dreaming out loud.

2010-03-01T22:16:00.003+08:00

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Mohammed Aldouri (Iraqi ambassador): The chicken did not cross the road. This is a complete fabrication. We don't even have a chicken.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

George W. Bush: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or it is against us. There is no middle ground here.

Bill Clinton: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken, please?

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically dispositioned to cross roads.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Emerson: The chicken didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Louis Farrakhan: The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken "crossed" the black man in order to trample him and keep him down.

Freud: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Bill Gates: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2000, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook.

Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Grandpa: In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken had crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Captain Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

John Lennon: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the Chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Agent Mulder: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

Ralph Nader: The chicken's habitat on the original side of the road had been polluted by unchecked industrialist greed. The chicken did not reach the unspoiled habitat on the other side of the road because it was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Richard M. Nixon: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did NOT cross the road.

Plato: For the greater good.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

Ronald Reagan: I forget.

Colonel Sanders: I missed one?

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Jerry Seinfeld: Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place, anyway? Where do they get these chickens?"

Dr. Seuss: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed, I've not been told!

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Oliver Stone: The question is not, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" Rather, it is, "Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

Thoreau: To live deliberatelyand suck all the marrow out of life.

Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Voltaire: I may not agree with what the chicken did, but I will defend to the death its right to do it.

Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Think of it this way: if you walk over a scent trail left by some animal, and you don't know that the trail is there, it is foolish to ask your motives of crossing that trail. One can ask your motives for walking in the first place, but the crossing was pure coincidence and not something you chose.

Therefore, the chicken can never have any motivation for crossing the road, since from the chickens point of view, it never does any such thing. It simply moves from one point to another, and these points happen to be on the opposite side of a flat area of ground. No road-crossing has happened.

Since chicken is an animal, it is unlikely that it has the concept of road in the same sense than humans do; since it is a bird, whose ancestors were probably capable of flight in the near past, it is unlikely to have the concept of road in any sense - why would a flying bird need roads?

REFERENCE:
here&here

EVERYTHING TAKEN FROM ABOVE WEBSITES.

newsweek feb 15

2010-02-15T23:01:00.013+08:00

ARTICLE FROM NEWSWEEK JAN 15

Mexican President Felipe Calderón in an interview with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth:
Weymouth: How do you feel the drug war is going? Many Mexican soldiers have been killed.
Calderón: From the very beginning I told the people that this was going to be a long-term battle, that there will be casualties. We must win the battle. We are moving ahead according to the plan to attack organized crime, and we are kicking them really hard. People have died, but let me tell you, probably about 90 percent of those people are linked with organized crime in one way or another. The problem is not only a criminal problem but also a social problem in the sense that we have young people without opportunities who are [hired] by criminals as distributors of drugs. Eventually, they die in the streets. I have serious concerns about that.
There is a lot of discussion about weapons from the U.S. flowing into Mexico.
It is a big problem for us. Most of the weapons we seize—in the last three years we have seized about 45,000 weapons—come from the United States. There are about 12,000 stores that sell weapons on the border with Mexico. I recognize the American government is improving its actions [in] stopping the flow [of weapons] to Mexico.

What is the most damaging weapon?
Armor-piercing bullets, which do a lot of damage against our police corps. We are working with the American government in order to stem the flow, but we have a very large border, and it is very difficult to be successful.

Do you feel the U.S. is helping you enough?
The U.S. has been very helpful to us, and we are improving and getting better results. For instance, some of the most important drug lords [have been] either captured or died in action. [Sharing] intelligence was very useful in these [successes].

No other country in Latin America has been hit worse by the economic crisis than your country.
Yes, you are right. There's an expression: "When the United States catches a cold, Mexico gets pneumonia." And that was exactly the case last year. And there are several reasons for that: 84 percent of our total exports go to the U.S., so if American consumers reduce their consumption, we suffer a lot. By the third quarter, the export of automotives in Mexico went down by almost 50 percent due to the economic crisis in the United States. The second factor that sent a shock into our economy was the reduction of our oil production by 7 percent. Why? Because Mexico didn't invest enough in the oil sector, and we are suffering the consequences. The main oilfield, Cantarell, which used to provide 60 percent of the total oil in the country, started to deplete.

Loss of oil production meant you faced a decline in tax revenue?
Yes. That is why I needed to propose to the Congress to raise some taxes, which wasn't very popular. [But] today we are running a deficit probably lower than 2 percent in total.

During your campaign, you spoke out against monopolies in Mexico. Is this still one of your main concerns?
Very important. Actually we are preparing a reform bill to submit to Congress to increase the power of regulatory institutions, antitrust commissions. I do believe that what Mexico needs is more competition and more fair play in several sectors—from telecommunication to transportation.
What's your view of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his effect on Latin America?
We live in a very complicated neighborhood. There are some tough guys around us. What we need to do is try to find an equilibrium in the area. It is probably time to reestablish some basic principles related to democracy, human rights, and freedom of speech that are universal values. I have some concerns about what is happening in the region.

Why is the PRI [the once dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party] gaining momentum in Mexico?
Probably the main factor is the midterm elections last year. As you can imagine, the Mexican economy was going down by 10 percent in the second quarter of the year, and that was exactly in the moment of the midterm election. So the PRI won. Let me tell you, when I started to run for president of Mexico, according to the opinion polls, I was in 17th place. I [was given] no chance to win, even inside my own party. Eventually, I won. So nothing is written in elections. Not in Mexico, not in any other country.^[newsweek]

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in an interview with Lally Weymouth:
Weymouth: Thaksin has been gone for two years. Why are people still supporting him?
Abhisit: He was in power for six years. He controlled most of the media. And he was fortunate enough to oversee quite a good period of economic expansion. But what we have done over the past year is to prove that we respond equally—if not more—to the needs of the people. [Only] we do it while upholding the spirit of democracy, which is not to abuse power or to intimidate the opposition. Some of his supporters have legitimate grievances against the coup that took place.

Do you have plans to hold a real election?
My term has two more years to go. The economy is on firmer ground now. But we also need to make sure we have rules that people can agree upon. What is the good of having elections if my opponents are going to engage in election fraud again? They use intimidation tactics, they use threats of violence, and that is not democratic to me.

U.S. experts are concerned that Thailand could end up in a civil war once the king leaves the scene.
Not if we continue on this track. The way we would descend into civil war is if we [were to] cave in to illegitimate demands because of threats of violence. That only invites further violence from all sides.

The rest of Asia has come out of the economic downturn faster than your country. Why is that?
I think we have one of the lowest unemployment rates now. Last year we saw the final figure of minus-2.8 percent negative growth, but this year we have had 4.5 percent growth. In December we had a record number of tourists—1.6 million. This year we think exports will increase by 14 percent. The next part is how we exit from the stimulus packages. They need to be sustained through this year, but we would certainly hope to see private investment picking up.

Do you believe the United States will play a diminished role in Asia as a result of the financial crisis?
Economically, there has to be rebalancing, which means that our growth has to be less dependent on the ability of U.S. consumers to buy Asian goods. So there has to be a shift toward Asia, toward the emerging economies.

Does that mean you look to your internal market or to other markets?
To the Asian markets. Having said that, we welcome the Obama administration's determination to reengage with Southeast Asia in a big way.

It is evident throughout the interview with Lally Weymouth that the Mexican president Felipe Calderón has intentions to continue the battle against organised crime in his country, despite Mexico being so hard hit by the recent economic recession that has devastated many parts of the world. Indeed, this resilience to go on despite financial difficulty shows that the president means for the war against organised crime to go on, despite any obstacles or obstructions, until the bitter end.
It is saddening that he is willing to just throw away the livelihoods of his fellow Mexicans, and that he is wasting the lives of the soldiers made to fight in the war. However, the president has is own good intentions for doing so. Now that the war has started, stopping would mean a true waste of the soldiers killed in the hands of mobsters and drug cartels. The only way for the great loss of life to be justified is through the continuance of the war against organised crime, until the criminals, drug lords, mobsters, and terrorists in Mexico are either killed or captured.
But does the ultimate goal justify the great loss of life? Is it not better to stop the war now, as it is to minimise loss? Instead of glorifying the already dead, is it not better to keep those still alive as they are?
Maybe. But Calderón definitely thinks otherwise. Perhaps he has done his math and realised that it is better for the war to go on, than for him to end the war there and then.
Abhisit Vejjajiva, however, evidently thinks otherwise. In an interview with the same journalist, Abhisit Vejjajiva states that violence invites violence. As Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird says, “…having a gun around you is an invitation for somebody to shoot you.” This completely corresponds to Abhisit Vejjajiva ideas about violence in coups d’état. However, his ideas may seem flawed to some with similar mindsets as Claderón. After all, one can reason, if violence were not used to knock out the source of the violence, wouldn’t there be no more violence?
Both ideas in their own contexts are not wrong. However, Claderón’s “to war” principles can and will cause a national uprising, even a civil war, if they are ever used in Thailand in its current state of affairs. Abhisit Vejjajiva’s ideals would bring chaos if he ever goes to Mexico and ends the war against the mobsters, drug lords, and terrorists.

jkr on the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination

2010-02-07T15:05:00.010+08:00

Since:
1. We are on the topic of speeches,
2. I like J.K. Rowling,
3. I found this,

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! [Hwa Chong Value!] Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.

Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far removed from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: "As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.^{[vimeo];[harvard magazine]}

Lesson learnt from JKR's speech:
It was amusing for one to find out that even successful billionaire novelist J.K. Rowling, author of seven best-selling books in the Harry Potter series along with three supplements of such, was at a loss for what to say at the Harvard Commencement Ceremony Speech. It was also heart warming to hear of the anecdotes that she had shared with the audience that day at Harvard, tales of her experiences she had until then very likely shared with nobody but her very closest of friends.
Indeed, her exhibition of these little incidents in her life were not for the sake of personal glorification, nor to show that her life had always been a bed of roses and that she was a perfect person, but to show the congregation of Harvard graduates that she was, just like them, another human being. But more importantly she set out to outline the two themes of her speech that she had formulated through the experiences in her life.
The first was of her failure, and failure’s benefits. The second is of the crucial importance in our lives of imagination, of creativity, of above all empathy.
But before anything else, the great novelist of so many successful stories does what she does best. She injected a small section of humour to gain the graduates’ attention. And only after this does she begin to introduce and explain her theses.
And it is through two extremely poignant narratives of episodes in her past that she proves her points. The first story focused on her life after college, her failure at work, love, and life. Indeed, it is this story, this narrative of J.K. Rowling’s past failure that seeks not our admiration but our compassion, but has likely gained the admiration of the graduates, teachers, and parents alike. And it is through this lesson in life that she manages to indoctrinate the graduates of the great benefits that failure brought to her, and can bring to the graduates. And at their darkest moment things can only get better especially if they can concentrate on what they feel is closest to their heart,
The second is of her life at Amnesty International, and on a more solemn subject less jokes are mentioned. But this story shows an important point, that humans are amazing in that we can imagine without being in such a situation ourselves. We can empathise with people. And it is this creativity and imagination that we can overcome the cruel regimes that are around the world now. Without creativity, the world would be filled with monsters, created by the narrow-mindedness of people. And she encourages the Harvard graduates to help the victims of cruel regimes around the world.
J.K. Rowling then ends off her speech with the hope that the graduates would have in their lives such true friends as hers. She touches on the importance of good friends, and thanked her friends for the good they have done for her. She closes her speech with a quote from a famous Roman Seneca, which I shall repeat here:
“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters."

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-rE. E. CummingsEmergency Lesson 1

2009-06-29T10:49:00.000+08:00

The Poem:
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(o-
aThe):l
eA
!p:
S a
(r
rIvInG .gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;

The Analysis:
Words Unscrambled and Reordered into Correct Sequence:
Grasshopper,

Who as we look

Up now gathering into a grasshopper

The Grasshopper leaps!

Arriving to become rearrangingly,

Grasshopper

Though it may not make sense, one must remember that the poem is muddled in the beginning, and that this is purely the literal meaning, and not the poem.

The Functional Meaning:
This poem can be seen as a grasshopper's journey to find out who he truly is. The words in the poem slowly get less mixed up. In human terms, it tells of a man searching for his true destiny, and as he gets closer to this, he gets less confused. The grasshopper also leaps about in the poem: there is one stanza where he actually jumps up two lines. This symbolises us going backwards when we are hit a solid wall. And in the end, grasshopper is spelt clearly, symbolising us finding our true self.

2009-06-04T14:16:00.001+08:00

One time a dog tried to play a trick to entertain a cat. Two seconds later, the dog was dead. No one tricks cats.

One time a pirate and a ninja decided to have a baby. They gave birth to a cat.

Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas. Chuck Norris wears cat pajamas.

If someone breaks into your house and you point a gun at them, they will run away in fear. If someone breaks into your house and you point a cat at them, you'll have found yourself a new pet.

Chuck Norris is an 8th degree black belt in Taekwondo. Cats are 8th degree black belts in Chuck Norris (the art of being better than Chuck Norris).

A cat walked into a bar. The bar said, "Ow!"

One time a cat decided he didn't want to eat tuna anymore. No one survived.

An old lady once accidentally put her cat into a microwave. The microwave exploded.

If a black cat crosses your path, you'll get bad luck. If you cross a black cat's path, you'll die. No one crosses a cat and lives.

Jack Bauer, Qaanol, Mr. T, Kiera Knightley, and a cat got into a fight. Guess who won? (If you guessed Qaanol, you are wrong.)

The only reason cats can't divide by zero is because cats don't give a shit about zero.

Everyone knows that when you ask a cat a question, it won't answer. This isn't because cats can't speak. It is because cats answer to no one.

Chuck Norris only has one life.

Mr. T once decided to pity a fool. His cat didn't like it. Mr. T didn't pity any more fools after that.

2009-05-27T20:39:00.000+08:00

Me of unsound mind and unsound body shall disturb yall.

The Lady or the Tiger

In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric. He was a man of exuberant fancy, and, withal, of an authority so irresistible that, at his will, he turned his varied fancies into facts. He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done. When every member of his domestic and political systems moved smoothly in its appointed course, his nature was bland and genial; but, whenever there was a little hitch, and some of his orbs got out of their orbits, he was blander and more genial still, for nothing pleased him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places.
Among the borrowed notions by which his barbarism had become semified was that of the public arena, in which, by exhibitions of manly and beastly valor, the minds of his subjects were refined and cultured.
But even here the exuberant and barbaric fancy asserted itself. The arena of the king was built, not to give the people an opportunity of hearing the rhapsodies of dying gladiators, nor to enable them to view the inevitable conclusion of a conflict between religious opinions and hungry jaws, but for purposes far better adapted to widen and develop the mental energies of the people. This vast amphitheater, with its encircling galleries, its mysterious vaults, and its unseen passages, was an agent of poetic justice, in which crime was punished, or virtue rewarded, by the decrees of an impartial and incorruptible chance.
When a subject was accused of a crime of sufficient importance to interest the king, public notice was given that on an appointed day the fate of the accused person would be decided in the king's arena, a structure which well deserved its name, for, although its form and plan were borrowed from afar, its purpose emanated solely from the brain of this man, who, every barleycorn a king, knew no tradition to which he owed more allegiance than pleased his fancy, and who ingrafted on every adopted form of human thought and action the rich growth of his barbaric idealism.
When all the people had assembled in the galleries, and the king, surrounded by his court, sat high up on his throne of royal state on one side of the arena, he gave a signal, a door beneath him opened, and the accused subject stepped out into the amphitheater. Directly opposite him, on the other side of the enclosed space, were two doors, exactly alike and side by side. It was the duty and the privilege of the person on trial to walk directly to these doors and open one of them. He could open either door he pleased; he was subject to no guidance or influence but that of the aforementioned impartial and incorruptible chance. If he opened the one, there came out of it a hungry tiger, the fiercest and most cruel that could be procured, which immediately sprang upon him and tore him to pieces as a punishment for his guilt. The moment that the case of the criminal was thus decided, doleful iron bells were clanged, great wails went up from the hired mourners posted on the outer rim of the arena, and the vast audience, with bowed heads and downcast hearts, wended slowly their homeward way, mourning greatly that one so young and fair, or so old and respected, should have merited so dire a fate.

But, if the accused person opened the other door, there came forth from it a lady, the most suitable to his years and station that his majesty could select among his fair subjects, and to this lady he was immediately married, as a reward of his innocence. It mattered not that he might already possess a wife and family, or that his affections might be engaged upon an object of his own selection; the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward. The exercises, as in the other instance, took place immediately, and in the arena. Another door opened beneath the king, and a priest, followed by a band of choristers, and dancing maidens blowing joyous airs on golden horns and treading an epithalamic measure, advanced to where the pair stood, side by side, and the wedding was promptly and cheerily solemnized. Then the gay brass bells rang forth their merry peals, the people shouted glad hurrahs, and the innocent man, preceded by children strewing flowers on his path, led his bride to his home.
This was the king's semi-barbaric method of administering justice. Its perfect fairness is obvious. The criminal could not know out of which door would come the lady; he opened either he pleased, without having the slightest idea whether, in the next instant, he was to be devoured or married. On some occasions the tiger came out of one door, and on some out of the other. The decisions of this tribunal were not only fair, they were positively determinate: the accused person was instantly punished if he found himself guilty, and, if innocent, he was rewarded on the spot, whether he liked it or not. There was no escape from the judgments of the king's arena.
The institution was a very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. Thus, the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan, for did not the accused person have the whole matter in his own hands?

This semi-barbaric king had a daughter as blooming as his most florid fancies, and with a soul as fervent and imperious as his own. As is usual in such cases, she was the apple of his eye, and was loved by him above all humanity. Among his courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens. This royal maiden was well satisfied with her lover, for he was handsome and brave to a degree unsurpassed in all this kingdom, and she loved him with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong. This love affair moved on happily for many months, until one day the king happened to discover its existence. He did not hesitate nor waver in regard to his duty in the premises. The youth was immediately cast into prison, and a day was appointed for his trial in the king's arena. This, of course, was an especially important occasion, and his majesty, as well as all the people, was greatly interested in the workings and development of this trial. Never before had such a case occurred; never before had a subject dared to love the daughter of the king. In after years such things became commonplace enough, but then they were in no slight degree novel and startling.
The tiger-cages of the kingdom were searched for the most savage and relentless beasts, from which the fiercest monster might be selected for the arena; and the ranks of maiden youth and beauty throughout the land were carefully surveyed by competent judges in order that the young man might have a fitting bride in case fate did not determine for him a different destiny. Of course, everybody knew that the deed with which the accused was charged had been done. He had loved the princess, and neither he, she, nor any one else, thought of denying the fact; but the king would not think of allowing any fact of this kind to interfere with the workings of the tribunal, in which he took such great delight and satisfaction. No matter how the affair turned out, the youth would be disposed of, and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching the course of events, which would determine whether or not the young man had done wrong in allowing himself to love the princess.

The appointed day arrived. From far and near the people gathered, and thronged the great galleries of the arena, and crowds, unable to gain admittance, massed themselves against its outside walls. The king and his court were in their places, opposite the twin doors, those fateful portals, so terrible in their similarity.
All was ready. The signal was given. A door beneath the royal party opened, and the lover of the princess walked into the arena. Tall, beautiful, fair, his appearance was greeted with a low hum of admiration and anxiety. Half the audience had not known so grand a youth had lived among them. No wonder the princess loved him! What a terrible thing for him to be there!
As the youth advanced into the arena he turned, as the custom was, to bow to the king, but he did not think at all of that royal personage. His eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in her nature it is probable that lady would not have been there, but her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment that the decree had gone forth that her lover should decide his fate in the king's arena, she had thought of nothing, night or day, but this great event and the various subjects connected with it. Possessed of more power, influence, and force of character than any one who had ever before been interested in such a case, she had done what no other person had done - she had possessed herself of the secret of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms, that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise or suggestion should come from within to the person who should approach to raise the latch of one of them. But gold, and the power of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess.
And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to emerge, all blushing and radiant, should her door be opened, but she knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the accused youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring to one so far above him; and the princess hated her. Often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned. Now and then she had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door.

When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she sat there, paler and whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious faces about her, he saw, by that power of quick perception which is given to those whose souls are one, that she knew behind which door crouched the tiger, and behind which stood the lady. He had expected her to know it. He understood her nature, and his soul was assured that she would never rest until she had made plain to herself this thing, hidden to all other lookers-on, even to the king. The only hope for the youth in which there was any element of certainty was based upon the success of the princess in discovering this mystery; and the moment he looked upon her, he saw she had succeeded, as in his soul he knew she would succeed.
Then it was that his quick and anxious glance asked the question: "Which?" It was as plain to her as if he shouted it from where he stood. There was not an instant to be lost. The question was asked in a flash; it must be answered in another.
Her right arm lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on the man in the arena.
He turned, and with a firm and rapid step he walked across the empty space. Every heart stopped beating, every breath was held, every eye was fixed immovably upon that man. Without the slightest hesitation, he went to the door on the right, and opened it.
Now, the point of the story is this: Did the tiger come out of that door, or did the lady ?
The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way. Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?

How often, in her waking hours and in her dreams, had she started in wild horror, and covered her face with her hands as she thought of her lover opening the door on the other side of which waited the cruel fangs of the tiger!
But how much oftener had she seen him at the other door! How in her grievous reveries had she gnashed her teeth, and torn her hair, when she saw his start of rapturous delight as he opened the door of the lady! How her soul had burned in agony when she had seen him rush to meet that woman, with her flushing cheek and sparkling eye of triumph; when she had seen him lead her forth, his whole frame kindled with the joy of recovered life; when she had heard the glad shouts from the multitude, and the wild ringing of the happy bells; when she had seen the priest, with his joyous followers, advance to the couple, and make them man and wife before her very eyes; and when she had seen them walk away together upon their path of flowers, followed by the tremendous shouts of the hilarious multitude, in which her one despairing shriek was lost and drowned!
Would it not be better for him to die at once, and go to wait for her in the blessed regions of semi-barbaric futurity?
And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!
Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of anguished deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and, without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.
The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?
It was nearly a year after the occurrence of that event in the arena of the semibarbaric king known as the incident of the lady or the tiger, that there came to the palace of this monarch a deputation of five strangers from a far country. These men, of venerable and dignified aspect and demeanour, were received by a high officer of the court, and to him they made known their errand.

The Discourager of Hesitancy

(a sequel to the lady or the tiger)

"Most noble officer," said the speaker of the deputation, "it so happened that one of our countrymen was present here, in your capital city, on that momentous occasion when a young man who had dared to aspire to the hand of your king's daughter had been placed in the arena, in the midst of the assembled multitude, and ordered to open one of two doors, not knowing whether a ferocious tiger would spring out upon him, or a beauteous lady would advance, ready to become his bride. Our fellow citizen who was then present was a man of supersensitive feelings, and at the moment when the youth was about to open the door he was so fearful lest he should behold a horrible spectacle that his nerves failed him, and he fled precipitately from the arena, and, mounting his camel, rode homeward as fast as he could go."

"We were all very much interested in the story which our countrymen told us, and we were extremely sorry that he did not wait to see the end of the affair. We hoped, however, that in a few weeks some traveller from your city would come among us and bring us further news, but up to that day when we left our country no such traveller had arrived. As last it was determined that the only thing to be done was to send a deputation to this country, and to ask the question: 'Which came out of the open door, the lady or the tiger?'"

When the high officer had heard the mission of this most respectable deputation, he led the five strangers into an inner room, where they were seated upon soft cushions, and where he ordered coffee, pipes, sherbet, and other semibarbaric refreshments to be served to them. Then, taking his seat before them, he thus addressed the visitors.

"Most noble strangers, before answering the question you have come so far to ask, I will relate to you an incident which occurred not very long after that to which you have referred. It is well known in all regions hereabout that our great king is very fond of the presence of beautiful women about his court. All the ladies in waiting upon the queen and royal family are most lovely maidens, brought here from every part of the kingdom. The fame of this concourse of beauty, unequalled in any other royal court, has spread far and wide, and had it not been for the equally wide spread fame of the systems of impetuous justice adopted by our king, many foreigners would doubtless have visited our court."

"But not very long ago there arrived here from a distant land a prince of distinguished appearance and undoubted rank. To such a one, of course, a royal audience was granted, and our king met him very graciously, and begged him to make known the object of his visit. Thereupon the prince informed his Royal Highness that, having heard of the superior beauty of the ladies of his court, he had come to ask permission to make one of them his wife."

"When our king heard this bold announcement, his face reddened, he turned uneasily on his throne, and we were all in dread lest some quick words of furious condemnation should leap from out his quivering lips. But by a mighty effort he controlled himself, and after a moment's silence he turned to the prince and said: 'Your request is granted. Tomorrow at noon you shall wed one of the fairest damsels of our court.' Then turning to his officers he said: 'Give orders that everything be prepared for a wedding in the palace at high noon tomorrow. Convey this royal prince to suitable apartments. Send to him tailors, bootmakers, hatters, jewellers, armorers, men of every craft whose services he may need. Whatever he asks, provide. And let all be ready for the ceremony tomorrow.'"

" 'But, your Majesty,' exclaimed the prince, 'before we make these preparations, I would like -'

" 'Say no more!' roared the king. 'My royal orders have been given, and nothing more is needed to be said. You asked a boon. I granted it, and I will hear no more on the subject. Farewell, my prince, until tomorrow noon.'"

"At this the king arose and left the audience chamber, while the prince was hurried away to the apartments selected for him. Here came to him tailors, hatters, jewellers, and every one who was needed to fit him out in grand attire for the wedding. But the mind of the prince was much troubled and perplexed."

" 'I do nut understand,' he said to his attendants, 'this precipitancy of action. When am I to see the ladies, that I may choose among them? I wish opportunity, not only to gaze upon their forms and faces, but to become acquainted with their relative intellectual development.'"

" 'We can tell you nothing,' was the answer. 'What our king thinks right, that will he do. More than this we know not.'"

" 'His Majesty's notions seem to be very peculiar,' said the prince, 'and, so far as I can see, they do not at all agree with mine.'"

"At that moment an attendant whom the prince had not noticed came and stood beside him. This was a broad shouldered man of cheery aspect, who carried, its hilt in his right hand, and its broad back resting on his broad arm, an enormous cimeter, the upturned edge of which was keen and bright as any razor. Holding this formidable weapon as tenderly as though it had been a sleeping infant, this man drew closer to the prince and bowed."

" 'Who are you?' exclaimed his Highness, starting back at the sight of the frightful weapon.'"

" 'I,' said the other, with a courteous smile, 'am the Discourager of Hesitancy. When the king makes known his wishes to any one, a subject or visitor, whose disposition in some little points may be supposed not wholly to coincide with that of his Majesty, I am appointed to attend him closely, that, should he think of pausing in the path of obedience to the royal will, he may look at me, and proceed.'"

"The prince looked at him, and proceeded to be measured for a coat."

"The tailors and shoemakers and hatters worked all night, and the next morning, when everything was ready, and the hour of noon was drawing nigh, the prince again anxiously inquired of his attendants when he might expect to be introduced to the ladies."

" 'The king will attend to that,' they said. 'We know nothing of the matter.'"

" 'Your Highness,' aid the Discourager of Hesitancy, approaching with a courtly bow, 'will observe the excellent quality of this edge.' And drawing a hair from his head, he dropped it upon the upturned edge of his cimeter, upon which it was cut in two at the moment of touching."

"The prince glanced, and turned upon his heel."

"Now came officers to conduct him to the grand hall of the palace, in which the ceremony was to be performed. Here the prince found the king seated upon his throne, with his nobles, his courtiers, and his officers standing about him in magnificent array. The prince was led to a position in front of the king, to whom he made obeisance, and then said:

" 'Your majesty, before I proceed further -'

"At this moment an attendant, who had approached with a long scarf of delicate silk, wound it about the lower part of the prince's face so quickly and adroitly that he was obliged to cease speaking. Then, with wonderful dexterity, the rest of the scarf was wound around the prince's head, so that he was completely blindfolded. Thereupon the attendant quickly made openings in the scarf over the mouth and ears, so that the prince might breathe and hear, and fastening the ends of the scarf securely, he retired."

"The first impulse of the prince was to snatch the silken folds from his head and face, but, as he raised his hands to do so, he heard beside him the voice of the Discourager of Hesitancy, who gently whispered: 'I am here your Highness.' And, with a shudder, the arms of the prince fell down by his side."

"Now before him he heard the voice of a priest, who had begun the marriage service in use in that semi-barbaric country. At his side he could hear a delicate rustle, which seemed to proceed from fabrics of soft silk. Gently putting forth his hand, he felt folds of such silk close behind him. Then came the voice of the priest requesting him to take the hand of the lady by his side; and reaching forth his right hand, the prince received within it another hand, so small, so soft, so delicately fashioned, and so delightful to the touch, that a thrill went through his being. Then, as was the custom of the country, the priest first asked the lady would she have this man to be her husband; to which the answer gently came, in the sweetest voice he had ever heard: 'I will."'

"Then ran raptures rampant through the prince's blood. The touch, the tone, enchanted him. All the ladies of that court were beautiful, the Discourager was behind him, and through his parted scarf he boldly answered: 'Yes, I will.'"

"Whereupon the priest pronounced them man and wife."

"Now the prince heard a little bustle about him, the long scarf was rapidly unrolled from his head, and he turned, with a start, to gaze upon his bride. To his utter amazement, there was no one there. He stood alone. Unable on the instant to ask a question or say a word, he gazed blankly about him."

"Then the king arose from his throne, and came down, and took him by the hand."

" 'Where is my wife gasped the prince.'"

" 'She is here,' said the king, leading him to a curtained doorway at the side of the hall."

" 'The curtains were drawn aside, and the prince, entering, found himself in a long apartment, near the opposite wall of which stood a line of forty ladies, all dressed in rich attire, and each one apparently more beautiful than the rest.'"

"Waving his hand toward the line, the king said to the prince: "There is your bride! Approach, and lead her forth! But, remember this: that if you attempt to take away one of the unmarried damsels of our court, your execution will be instantaneous. Now, delay no longer. Step up and take your bride.'"

"The prince, as in a dream, walked slowly along the line of ladies, and then walked slowly back again. Nothing could he see about any one of them to indicate that she was more of a bride than the others. Their dresses were all similar, they all blushed, they all looked up and then looked down. They all had charming little hands. Not one spoke a word. Not one lifted a finger to make a sign. It was evident that the orders given them had been very strict."

" 'Why this delay?' roared the king. 'If I had been married this day to one so fair as the lady who wedded you, I should not wait one second to claim her.'"

"The bewildered prince walked again up and down the line. And this time there was a slight change in the countenances of two of the ladies. One of the fairest gently smiled as he passed her. Another, just as beautiful, slightly frowned."

" 'Now,' said the prince to himself, 'I am sure that it is one of those two ladies whom I have married. But which? One smiled. And would not any woman smile when she saw in such a case, her husband coming toward her? Then again, on the other hand, would not any woman from when she saw her husband come toward her and fail to claim her? Would she not knit her lovely brows? Would she not inwardly say 'It is I! Don't you know it? Don't you feel it? Come!' But if this woman had not been married, would she not frown when she saw the man looking at her? Would she not say inwardly, "Don't stop at me! It is the next but one It is two ladies above. Go on!" Then again, the one who married me did not see my face. Would she not now smile if she thought me comely? But if I wedded the one who frowned, she could restrain her disapprobation if she did not like me? Smiles invite the approach of true love. A frown is a reproach to a tardy advance. A smile -"

" 'Now, hear me!' loudly cried the king. 'In ten seconds, if you do not take the lady we have given you, she who has just been made your bride shall be made your widow.'"

"And, as the last word was uttered, the Discourager of? Hesitancy stepped close behind the prince and whispered: 'I am here!'"

"Now the prince could not hesitate an instant; he stepped forward and took one of the two ladies by the hand."

"Loud rang the bells, loud cheered the people, and the king came forward to congratulate the prince. He had taken his lawful bride."

" 'Now, then," said the officer to the deputation of five strangers from a far country, "when you can decide among yourselves which lady the prince chose, the one who smiled or the one who frowned, then I will tell you which came out of the open door, the lady or the tiger!"

At the latest accounts the five strangers had not yet decided.

Randomness

2009-05-21T20:12:00.000+08:00

The disease of randomness has gotten hold of me! Argh...

Some random political cartoons found in the thing (known to Madeline L'Engle as IT) against AMERICA! *dramatic music*

Story 1

2009-05-17T10:30:00.000+08:00

There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls
upon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no
less obligatory.

It was set forth in the program of this tropic vaudeville that
it would be made known why Shorty 0'Day, of the Columbia Detective
Agency, lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tell
us what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when
he strewed so many cigar stumps around the coconut palm during his
lonely night vigil on the beach. These things were promised; but
a bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished--the clearing up of a
seeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicled
facts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented. And one voice,
speaking, shall do these three things.

Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of New
York. A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas and
oranges on the pier. Now and then a banana or two would fall from
an overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward,
seize the fruit and return to share it with his companion.

One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far as
rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been
done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible.
And yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched
a pair of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.

The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of the
Incompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed--seed
that, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still cross-cuts
along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the pathway
of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles. This man
was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, like
that of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We know
the eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht,
the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance,
has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his former state.

At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from him
with a shudder.

"Deuce take all fruit!" he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust.
"I lived for two years where these things grow. The memory of their
taste lingers with you. The oranges are not so bad. Just see if you
can gather a couple of them, O'Day, when the next broken crate comes
up."

Did you live down with the monkeys?" asked the other, made tepidly
garrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit.
"I was down there, once myself. But only for a few hours. That was
when I was with the Columbia Detective Agency. The monkey people
did me up. I'd have my job yet if it hadn't been for them. I'll
tell you about it.

"One day the chief sent a note around to the office that read: 'Send
O'Day here at once for a big piece of business.' I was the crack
detective of the agency at that time. They always handed me the big
jobs. The address the chief wrote from was down in the Wall Street
district.

"When I got there I found him in a private office with a lot of
directors who were looking pretty fuzzy. They stated the case.
The president of the Republic Insurance Company had skipped with
about a tenth of a million dollars in cash. The directors wanted
him back pretty bad, but they wanted the money worse. They said
they needed it. They had traced the old gent's movements to where
he boarded a tramp fruit steamer bound for South America that same
morning with his daughter and a big gripsack--all the family
he had.

"One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up,
ready for a trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh. In
four hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruit
tub. I had a pretty good idea where old Wahrfield--that was his name,
J. Churchill Wahrfield--would head for. At that time we had a treaty
with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana
republic, Anchuria. There wasn't a photo of old Wahrfield to be
had in New York--he had been foxy there--but I had his description.
And besides, the lady with him would be a dead-give-away anywhere.
She was one of the high-flyers in Society--not the kind that have
their pictures in the Sunday papers--but the real sort that open
chrysanthemum shows and christen battleships.

"Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road.
The ocean is a pretty big place; and I guess we took different
paths across it. But we kept going toward this Anchuria, where
the fruiter was bound for.

"We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four. There was a
ratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas. The monkeys were
loading her up with big barges. It might be the one the old man had
taken, and it might not. I went ashore to look around. The scenery
was pretty good. I never saw any finer on the New York stage.
I struck an American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing around
with the monkeys. He showed me the consul's office. The consul was
a nice young fellow. He said the fruiter was the ~Karlsefin~, running
generally to New Orleans, but took her last cargo to New York. Then
I was sure my people were on board, although everybody told me that
no passengers had landed. I didn't think they would land until after
dark, for they might have been shy about it on account of seeing that
yacht of mine hanging around. So, all I had to do was to wait and nab
'em when they came ashore. I couldn't arrest old Wahrfield without
extradition papers, but my play was to get the cash. They generally
give up if you strike 'em when they're tired and rattled and short
on nerve.

"After dark I sat under a coconut tree on the beach for a while,
and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was
enough to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and be
honest, he'd better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million.

"Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets;
ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars;
tree-frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; big
mountains dropping gravel in the back yards, and the sea licking
the paint off in front--no, sir--a man had better be in God's country
living on free lunch than there.

"The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and
then turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles
and straw. I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren't
climbing coconut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw my
people. They must have come ashore while I was promenading. A man
about fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth,
looking like he was just about to say, "Can any little boy in the
Sunday school answer that?' He was freezing on to a grip that weighed
like a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl--a regular peach, with
a Fifth Avenue cut--was sitting on a wooden chair. An old black woman
was fixing some coffee and beans on a table. The light they had come
from a lantern hung on a nail. I went and stood in the door, and they
looked at me, and I said:

"Mr. Wahrfield, you are my prisoner. I hope, for the lady's sake,
you will take the matter sensibly. You know why I want you.'

"'Who are you?' says the old gent.

"'O'Day,' says I, 'of the Columbia Detective Agency. And now, sir,
let me give you a piece of good advice. You go back and take your
medicine like a man. Hand 'em back the boodle; and maybe they'll let
you off light. Go back easy, and I'll put in a word for you. I'll
give you five minutes to decide." I pulled out my watch and waited.

"Then the young lady chipped in. She was one of the genuine
high-steppers. You could tell by the way her clothes fit and
the style she had that Fifth Avenue was made for her.

"'Come inside,' she says. 'Don't stand in the door and disturb the
whole street with that suit of clothes. Now, what is it you want?'

"'Three minutes gone,' I said. 'I'll tell you again while the other
two tick off.'

"'You'll admit being the president of the Republic, won't you?'

"'I am,' says he.

'Well, then,' says I, 'it ought to be plain to you. Wanted, in
New York, J. Churchill Wahrfield, president of the Republic Insurance
Company.

"'Also the funds belonging to said company, now in that grip, in
the unlawful possession of said J. Churchill Wahrfield.'

"'Oh-h-h-h!' says the young lady, as if she was thinking, 'you want
to take us back to New York?'

"'To take Mr. Wahrfield. There's no charge against you, miss.
There'll be no objection, of course, to your returning with your
father.'

"Of a sudden the girl gave a tiny scream and grabbed the old boy
around the neck. 'Oh, father, father!' she says, kind of contralto,
'can this be true? Have you taken money that is not yours? Speak,
father!' It made you shiver to hear the tremolo stop she put on her
voice.

"The old boy looked pretty bughouse when she first grappled him,
but she went on, whispering in his ear and patting his offshoulder
till he stood still, but sweating a little.

"She got him to one side and they talked together a minute, and then
he put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip.

"'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken, 'I conclude
to return with you. I have finished to discover that life on this
desolate and displeased coast would be worse than to die, itself.
I will go back and hurl myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company.
Have you brought a sheep?'

"'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single--'

"'Ship,' cut in the young lady. 'Don't get funny. Father is of
German birth, and doesn't speak perfect English. How did you come
up?'

"The girl was all broke up. She had a handkerchief to her face,
and kept saying every little bit, '0h, father, father!' She walked
up to me and laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had pained
her at first. I smelt a million violets. She was a lulu. I told
her I came in a private yacht.

"'Mr. O'Day,' she says. 'Oh, take us away from this horrid country
at once. Can you! Will you! Say you will.'

"'I'll try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them
on salt water before they could change their mind.

"One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to
the boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they
were going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be
kept out of the papers. They swore they wouldn't go unless I got
them out to the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreed
to humor them.

"The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-room
near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take
the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there.
How to get them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the grip
with the prisoner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing but
what the monkeys might stick me up.

"The young lady says the old colored woman would take them a note.
I sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions
what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.

"Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she
nods her head and says, 'See, senor' maybe fifty times, and lights
out with the note.

"'0ld Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahrfield, smiling
at me. 'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging,
and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was raised
in a German family in San Domingo.'

"'Very likely,' I said. 'But you can search me for German words,
except ~nix verstay~ and ~noch einst~, I would have called that
"See, senor" French, though, on a gamble.'

"Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not to
be seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes
and tropical scenery a good deal. The monkey suburbs was as wild
as places in Central Park. We came out on the beach a good half
mile below. A brown chap was lying asleep under a coconut tree,
with a ten-foot musket beside him. Mr. Wahrfield takes up the gun
and pitches it into the sea. 'The coast is guarded,' he says.
'Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit.' He pointed to the sleeping
man, who never stirred. 'Thus,' he says, 'they perform trusts.
Children!'

"I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece of
newspaper to show them where we were. In thirty minutes we were
on board the yacht.

"The first thing, Mr. Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the grip
into the owner's cabin, opened it up, and took an inventory. There
was one hundred and five thousand dollars. United States treasury
notes in it, besides a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of hundred
Havana cigars. I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt for the
rest of the lot, as agent for the company, and locked the stuff up
in my private quarters.

"I never had a pleasanter trip than that one. After we got to sea
the young lady turned out to be the jolliest ever. The very first
time we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass with
champagne--that director's yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-
Astoria--she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow trouble,
Mr. Fly Cop? Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches
on your grave.' There was a piano on board, and she sat down to it
and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty times. She
knew about nine operas clean through. She was sure enough ~bon ton~
and swell. She wasn't one of the 'among others present' kind; she
belonged on the special mention list!

"The old man, too, perked up amazingly on the way. He passed the
cigars, and says to me once, quite chipper, out of a cloud of smoke,
'Mr. O'Day, somehow I think the Republic Company will not give me
the much trouble. Guard well the gripvalise of the money, Mr. O'Day,
for that it must be returned to them that it belongs when we finish
to arrive.'

"When we landed in New York I 'phoned to the chief to meet us in
that director's office. We got in a cab and went there. I carried
the grip, and we walked in, and I was pleased to see that the chief
had got together that same old crowd of moneybugs with pink faces
and white vests to see us march in. I set the grip on the table.
'There's the money,' I said.

"'And your prisoner?' said the chief.

"I pointed to Mr. Wahrfield, and he stepped forward and says:

"'The honor of a word with you, sir, to explain.'

"He and the chief went into another room and stayed ten minutes.
When they came back the chief looked as black as a ton of coal.

"'Did this gentleman,' he says to me, 'have this valise in
his possession when you first saw him?'

"'He did,' said I.

"The chief took up the grip and handed it to the prisoner with
a bow, and says to the director crowd: 'Do any of you recognize
this gentleman?'

"They all shook their pink faces.

"'Allow me to present,' he goes on, 'Senor Miraflores, president
of the republic of Anchuria. The senor has generously consented
to overlook this outrageous blunder, on condition that we undertake
to secure him against the annoyance of public comment. It is a
concession on his part to overlook an insult for which he might
claim international redress. I think we can gratefully promise him
secrecy in the matter.'

"They gave him a pink nod all round.

"'O'Day,' he says to me. 'As a private detective you're wasted.
In a war, where kidnapping governments is in the rules, you'd be
invaluable. Come down to the office at eleven.'

"I knew what that meant.

"'So that's the president of the monkeys,' says I. 'Well,
why couldn't he have said so?'

"Wouldn't it jar you?"

2009-05-10T23:17:00.000+08:00

Once again, not an ACE post.

The Ace of Spades rock.

Spades is one of the four suits found in the "international" deck of playing cards. The standard "international" deck uses the French suit system.
In bridge, it ranks highest out of the four suits. In some card games of Germanic origin such as Skat or Sheepshead, the suits rank: clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. In cartomancy, it is typically associated with death.[clarification needed][citation needed]
The symbol was first used on French playing cards, made in Rouen and Lyon in the 15th Century, around the time that playing cards were first mass-produced by the use of woodcuts.
In the Germanic countries the spade was the symbol associated with the blade of a spade. In German and Dutch the suit is also, alternately, named Schüppen and schoppen (shovel).
It is often stated that the suit is named after Spanish espada (sword), but this is not likely. In Germany and Scandinavia, Spanish playing cards were not in use, and Spanish loanwords in these languages were rare. It should also be noted that the Spanish name for the French suit is picas - not espadas.
In some parts of Britain, namely the West Midlands, the suit can be known as cabbages, or cabbage-leaf, which is a direct correlation with the German suit of "leaves".

Islands in the Stream

2009-05-10T22:40:00.000+08:00

N.B.: This is not for ACE testing.

The Tonight Show

2009-05-10T16:42:00.000+08:00

Anyone saw 'The Tonight Show' on CNBC Last night?

Spock from Star Trek, Bush, and Jay Leno were asked to find the question for the answer (reverse of our fave exams). The first answer was 'Mercury'. 'Jay' said, "What car do I have in my garage?" The second answer was 'Comet'. 'Jay' said, "What car do I have in my garage?" The thrid answer was 'Meteor'. 'Jay' said, "What car do I have in my garage?" The fourth answer was 'Satrurn'. 'Bush' said, "What is next to your anus?"

Hilarious, Jay Leno is.

"Well, tomorrow, John Edwards' wife, Elizabeth Edwards, a great woman, is going to be on 'Oprah.' How many of you are going to watch that? How many of would you rather see her beat the crap out of her husband on 'Jerry Springer?'" --Jay Leno

"Former presidential candidate John Edwards has admitted that Federal investigators are looking into his presidential campaign finances and the fact that he paid over $100,000 to his mistress. Edwards is denying any impropriety -- he said his mistress earned every penny." --Jay Leno

"A vacancy on the Supreme Court. This is something we haven't seen in awhile. Let's just hope the president is better at picking a justice than the justices were at picking a president." --Jay Leno

Political Humour

2009-05-10T16:39:00.000+08:00

You know Dick Cheney accidentaly shot a fello hunter? Here's a hilarious twist to the story:
Vice President Dick Cheney, while hunting wild geese in the Rose Garden, accidentally shot President Bush twice, once in the heart and once in the head. "I didn't really shoot the President twice," said Cheney. "The second time I shot him, I was president. It wasn't until my third shot, where I accidentally shot my own foot, that I had shot the president twice. I was officially injured and unable to govern, when Dennis Hastert came in, and stepped on the butt handle of the rifle causing it to swing up like a rake and shoot his hair off. I guess I'm officially responsible for that too, meaning I shot the acting president for a total of three occupants of the oval office. I'm not proud, but it is a record."

Animal Farm

2009-05-10T09:29:00.000+08:00

Animal Farm is a dystopian (A dystopia (from the Greek δυσ- and τόπος, alternatively, cacotopia, kakotopia, cackotopia, or anti-utopia) is the vision of a society that is the opposite of utopia. A dystopian society is one in which the conditions of life are miserable, characterized by human misery, poverty, oppression, violence, disease, and/or pollution.) novel by George Orwell. Published in England on 17 August 1945, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II. Orwell, a democratic socialist and a member of the Independent Labour Party for many years, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and was suspicious of Moscow-directed Stalinism after his experiences with the NKVD (The NKVD (Russian: НКВД, Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of terror, including political repression, during the Stalinist era.) during the Spanish Civil War.

Character Representations:
Pigs
Old Major
A prize Middle White boar, the inspiration that fuels the Rebellion in the book. According to one interpretation, he could be based upon both Karl Marx (in that he describes the ideal society the animals could create if the humans are overthrown) and Vladimir Lenin (in that his skull is put on revered public display, as was Lenin's embalmed corpse).
Napoleon
A Berkshire boar ("a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way") the main tyrant and villain of Animal Farm; he is based upon Joseph Stalin. He begins to gradually build up his power, using puppies he took from mother dogs Jessie and Bluebell, which he raises to be vicious dogs as his secret police. After driving Snowball off the farm, Napoleon usurps full power, using false propaganda from Squealer and threats and intimidation from the dogs to keep the other animals in line. Among other things, he gradually changes the Commandments for his benefit. By the end of the book, Napoleon and his fellow pigs have learned to walk upright and started to behave similarly to the humans against whom they originally revolted.
In the first French version of Animal Farm, Napoleon is called César, the French spelling of Caesar, although another translation has him as Napoléon.
Snowball
Napoleon's rival. He is probably an allusion to Leon Trotsky. He wins over most animals, but is driven out of the farm by Napoleon. Snowball genuinely works for the good of the farm and devises plans to help the animals achieve their vision of an egalitarian utopia, but Napoleon and his dogs chase him from the farm, and Napoleon spreads rumours to make him seem evil and corrupt and that he had secretly sabotaged the animals' efforts to improve the farm. In his biography of Orwell, Bernard Crick suggests that Snowball was as much inspired by the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leader Andrés Nin as by Trotsky. Nin was a similarly adept orator and also fell victim to the Communist purges of the Left during the Spanish Civil War.
Squealer
A small fat porker who serves as Napoleon's right hand pig and minister of propaganda. Inspired by Vyacheslav Molotov and the Soviet paper Pravda,. Squealer manipulates the language to excuse, justify, and extol all of Napoleon's actions. He represents all the propaganda Stalin used to justify his own terrible acts. In all of his work, George Orwell made it a point to show how politicians used language to suit their interests. Squealer limits debate by complicating it and he confuses and disorients, making claims that the pigs need the extra luxury they are taking in order to function properly, for example. However, when questions persist, he usually uses the threat of the return of Mr Jones, the former owner of the farm, to justify the pigs' privileges. Squealer uses statistics to convince the animals that life is getting better and better. Most of the animals have only dim memories of life before the revolution; therefore, they are convinced.
Minimus
A poetic pig who writes the second and third national anthems of Animal Farm after the singing of "Beasts of England" is banned. He represents admirers of Stalin both inside and outside the USSR such as Maxim Gorky. As Minimus composed the replacement of "Beasts of England", he may equate to the three main composers of the National Anthem of the Soviet Union which replaced The Internationale – Gabriel El-Registan, Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov and Sergey Mikhalkov.
The Piglets
Hinted to be the children of Napoleon (albeit not truly noted in the novel) and are the first generation of animals actually subjugated to his idea of animal inequality.
The Rebel Pigs
Four pigs who complain about Napoleon's takeover of the farm but are quickly silenced and later executed. This is based on the Great Purge during Stalin's regime.
Pinkeye
A minor pig who is mentioned only once; he is the pig that tastes Napoleon's food to make sure it is not poisoned, in response to rumours about an assassination attempt on Napoleon.
Humans
Mr. Jones
The former owner of the farm, who represents Nicholas II of Russia, the deposed Czar, who had been facing severe financial difficulties in the days leading up to the 1917 Revolution. The character is also a nod towards Louis XVI. There are several implications that he represents an autocratic but ineffective capitalist, incapable of running the farm and looking after the animals properly. Jones is a very heavy drinker and the animals revolt against him after he drinks so much that he does not feed or take care of them.
The attempt by Jones and his farmhands to recapture the farm is foiled in the Battle of the Cowshed (the Russian Civil War).
Mr. Frederick
The tough owner of Pinchfield, a well-kept neighbouring farm. He represents Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in general. He buys wood from the animals for forged money and later attacks them, destroying the windmill but being finally beaten in the resulting Battle of the Windmill, which could be interpreted as either the Battle of Moscow or the Battle of Stalingrad. There are also stories of him mistreating his own animals, such as throwing dogs into a furnace, which may also represent the Nazi Party's treatment of political dissidents.
Mr. Pilkington
The easy-going but crafty owner of Foxwood, a neighbouring farm overgrown with weeds, as described in the book. He represents the Anglosphere, the British Empire and the United States. The card game at the very end of the novel is a metaphor for the Tehran Conference, where the parties flatter each other, all the while cheating at the game. This last scene is ironic because all the Pigs are civil and kind to the humans, defying all for which they had fought. This happened at the Tehran Conference: the Soviet Union formed an alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom, capitalist countries that the Soviet Union had fought in the early years of the revolution. At the end of the game, both Napoleon and Pilkington draw the Ace of Spades and then begin fighting loudly, symbolising the beginning of tension between east and west.
Mr. Whymper
A man hired by Napoleon for the public relations of Animal Farm to human society. He is loosely based on Western intellectuals such as George Bernard Shaw and, especially, Lincoln Steffens, who visited the USSR in 1919.
Equines
There are four main equine (horse and donkey) characters: Clover, Boxer, Benjamin, and Mollie.
Boxer
One of the main characters, he is the pathetic symbol of the working class, or proletariat: loyal, kind, dedicated, respectful and physically the strongest animal on the farm, but naïve and slow. His ignorance and blind trust towards his leaders leads to his death and their profit. In particular, his heroic physical work represents the Stakhanovite movement. His maxim of "I will work harder" is reminiscent of Jurgis Rudkus from the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle. His second maxim, "Napoleon is always right" is an example of the propaganda used by Squealer to control the animals. It was not adopted until later in the book. Boxer's work ethic is often praised by the pigs, and he is set as a prime example to the other animals. When Boxer is injured, and can no longer work, Napoleon sends him off to the knacker's yard and deceives the other animals, saying that Boxer died peacefully in the hospital and that the ambulance was an old knacker's van that hadn't been repainted. When the animals cannot work, Napoleon tosses them aside, for they mean nothing to him and Napoleon was not just done with Boxer because he could not work. He was also afraid of Boxer. Boxer had the strength and leadership to overthrow Napoleon. Napoleon saw that Boxer would never do this because he was too loyal.
Clover
Boxer's companion, who is also a draught horse. She helps and cares for Boxer when he splits his hoof. She blames herself for forgetting the original Seven Commandments when Squealer had actually revised them. Clover is compassionate, as is shown when she protects the baby ducklings during Major's speech. She is also upset when animals are executed by the dogs, and is held in great respect by the three younger horses who ultimately replace Boxer. Beyond being the matriarch it is hard to find a political role for her in the novel.
Mollie
A self-centred and vain white mare who likes wearing ribbons in her mane, eating sugar cubes (which represent luxury) and being pampered and groomed by humans. She represents upper-class people, the bourgeoisie and nobility who fled to the West after the Russian Revolution and effectively dominated the Russian diaspora. Accordingly, she quickly leaves for another farm and is only once mentioned again.
Benjamin
A wise old donkey who shows little emotion and is one of the longest-lived animals; he is still alive at the end of the book. The animals often ask him about his lack of expression but he always answers with: 'Donkeys live a long time. None of you have ever seen a dead donkey.' Benjamin can also read as well as any pig, but rarely displays his ability. He is a dedicated friend to Boxer and is very upset when Boxer is taken away. Benjamin has known about the pigs' wrongdoing the entire time, but he says nothing to the other animals. He represents the cynics in society. Another possibility is that Benjamin is an allegory for intellectuals who have the wisdom to stay clear of the purges, but take no action themselves, such as pacifists, whose attitude Orwell firmly disliked. Yet another possibility is that Benjamin is Orwell himself.
Other animals
Muriel
A wise old goat who is friends with all of the animals on the farm. She, like Benjamin and Snowball, is one of the few animals on the farm who can read (with some difficulty, she has to spell the words out first) and helps Clover discover that the Seven Commandments have been continually changed. She possibly represents the same category as Benjamin, though she dies near the end of the book from old age.
The Puppies
Offspring of Jessie and Bluebell, raised by Napoleon to be his security force, and may be reference to the fact that Stalin's rise to power was helped by his appointment as General Secretary of the Communist Party by Lenin in 1922, in which role he used his powers of appointment, promotion and demotion to quietly pack the party with his own supporters. The puppies represent Stalin's secret police or the KGB.
Moses the Raven
An old bird that occasionally visits the farm with tales of a place in the sky called Sugarcandy Mountain, where he says animals go when they die, but only if they work hard. He spends time turning the animals' minds to Sugarcandy Mountain and he does no work. He represents religious leaders, specifically the Russian Orthodox Church, and Sugarcandy Mountain is Heaven. He also represents Rasputin being loyal to the Czar (Mr. Jones). Religion is banned in the new régime, and his religious persona is exacerbated by the fact that he is named after a biblical character. He feels unequal in comparison to the other animals, so he leaves after the rebellion, for all animals were supposed to be equal. However, much later in the book he returns to the farm and continues to proclaim the existence of Sugarcandy Mountain. The other animals are confused by the pigs' attitude towards Moses; they denounce his claims as nonsense, but allow him to remain on the farm. The pigs do this to offer the hope of a happy afterlife to the other animals, probably to keep their minds on Sugarcandy Mountain and not on possible uprisings. In the end, Moses is one of few animals to remember the rebellion, along with Clover, Benjamin, and the pigs.
The Sheep
Represent the mass proletariat, manipulated to support Napoleon in spite of his treachery. They show limited understanding of the situations but support him anyway, and regularly chant "Four legs good, Two legs bad". At the end of the novel, one of the Seven Commandments is changed after the pigs learn to walk on two legs, so they shout "Four legs good, two legs better". They can be relied on by the pigs to shout down any dissent from others.
The Rats
May represent some of the nomadic people in the far north of the USSR.
The Hens
Represent the Kulaks. They destroy their eggs instead of handing them to the higher powers, just as during collectivisation some Kulaks sabotaged machinery or killed their livestock.
The Cows
Represent the proletariat, whose milk is greedily stolen by the pigs as a luxury, and is not shared out equally.
The Cat
Represents those who insincerely adhere to ideology for exploitation and personal gain, shown in her promise to the birds that they are 'comrades' and they are safe to land in her paw.

Other Significant Symbols

The horn and the hoof flag and the Hammer and Sickle flag (USSR flag) are very similar in design, with a 'single colour in the background and a picture of something curved, with a stick thingy through the middle' (my brother).

The revolution was supposed to make life better for the animals, and in the Russian Revolution, remove the Czar. Instead, in both cases, it got worse for the animals and the Russians. And like Benjamin said, nothing ever chages. The new leaders are worse than the old.

Le Quote da Buke the Anti-Amerikanzi des.

2009-05-09T21:24:00.000+08:00

There are 300 cows in a field. 2 cows pass through a gate at the rate of one per minute. How many will be left after one-and-a-half hours?

A geek (such as a certain lad who calls himself dl) will jump up at once and reply, 'Duh! 120!'

But anyone who has had experience in rearing cattle will know this: cows don't pass through a field at a rate of 2 per minute. They either go through all at once, or never, or walk in and out as they please. The field might be empty within ten minutes, or still full of cows after 24 hours.

So what?

What is taught in school doesn't apply to real life. The 'right' answer to this question is 120. But is that the answer? An experienced farmer (such as Federick and Pilkington) would say 'None or all.' School, thus, is utterly and completely and unconceivably useless.

That's what.

Quotes from the book, The Tao of Pooh & The Te of Piglet

2009-05-08T18:26:00.000+08:00

OK.
While travelling seperately through the countryside one late afternoon, a Hindu, a Rabbi (or Muslim, whichever you understand), and a Criticwere caught in the same area by a terrific thunderstorm. They sought shelter at a nearby farmhouse.
'The storm will be raging for hours,' the farmer told them. 'You'd better stay here for the night. The problem is, there's only room enough for two. One of you'll have ti sleep in the barn.'
'I'll be the one,' said the Hindu. 'A little hardship is npthing to me.' He went out to the barn.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was the Hindu. 'I'm sorry,'he told the others, 'but there is a cow in the barn. According to my religion, cows are sacred, and one must not intrude into their personal space.'
'Don't worry. Make yourself home here,' said the Rabbi/ Muslim. I'll go and sleep in the barn.' He went out to the barn.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was the Rabbi/ Muslim. 'I hate to bother,' he said, 'butthere is a pig in the barn. In my religion, pigs are considered dirty. I wouldn't feel comfy sharin my sleeping quaters with one.
'OK, alright,' said the critic. 'I'll go sleep in the barn'. He went out into the barn.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was the pig and the cow.
Critics are scary.

2009-04-02T20:22:00.000+08:00

Geniuses... I feel insanely cruel today!

A simple question in which many get wrong! Indeed why?!!?

1=5, 2=10, 3=15, 4=20, 5=?

Seems simple enough right?

::~::

Normal people answer as 25.

::~::

The answer?

::~::

1. Duh.

2009-03-20T12:18:00.000+08:00

Certain students were asked to write out the end half of the following idioms [i.e. a bad (egg)].

The following is completely unaltered. As lawyers say, it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Or in the movies: a true story...

1.	Don't change horses	until they stop running..
2.	Strike while the	wasp is close.
3.	It's always darkest before	Daylight Saving Time..
4.	Never underestimate the power of	termites.
5.	You can lead a horse to water but	How?
6.	Don't bite the hand that	looks dirty.
7.	No news is	impossible
8.	A miss is as good as a	Mr.
9.	You can't teach an old dog new	Maths
10.	If you lie down with dogs, you'll	stink in the morning..
11.	Love all, trust	me.
12.	The pen is mightier than the	pigs.
13.	An idle mind is	the best way to relax
14.	Where there's smoke there's	pollution.
15.	Happy the bride who	gets all the presents.
16.	A penny saved is	not much.
17.	Two's company, three's	the Musketeers.
18.	Don't put off till tomorrow what	you put on to go to bed..
19.	Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and	You have to blow your nose.
20.	There are none so blind as	Stevie Wonder .
21.	Children should be seen and not	spanked or grounded.
22.	If at first you don't succeed	get new batteries.
23.	You get out of something only what you	See in the picture on the box
24.	When the blind lead the blind	get out of the way.
25.	A bird in the hand	is going to poop on you..

2009-03-16T17:09:00.000+08:00

Exceptions in Idioms

We use idioms (and this blog is for LA). Yet they are not universally true. Take these few...

Idiom the first...*dramatic music!*:

'A rolling stone gathers no moss.'

Actual Definition:

'An ever-moving person will not have many close friends.'

What if the stone was a rock, or the stone rolled down a mossy hill?

::~::~::

Idiom the second...*more dramatic music!*:

'An apple a day keeps the doctor away.'

Actual definition:

'Eating healthy food keeps you healthy(duh...)'

I seriously wonder which half will come if I only eat half.

Better still, if I were allergic, won't an apple a day keep the doctor coming?

::~::~::

Idiom the final...*most dramatic music!*:

Better late than never.'

Actual definition:

'It is better to do something after it was supposed to have been done than not to do it at all.'

So a man dies late. A man never dies. Who would you rather be?

::~::~::

I'm lame.

三ティモシー之一

MOOSIC!!!!

2009-03-14T17:39:00.000+08:00

Music's back! Hooray for the Great Me!

Regards,

三ティモシー之一/

The Great/

King Elizabeth's fan/

Doomdoomdoom/

Mr. Nice Moosic/

Author/

Questioner/

Doodle, Aunt Nicey, Brother, and the rest of the c-box crew (incl. Justin Timberlake, One Republic, The Lawyer, TT Durai, Anwar Ibrahim, and Obama).

2009-03-03T16:06:00.000+08:00

Today's Society:

Look at this mess society is today. I mean...

The little red hen called all of her Democrat neighbors together and said,'If we plant this wheat, we shall have bread to eat.
Who will help me plant it?'
'Not I,' said the cow.
'Not I,' said the duck.
'Not I,' said the pig.
'Not I,' said the goose.
'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did.
::~::~::
The wheat grew very tall and ripened into golden grain.
'Who will help me reap my wheat?' asked the little red hen.
'Not I,' said the duck...
'Out of my classification,' said the pig.
'I'd lose my seniority,' said the cow.
'I'd lose my unemployment compensation,' said the goose.
'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen, and so she did.
::~::~::
At last it came time to bake the bread.
'Who will help me bake the bread?' asked the little red hen.
'That would be overtime for me,' said the cow.
'I'd lose my welfare benefits,' said the duck.
'I'm a dropout and never learned how,' said the pig.
'If I'm to be the only helper, that's discrimination,' said the goose.
'Then I will do it by myself,' said the little red hen.
::~::~::
She baked five loaves and held them up for all of her neighbors to see.
They wanted some and, in fact, demanded a share.
But the little red hen said,'No, I shall eat all five loaves.'
'Excess profits!' cried the cow. (Nancy Pelosi)
'Capitalist leech!' screamed the duck. (Barbara Boxer)
'I demand equal rights!' yelled the goose. (Jesse Jackson)
The pig just grunted in disdain. (Ted Kennedy)
::~::~::
UNFAIR!
::~::~::
And they all painted 'Unfair!' picket signs and marched around and around the little red hen, shouting obscenities.
Then the farmer (Obama) came. He said to the little red hen, 'You must not be so greedy.'
'But I earned the bread,' said the little red hen.
'Exactly,' said Barack the farmer.
'That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful.
Anyone in the barnyard can earn as much as he wants.
But under our modern government regulations, the productive workers must divide the fruits of their labor with those who are lazy and idle.'
And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, 'I am grateful, for now I truly understand.'
But her neighbors became quite disappointed in her. She never again baked bread because she joined the 'party' and got her bread free. And all the Democrats smiled. 'Fairness' had been established.
(Bread became scarce and the price tripled).

Individual initiative had died, but nobody noticed; perhaps no one cared...so long as there was free bread that 'the rich' were paying for.
::~::~::
IS THIS A GREAT BARNYARD OR WHAT ?

The Taximan's Story Version 2

2009-03-01T15:50:00.000+08:00

The Taximan's Story Rewritten
I arrived at the address where someone had requested a very early morning taxi.. I honked but no one came out. I honked again; nothing. So I walked to the door and knocked. 'Just a minute', answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90's stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940's movie.
By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years.. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knick-knacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
'Would you carry my bag out to the car?' she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, and then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. 'It's nothing', I told her.. 'I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated'.
'Oh, you're such a good boy', she said. When we got in the cab, she gave me an address, and then asked, 'Could you drive through downtown?'
'It's not the shortest way,' I answered quickly.
'Oh, I don't mind,' she said. 'I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice'.
I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. 'I don't have any family left,' she continued. 'The doctor says I don't have very long.'
I quietly reached over and shut off the meter. 'What route would you like me to take?' I asked.
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds.
She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, 'I'm tired. Let's go now'
We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico.
Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.
I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
'How much do I owe you?' she asked, reaching into her purse.
'Nothing,' I said
'You have to make a living,' she answered.
'There are other passengers,' I responded.
Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly.
'You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,' she said,
'Thank you.'
I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light. Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of the day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?
What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, and then driven away? In retrospect, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life.

We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware - beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance.

If you were touched by the story, tag me with a yes on my chatbox down there. Use proper English please.

To all you believers of any religion:

2009-03-01T14:06:00.000+08:00

To all you believers of any religion:

This conversation is about god. Those from other religions can replace god with whoever is relevant.

::~::~::

In today's society, science is often used to answer problems. but science has one major flaw...

Take 5 minutes to read this, even ten, because it has great, great meaning. You seriously are not wasting your time...

::~::~::

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty.

He asks one of his new students to stand and...
Prof:
So you believe in God?
Student:
Absolutely, sir.

Prof :

Is God good?
Student:
Sure.

Prof:
Is God all-powerful?
Student:

Yes.
Prof:
My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him.
Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is this God good then? Hmm?
(Student is silent.)

::~::~::

Prof:
You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?
Student:
Yes.
Prof:
Is Satan good?
Student:

No.
Prof:
Where does Satan come from?
Student:
From...God...

::~::~::
Prof:
That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student:
Yes.
Prof:
Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student:
Yes.
Prof:
So who created evil?
(Student does not answer.)

::~::~::
Prof:
Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student:
Yes, sir.
Prof:
So, who created them?
(Student has no answer.)

::~::~::
Prof:
Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you.
Tell me, son...Have you ever
seen God?
Student:
No, sir.
Prof:
Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student:
No, sir.
Prof:
Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student:
No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.
Prof:
Yet you still believe in Him?
Student:
Yes.

::~::~::
Prof:
According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn't exist.
What do you say to that, son?
Student:
Nothing. I only have my faith.
Prof:
Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.

::~::~::

Here is the point where we should stop for a while.

This is, after all, an inspirational post. Why then, are we proving religion wrong?

Read on...

::~::~::
Student:
Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof:
Yes.
Student:
And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof:
Yes.
Student:
No sir. There isn't.
(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)
Student :

Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat.
But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that.
There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of
heat.
We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy . Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)

:~::~::
Student:
What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof:
Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?
Student :
You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light...

But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? In
reality, darkness isn't. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?
::~::~::

Prof:
So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student:
Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof:
Flawed? Can you explain how?
Student:
Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it.

::~::~::

Student:
Now tell me, Professor.Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?
Prof:
If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student:
Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)
Student:
Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher? (The class is in uproar.)
::~::~::

The really funny part...

::~::~::

Student:
Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain?
(The class breaks out into laughter.)
Student :

Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.
With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable.)
::~::~::

Prof:
I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.
Student:
That is it sir...

The link between man & god is FAITH.

That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

::~::~::

Hope you enjoyed it, in all due respect.

::~::~::

N.B.: This conversation really did take place. the student was none other than the former president of India:- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

::~::~::

Believe in faith (and you'll be president? Nah, don't think thats right...)!

::~::~::

Have a nice day.

Writing long blog postings (such as this)

2009-02-22T16:44:00.000+08:00

Dear Mark, as well as anyone(like me) who has the intention of defeating Darrel in terms of blog posting length,
I'm afraid that if you want to even think of beating Darrel in writing the longest post on this blog, you must first be very long-winded. I repeat, very long-winded (like me).
There are many ways and means one can use to be as long-winded as possible. Using point form also may help, as this makes the blog seem extremely long, a one has to scroll down a lot. As with small size being mistaken to be far away by the human eye and brain, more scrolling down also can achieve the effect of long blog posts.
Double spacing also helps. Not just the neatness factor, but more spacing= more scrolling down, causing the effect as mentioned earlier. Big font may also help 'lengthen' your blog postings. Unnecessary details may be added, such as the 'ings' in postings. Although four letters may seem a meagre, insignificant amount, a lot of four letters will add up to a great amount. I would try it out for you to see, but I do not want to waste your time.
Another thing one can do is to go on and on about nothing. Perhaps one can open up a random page of 'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy and rewrite it out, acknowledging at the bottom as many details as possible, such as the page number, the line, the paragraph, the publishing date, etc.
Ending each paragraph's line with a single word will also give the impression that the paragraph is long. from perhaps an eight line paragraph, one can add a few words to give the impression of a nine-liner.
Complex words where explanations have to be given are also recommended for increasing the lenght of you blog postiong. repeating key points, I repeat-- repeating key poins helps in ensuring that the blog posting has a length greater than normal, normal refering to without the conscious, and importantly conscious, use of the techniques listed above.
Other techniques of blog posting lengthening include the non usage of abbreviations, such as don't, won't, etc. Instead, one should consider using the full word(in the examples earlier, the words do not, will not, and et cetera should be used to increase the blog postings' length.)
Signing off in a, ahem, long winded (Why do I always use this word? Even I do not know.) manner, such as quote from Cheng Yao,
'P.S. ...
P.P.S. ...
P.P.P.S. ...
P.P.P.P.S. ...' (Did he put this? I forget.)
So one can now clearly see that long sign-offs are helpful in the lengthening of one's blog postings.
In essence, the methods are:
1) Be long winded,
2) Double spacing,
3) Quotation,
4) Repetition,
5) Sign-off very-longly, I guess.(Is there another way to say this?)
Like,
Me you know,
Your Anti-Treasurer-Collecting-So-Much-Money-From-Us-Poor-People-Campaign Organizer.
His Assistant too.
P.$. I think I broke the record.
P.P.$. Hooray for me!!
P.P.P.$. Comment on this post with your name to join the Anti-Treasurer-Collecting-So-Much-Money-From-Us-Poor-People-Campaign.
P.P.P.P.$. Long live the Anti-Treasurer-Collecting-So-Much-Money-From-Us-Poor-People-Campaign!!
P.P.P.P.P.$. Some non-advanced computers (like mine) may not be able to see my blog. Sorry for the inconvenience caused?
P.P.P.P.P.P.$. This is the first proper post. I can't delete the rest for some wierd reason.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.$. This was posted before the one on the class blog was.
P.P.P.P.P.P.P.P.$. I plaigarised myself. Oh no.

How many times must I do this?

2009-02-21T17:50:00.000+08:00

A lot I guess...

When can I stop doing this?

2009-02-21T17:20:00.000+08:00

Hello there?

Okay...

2009-02-21T15:26:00.001+08:00

Number 1 post. You know, to see if this works?

Hello

2009-02-21T15:09:00.000+08:00

Good Afternoon. This is the first post, i.e. a test.

Hello?

2009-02-21T10:50:00.001+08:00

Hello?