Scumbaggery in the UK.

Sun, 14 Aug 2011
2 min read
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Anarchy in the UK.

(NOTE: For the young ‘uns, the title of this post and the image is a reference to a song by the Sex Pistols.)

I’m quite tired of people hijacking the event popularly known as the London ‘riots’ for their own agenda.

Some examples:

  • “This justifies the strict laws against rioting and protesting we have in Singapore”.
  • “This is why we need to love our government, regardless of whoever is in the government”.

I don’t think those two claims are relevant or appropriate to the situation.

The first misses the larger point – this is not a riot, but simply a case of looting and theft carried out by opportunists who have purposefully disregarded social mores and notions of prop(ri)erty.

The second claim entails a blind subservience without moderation or calibration; a one or the other approach seldom makes sense, especially in contexts like these.

In my opinion, the most pertinent issues that seem to have conveniently been forgotten are:

  1. How this scumbaggery has been wrongly labelled a ‘riot’ or a ‘protest.
    This merely legitimises the actions of the looters and thefts and encourages them to be bolder in their impunity.
  2. How everything including the kitchen sink is wrongful fodder for blame with regard to these acts of “feral” scumbaggery.
    When in actual fact, the adage of “Those who criticise [the younger] generation forget who raised it” has never rung truer.

These articles may flesh out my arguments better:

  1. The UK riots and language: ‘rioter’, ‘protester’ or ‘scum’?
    (via Yu-Mei)

  2. Britain’s liberal intelligentsia has smashed virtually every social value.
    (via Andrew)

BTW with regard to the second article, I disagree with the portion on the “destr[uction of] the traditional nuclear family”.

I think the traditional nuclear family is ONE of the ways in which the problem of “a world where the parent is unwilling or incapable of providing the loving and disciplined framework that a child needs in order to thrive” can be resolved.

Also, I’m advocating a moderate approach to parenting/discipline – it’s okay to ‘let children be’, but at times you really have to rein them in.

National Day Message.

Tue, 9 Aug 2011
1 min read
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Since every mother’s son (and daughter) has been broadcasting his (or her) National Day Message, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon too.

Here’s my National Day Message to everyone:

Party like it's 1965 (million B.C.)

Party like it’s 1965 million B.C., people!

Have a happy National Day and never forget things that have shaped the collective memory of our nation, such as:

among others.

Last but not least, if you’re spending National Day patriotically by sitting at home surfing the Net, please read The Book Review That Never Was.

Copywriting: fail. Advertising: no discernible loss.

Sun, 7 Aug 2011
3 min read
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"Today's engineers are solving tomorrow's problems. Are you ready to be one of them?"

I was on the subway on Friday when I saw the advertisement displayed above.

For readers without image support, the tagline is as follows:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

I took a picture of it and uploaded it to Facebook and Twitpic with the caption “Bet all you B.Eng grads feel pretty proud of yourselves now, huh”, for I thought such a gloriously humorous error had to be shared with everyone.

Unfortunately, some people didn’t get it. What’s worse, some of the people who didn’t get it immediately thought I was mocking engineers.

Let’s look at the tagline of the ad once more:

Today’s engineers are solving tomorrow’s problems. Are you ready to be one of them?

Explanation:

  • We know the ad producer’s intention was to ask “Are you ready to be one of [the engineers]?”.
  • However, “problems” in the first sentence is also a plural noun.
  • Because the word “them” could also refer to “problems”, it’s possible for the second sentence to be read as “Are you ready to be one of [the problems]?”.

In that case, the ad becomes somewhat humorous: is this educational institute actually recruiting people to train them to become problems for engineers to solve?

So I’d rate the copywriting as having failed on this count. However, in terms of advertising, there’s no discernible loss.

Based on the comments I received, only one person made it clear that he understood what I was referring to.

However, the ad isn’t targeting people like us i.e. arts/humanities graduates with little inclination toward an education or a career in engineering or the sciences.

The rest of the comments came from people who majored in engineering, math or science subjects and are also working in related industries.

Their concerns were either to joke about how engineers are in fact ‘fighting fires’ instead of preventing them, or to be defensive about the perceived slight.

Nevertheless, since they didn’t spot the error (or perhaps the error is only a concern to people who are interested in linguistics), I guess the ad will still manage to reach out to its target audience.

Post-script: On hindsight, actually, the biggest failure in terms of communication and humour are actually mine alone.

Sigh. In the future, I shall just stick at doing what I do best i.e. re-tweeting what people are saying about The Weight of Silk on Skin.

Post-post-script: I misread a comment!

A math graduate/teacher just texted me to clarify this interpretation he provided:

This is an ad for BSs and BSc, not BEng. The alternate reading [that B.Ss. and B.Sc. graduates are/will be the bane of engineers] actually makes more sense in light of that fact.