eensy weensy spider

GRR

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:26:12 GMT

What I despise most is people who can't see their own failings. When something fucks up, all they can see is how the other party involved was at fault. How the other party didn't do enough, didn't keep up to their side of the bargain... never once taking a moment to introspect and consider that partly, the 'blame' is to be shared.

I may have walked away, but I walked away with my eyes wide open. I could see the good and the bad, and ultimately decided the bad far outweighed the good, and so I walked. I didn't have to shit on things to make it easier to leave. Things really weren't great for me. I didn't want to say too much, for fear of hurting you, but also because I knew how blind you are to your own failings and hence knew that it was pointless attempting to make you see the light.

All I can say is that every day since has made me even more convinced that my decision was right. It wasn't that I changed my mind, but that circumstances changed, and the entire relationship changed, for the worse. I thought it was just the circumstances forcing us to change, but now I see that the circumstances merely threw up a side of you I thoroughly dislike and despise.

I so want to shout at you. To tell you exactly why I walked away. But I won't, because unlike you, I actually walk the talk. So I'll grit my teeth and hold back everything that was bugging me all those months, and let you play the petulant victim.

Things like that make me think twice about how happy I am with SH. I really enjoy his company and we get along very well. He is a lovely person. But the last few years have taught me that we never really know a person until things get ugly.

HELP! Buying a laptop

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:31:28 GMT

My tuition students are getting a laptop for Christmas, but they have to shop for it themselves. Unfortunately, there is no one to help them -- so I offered! But I know nothing about laptops... So please help!

Their parents did not give them a budget, but they're not the type that would splurge unnecessarily. They basically want something that lets them surf the internet, listen to music, watch movies, do a bit of work (word processing and PPT). Very basic. But what should they get?

They're looking at Toshiba, HP and IBM. I have no idea what brands are 'good' though! (Good in quotation marks since I have no idea what makes a laptop good. I just go for durability.) What would you guys recommend for kids like them? Where would you recommend we go shopping? We're probably going to Funan on Saturday...

If you have any advice, especially information on good deals, please let me know!

BAH HUMBUG

Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:55:20 GMT

S-Man's post was hilarious. If can find this type of job, please let me know. If I made $4m a year, I wouldn't even need to be corrupt! But maybe that just proves how I'm not ambitious enough...

And this takes the cake as the best forum letter EVER.
Stop diseases, ban parties like ZoukOut
RAUNCHY incidents were reported during the ZoukOut party on Sentosa on Dec 8.

It is shocking that the authorities allowed the party, coming just after we marked World Aids Day.

In March 2005, Senior Minister of State for Health Balaji Sadasivan stated his hypothesis that the allegedly gay Nation parties on Sentosa caused a spike in Aids cases. These parties stopped after his comment.

Why are parties such as ZoukOut still allowed, given that there is now evidence that sexual activities took place during these events?

In addition to spreading diseases, there could be underaged patrons engaging in undesirable activities with sad consequences.

All such parties should be banned.

Kwok Chee Chiu

Raunchy acts! Sexual activities! Oh my god! Ban ban ban!

Boy oh boy, did the ST brighten up my day. What would I do without the ST?

Clearly, my sense of humor is warped.

REDECORATING

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:30:30 GMT

On the shopping list:
- New bookshelves, 2m tall, 3m wide. Lots of bookshelves!
- Chest of drawers.
- Shoe Cabinet.
- New bedside table.
- Full length mirror.
- Make up lighting.

The plan is to have the drawers and shoe cabinet and full-length mirror line the side of my room, and place my trinkets and makeup on top of the drawers and shoe cabinet.

I'm planning to check out Ikea and vHive for furniture, and perhaps IMM. I'm looking for affordable, simple furniture, that will not break down in a few years. I know, doesn't everyone? If you have suggestions for such furniture, please share!

I am very tempted to get this:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BzVA989e-RY&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BzVA989e-RY&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
Very cool! It's $129 SGD ($5 assembly fee). But am worried about the durability of the elastic. Plus I think I may need the counter top space from the shoe cabinet!

Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:49:46 GMT

Love these dresses, very fashion-forward and definitely not what your average girl on Orchard Road will wear, but unfortunately, they're overpriced by my standards. FEP does spoil a girl! When you get awesome dresses that people stop to ask you where you got them from at $30+, anything more than $50 is over-priced.

Ditto for these dresses. Perfect for work -- chic but formal enough. But still too pricey!

And I found the cutest solution to my shoe storage problem -- cuteness!

Clearly, I've have been blogstalking to get over my shopping pangs. I love online shopping: you get the satisfaction of poring over options and making your selection, but without having to pay for anything. Click, click, click, everything's in my shopping basket, but I never check out. Helps that my wallet is always in another room -- more work to spend money = less money spent. I found a few pretty decent Singaporean fashion blogs!
- Vogueite: very bitchy!
- Soon Lee: they have a shop on Haji Lane, that I'm dying to check out. Girls, can we please go to Haji Lane sometime soon? Like when we finally have money again? :P
- Fashionation: Comes with their own list of Singaporean fashion blogs or websites!

All this fashionstalking has been making me happy, but I've also been thinking about materialism and consumerism. I like owning pretty things, and I like owning new things, but recent conversations -- plus the plans to renovate my room so I can actually store all my possessions neatly -- have made me question this lifestyle. Before I moved back to Singapore, I swore I would not succumb to the gross consumerism underlying our society. I'd rise above it -- no shopping, no clubbing, no frivolous spending, only indulging in things that feed you intellectually.

Well, we all know how long that lasted. ;) It's hard to fight off, the bling culture of instant gratification and self-indulgence. The book I'm reading now, Londonstani, has an interesting rant about this:

'Like I said, boys, this particualr subculture's not a passing phase. You can be a hippie or a punk and then one day grow out of being skint and stoned or having ridiculously spiky hair. But you won't one day wake up and say, I know, I want to be less comfortable, less well off, less sexually attractive and less healthy. ... This isn't about society becoming more affluent, this is about a subculture that worships affluence becoming mainstream culture. '

But I have been feeling guilty, I have been questioning the purpose of all this spending. Do I really need so much STUFF?! Even my books? Do I really need any of this? Of course not. I look at how much I junk during my regular 'spring-cleaning' sessions, and I shake my head at how wasteful this all is. I have so much stuff that's in great condition, but that I simply don't need or even want anymore. I think my maid thinks I'm crazy; she always marvels at how I throw out stuff that seems perfectly fine to her.

And I start wondering about what it means that buying things is one of my biggest source of happiness. I'm so scared that I'm becoming my worst nightmare: one of those stereotypical Singaporean girls whose lives are just an endless stream of mindless superficial self-indulgences. Hence the stack of books from Kino for intellectual stimulation -- but which also involved spending money. It's practically hypocritical. I find myself contemplating buying designer bags, signing up for massage packages, getting my driver's license, buying a car... and I have to stop and ask: why the hell do you need any of this?

Money is great, but after a certain point, more money doesn't really mean a thing. Jumping from $1000 to $2000 a month, from $2000 to $4000, can make a world of difference in your quality of life. But jumping from $4000 to $8000? $8000 to $12000? What does that really do for you? So instead of getting a car, you get a fancy car; instead of getting a home, you get a fancy home in a swanky district; instead of going on a quick getaway, you jet off to some exotic locale whose name most Singaporeans will have trouble even pronouncing... but does all that really make you happier?

I read the articles on how inflation has affected low-income families in Singapore and I can't help feeling guilty. Entire families are surviving on less than my monthly salary, and I'm complaining about not having enough money?

Helicopter parenting

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 07:53:13 GMT

This is so sad...

November 29, 2007, 9:43 pm

Helicopter Parenting Turns Deadly

Tags: lori drew, megan meier, teen suicide

Megan Meier, a 13-year-old from Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, killed herself last year after an online relationship she believed she was having with a cute 16-year-old boy named Josh went very sour. What she didn’t know – what her parents would learn six weeks after her death – was that “Josh” was the fictitious creation of Lori Drew, a then-47-year-old neighbor and the mother of one of Megan’s friends.

Or former friends. Megan had, essentially, dropped the other girl when she’d changed schools and tried to put an unhappy chapter of her junior high school life – fraught with weight problems and depression – behind her.

Drew’s daughter, one assumes, would have eventually gotten over it. But Drew didn’t. Instead, she got revenge.

She created a fake MySpace profile (she later told police she’d done so to “find out what Megan was saying online” about her daughter, according to a sheriff’s report). Working with her daughter, she led Megan to become infatuated with “Josh.” And then she delivered the blow. “I don’t like the way you treat your friends,” Drew wrote. According to Megan’s father, “Josh”’s last e-mail to his daughter read, “You are a bad person and everybody hates you … The world would be a better place without you.”

The Meier case got massive play in the national media this past week, coming as it did on the heels of a major new survey showing that up to one in three children in the United States have been harassed or bullied online.

But for me the tragedy highlighted another troubling issue that threatens our homes just as steadily as poisonous online communications. That is the disturbing degree to which today’s parents – and mothers in particular – frequently lose themselves when they get caught up in trying to smooth out, or steamroll over, the social challenges faced by their children.

You only hear about the most freakish cases, like that of Lori Drew or of Wanda Webb Holloway, the Texas mother who in 1991 tried to pay someone to murder the mother of her daughter’s chief cheerleading rival. (“The motive here was love, a mother’s love for a daughter,” said a police investigator at the time.) Yet everyday examples abound of parents whose boundary issues are not so extreme, but still qualify as borderline wacko.

“People now feel like having a good relationship with your child means you’re involved in every aspect of your child’s life,” says Rosalind Wiseman, author of “Queen Bees & Wannabes” and “Queen Bee Moms & Kingpin Dads,” who travels the country speaking with and counseling parents, teachers and teens. “Nothing is off-limits” now between parents and their kids, she says. “There’s no privacy and there’s no critical thinking.”

Wiseman has heard stories of parents who hope to pave their child’s way to popularity by luring the in-crowd to parties with promised “loot-bag” giveaways like iPods and North Face fleeces. She recently heard of a father who, happening on an instant-messaging war between his child and a bunch of children on a sleepover, went over to the other house, called the other father outside, and began a fistfight that ended only after someone called the police. And of a mother who, unwilling to join her fifth-grade daughter in accepting the apology of another fifth-grader who’d bullied her in the playground, hounded the school incessantly, pushing for the other child to be expelled.

Parents, she says, routinely blow a gasket when they get it in their heads that they need to seek revenge on their child’s behalf. “It’s, ‘I’ve been wronged. My kid has been wronged, so I’ve been wronged; therefore I have to do whatever’s necessary, including being disgustingly immoral.’ ”

“Where are the brakes,” Wiseman asked, “on parental behavior?”

Otherwise put: where does adult behavior end and childish behavior begin?

“Morally speaking, they shouldn’t have done that,” a 22-year-old writing on Yahoo! Answers this week observed about the Drew case. “But I don’t think they should be held responsible b/c kids are mean to each other every day. It would not be any different than an actual 13 yr old boy being mean to another girl.”

That, of course, is the whole point.

Parents of teenagers are not supposed to act like teenagers. They’re not supposed to dress like teenagers or talk like teenagers or spend their days text-messaging teenagers – as one mom Wiseman encountered did, exchanging expressions of shock and dismay, after her 14-year-old daughter broke up with a popular and athletic boy. (“I was totally basking in the social status I was getting from the boy,” the very honest mother told Wiseman.)

Or, at least, parents weren’t supposed to act like this in the past.

“There used to be this kind of parent-child gradient, where the parent was expected to – and did – function at a different level than the child,” says clinical psychologist Madeline Levine, author of the 2006 book “The Price of Privilege,” who lectures frequently on child and adolescent issues. Now, she says, “that whole notion of parents being in an entirely different space than their children is disappearing.”

In part, Levine blames parenting experts for this turn of events.

She blames the self-esteem movement, decades of parenting advice that prized “communication” over limit-setting and safety. She blames the narcissistic needs of parents who want their children to like them at all costs. And in part, when thinking over the fused mother-daughter dyads she so often encounters in therapy, she indicts this generation of mothers’ loneliness, dissatisfaction in work and marriage, stress, sense of failure, and emotional isolation. In the end, she asks, when you’re feeling alone and blue, “Who are you sure is going to hang around with you? It’s your children.”

It’s very easy to put up walls to separate the likes of Lori Drew and Wanda Webb Holloway from the rest of us. Most of us, after all, are not sick or profoundly vindictive, entirely lacking in self-awareness or devoid of all empathy.

Still, we have all caught ourselves spending a little too much time worrying about (or gloating over) our children’s popularity. We spend a lot of time feeling our children’s pain and put a lot of thought into shaping their world to offer them the greatest possible degree of happiness. But our kids really need something much bigger from us than that. They desperately need us to grow up.

SHOPPING BUG

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 13:44:56 GMT

I am CRAZY about Chanel now. Love it! But hate the limited range at Taka (or so it seems). I refuse to believe that's all the bags they have! But I've been having trouble finding Chanel pr0n online. So please help girls! Where can I go for Chanel bags and accessories?!

Pasta Monster!

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 12:35:11 GMT

Old, but interesting.

Pasta monster gets academic attention

Flying Spaghetti Monster gets laughs but also raises serious questions

By Justin Pope

The Associated Press

updated 1:30 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2007

When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

The appearance of the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the agenda of the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting gives a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a phenomenon that first emerged in 2005, during the debate in Kansas over whether intelligent design should be taught in public school sciences classes.

Supporters of intelligent design hold that the order and complexity of the universe is so great that science alone cannot explain it. The concept's critics see it as faith masquerading as science.

An Oregon State physics graduate named Bobby Henderson stepped into the debate by sending a letter to the Kansas School Board. With tongue in cheek, he purported to speak for 10 million followers of a being called the Flying Spaghetti Monster — and demanded equal time for their views.

"We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it," Henderson wrote. As for scientific evidence to the contrary, "what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."

The letter made the rounds on the Internet, prompting laughter from some and vilification from others. But it struck a chord and stuck around. In the great tradition of satire, its humor was in fact a clever and effective argument.

Between the lines, the point of the letter was this: There's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe. If intelligent design supporters could demand equal time in a science class, why not anyone else? The only reasonable solution is to put nothing into sciences classes but the best available science.

"I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence," Henderson sarcastically concluded.

Kansas eventually repealed guidelines questioning the theory of evolution.

Meanwhile, Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM-ism to its "adherents") has thrived — particularly on college campuses and in Europe. Henderson's Web site has become a kind of cyber-watercooler for opponents of intelligent design.

Henderson did not respond to a request for comment. His Web site tracks meetings of FSM clubs (members dress up as pirates) and sells trinkets and bumper stickers. "Pastafarians" — as followers call themselves — can also download computer screen-savers and wallpaper (one says: "WWFSMD?") and can sample photographs that show "visions" of the divinity himself. In one, the image of the carbohydrate creator is seen in a gnarl of dug-up tree roots.

It was the emergence of this community that attracted the attention of three young scholars at the University of Florida who study religion in popular culture. They got to talking, and eventually managed to get a panel on FSM-ism on the agenda at one of the field's most prestigious gatherings.

The title: "Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody."

"For a lot of people they're just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives," said Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University.

The presenters' titles seem almost a parody themselves of academic jargon. Snyder will speak about "Holy Pasta and Authentic Sauce: The Flying Spaghetti Monster's Messy Implications for Theorizing Religion," while Gavin Van Horn's presentation is titled "Noodling around with Religion: Carnival Play, Monstrous Humor, and the Noodly Master."

Using a framework developed by literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, Van Horn promises in his abstract to explore how, "in a carnivalesque fashion, the Flying Spaghetti Monster elevates the low (the bodily, the material, the inorganic) to bring down the high (the sacred, the religiously dogmatic, the culturally authoritative)."

The authors recognize the topic is a little light by the standards of the American Academy of Religion.

"You have to keep a sense of humor when you're studying religion, especially in graduate school," Van Horn said in a recent telephone interview. "Otherwise you'll sink into depression pretty quickly."

But they also insist it's more than a joke.

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

In short, is an anti-religion like Flying Spaghetti Monsterism actually a religion?

Joining them on the panel will be David Chidester, a prominent and controversial academic at the University of Cape Town in South Africa who is interested in precisely such questions. He has urged scholars looking for insights into the place of religion in culture and psychology to explore a wider range of human activities. Examples include cheering for sports teams, joining Tupperware groups and the growing phenomenon of Internet-based religions. His 2005 book "Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture," prompted wide debate about how far into popular culture religious studies scholars should venture.

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion _ including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: "Come on Spaghetti Monster!"

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21837499/

Can you tell I have lots of work due? :(

WHY I AVOID THE ST FORUMS

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:37:35 GMT

Taken from YR:

What the hell is this?! What is the "GENERAL INTEREST" in making one
person's body forcibly sexually available to another?!?!?!?!?

http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BForum/Online%2BStory/STIStory_166104.html

I REFER to the article, 'Rape is rape, so husbands should not have
immunity" by Dr Andy Ho (ST, Oct 2).

To remove bias, 'rape' here means only 'non-consensual sex', with no
overtone.

Dr Ho rebuts arguments for 'marital rape is not a crime'.

One: A woman's consent to marriage implies her lifelong consent to
sex. Rebuttal: Lifelong consent becomes a 'legal fiction' when the
husband turns into a violent stranger. Comment: The law makes no such
exception, and no supporting argument is offered for this assertion.

Two: Marriage is a private intimacy, into which the law should thus
not intrude. Rebuttal: Marriage as a private intimacy wrongly presumes
the interests of husband and wife are aligned. Comment: Neither
'private' nor 'intimacy' presumes interests are aligned.

Three: Making marital rape a crime will poison reconciliation.
Rebuttal: Marital rape already poisons reconciliation. Comment: Many
marital rape victims do 'forgive and forget', and reconcile.

Four: Making marital rape a crime makes wives more likely to falsely
accuse husbands. Rebuttal: England and Ireland have made marital rape
a crime, without increasing false accusations. Comment: Dr Ho has a
counter-example.

Dr Ho argues for 'marital rape should be a crime'.

One: Almost all aspects of women's legal subordination to men have
been rejected. Comment: A traffic sign saying 'No entry - except
ambulances' will insist on the exception.

Two: 'Rape is rape, so the marital rape exception should be completely
erased.' Comment: The marital rape exception is built into the law.
Insisting the exception be removed does not entail it should be.

Three: Marital rape harms the victim more than does stranger rape,
which is a crime. Comment: First, harm may not be a sufficient reason
here. Husbands also have duties to wives that strangers do not.
Second, the alleged greater harms of betrayal, entrapment and
isolation likely presume marital sex must be consensual, rendering the
argument circular.

Four: 'Why does the system then deny her what she considers to be in
her best interest?' That is, if a wife considers it in her best
interest that marital rape is a crime, then marital rape should be a
crime. Comment: First, the law must consider the general interest, not
that of just one party. Second, wives do not dictate the law.

In summary, we have a case for 'marital rape is not a crime', and none
for 'marital rape should be a crime'.

Lau Kwong Fook

This guy's a PHILOSOPHY TUTOR at NUS.

READING LIST

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 06:26:27 GMT

Singaporeans really need to read this book.

Book review below:

August 26, 2007

The Devil Sells Prada

By CAROLINE WEBER

Skip to next paragraph

DELUXE

How Luxury Lost Its Luster.

By Dana Thomas.

Illustrated. 375 pp. The Penguin Press. $27.95.

“Luxury,” Socrates once declared, “is artificial poverty.” I’m not poor, but there’s nothing like an afternoon spent shopping for luxury goods to make me feel that way. On a recent jaunt through some of Midtown Manhattan’s snazzier stores, I began to wonder why this should be the case. When, I asked myself, did it become commonplace to charge several thousand dollars for a mass-produced handbag? How could the flimsy designer sundress I bought on sale — a “steal,” the saleswoman assured me — still wind up costing a whole month’s salary? Why is my favorite brand of lipstick more expensive than a nice bottle of Italian wine? When did these products’ values grow so distorted, and what is the would-be customer to make of it all?

In the midst of my consumerist crisis, the question I should have been asking was: Dana Thomas, where have you been all my life? In “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster,” Thomas investigates the business of designer clothing, leather goods and cosmetics, and finds it wanting. Hijacked, over the past two or three decades, by corporate profiteers with a “single-minded focus on profitability,” the luxury industry has “sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history and hoodwinked its consumers.” Hoodwinked? The truth hurts. After I read “Deluxe,” suddenly my new sundress no longer looked like such a steal. Au contraire, the book’s line of argument suggested, it was I who’d been robbed.

For Thomas, a cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris and the Paris correspondent for the Australian Harper’s Bazaar, the luxury industry is a sham because its offerings in no way merit the high price tags they command. Yet once upon a time, they most certainly did. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when many of luxury’s founding fathers first set up shop, paying more money meant getting something truly exceptional. Dresses from Christian Dior, luggage from Louis Vuitton, jewelry from Cartier: in the golden period of luxury, these items carried prestige because of their superior craftsmanship and design. True, only the very privileged could afford them, but it was this exclusivity that gave them their cachet. Although they may have “cared about making a profit,” the merchants who served this pampered class aimed chiefly “to produce the finest products possible.”

All that changed, however, in the last decades of the 20th century, when a new breed of luxury purveyor, epitomized by Bernard Arnault, now the chairman and chief executive of the multibillion-dollar LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton conglomerate, first came on the scene. “A businessman, not a fashion person,” Arnault realized that the mystique of the great brand names represented an invaluable — and historically underexploited — asset. Identifying the luxury sector as “the only area in which it is possible to make luxury margins,” Arnault snapped up Dior, Vuitton and a clutch of other star brands. Then, by spending hundreds of millions on advertising, dressing celebrities for the red carpet, “splashing the logo on everything from handbags to bikinis,” and pushing product in duty-free stores and flagship boutiques all around the world, he turned these brands into objects of global consumer desire. In so doing, Arnault changed “the course of luxury forever.”

And strictly, Thomas argues, for the worse. Insofar as luxury has gone corporate, relentlessly focused on the bottom line, quality has disappeared. In order to keep margins high (in 2005, LVMH recorded more than $17 billion in sales and a net profit of almost $1.8 billion), Arnault and his competitors have cut costs wherever and whenever possible. The most obvious strategies involve using cheaper materials, replacing skilled artisans with computers and machines and outsourcing labor to less expensive markets like China. Sneakier tactics include “cutting sleeves a half an inch shorter” (“when you get to 1,000, you see the savings,” one employee told the author), replacing finished seams with raw edges and eliminating linings on the grounds that “women don’t really need” them. A grouchy aside: my aforementioned sundress is (a) an LVMH brand and (b) unlined. It is also (c) white, which means that a lining would sure have come in handy. But if Arnault can amass a personal fortune of more than $21 billion by forcing me to display my underwear, then who am I to complain?

In truth, the perverse reality of luxury consumption today is that so few people are complaining, and so many are clamoring for what Thomas refers to (a bit too frequently for my taste) as a piece of the “dream.” Paradoxically, as craftsmanship has waned, consumer appetite has grown — and not just among luxury’s original, elite clientele. The vast reach of contemporary advertising, distribution and product-placement efforts has effectively democratized luxury, making once exclusive brands available, if only in the form of logo-covered sneakers or sunglasses, to middle-market customers the world over. “Luxury-brand logos convey wealth, status and chic,” Thomas explains, “even if the bearer of the logo-ed product is a middle-market suburban housewife who bought it on credit.”

As a result, a designer jacket or handbag or watch no longer transmits reliable information about its wearer’s socioeconomic stature or background. Without quite coming right out and saying it, Thomas seems nostalgic for the good old days when “a middle-market suburban housewife,” say, couldn’t be confused with her betters. The author is shocked to overhear a woman “in a designer pantsuit, good jewelry and Chanel sunglasses” expressing interest in a fake Rolex. Spotting a couple loading shopping bags into a $380,000 car, she is surprised to learn that their loot came from an outlet store. In a discussion of the booming, underground market for counterfeit luxury goods, she compares “folks with a craving for the goods but not enough dough for the genuine thing” to petty teenage drug users — eager “to buy a couple of joints with their allowance or baby-sitting money.” She quotes a commentator on the last days of the Roman Republic, who contrasts an era of rampant, nouveau-riche acquisitiveness to an earlier and more “patrician” age when “people used to know their place.”

These hints of condescension are regrettable, for Thomas’s message is relevant to shoppers of every stripe. Whether upscale or middle-market, paying in cash or buying on credit, today’s customer is barraged at every turn with the logos that, for titans like Arnault, mean pure, corporate gold. “Deluxe” performs a valuable service by reminding us that these labels don’t mean much else. Once guarantors of value and integrity, they are now markers that point toward nothing, guiding the consumer on a road to nowhere.

Caroline Weber is a frequent contributor to the Book Review. Her most recent book, “Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution,” will be published in paperback this fall.

In other news, I'm slowly adapting back to life in Singapore. Mambo on Wednesday, Butter on Saturday... so much for staying away! :) But I'm still sticking to my resolution and being a recluse; haven't hung out with many people other than my BFFs and people in NIE. Spare time is spent commuting and knitting. I'm an old auntie.

Sat, 19 May 2007 20:50:01 GMT

This is just disgraceful:

The Navy has commenced the court-martial in Norfolk, Virginia, of LtCmdr Matthew Diaz. Commander Diaz is a 19-year veteran who was last detailed to serve as a JAG at Guantánamo—he faces charges that he disseminated “secret national defense information” with “intent or reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.” The charges carry a possible prison sentence of 36 years. What exactly did Commander Diaz do? It appears from press reports that he mailed a New York law firm a list identifying detainees who were being held at Guantánamo.

And this video is HILARIOUS. You have to watch it. And then watch the out-takes.

PROCRASTINATION

Fri, 04 May 2007 14:13:06 GMT

I've been watching The Search For The Next Pussycat Doll to procrastinate. OMG, this is the trashiest show ever. These girls are SKANKS! But oh well, what do you expect when they want to be the next Pussycat Doll.

Who claim they are "sexy but classy". What is classy about this:

They'd fit right in in Orchard Towers.

This show is awesome anyway. The people are so bitchy. The girls are tricked out and look like complete whores, and best of all, they CANNOT SING! So hearing them is hilarious. Hearing these girls be all serious about their 'talent' cracks me up.

Need to finish a 25-page paper that I haven't researched for yet by Tuesday, presentation on Tuesday, 15-page paper (again no research yet) on Friday, stats term project next Tuesday, and exam on Friday. Am freaking out.

Alanis' version of My Humps

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 20:24:39 GMT

AWESOME.

In other news, my latest treat to myself after the influx of cash from work is Milton Friedman's (& Rose Friedman) Free to Choose. I LOVE this man now. Can't believe I used to prefer Keynes back in JC.

I LOVE THIS

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:42:07 GMT

Mankiw's principles of economics translated for the uninitiated:

LAW SCHOOL

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 00:03:03 GMT

The Singapore government would love this article by a US judge, about how unproductive it is to accept equal proportions of female and male graduates into professional schools, when more female graduates of professional schools stop working to stay at home than male graduates. His suggested solution?

A better idea, though counterintuitive, might be to raise tuition to all students but couple the raise with a program of rebates for graduates who work full time. For example, they might be rebated 1 percent of their tuition for each year they worked full time. Probably the graduates working full time at good jobs would not take the rebate but instead would convert it into a donation. The real significance of the plan would be the higher tuition, which would discourage applicants who were not planning to have full working careers (including applicants of advanced age and professional graduate students). This would open up places to applicants who will use their professional education more productively; they are the more deserving applicants.

And he concludes with:

Although women continue to complain about discrimination, sometimes quite justly, the gender-neutral policies that govern admission to the elite professional schools illustrate discrimination in favor of women. Were admission to such schools based on a prediction of the social value of the education offered, fewer women would be admitted.

While on the subject of law school, a friend of ours is going to work as a tax lawyer after graduating from HLS and he'll be earning $160 000 pa. Even though he graduates with nearly $100 000 in debt (peanuts compared to mine!), he's in pretty good shape. Insane. The wage differentials in developed societies astound me.

PROCRASTINATION

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:43:22 GMT

My favorite Superbowl commercials!

My favorite-est:

More here.

Clearly, I'm procrastinating. I just want to go sleep!

WHY IS THIS A BAD THING?

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:06:51 GMT

SINGAPORE GIRLS - A CHALLENGE TO LOVE

Star, Malaysia
February 13, 2005

Insight Down South By Seah Chiang Nee

EDUCATED and financially independent, the new Singaporean woman is running into a wall of male traditions that is leaving some holes in their relationship, including marriage.

The trend had been building up over a couple of decades. In few other countries have women made larger strides in education and careers than in Singapore.

During the past few decades they have caught up with, and even overtaken, men in fields they had once dominated.

In university, women still outnumber men 55-45 with many moving strongly into subjects like media, mathematics, law and engineering, among others.

Recently girls won seven of the top 11 awards for A-level Physics, which had long been a boys’ domain.

Island-wide, women have moved into the highest ranks of the corporate world and commanded artillery units or police divisions, as well as trained jetfighter pilots. Ten women, aged 20-40, are planning to climb Mount Everest.

In short, the new female is able, confident and more than holding up half the heavens, but not getting equal success in their relationship with men.

This is running smack into a traditional male value of wanting to be seen wearing the pants, causing a growing “incompatibility”.

Better education has also led to the woman being perceived as too ambitious, self-centred and materialistic, not qualities that promote romance.

As a consequence, more men are choosing their brides from abroad, especially from China, Vietnam and most of all Malaysia, where historical links remain strong.

I attended five weddings in the last eight months that reflected the trend.

Four of the brides were from Malaysia and China and only one was local. I was told this was becoming a trend that government matchmakers have failed to correct.

One groom with a Johor bride said he had found Singaporean girls too materialistic and demanding. “One specifically set a condition: no living with my parents. She wasn’t happy dating on public buses.”

The women’s relentless pursuit of a career had come at the expense of learning to do simple household chores like cooking, ironing or looking after babies.

“If you want to marry a Singapore girl you must be prepared to eat at hawker centres for life,” one male cynic said.

A marriage agency owner told a radio interviewer how some of the girls had, on the first date, plied the men with questions like: What is your degree and earnings? Do you own a condo? “And they’re surprised when they didn’t get a second date,” she said.

Others find them picky, untrusting and calculative towards love and marriage.

Results of recently released research have found that one in five Singaporean wives is hiding her assets from her husband for fear that he will squander them or in case the marriage fails.

This 20% here compares with France (7.2%), USA (7.6%), Brazil (9%), Romania (12%) and Britain (16.8%).

But there are more hoarders in Japan (38%), Saudi Arabia (32%) and China (21%).

It doesn’t inspire trust. Another sign is the increasing number of cases when a private detective is hired to check on the spouse.

Pre-marital contracts are also becoming more common among people who want to keep their assets out of their spouse’s reach in any divorce. Almost six out of 10 women say in a survey that they are not submissive, while two-thirds believe they could live without men.

The changing female attitude is, of course, only half the cause.

The other is the man sticking to a traditional view that it is his right as head to leave the babies and household work to his working wife. One in two women here have a job.

The social impact is a growing number of single women, especially university graduates.

A growing minority is marrying Westerners.

This has prompted a newspaper reader to urge her well-educated peers to revisit some the traditional feminine traits.

Her letter followed reports that more Singaporeans, including young professional males, were turning abroad for brides.

She said she had worked in Vietnam and found the girls there feminine, their speech melodious.

“They work hard without complaining, carrying loads of cloth and vegetables in the market stalls and food places. Simple, gentle and hardworking, it's hard not to fall in love with them,” she added.

As for the Malaysian ladies, she finds them “neither loud nor argumentative, (but) pander to the boys' needs. Not as doormats, but as cheerful assistants, who see it as their obligation to help their men without expecting anything in return.

“Not that they are stupid - oh, no, the Malaysian girls I know are smart and hardworking, with careers of their own.

“But when it comes to matters of the heart, they play the docile, giggly girlfriend with as much aplomb as their Vietnamese counterparts. Again, it's easy to see where their attraction lies.”

In contrast, the Singapore girl is twice as likely as her Malaysian or Vietnamese counterpart to stride away in a huff or throw water in the male's face or hold a public screaming or crying fit.

“The Singapore girl debates and argues impassionedly. She wants to win at all costs and treats her love conquests like those fought in the office arena. She may be pretty, yes, smart, yes, but, oh, so demanding.”

The Singapore girl, in short, is a challenge to love, she added.

Although she may, at the end of the day, be a supportive and faithful spouse, the barbs hiding her soft interior are daunting to the suitor.

“She is materialistic, and loves being so. Shopping is a major hobby, and looking good is absolutely essential. The man is but another accessory, a helper, chauffeur, bag carrier.”

There are, however, some 200,000 men who have a poor education and a low salary. Their prospect of marrying a Singapore girl is slim.

One emotional man said online: “I’m fed up with life. Can’t even find a date let alone a wife.” For him and the rest, salvation lies in Vietnam or China.

o Seah Chiang Nee is a veteran journalist and editor of the information website littlespeck.com

I read the descriptions, and so many of them resonate, but I'm not ashamed or upset. There're lots of false dichotomies in the complaints about Singaporean women - a strong, career-oriented woman cannot look after her family and kids; a demanding woman must be materialistic. That's what happens when you group all of us together.

(NOTE: this isn't only a Singaporean phenomenon.)

takchek has a post listing lots of other posts about dating and relationships and women in general. He's been musing about the purposes of dating. My reply is: companionship. To me, my boyfriend is my best friend (with physical intimacy thrown in). I spend time with him because I enjoy his company and I'm happy when I'm around him. I don't have other best friends because this one makes me happy enough that I don't want to be with anybody else (in the same way).

IS IT BAD TO TELL A KID HE'S SMART?

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:11:30 GMT

A recent New York Magazine article drew attention to studies indicating that praising a child as 'smart' may actually result in the child under-performing.

Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.” ...image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down.

In contrast, praising a child for his effort raises achievement, possibly because it encourages them to bounce back from failure and continue trying. Similarly, teaching children that intelligence can be developed was actually linked to improved performance.

I thought this was really interesting, and particularly relevant in the Singaporean context - doesn't that quote sound uncomfortably familiar? How many of us grew up in environments when being called 'smart' was the highest praise? And how many of us became perfectionists, afraid of making mistakes? Or procrastinators, which arguably is another way of avoiding making mistakes?

Finally, the author brings up a good point:

Praising him for just a particular skill or task felt like I left other parts of him ignored and unappreciated. I recognized that praising him with the universal “You’re great—I’m proud of you” was a way I expressed unconditional love.
Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. Out of our children’s lives from breakfast to dinner, we turn it up a notch when we get home. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day—We are in your corner, we are here for you, we believe in you.