. Ham: "Waitamin. The new hires are gals?" Me: "Yup, the suppliers/headhunters said they only had female staff." Mr. Ham: "Whoopee! I'll get my hat!" One hour later...  Just go away, will you? Mr. Ham is crying in a corner after getting slapped with two personal protection orders :( I'm sure that's not the last we'll hear of Mr. Ham or the super-cute Ms. Robos, who are currently getting the BIOS up. It's back to the EPL after a delightful YOG match between Singapore and Montenegro that made me a believer in Singapore football again, and the Challenge is in good shape at P$210/P$100. P$50 on United to beat Fulham (at 1.48) P$50 on Aston Villa to beat Newcastle (2.30)
Every so often, a movie comes along that catches the popular imagination. The latest is Inception, which I have heard mentioned in several separate social settings (SSSS), though without hearing the title being dropped I would not have surmised that the conversations were about the same flick. I'm filing it behind Primer in my mental Netflix queue. Saturday Watched the end of the YOG opening ceremony (which explained all the purple-shirted volunteers at the airport yesterday), and particularly admired the firebreathing dragon float, as well as the phoenix boat. The DNA-helix animation changing colors to match the flags as they entered was a nice touch too. Far more importantly, the EPL kicks off again, and as of blog-press time newcomers Blackpool have smashed Wigan 0-4 and go to the top of the table. Didn't see that coming. Using odds from the Singapore Pools website, the Challenge resumes: P$50 on Manchester United to beat Newcastle (at 1.20) P$50 on Liverpool to draw Arsenal (at 3.00) Friday Woke at five-thirty, and happened to drop by Changi Airport, where I saw the recently-back-from-Japan Mr. Chong preparing to disappear off to Dartmouth, which was the biggest coincidence that had happened to me since I mysteriously found myself in the vicinity of Rome on the morning of the Champions League final last year. Law also happened to be hanging around, and smk was there since, well, it's his place of work. Mr. Chong's dad took a photo, but as it is currently unavailable, I spent much effort in replicating it in the Chongian style of fine arts (I hasten to add that Mr. Chong is far superior at it):  Drawn in imitation of the mature Chongian period Thursday  You want a piece of me, boy? My cousin got a copy of Starcraft II, and I quickly realised that it's basically the original 1998 Starcraft updated with 2010 graphics, which Blizzard has admittedly done up well. They've got the near-photorealistic-but-not-creepy look down pat. This also means that plenty of the old tactics work/can be adapted, so I stuck to my siege tanks until I can find the time to learn new tricks.  Tychus Findlay up close Irritatingly, while the campaign can be played as a guest, there is no LAN option, which means that the days of LAN parties where only one of the participants needed to have a copy of the game are over. But then, everybody is on Battle.net. Right? Right. Read up in preparation for attempting the Distributed Systems assignment, cleaned my keyboard (it was getting real nasty). Wednesday Stuff happened. Met supervisors in the morning, before restocking on stationery and supplies. Was back in NUS by two to drop in on a talk about Environmental Effects of Electricity Generation, by Dr. Landsberger from UTexas. It was far less technical than I had feared, with some of the information previously covered in high school science & geography classes (think the greenhouse gas cycle/acid rain), but still worth revisiting. In summary, increased quality of life has led to changes in the environment, not the least due to the need for electrical energy - which can only decrease as China (which now consumes more energy than the USA, from just half a decade ago!) and other developing nations modernize. We have only really begun to consider the environmental effects in the 1960s, and most people now know that fossil fuels (mostly coal, since oil is usually too precious for this purpose) are highly polluting. However, it turns out that "cleaner" sources aren't too great either:
And as for nuclear (fission) power; It supplies 20% of the USA's needs, and heck, coal plants produce as much radiation as nuclear plants, and miners die every so often, but one unlucky meltdown and a few three-eyed toads and everyone gets in a tizzy. I'm not sure if this sounds like a subtle endorsement of nuclear energy (an option that Singapore is looking into), but the professor happens to be from the Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program after all. One thing has to be said - the catered noodles and ham-and-cheese sandwiches were to die for, and the portions more than filling, since they seemed to have slightly overestimated the attendance. Free food is one of the best academic traditions, IMHO. Blissfully filled up, I stumbled into the room for the Distributed Systems module ten minutes early, only to find it nearly packed. Felt motivated to do the (yay, individual) assignments early. Might have been all the glucose speaking. Tuesday More research. This might be a good time to mention the boot problem that had afflicted my home system for some time after a BIOS update - the startup beeps were heard, but the monitor showed nothing at all. My initial diagnosis was that the motherboard battery had run out of juice, but it turned out that the BIOS update had helpfully reset the first boot device to a completely non-existent floppy disk drive, causing a fruitless minutes-long search each time. By the way, internal floppy drives are available again at Sim Lim, which makes some sense as they've never stopped selling the disks. Monday National Day. Didn't watch much of the parade. Planned modules, researched. Sunday United win the Community Shield! Amazingly, despite their dominance over the past couple of decades, they have yet to win it without resorting to a penalty shootout since 1996. But they did deserve it this time, with Scholes spreading ridiculously accurate fifty-metre passes to the sheer pace of Valencia, Nani and Chicharito, who assisted his own goal on his debut. He looks like a great signing already. Özil who?  (Source: Redcafe.net) Saturday Set foot in Holland Village (didn't realise it was but a stone's throw from the university) and the Wala Wala cafe bar, where I set my heart on appreciating the first mug of iced coffee that I can remember paying eight bucks for. Stayed for three sets by The Unexpecteds, the most memorable being a retelling of I Will Survive, but including many songs that I've never heard (not that that's out of the ordinary). Law moreover got us some appropriate T-shirts from Thailand. Thanks a bunch!  Tell me about it - everybody's on LCD screens now!
- Bill Maher, comedian, wise man Spent the weekend mostly tinkering with Google Chart (yes, what service doesn't Google provide? - see some results) and reading; Specifically, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, among other books.  (Source: amazon.com) Questioning Generals (Not In The Army) Before I continue, I'd like to straighten out an issue about my writing. From my own observation, I have been using words like "probably", "likely" and "perhaps" somewhat more than is common. If taken to the strictest possible standard, nothing is certain, but it's probably (ah, see?) unnecessary to qualify a statement like "the Sun will rise tomorrow", seeing as the event is about as close to a practical certainty as we can get. Stuff like "men are taller than women" though would deserve "in general", since it is true that many individual women are taller than many individual men, even if men are indeed taller as a group. For the remainder of this post at least, I shall follow the convention of leaving out such qualifiers whenever plausible, as occurs in the book. It certainly makes for a cleaner, if mildly less accurate, read. The authors are evolutionary psychologists (EP), and the main thesis is that a lot of our behavior is actually deeply ingrained within us; Learning and the environment can only do so much to adjust that, contrary to what the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) says. Culture is not destiny, and humans are basically still animals deep within. Unfortunately, where SSSM was extremely politically correct - we all have the same infinite potential! - EP is more gloomy, and says that while humans are indeed basically alike, it's not always for the best, and worse, the "bad" parts are unlikely to change in the near future. The unifying theme is about something all our honoured ancestors did, stretching in an unbroken chain through the mists of time. Back through the modern era, the industrial ages mere centuries past, various renaissances major and minor, the discovery of agriculture many millenia ago; But even those tens of thousands of years are but the merest blink in the story of life, a fraction of the latest paragraph of the newest chapter, where some creatures who were not quite human, became so. And in that span of time, there were generations - thousands, tens of thousands, millions of them. Every single human today stands at, or very near the end, of that unimaginably enormous tree, and looking up he can see, beyond his two parents and four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and in general, 2n+3 great-to-the-power-of-n-grandparents. That's a lot of ancestors for even moderate values of n, by the way. And each of those; They may have been male, or female, tall or short or fat or thin. Black, white, or any shade in between. Smart or slow, pretty or plain. Kings or paupers, humble or vain. Good or evil, violent or tame, devout or disbelievers, happy or discontent. Of such a huge mass of people (and proto-people), there are very few similarities that all share. Probably not all had an arm, or both legs, or even a single head. But there is at least one non-trivial act that they all engaged in. They all f**ked. Every single last bloody one of them. Ah, Yes, So They Did As might be expected, it is hard to contemplate this fact without reevaluating the sheer significance of sex, or procreation, for the squeamish. In particular, if traits might be passed down to children (as most believe), then how people chose their mates would answer a lot of questions. The short answer is: Men want young and beautiful (a.k.a cute) women, and women want rich, powerful and respectable men. There, it doesn't make for especially pleasant reading, but that's the status quo everywhere throughout known history. Note the absence of qualities like intelligence (except where it translates into money/power for males), sense of humour and personality. Further, men want young, beautiful and many women, since they can potentially have thousands of kids (and at least a few did), while no woman could have more than a handful. But women do have their own consolation, in that they could almost always have a few children if they wanted to, while historically the majority of men died without progeny (hint: one wife per guy is a relatively recent invention) This is also why males are more violent and bigger risk-takers - they have a lot more to gain if they win in life, and everything to lose by default if they don't try (indeed, the authors argue that even the death penalty is scant deterrance, as that only threatens a personal demise, while failure to reproduce represents eternal annihilation). Whereas for females, it's "meh, I can have about the same number of offspring anyway", which also explains male ambition and dedication to career, as compared to females. Thus the guys explore new continents, fight dangerous beasts and each other, try horrible pick-up lines etc, and when the dust settles there are somewhat fewer of them. And the survivors will claim the young ladies, because they have most of their reproductive years in front of them, and the pretty ones, as beauty is a sign of good health, and easy on the eyes after a hard day out. In fact, gentlemen prefer blondes (well, usually...) as blonde hair was an accurate indicator of youth (it usually turns brown later in life), and long hair as the hair's appearance reveals the woman's health status for the period it had been growing (years for shoulder-length hair) [Interestingly, this may also be why blondes are regarded as dumb - it turns out they're just younger and less experienced]. A thin waist (waist-to-hip ratio of about 0.7) is universally liked as it shows high fertility, and large boobs because it helps in determining age. There's a reason for everything, eh? Money Finds Looks, So...? Well, there are many other fascinating explanations for observed phenomena. A selection:
Wow. Is All That True? I would say... perhaps. One thing to note is that the authors seem to concentrate on and favour evidence that conforms to their theories (e.g. the 10%-30% cuckoldry rate assertion, which appears a gross overestimate, and their refutation of Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, heavily based on Derek Freeman's arguments, themselves in question) Another possible criticism is that the authors move too easily from evidence to hypothesis (refer to one of Kanazawa's original academic papers, which is recommended reading if only as a more approachable introduction to academic writing). The confirmation that beautiful people do have more daughters was based on:
Without delving too deeply into the statistics, exactly why there is such a difference between attractive and very attractive people seems to bear further thought, if the hypothesis is to be supported. Kanazawa does try to correct for variables like income by considering them in doing regression analysis, but like much of social science, it's hard to be certain. There are simply too many possibilities to consider; Did the same interviewer rate all subjects? Even if so, how objective can a single human be, especially given that the results necessarily depend heavily on the initial segmentation? Are there important undiscovered variables? Unlike the hard sciences, there's a distinct lack of near-certain relations and dependable numbers, though not through any fault of the social scientists. Also, things are changing. This might be the most fascinating time to be a human, thus far. While the basics may still hold true, advances like hair dye (not that recent actually) and plastic surgery, not to mention increased earning power by females and other social upheavals. And despite all these subconscious drives, people do still - gasp - think, at least once in a while. But it sure doesn't hurt to be young and pretty, or rich and powerful.
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