- Email Charter: Save Our Inboxes! Adopt the Email Charter!
You may think it overly pedantic, but some people really need to be taught how to use/send e-mail messages that are coherent and tailored for easy reading. (via)
- Male Sexual Attractiveness: Based on Shoes | Philolzophy
“I just believe that by looking at a guy’s footwear you can tell a lot about his personality without even speaking to him”.
Everything is text, yo’. And because I’ve come to realise many people don’t get the references I make: “Everything is a text; this is a text”, according to Derrida.
- The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease | Deadspin
Oh, for those halcyon days of Usenet and IRC.
- New pick-up line | QDB: Latest Approved Quotes
Well, it sure beats pretending to be possessed.
- A Gentleman Never Arrives Empty-Handed | The Art of Manliness
“Like thank you notes, the giving of gifts to your hosts is becoming a lost art. When we do remember to bring a nice little something, it’s invariably a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine from the corner liquor store. Really, can’t we do better than that?”
I’m guilty of the ‘bottle of wine’ trick, so found this guide rather useful.
My review of Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays – the text which I was busy devouring in June while recuperating from my short stint in the Weapon X Project – is now up on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS).
Six of the Best
Compilation revives veteran playwright’s greatest hits
This collection brings together six of Tan Tarn How’s best works thus far, written and produced over a period of 11 years (1992 – 2003). Prior to this, The Lady of Soul and Her Ultimate ‘S’ Machine (“Soul“) was published individually in 1993, and Undercover and Home were published in play collections that featured various local playwrights. The publication of these plays in one volume are, hence, important in providing readers and scholars of Singapore literature with a holistic overview of Tan’s concerns as well as showcasing the diversity of topics he writes on, while demonstrating Tan’s dexterity as a playwright when tackling a range of subjects.
Thematically, most of Tan’s concerns, as with the majority of P65 Singaporean writers, are with the socio-political environment and machinations of the Singapore state – an ostensibly natural reflection of and response towards the environment that P65 Singaporean writers have been bred in.
(continued…)
I’m not against the pruning of trees, because pruning does help at times in terms of improving the aesthetics or safety of a place.
What I’m against is the excessive pruning of trees all over Singapore that takes place on a regular basis.
(At the same time, I do wish more trees could be planted in Singapore, but that’s another battle for another time).
That tree gave some much-needed shade to Pooters – something I appreciate because I hate sitting on an over-heated seat and I hate knowing Pooters is exposed to the elements.
There are other benefits to trees in our urban environment too: carbon sequestration, reduction in ambient temperatures, etc. Read more here.
That’s why trees are especially important in a place like sunny Singapore and in a world stricken by global warming.
However, I’ve always felt that whoever makes decision like these – e.g. to prune trees excessively – do so in the right spirit: to neaten and hence beautify the place, to prevent tree branches from falling and killing people during a gale or a storm, etc.
Unfortunately, these decisions seem to always be made in a vacuum, without consideration of other important factors like the ones I mentioned above: shade, shelter, preventing global warming, etc.
Why?
I think this has to do with encouraging critical thinking and providing these people with an actual knowledge of circumstances in our world today.
And that’s why it has never been more important for us to move away from subjects taught in the traditional curriculum, to teaching slightly more multidisciplinary and ‘real-world’ subjects like biodiversity or environmental ethics now.