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Friday, Oct 19, 2012 - 23:30 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Friday Night


News In Briefs

The Red Bull Stratos freefall kept me glued to the screen in the wee hours of Monday. It's not exactly landing on the moon, but Mars could take some time, though the Sentosa Flugtag by the same sponsors might be good practice. Speaking of which, NUS has won the Space Race - a race to get a bonus 25GB of free space on Dropbox for two years, that is (with no mention on what happens after that, though), beating out the likes of MIT and UCB. In kiasuism, at least, we are unabashedly world-class.

I then came across a slightly unfortunate headline by The Telegraph, stating that "A new theory put forward by Harvard scientists suggests the Moon was once part of the Earth that spun off after a giant collision with another body.", when the long-prevailing giant impact hypothesis states that... the Moon was once part of the Earth that spun off after a giant collision with another body (interestingly enough, the beginnings of this idea came from George Darwin, son of Charles, though he postulated centrifugal force as the cause, not an impact)

This is probably on the head of the journalist if, as I expect, what the scientists did was to propose a refinement (which could still be significant) of existing theory. Still, there has always been more heated exchanges on the elder Darwin's theory (N.B. scientifically, the term theory does not imply mere speculation) of evolution, which however after the initial spurt seems to have petered out for now with "Evolution should be taught to all students" and "No obligation on evolutionists to respond" (Note: the general flow of comments on all these articles are strangely similar)

Digging a bit deeper, it seems that these things come in cycles, with a Nov 2005 State's Times Online Forum letter declaring "Man's evolution from monkey a proven scientific fact? No, it's not", from a bona-fide doctor... of theology (alright, and medicine). And yes, the infamous Answers In Genesis website, of "If humans were around millions of years ago, why is the population so small" argument fame (which by the way is a fair approximation of the quality of their analysis), is heavily quoted.

And for the last time, no, evolution does not say that man evolved from monkeys, lah.


News With Briefs Removed

On the still-educational but naughtier side, a 32 year-old married female teacher got exposed for courting her 15 year-old student with, of all things, a copy of Eat, Pray, Love. What makes this doubly implausible is firstly, the dumbness of the boy involved in managing to get the cosy arrangement busted, and secondly, how our birth rate is still so dismal, if literature (in the loose sense of the word) is all it takes. Well, the law faculty certainly isn't about to be left behind...

Coming to the sadder side, the body of the SMA PhD student who went missing in France some months back has been found in the Cevennes mountains, apparently while trying to retrace Robert Louis Stevenson's footsteps (latest: or maybe not). There were some unworthy speculations that he had skipped town for greener pastures, but as a graduate student myself, that was extremely unlikely, especially so deep in.

Back home, the DPM explained his meeting with the Archbishop, yielding few surprises. Slightly more unexpected was a slight relaxation of the death penalty regime (petty traffickers now stand some chance of not dancing the hemp fandango if they cooperate), which followed a most-legitimate application of the Internal Security Act.

Master Political Analyst Herr Ahm A. Hoffham reads this as part of some slow and cautious liberalization ("caving-in" thought by him to be an ungenerous term), while publicizing proper usage of the ISA (which opposition party really wants to take the fallout for having unrehabilitated Jemaah Islamiyah agents run free, if anything happens?) to buttress support.

In fact, Herr Ahm does think it highly unlikely that the ISA be used for purely political motives for the foreseeable future. Yet it will remain unchanged... until some opportune time when discontent starts to run high, at which point it will be slightly tweaked as a symbol of goodwill. Herr Ahm is cynical. Thus it is with all the minor irritants such as the Elections Department being under the Prime Minister's Office. You simply don't dole out all your goodies at one go, if you can help it.


Tee Up

Mr. Ham's (sorry, Mr. H's) very own contribution towards the enlightenment of humans, who are quite clearly the result of a failed attempt at creating hamsters by The Great Hamster In The Sky. He pities da fools.


Urgent Manga Recommendation

Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku has catapulted itself near the top of my list in a few short hours. It's centered about mahjong, but if you have any interest in any of the following, at all:

  • Mahjong
  • Junichiro Koizumi
  • Ridiculous yet disquietingly appropriate superpowers
  • World politics (huge dose of)
  • Japanese politics
  • Manga parodies
  • The Pope (ok, not for the easily-offended)
  • George W. Bush getting the short end of the stick
  • World history (somehow made so relevant)
  • Nazi baddies, with Super Hitler (must be seen to be believed)
  • Surprisingly tender moments
  • A fitting summation of the Armstrong saga
  • Quantum physics
  • Moon landings
  • Classical physics
  • Fanservice
  • Gratuitous mahjong violence

...it's probably worth a long, long look.



Ouch.
(Source: mangafox.me)




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