A young man recently returned from World War I came back to his College in Oxford. As he walked across the quad, he was delighted to see his former tutor and rushed over to greet him."Hello Sir! I hope you remember me?" said the young man.
The old Fellow peered at him. "Ah yes! Biggins, isn't it?"
"Yes," replied the young man excitedly, "What a great memory!"
"Now tell me," continued the old Professor absent-mindedly, "Was it you or your brother who was killed in the Somme?"
Even funnier, the Principal had told the joke to an Emeritus Fellow. She showed him a copy of one of the oldest jokebooks known to exist, from around the 5th century, and that same joke was in there. The only difference was that the punchline was, "Was it you or your brother who was killed in the war with the Persians?"
]]>"The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in our country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate present; it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.
"All this has happened when there was so much more for him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he had done his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so many difficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.
A madman has put an end to his life, for I can only call him mad who did it and yet there has been enough poison spread in this country during the past years and months, and this poison has had an effect on people's minds. We must face this poison, we must root out this poison, and we must face all the perils that encompass us, and face them not madly or badly, but rather in a way that our beloved teacher taught us to face them.
"The first thing to remember now is that none of us dare misbehave because he is angry. We have to behave like strong and determined people, determined to face all the perils that surround us, determined to carry out the mandate that our great teacher has given us, remembering always that if, as I believe, his spirit looks upon us and sees us, nothing would displease his soul so much as to see that we have indulged in any small behaviour or any violence.
"So we must not do that. But that does not mean that we should be weak, but rather that we should, in strength and in unity, face all the troubles that are in front of us. We must hold together, and all our petty troubles and difficulties and conflicts must be ended in the face of its great disaster. A great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small things of which we have thought too much. In his death he has reminded us of the big things of life, the living truth, and if we remember that, then it will be well with India.......
-- Jawaharlal Nehru, spoken on the evening of January 30 after the death of the Mahatma.
]]>Our television stations want to make popular but cheap television shows which the government approves of.
This is an avenue which can be exploited!
Introducing Let's Go Book A HDB Flat Together!: A Singaporean reality TV show about Singaporeans trying to find love in the highly pressurised and materialistic world that is Singapore!
In the first season, we follow 12 men as, over the course of a season spanning 6 months, we observe their desperate attempts to find love in the city and reach that holy grail: their very-own HDB flat!
Watch! As the men get style tips, wardrobe makeovers, and etiquette advice from government-sponsored consultants, none of whom are gay!
Laugh! As they attempt to tiptoe their way through the minefield of kay-poh family, convince suspicious parents, pretend their jobs are better than they actually are and try not to be emasculated by the all-seeing camera!
Cry! As the men break down and confess their fears about women, their macho exteriors slowly breaking away as they plead for help to obey their biological and governmental imperatives!
Cheer! As they find women who actually can see past their social ineptitude, outmoded patriarchal values, debilitating shallowness, and funky body odour!
Shock! As it turns out that the true love they found on the show was a fraud as most of the women were actors and the rest were China-brides!
On second thoughts, never mind.
]]>One interesting point which the most recent episode made was in its discussion of a Labour Party Prime Minister who resisted the strong entreaties of a President of the United States of America, from the south, to join the USA in an unpopular war in a distant state. The Prime Minister was Harold Wilson; the President was Lyndon Johnson. Wilson kept British troops out of the war; however, he refused to condemn it and supported the American effort with intelligence and rhetoric. He lost his credibility with the radical left because of his stand and his popularity plummeted. Students demonstrated; riots broke out; and even in his own cabinet, doubts were raised about the wisdom of his stance.
However, he steadfastly held firm, because Britain was a debtor nation, kept afloat only because of American loans. His Labour government had inherited from the previous Tory government a deficit of no less than £8 billion (around £11 billion today) and it needed American credit to keep the hospitals, factories and schools running. As he succinctly put it in a cabinet meeting, "We can't kick our creditors in the balls." Marr argued that his decision to tread the fine line between not supporting the war but not condemning it either was Wilson's finest hour; but it cost him a lot of popularity with the voters.
Wilson's stand is today contrasted with Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq. This leads me to wonder, are we missing a bigger picture? Is there something that Blair sees as vitally important to British interests that we easily dismiss? In 30 years' time, when documentaries are made of the Blair government with the benefit of hindsight and declassified documents, will his decision to stand shoulder to shoulder with the USA in Iraq be vindicated as necessary or even correct?
I believe that Tony Blair has been an excellent Prime Minister, with a very good record in office. He has kept Britain prosperous and has made Britain more relevant on the world stage than any time since before Suez. I am sad to see him go. And I am very sure that in the years to come, with the benefit of hindsight and of declassification, we will (more or less) come to agree that his government was a good one for Britain.
]]>Winner of the 2007 MTV Movie Awards Movie Spoof contest, it's a mash-up of United 93 and 300. You will either finds this hilarious or be deeply offended and disgusted by the idea. I personally loved it.
]]>I refer to your article on Confucius and Mr. Tan Boon Tee’s subsequent letter to The Economist. Mr Tan's letter demonstrates a commonly-held misconception about Confucius and his teachings. Confucius lived in a time of great political uncertainty and oppression, when monarchs held absolute power over life and death, and the values and ideas expressed in his philosophy have to be understood in the context of the times in which he lived. His famous ‘five relationships’ emphasize not only obedience by a subject to a ruler, but also the ruler’s responsibility to his people. He believed that if people became conscious of their responsibilities to each other, and followed good practices (‘ritual’) in their behaviour with each other, a harmonious society would result.
Sadly, Confucius’ teachings have been interpreted quite literally, perhaps in the same way that the pro-gun lobby in the USA interprets the second amendment. Confucius’ teachings are now routinely used to justify a strong paternalistic state and obedience to power, not least in places like Singapore. As a fellow Singaporean, I sympathize with Mr. Tan but I fear that Confucius, like many other philosophers and religious figures before him, has had his words interpreted to serve the purposes of those who would use them to justify their actions. As your article showed, Confucius is valued not for his inherent wisdom but as a way to justify the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Rather than seek an inviolable text, I suggest we use it as a starting point for examining our own lives.
Yours Faithfully,
PJ Thum
Oxford
Given that
1. Wearing tight briefs decreases your fertility
2. 'Elite' organizations (like the PAP or some schools) enforce an all-white dress code
3. You cannot wear any colourful underwear when wearing white trousers, or you'll look silly, and are thus forced to wear tight white briefs (boxer shorts don't come in white, as far as I know)
Thus it follows that the all-white dress code is at least partially responsible for a decline in fertility among the men who belong to these institutions? MM Lee believes that the 'elite' who belong to the aforementioned organizations should breed more, and bemoans the falling Singaporean birth rate, but perhaps the dress code he imposed on his own party has been a contributing factor.
In this light, it is hardly surprising that ACS and Chinese High boys have always been considered much more virile than students from some other institutions.
]]>Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has excited Singaporeans for Chow Yun Fat's line, "Welcome to Singapore," not just because it's a wonderful mention of our home, not just because it's the second mention of Singapore in the trilogy (See: "Obviously you've never been to Singapore" in the first movie), but because it's uttered by Chow Yun Fat, quite simply the coolest actor in East Asia (and probably the world), and looking suitably badass in this movie.
What delighted me, however, was the historical and geographic mashup created by the conflation of different eras in Singapore's history and Southeast Asian geography. There is a lot of proof that Singapore was indeed a pirate haven in the 16th and 17th centuries, as a central and open port and part of the Johor Sultanate, with trade from the Portuguese and Dutch passing through regularly (it remains a pirate haven to this day- albeit a rather different kind of piracy). The depiction of Singapore is more accurate than you'd assume from a movie like this.
Yet from the overhead shots and the ethnic composition of the people, as well as the climate (implied from the clothing and the fact that Sao Feng used steam to heat his room), it looks like the location of the pirate haven wasn't Singapore. Rather than a flat country, an open port, hot and humid weather and lots of Orang Laut running around, we saw a mountainous country in a temperate zone with lots of Chinese running around. That suggests that 'Singapore' in the movie is somewhere much further north: either Taiwan, Vietnam or Hong Kong. All three had pirate havens (indeed, the first Chinese settlements in Taiwan were pirate settlements). Most likely, however, is that it would be Pattani in Southern Thailand. In the 16th century it was ruled by the great pirate chief Ling Dao Qian, who led a band of some 2000 men and who, as legend has it, married the daughter of a Malay chief and became a ruler himself.
The female Pirate Lord Mistress Ching also has her historical counterpart, although she dates from the beginning of the 19th century- Mdm. Cheng Yisao, who at the height of her power commanded 70,000 men and 400 ships, and who struck fear into the heart of the Qing Imperial Navy. The Qing even had to beg for help from the East India Company to help protect them from her raids, to no avail.
Meanwhile, the opening scene of the movie, where a "State of Emergency" is declared and certain constitutional freedoms are suspended (including habeas corpus, trial by jury, the right to assembly and protest, and the right to an advocate), sounds very familiar... just two or three hundred years too early. But given the wording the filmmakers chose to use, and the fact that it was voiced by a representative of the British Crown, as a measure to repress a dangerous, underground and militant enemy with socialist beliefs, to protect British commercial interests, could they have been nodding at the Malayan Emergency?
I'm giving a lecture on the Malayan Emergency on Monday 28th May at Hertford College... feel free to attend if you wish to know more!
But here's what bothered me about the ending of the movie. This is of course a spoiler, so stop reading here if you haven't seen the movie. Otherwise, read on after the jump.
]]> [Spoiler starts here]Given that
a) Will Turner is now Captain of the Flying Dutchman, and is now immortal;
b) Elizabeth Swann Turner has no family to speak of since her parents are dead;
c) She also has no ship, no job, and no prospects;
d) If she dies at sea, she gets to choose to join the crew of the Flying Dutchman for all eternity and stay on board the ship with her husband;
e) If she doesn't, she will grow old and die while he will remain young forever.
Isn't the logical thing to do just to swim out to sea and kill herself? Death no longer has any fear for her.
The final scene after the credits gives this even more credence, because if Will can still father children in his new state, it implies that the state that he and his crew are in isn't one of death, but one of continued life. She could join him on board the ship and they could raise a family, and their children wouldn't be bound by the constraints of their condition, and they'd be (in the words of Rick Astley) together forever and never to part. So it's really a win-win all around.
]]>Other people who turned 10,000 days old on May 4th:
The answer lies in the number of calories available per dollar in American supermarkets. Cheap processed foods and snacks lack vast amounts of calories, whereas fresh produce is more expensive and has far fewer calories. So for example, 1 dollar can buy you 1,200 calories of coolies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots; 875 of soda but only 170 calories of fresh orange juice. So the rational economic strategy if you are eating on a restricted budget is to eat cheap processed foods, from which you can get all your necessary calories but which make you fat.
This perverse situation is due largely to America's Farm Bill, a relic of the 1930s which heavily subsidises five crops- corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. As a result, it is far cheaper to make and sell a heavily processed food or drink item out of these products, even with all the necessary industrial inputs and energy costs, then it is to grow and sell produce. Thus, the price differential in the supermarket.
What really interested me is how this Farm Bill not just dictates the American food system, but has a massive impact on the global food system. This system has impacts on the environment, on poverty, and even on immigration. Most directly, it impacts our own food systems and diets all over the world. By depressing the price of basic crops, it enables many of these unhealthy products to invade foreign dining tables all over the world and push aside healthier local varieties of food.
It's not just America, either: Europe has lived with the Common Agricultural Policy for much too long. But I believe with the growth of the organic movement (which seems to have taken a very firm hold here in Britain) will come increasing awareness that legislation like the Farm Bill and the CAP artificially distorts the market and increases the cost of eating healthily, hitting our waistlines. Perhaps this will convince voters in the first world to act: It's one thing to be concerned about the plight of African farmers in an abstract way, but it's a much more effective tool to change peoples' minds by telling them that their food is artificially expensive and their health and waistlines are suffering as a result.
]]>The People's Action Party likes to talk about the government of Singapore as if it were a company. If we work with that assumption, then the PAP is selling us a service, and it's a monopoly. As a monopoly, it can charge whatever price it wants for its service. Thus, if we want competitive pricing for the service, we have to break the monopoly and introduce competition. In the absence of an anti-trust authority, there is only one body that the PAP is ultimately responsible to: the voters.
So, if are angry and upset about the ministerial pay increase, let the PAP know- vote. If you are upset about falling levels of income, or lower standards of living, or the rising cost of healthcare, let the PAP know- vote. Let's be honest: the PAP is not going to lose the next election. But they have taken for granted the votes of our electorate for too long, and we need to remind them that the job of government is to serve its citizens.
Historically, the one thing that the PAP have always respected is the ballot box. Vote, and they will listen.
]]>Whilst this magazine offers much advice and counsel to those people to whom Chappism does not come naturally, it is vital that attention is paid to the next generation of gentlemen. Callow-faced youths may be too easily distracted from the path of dignity and sophistication by the barbaric caterwauls of popular music, or worse, the lure of denim and nylon. They may never know of the joy of the briar, the sparkle of a vodka martini or the pleasure of relieving Mr Ladbroke of 60 guineas after the 3.15 at Doncaster. The young are at their most vulnerable on fleeing the security of the family home or the public school, and being surrounded by like-minded ingrates who may have the audacity to assume that seventeen pints of “snakebite” in a sticky floored “nightclub” is the essence of existence. Thus, this guide is aimed at those young people thinking of or already attending university. By following these instructions, a member of the younger generation can maintain their respect and be looked upon by the general public as an example of unbridled panache and elan, rather than a tax-dodging, bedizened loafer.
There is, of course, only one university in Britain, and that is Oxford. Many other cities and towns claim that they also have similar establishments, but a true chap would blush from spending three of their formative years in some concrete monstrosity of the Midlands, or the dark satanic mills of the North. One is not to be fooled either by members of the royal family who opt to join the arts-and-craft communities of our Caledonian cousins. Intelligent homosexuals are permitted to attend the University of Cambridge, which offers a variety of courses on espionage leading to worthy careers working for the KGB in mysterious buildings south of the Thames.
If these fail, then St John’s, Trinity, University, Worcester and St Benet’s Hall will suffice, although you will be in a minority, and must treat your time there much as a nineteenth century missionary would have in attempting to spread the Chappist credo. Sadly, even Oxford has its hot-beds of all-embracing radicalism and rent strikes which must be avoided at all costs: for example Pembroke, and to some extent Wadham, Somerville, Exeter, Hertford and Queen’s. Balliol can have its over-enthusiastic students, but has enough of a tweed-clad contingent to make it bearable.
On arrival at one’s college, one must immediately redecorate one’s rooms with black leather wallpaper, peacock fathers, a sheaf of assegais over the chimneypiece, several daguerreotypes of oneself on safari, a collection of shrunken heads, a Nantucket harpoon (“went whaling in me gap year”) and leather-bound, travel-bruised editions of ‘Sapper’, John Buchan, Biggles, “artistic” magazines, Thesiger (Ernest, not Wilfred) and volumes of Symbolist poetry. If one’s finances run to it, employ an amusing dwarf to pass round the cocktails; but if one is financially embarrassed, make do with a pet badger with a tray of canapés strapped to its back.
A miniscule proportion of your time at these temples of education could be spent desperately trying to complete assessments or cram for examinations, so it is essential to chose a course that will pose no intellectual challenge whatsoever (and where you may also meet like-minded gentlemen). Therefore, at all costs, one must choose an Arts subject that one is already vaguely knowledgeable about. No interesting books have been written since Mr Rider Haggard’s splendid King Solomon’s Mines in 1885, so English literature is unlikely to expand in the near future. Likewise History has remained fairly stagnant since the Relief of Mafeking. Foreign languages are also a gentle option, as it matters not if one graduates without being able to speak a word of a foreign lingo, The Chap having recently begun a policy of scattering copies of this august publication overseas. Therefore not only will Johnny Foreigner speak the Chap’s English, they will also be able to advise on the nearest establishment where one’s moustache can be appropriately waxed.
The sciences are to be avoided at all costs. Not only are they exceedingly difficult and require a gentleman to spend inordinate amounts of time in a laboratory staring blankly at the periodic table, but also one will be surrounded by the strangest sort of creature one would fear to meet.
These fellows (there are no ladies in the world of the scientist) will have a complexion that appears never to have seen sunlight, hair that has never been in contact with a barber’s implements, nor even a plunge of brilliantine, and their garb will consist of ill-fitting black “t-shirts” bearing extraordinary messages, such as “Napalm Death” or shiny acrylic garments bearing the legend “Sunderland FC”. A true chap will never gain a degree in science, as the horror of these forced-upon companions will send him fleeing from the building to settle in a dingy cellar for three years’ contemplation with the hookah.
The main dangers to which one’s dignity will be exposed will come from other people. Sadly, as ever in this brave new world, not everyone lives on a diet of couth manners, esoteric literature and impressive liqueurs, and at university one will be exposed to these others, therefore one should choose one’s friends with more care than normal. When joining societies, it is imperative that future implications are considered. What may at first seem like an elegant collection of young gentlemen of the Hellfire Society may soon become a pathetic collection of pock-marked specimens comparing episodes of American television programmes set in outer space and bemoaning the continuation of their virginity in little over two months. However, when one inevitably becomes President of the Union, using nefarious methods made traditional by the least civilised members of the Empire, the opportunity to surround oneself with the most sparkling minds, and perhaps a dazzling lady to make the tea and begin your biography, will present itself. It is at this point that one will require the elimination of the dreadful fellows that were met during the early days of term, with their “I did rather well in my A-levels, two Cs and a D”; “after Coventry I went travelling to Leicester, but it’s simply too commercial and popular these days, so we hitched to Derby and travelled there for a while” and “I do miss my mum, I want to go home, where’s teddy?”
Should the Chap not wish to attend Oxford the only other establishments worth frequenting are the Universities of Heidelberg and Ruritania. At the former one can obtain duelling scars, blood-brotherhood, Palatinate beer and flaxen-haired maidens; at the latter one can wear funny hats, partake in comic-opera revolutions, and end up as Minister of Culture (where one can make statutory the Noonday Absinthe Power Nap). Do not make the mistake of going to the Sorbonne. Instead of sipping a Pastis and swapping bons mots with Henri de Montherlant, one will find oneself ripping up the agreeable cobblestones of the Boul’ Mich’ and lobbing them at blue-chinned riot police – scarcely the way a gentleman wishes to spend his education.
At the end of the academic year, one will spend a few hours in a fractious hall easing through the examinations, where, in three hours, one will produce more written work than has been done in the whole of the previous nine months. Contrary to advice, one should never read the exam questions too closely, but simply write all that one knows about a particular subject, and assume that, in the midst of it, a fusty academic will discover that you are far too clever for his silly questions and award you the highest mark imaginable.
The true ur-chap will, however, never set foot in an examination hall, having contrived to be rusticated mid way through his final year for stoning the college swan to death with empty gin bottles.
]]>For example:
Someday, we're going to write a treatise on the crazy hats women wear in musicals. We propose that because there was so much sexual repression in these films, the outrageous hats are supposed to represent vaginas on top of their heads. It's why so many of the men had walking sticks too.Think about it.
Judging by the things Fred did to his walking stick in this movie and in Blue Skies, he had a penchant for self-abuse.
Ah, look how he lovingly caresses his stick.
]]>