Culture of Hypocrisy

Terry Schiavo has passed. God will take care of her now. George Bush offered his condolences:

"I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life™ where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others,"

Pandering to the ChristianReligiousPoliticalRight, Bush rushed back from his holiday to sign a bill to 'save' Terry, and to gain additional political capital on the way. Scores of people dead in Indonesia aren't able to pull Bush away from his vacation. He has not attended a single funeral (as far as I know) of the 1500 US soldiers who have fallen in iraq.

A 'culture of life'? A culture of rank hypocrisy is more like it. In 1999, Bush signed a bill which directly contradicts his current position. Terry may have died, but the religious/political circus has only begun.

Optional commentary from Jon Stewart: here, here.

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Palm Tuesday

Haha, I've finished my XTremEz Tuning Fork. It's quite fascinating that the correspondence of the naming of various pitches is not absolute; it changes throughout history. Like nowadays, the A above middle C is at 440 Hz. But during the last century, it was something else!

I caught Hitch today at a cinema that is showing new shows since there are half price tickets at Hoyts on Tuesdays; never knew that until Delise told me. So now on Tuesdays, I have plenty of places to go, all of them cinemas...

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Palm Monday

Phew, I just uploaded the updated guitar and violin tuners at Palmgear. My thanks to David Malone who wrote to me and suggested the improvements in this version. He also requested a tuning fork as well. Let's see if I can get the source code right.

For GoogleCacheLand: the freeware Palm OS Development Suite (PODS) is really cool. However, one thing that's still not totally implemented in Version 1.1.1 is the problem of resource headers. Ben Combee addresses the issue here. If you find yourself wondering why there's a 'k' before all the DEFINEs, just get rid of it from the template.

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Happy Easter!

"Have ye here any meat?" said Jesus to His disbelieving disciples.
~Luke 24:41

I think today's scripture reading is one of the funniest, most comforting and informal lines I've read in the Gospels. Everyone didn't know what was going on. Even though Jesus had told them before that He would rise from the dead in three days, they didn't understand it. His followers had just spent the last two days in absolute despair and hopelessness, and here was Jesus standing amongst them.

They were in disbelief and wonder, and Jesus asked them, "Have you anything here to eat?" It's just so out of place, so unfazedly human. When things have become so unbearably dismal that all seems lost, today we celebrate the triumph of God over the shadow of death. Dr. Luke ends his account with His disciples in great joy and continually blessing God. We should too!


Rays of light shining forth in church today

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Good Friday?

"Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no crime in him."
~ Governor Pilate of Judea/John 19:6

Today is Good Friday. I'm not sure who coined the name, but I wonder what's so good about today. Truth of the matter is, this was the most horrifying and worst day ever. It was absolutely terrible! The swift and unlawful trial and execution of the Son of God. I think it should be renamed Tragic Friday instead. Actually, no words can even describe the day accurately; it was hell itself. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I don't think Jesus was joking when He said that. He really felt abandoned. It's the most terrible feeling in the world. And then He would die a few moments later.

What about Jesus' friends and family and disciples? The hope they have been waiting for is dead! I can't even begin to imagine what they were thinking at that time. They probably couldn't even be thinking anything. They must have been sick with shock and sadness. An optimistic story gone horribly wrong...

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Live Strong

Almost 7000 cyclists took part, the majority of them choosing the longer route. I didn't even know Perth had so many people. Did the whole city turn up?! It was fantastic, taking over the expressway and riding through the tunnel. It's like heaven on earth, no cars, just bikes. No petroleum powered overweight metal cages carrying their disproportionately laden (human) weight, just the most efficient human-powered machine ever constructed battling the wind and the tarmac.

They sent us off in batches, I stupidly answered in the online application form that I expected to take a long time to finish the route, so was assigned the D group, the last group to go 40 minutes after the first had started. The wind, like a lottery with 4-1 odds, was not very favourable, though it could have been much worse. And there were people standing on the bridges and roadside clapping and cheering, just like on TV (though on a much smaller scale.) I finished in about an hour and 20 minutes. Not too bad, I guess, all things considered...

More pictures here.

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If you hit me, baby, one more time, I'd sue!

I signed up for next week's 30km Freeway Bike Hike to Joondalup, so decided to do some practise today by cyling to Fremantle. The odometer showed 15km at Cottesloe, so I headed back. The wind direction was from the south-west, so the trip back was much easier. Maybe next time I'd go all the way to Freo.

There's a booth at Myers promoting Britney Spears' fragrance called Curious. I guess she's not the only one curious. I'm curious too; curious about why anyone would wanna buy her perfume! I mean, look, if you buy Ralph Lauren's Romance, naturally the idea is to feel romantic. If you buy Chanel's Allure, you want to feel as alluring as Chanel herself. If you like Calvin Klein's Eternity, you want to be eternal to your partner. And if you like Spears' stuff, you want to feel... as CURIOUS AS BRITNEY! If you actually bought it, talk to me, thanks.

I've just finished, over several days, Amy Tan's autobiography called The Opposite of Fate at A&G. (She's actually a comedian, not just a writer.) Now, what's the difference between stealing, and reading it in the bookshop? Because this is a little like stealing; I have the intent of going into the bookshop, reading a few pages each day and not buying the book as a result. I guess they don't mind, for who would enjoy standing and reading? I'm now doing the same thing with a book called In The Beginning that talks about how the KJV Bible came about. First few chapters are about the invention of the printing press and how the church leaders were so against an English version of the Bible because they didn't want anyone else to read it, for then they would lose their power to control the masses. (It used to be in Latin.) Next chapter is about the Reformation...

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Black or white

The difference between a human and a black swan is that as a human grows older, he/she starts getting white hair. The reverse happens with the black swan. As the cygnet ages, it grows black hair (see Figure 1).


Figure 1. Changes to hair colour in the development of Cygnus atratus.

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Health Minister's New Hypothesis: What I Said Yesterday Was Pure Junk

Singapore, Singapore -- Senior Minister of State for Health Dr Balaji Sadasivan issued a new hypothesis today: what he said yesterday might be pure junk. "Don't get me wrong," Sadasivan told reporters. "This is just a hypothesis. More research is needed. In the meantime, don't believe everything I tell you."

In a Straits Times article yesterday, Sadasivan quoted an "unknown expert" (quite possibly because he doesn't know much about his area of expertise) that a sharp rise in new Aids cases last year could be linked to a popular annual 'gay party' on Sentosa. He also added in the report that "this is a hypothesis and more research needs to be done."

In the same article, it was revealed that nine out of ten of the new Aids sufferers are men and a third of them are gay.

"The truth of the matter is," the minister revealed, "I didn't pay much attention in my statistics course at Uni, and so wasn't able to be more critical of the scientific literature, or the advice of my unknown expert."

"My prof called me up this morning and pointed out that if one third of new AIDS patients are gay, two thirds should be heterosexual. 1 - 1/3 = 2/3. If two thirds of new AIDS patients are not gay, a more reasonable hypothesis might be that heterosexual parties at Sentosa or elsewhere is causing a spike in infections. Actually, now that I think about it, no hypothesis should even be raised since there's no data to suggest it in the first place! But we live and learn..."

It is understood that the minister is now going over the unknown expert's research again very slowwllly to ascertain its accuracy and objectivity. A proposal to ban discos in Singapore has been put on hold, for now.

Seriously, I'm very angry with the minister and the newspaper for putting forth this sort of absolutely irresponsible reporting. AIDS is a serious problem, and it's not going to help if minority groups are getting targeted when a bulk of public education needs to be targetted at the heterosexuals also. I'm also puzzled by what the doctor said. This is not someone I'd expect from a person with a doctorate, let alone the country's health minister...

Edit: The minister is not just someone with a doctorate, he's a real neurosurgeon! It's pretty amazing...

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Happy Labour Day! I just found a place to stay, consistent Internet will be available in probably a little more than a week's time. I tried the new computers in school. Microsoft's new keyboards and mice are surprisingly comfortable to use. They use to make joysticks, but a few years ago stopped doing so. Some speculated that the reason was because the hardware was so good that they never spoil, hence no repeat sales, hence not much earnings. It's quite true, their joysticks are really good, and now I can see there seems to be something about their hardware department...

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