::Homework Crapbox:: (2017)
-
But Alvin, who is 43 this year, always knew there was someone more important: his mother. At the time of his enlistment, she was no longer a JW and threatened to disown him if he refused to serve. “I told God: ‘I know I’m supposed to love you more than mom but I cannot lah. I’m supposed to be honest about it. If that makes me lose my ticket to paradise, so be it’,� he shrugs.
See, that right there, is the problem. He (and many religious folks) has got the concept of God all wrong, hence resulting in unnecessary suffering caused by an erroneous-fallacious emotional-cognitive dissonance vis-Ã -vis love.
Inside the Lives of Singapore’s Jehovah’s Witnesses
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/just-us-inside-lives-singapore-134524612.html
-
Chris Jericho on Singapore :
Alright, here in Singapore, look at all the beautiful buildings behind us, it’s just crazy man. It’s like this unbelievable architecture. Um. Such a pretty city, such a pretty country, not so pretty hair. [laughs] it’s what happens when you’re, uh, you know what happens? Hair? When it’s humid out? And it’s too long? But yeah look at that. What a great area. Kind of a cool little, uh, pool area up here, have a workout, now get ready for the big uh, big show tonight, here in Singapore. But yeah I really like that I like that uh, these areas, so to give you a little taste of what Singapore is like. See you soon.
http://mothership.sg/2017/06/wwe-wrestler-chris-jericho-praises-spore-for-being-beautiful/
-
[Singapore] - Driver Refused to Give Way to Ambulance Rushing Old Lady to Hospital
-
Japan airline forces wheelchair-bound man to crawl on all fours onto plane ; Vanilla Air employee told him that company safety rules banned anyone from carrying him up the stairs ; the handicapped man managed to pull himself up some 17 steps.
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/japan-carrier-forces-wheelchair-bound-man-crawl-onto-074811438.html
-
Bet they won't be returning to Malaysia ever again, assuming they even get to return to Singapore alive in the first place.
[Malaysia] - S'porean mum and 18 year old daughter accused of insulting a Malaysian immigration officer (maybe because they offered to bribe him, or perhaps because they *didn't*), so both kena jailed in Malaysian prison for 1 day. Upon their release 24 hours later, the Immigration Department of Malaysia further accused them of shoplifting, so now they're being further imprisoned indefinitely pending investigations and paperwork.
-
Poor girl. She's lucky to be alive. But she may have permanently (hopefully not) lost her voice as a result of the toxic damage to her throat and vocal cords.
[China] - 26 year old woman eats 'aloe vera' on internet live stream but panics after realising it's actually a highly poisonous plant.
-
LGBT and Religious folks on the warpath, yo. This may be in America, but no doubt both camps in Singapore are monitoring. Personally, I sympathize and empathize with both sides, both sides feeling victimized not just by the other, but also by the government and the laws of the land.
-
2/3 of all expert analysts agree : Donald Trump *will* launch a military assault on North Korea out of 'America First' selfish interest, even if it means millions of South Koreans will die.
North Korea and the dangers of America First
https://www.ft.com/content/88ba9f52-5a4b-11e7-b553-e2df1b0c3220
-
Singaporean woman traveller left stranded on street after being refused entry to her hotel in India, just because she is unaccompanied by a man.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/single-women-not-allowed-at-indian-hotel/
-
All not all human lives equal? (don't answer that, just continue reading). Imagine Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump being forced to work in this slave factory and them being beaten up each time they fail to meet the unreasonable production quotas. Welcome to Ivanka Trump's slave factory.
Making Ivanka Trump shoes: Long hours, low pay and abuse
https://sg.yahoo.com/finance/news/making-ivanka-trump-shoes-long-215445253.html
-
It's tasty. Too bad the previous supplier couldn't negotiate contractual terms with the manufacturer to their satisfaction. Good of Giant to find another supplier. Giant does indeed have some good stuff that the other supermarkets don't bring in.
-
Simon Cowell Steps In To Save Dog Trainer
-
[Singapore] - Dr Ang Peng Tiam has written several articles in the Straits Times sharing about his experience as an oncologist treating his cancer patients. No doubt he genuinely had his patients' best interests, even if things do not always turn out as hoped. And I totally agree with SMC, even if a doctor genuinely feels treatment A is the best course of action, he still has the responsibility to explain alternative treatments B and C, and let the patient decide. Unfortunately he just took it upon himself to select what he felt was the best treatment without explaining the alternatives, the patient died, and the family lodged a complaint against him. Moving forward, Dr Ang should certainly have more than enough money (savings and investments) to afford to take this 8 months suspension, to do something else with his life for a change.
-
From happy couple...
To dead guy and girl charged with manslaughter after she accidentally kills her...
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/29/us/fatal-youtube-stunt/index.html
-
[Singapore] - Check out the dent on the air-con unit where it hit the poor guy's head!!!
http://redwiretimes.com/singapore-in-brief/i-fainted-and-woke-up-in-the-hospital-air-con-unit-falls-and-hits-foreign-worker/
-
Jialat. Poor woman customer, and poor shop owner.
Well, just imagine how this female tourist at a jade shop in Yunnan, China, felt when she realised she had broken a 300,000 yuan (around S$61,000) bracelet.
According to Shanghaiist, she had tried on the accessory when the shopkeeper informed her of its hefty price tag.
Anxious and in a hurry to remove the bracelet, it slipped from the woman's hand and fell on to the ground, where it broke into two pieces.
The woman then suffered a panic attack and she fainted into the arms of other customers.
-
Plastic surgery gone wrong. Hard to sympathize and empathize with stupidity.
-
Nicholas posted : Assad is smiling quietly to himself. Let the Russians and the Americans screw each other. They can jab each other as hard as they wish. Assad wouldn't care a damn.
Slayer posted : Several prophecies have predicted that WW3 will in Syria.
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/russia-says-respond-dignity-u-mounts-syria-strike-165755038.html
-
[Singapore] - Older Generation Singaporean Gay Couples on Their Fight for Equality
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/older-gay-couples-fight-equality-091430209.html
-
From international website http://www.economist.com
How foreigners misunderstand Singapore
The city state’s success offers much to admire but little to emulate
Excerpt :
SINGAPORE has never been short of admirers. Many leaders of developing countries respect Lee Kuan Yew, its founding father, for taking his city-state from third- to first-world status while resisting Western calls for greater political liberalisation. Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s iron-fisted president, hopes that his country will become “the Singapore of Africa�. Fans of Rodrigo Duterte compare the Philippine president to Lee: strong-willed and intolerant of crime and corruption.
Lately the rich world, too, has begun to look at the island. “Want to ditch Obamacare? Let’s copy Singapore’s health-care miracle,� chirped an opinion piece on the website of Fox News, a conservative American broadcaster, soon after the election of Donald Trump. It argued that the “miracle� rested on two features dear to Republican hearts—“empowering consumers and fostering competition�. Some of the more vocal Brexiteers dream of turning Britain into “Singapore-on-Thames�: a low-tax, lightly regulated haven for businesses eager to trade with Europe. Like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant by feeling just one part of the beast, each of these admirers gets something right about Singapore, but all miss the big picture.
American conservatives, for their part, are right that Singapore’s health-care system achieves fine results by emphasising personal responsibility, competition and low public spending. Singaporeans pay for much of their health care out of their own pockets and enjoy among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest infant-mortality rates. The country spends just 5% of GDP on health care, of which about 2% of GDP comes from the public purse. America spends much more, 17% and 8% of GDP respectively, yet its population is much less healthy.
However, Singapore’s system also features far more coercion and government intervention than Americans would plausibly accept. Most hospitals are state-run. Most hospices and nursing homes are private but government-funded. The government heavily subsidises acute care. It promotes competition by publishing hospital bills; American health-care providers, by contrast, make their prices as opaque as possible to discourage shopping around. The government compels Singaporeans to divert up to 10.5% of their wages into “Medisave� accounts (employers contribute, too). It also subsidises “cost-effective and essential� drugs; unapproved drugs, if available, can be prohibitively expensive.
Both the left and the right will find much to like about Singapore’s health-care system. But anyone who thought that Michelle Obama urging children to eat more apples was too nannyish will find it hard to stomach. As Kishore Mahbubani of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy puts it: “The ideology guiding Lee Kuan Yew was not Ayn Rand.�
A similar pattern—personal responsibility supported by coercion and a lean but robust safety net—applies across Singapore’s economy. More than 90% of Singaporeans own their own homes, but most are government-built flats bought at government-set prices, often with government-provided grants. Where Singaporeans can live depends in part on their ethnicity: to avoid racial ghettos, Singapore requires the composition of public-housing blocks to reflect the country’s racial make-up.
Such social engineering would appal Western voters and be struck down by Western courts. Yet Singaporeans accept it. Paternalism has enforced racial calm. The country’s Chinese majority has been spared the atrocities visited on the Chinese diaspora in, say, Malaysia and Indonesia. More important, the trade-off that Lee Kuan Yew offered still holds: illiberal politics in exchange for good government and high living standards.
Singapore’s leaders vigorously defend their reputations with defamation suits, and gerrymander constituencies to help preserve the ruling party’s majority. But they deliver safe streets, first-rate health care, good public transport and a clean, responsive public administration. In distorted form, elections allow voters to affect policy: after the ruling party suffered its worst-ever performance in 2011, winning “just� 60% of the vote, it took a more populist line and won resoundingly four years later.
Lee’s bargain is hard to emulate. Both parts have been essential to Singapore’s success. Yet admirers such as Mr Duterte and Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strongman, are adept only at the authoritarian bit, without the clean government or wealth creation. Singapore’s rich-world admirers, meanwhile, lack the tame politics that allow Singapore’s rulers to set policy without worrying too much about the next election—or their citizens’ civil liberties.
-
Trash talking between opponents is not limited to wrestling, boxing and MMA.
Britain : Russia's jealous of our new aircraft carrier, it's better than anything they have!
Russia : That piece of crap? We can destroy it without breaking a sweat.https://sg.yahoo.com/news/russian-military-hits-back-over-uk-defence-minister-091900482.html
