The world's oldest profession

Letter in Economist - Mike Gallagher


Given that some countries have already nationalized the world's second-oldest profession (banking), why not nationalize the oldest? ... Governments could use the huge revenues that prostitution generates to bail out even more banks... As well as being the world's oldest profession, perhaps prostitution is the most honest, given the recent shenanigans by all those involved in the credit crunch. We are all civil servants now.

Malaysia, truly asia

Malaysian Parliment


Paid to argue while everything productive is at a standstill.

Science and Anti science in RI

Welcome to... the raffles institution science hub.



Enchanting, enthusing, expensive painting.



Did you spot the errors? Try again :)

These should be changed by now, thankfully.

Shopping malls not in God's purpose

Article below

Why is new creation church now getting into the business of running shopping malls? Their excuse is that they have too much money doing nothing in the bank...

This is a pretty ridiculous affair. God did not set up churches to raise capital and run investments... the church exists as a channel for god's love to reach out to more and more people. Riches on earth don't last - why can't new creation church get this right? This smacks of the sin of greed and serves only to distract from god. Even from a non-religious point of view - you would expect churches to be furthering the values of core humanity, not that of profit.

And this is not the only manifestation: Some pastors are paid more than necessary to sustain a comfortable life - unconsciously justified by some by the 'personality cults' that are a direct product of the the Pentecostal or the Charismatic movement. I tend to agree with the quintessence of these traditions - direct personal experience of God and so on - but not the way Christianity is being marketed and steeped in the ways of the world.

If new creation has too much money "doing nothing" in the bank, it would be prudent to make that money "do something" - local charitable outreaches, overseas missions, and so on. Something in line with God's purpose, not building shopping malls.


*I've yet to see such pastors though - just heard of them


Fr. today's straits times:



Come 2011, a futuristic-looking lifestyle hub with a 5,000-seat theatre, restaurants, shops, chill-out wine bars and even dance clubs will emerge in Buona Vista.

Property giant CapitaLand and a church-linked business company, Rock Productions, announced yesterday that they will jointly develop an integrated complex in Singapore’s one-north science hub at a cost of $660 million.

CapitaLand’s share of the proposed development, including the ownership of about 1,000 carpark lots, will be about $380 million.

Rock Productions - the business arm of the 16,000- strong New Creation Church - will invest $280 million.

The complex, which will be connected directly to the Buona Vista MRT station, will be sited within the 17ha Vista Xchange, the business service centre as well as lifestyle and cultural hub of one-north.

Designed by Mr Andrew Bromberg of Aedas Hong Kong, it will have eight levels of civic and cultural space, and four levels of retail and entertainment space.

The project came about after JTC Corporation last Friday awarded Rock Productions the tender to build, lease and operate an integrated civic, cultural, retail and entertainment hub at Vista Xchange on a 60-year lease at a land price of $189 million.

Rock Productions had spoken to a few partners and decided on CapitaLand, which entered into an agreement through its indirect wholly owned subsidiary One Trustee to acquire the hub’s retail and entertainment zone, which has a gross floor area of more than 24,000 sq m.

CapitaLand Retail will also manage the entire development of the integrated hub.

It is proposing an open concept for the retail and entertainment zone, which will be spread over two floors above the ground and two basement levels. The basement levels will house chic tenants that will include restaurants, cafes, thematic dance clubs, a concept food hall and a gourmet supermarket.

CapitaLand Retail chief executive officer Pua Seck Guan said the zone presents a unique opportunity for CapitaLand to extend its presence to the Buona Vista area.

The zone will cater to the affluent crowd from the nearby Bukit Timah, Holland and Rochester Park areas, as well as the visitor catchments from the one-north communities, surrounding estates and tertiary institutions, he said.

Rock Productions will own and manage the hub’s civic and cultural zone, which has a gross floor area of 30,000 sq m. This zone will have a 5,000-seat state-of-the-art theatre designed by world renowed performing arts facility design consultants Artec Consultants and Bromberg.

Among Artec’s best-known projects are the Lucerne Culture Centre in Switzerland and the concert hall and opera theatre at the Esplanade here.

Rock Productions has engaged IMG Artists, a global performing arts management company, to work on the marketing and programming efforts for the zone.

A major tenant has already been secured.

New Creation Church, which now holds its services at The Rock Auditorium at Suntec City, will be the anchor tenant of the theatre, using the space on a large part of Sundays and one mid-week night, said Rock Productions director Matthew Kang.

Rock Productions also owns and manages The Rock Auditorium and Marine Cove, the recreational and dining establishment at East Coast Park.


--------------------

Fantasy - Earth Wind and Fire

Every man has a place
In his heart there's a space
And the world can't erase his fantasies
Take a ride in the sky
On our ship fantasise
All your dreams will come true right away

And we will live together
Until the twelfth of never
Our voices will ring forever as one

Every thought is a dream
Rushing by in a stream
Bringing life to your kingdom of doing
Take a ride in the sky
On our ship fantasise
All your dreams will come true miles away

Our voices will ring together
Until the twelfth of never
We all will love together as one

Come to see victory
In a land called fantasy
Loving life a new degree
Bring your mind to everlasting liberty

As one

Come to see victory
In a land called fantasy
Loving life for you and me
To behold to your soul is ecstasy
You will find other kind
That has been in search of you
Many lives have brought you to
Recognise it's your life now in review

As you stay for the play
Fantasy has in store for you
A glowing light will see you through
It's your day shining day
All your dreams come true

As you glide in your stride
With the wind as you fly away
Give a smile from your lips and say
Are you free yes I'm free
And I'm on my way

The Lamentation of the Wind

chasing after the numb wind,
i uncover

the multipolar and parallel realities
that colour and underlie
the entirety of truth and existence.

the powering and dismembering ideals
that converge and diverge
as visions and faiths of utopia.

the stark contradictions
and bittersweet juxtapositions
transcending space and place and time

the unifying warmth
of humanity threaded
through the utilitarian beauty of DNA.

alternatively, the saving grace.


Add RNAi. Chop chop.

Descartes joke

Descartes went to McDonalds and ordered a burger. The waiter asked him, "would you like fries too?" Descartes replied, "I think not"... and disappeared.

If you didn't get it: Descartes, the philosopher, said Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore i am). Therefore if he says he thinks not, then he is not.

$B$

Luckily this doesn't happen when i'm going home. Longest so far is 50min. Sigh.

Despair

Koped from despair.com (they r actually v witty too! - if u like them despair.com sells calendars, posters etc etc)

Black button

Cram school

Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills

SEOUL, South Korea — It is 10:30 p.m. and students at the elite Daewon prep school here are cramming in a study hall that ends a 15-hour school day. A window is propped open so the evening chill can keep them awake. One teenager studies standing upright at his desk to keep from dozing.

A student and teacher at an elite South Korean school, the Minjok Leadership Academy, where sights are set on the Ivy League. More Photos »

Kim Hyun-kyung, who has accumulated nearly perfect scores on her SATs, is multitasking to prepare for physics, chemistry and history exams.

“I can’t let myself waste even a second,” said Ms. Kim, who dreams of attending Harvard, Yale or another brand-name American college. And she has a good shot. This spring, as in previous years, all but a few of the 133 graduates from Daewon Foreign Language High School who applied to selective American universities won admission.

It is a success rate that American parents may well envy, especially now, as many students are swallowing rejection from favorite universities at the close of an insanely selective college application season.

“Going to U.S. universities has become like a huge fad in Korean society, and the Ivy League names — Harvard, Yale, Princeton — have really struck a nerve,” said Victoria Kim, who attended Daewon and graduated from Harvard last June.

Daewon has one major Korean rival, the Minjok Leadership Academy, three hours’ drive east of Seoul, which also has a spectacular record of admission to Ivy League colleges.

How do they do it? Their formula is relatively simple. They take South Korea’s top-scoring middle school students, put those who aspire to an American university in English-language classes, taught by Korean and highly paid American and other foreign teachers, emphasize composition and other skills crucial to success on the SATs and college admissions essays, and — especially this — urge them on to unceasing study.

Both schools seem to be rethinking their grueling regimen, at least a bit. Minjok, a boarding school, has turned off dormitory surveillance cameras previously used to ensure that students did not doze in late-night study sessions. Daewon is ending its school day earlier for freshmen. Its founder, Lee Won-hee, worried in an interview that while Daewon was turning out high-scoring students, it might be falling short in educating them as responsible citizens.

“American schools may do a better job at that,” Dr. Lee said.

Still, the schools are highly rigorous. Both supplement South Korea’s required, lecture-based national curriculum with Western-style discussion classes. Their academic year is more than a month longer than at American high schools. Daewon, which costs about $5,000 per year to attend, requires two foreign languages besides English. Minjok, where tuition, board and other expenses top $15,000, offers Advanced Placement courses and research projects.

And, oh yes. Both schools suppress teenage romance as a waste of time.

“What are you doing holding hands?” a Daewon administrator scolded an adolescent couple recently, according to his aides. “You should be studying!”

Students do not seem to complain. Park Yeshong, one of Kim Hyun-kyung’s classmates, said attractions tended to fade during hundreds of hours of close-quarters study. “We know each other too well to fall in love,” she said. Many American educators would kill to have such disciplined pupils.

Both schools reserve admission for highly motivated students; the application process resembles that at many American colleges, where students are judged on their grade-point averages, as well as their performance on special tests and in interviews.

“Even my worst students are great,” said Joseph Foster, a Williams College graduate who teaches writing at Daewon. “They’re professionals; if I teach them, they’ll learn it. I get e-mails at 2 a.m. I’ll respond and go to bed. When I get up, I’ll find a follow-up question mailed at 5 a.m.”

Korean applications to Harvard alone have tripled, to 213 this spring, up from 66 in 2003, said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions. Harvard has 37 Korean undergraduates, more than from any foreign country except Canada and Britain. Harvard, Yale and Princeton have a total of 103 Korean undergraduates; 34 graduated from Daewon or Minjok.

This year, Daewon and Minjok graduates are heading to universities like Stanford, Chicago, Duke and seven of the eight Ivy League universities — but not to Harvard. Instead, Harvard accepted four Korean students from three other prep schools.

“That was certainly not any statement” about the Daewon and Minjok schools, Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “We’re alert to getting kids from schools where we haven’t had them before, but we’d never reject an applicant simply because he or she came from a school with a history of sending students to Harvard.”

South Korea’s academic year starts in March, so the 2008 class of Daewon’s Global Leadership Program, which prepares students for study at foreign universities, graduated in February.

One graduate was Kim Soo-yeon, 19, who was accepted by Princeton this month. Daewon parents tend to be wealthy doctors, lawyers or university professors. Ms. Kim’s father is a top official in the Korean Olympic Committee.

Ms. Kim developed fierce study habits early, watching her mother scold her older sister for receiving any score less than 100 on tests. Even a 98 or a 99 brought a tongue-lashing.

“Most Korean mothers want their children to get 100 on all the tests in all the subjects,” Ms. Kim’s mother said.

Ms. Kim’s highest aspiration was to attend a top Korean university, until she read a book by a Korean student at Harvard about American universities. Immediately she put up a sign in her bedroom: “I’m going to an Ivy League!”

Even while at Daewon, Ms. Kim, like thousands of Korean students, took weekend classes in English, physics and other subjects at private academies, raising her SAT scores by hundreds of points. “I just love to do well on the tests,” she said.

As bright as she is, she was just one great student among many, said Eric Cho, Daewon’s college counselor. Sitting at his computer terminal at the school, perched on a craggy eastern hilltop overlooking the Seoul skyline, Mr. Cho scrolled through the class of 2008’s academic records.

Their average combined SAT score was 2203 out of 2400. By comparison, the average combined score at Phillips Exeter, the New Hampshire boarding school, is 2085. Sixty-seven Daewon graduates had perfect 800 math scores.

Kim Hyun-kyung, 17, scored perfect 800s on the SAT verbal and math tests, and 790 in writing. She is scheduled to take nine Advanced Placement tests next month, in calculus, physics, chemistry, European history and five other subjects. One challenge: she has taken none of these courses. Instead, she is teaching herself in between classes at Daewon, buying and devouring textbooks.

So she is busy. She rises at 6 a.m. and heads for her school bus at 6:50. Arriving at Daewon, she grabs a broom to help classmates clean her classroom. Between 8 and noon, she hears Korean instructors teach supply and demand in economics, Korean soils in geography and classical poets in Korean literature.

At lunch she joins other raucous students, all, like her, wearing blue blazers, in a chow line serving beans and rice, fried dumpling and pickled turnip, which she eats with girlfriends. Boys, who sit elsewhere, wolf their food and race to a dirt lot for a 10-minute pickup soccer game before afternoon classes.

Kim Hyun-kyung joins other girls at a hallway sink to brush her teeth before reporting to French literature, French culture and English grammar classes, taught by Korean instructors. At 3:20, her English language classes begin. This day, they include English literature, taught by Mani Tadayon, a polyglot graduate of the University of California at Berkeley who was born in Iran, and government and politics, taught by Hugh Quigley, a former Wall Street lawyer.

Evening study hall begins at 7:45. She piles up textbooks on an adjoining desk, where they glare at her like a to-do list. Classmates sling backpacks over seats, prop a window open and start cramming. Three hours later, the floor is littered with empty juice cartons and water bottles. One girl has nodded out, head on desk. At 10:50 a tone sounds, and Ms. Kim heads for a bus that will wend its way through Seoul’s towering high-rise canyons to her home, south of the Han River.

“I feel proud that I’ve endured another day,” she said.

The schedule at the Minjok academy, on a rural campus of tile-roofed buildings in forested hills, appears even more daunting. Students rise at 6 for martial arts, and thereafter, wearing full-sleeved, gray-and-black robes, plunge into a day of relentless study that ends just before midnight, when they may sleep.

But most keep cramming until 2 a.m., when dorm lights are switched off, said Gang Min-ho, a senior. Even then some students turn on lanterns and keep going, Mr. Gang said. “Basically we lead very tired lives,” he said.

Students sometimes report for classes so exhausted that Alexander Ganse, a German who teaches European history, said he asked, “Did you go to bed at all last night?”

“But we’re not only nerds!” interrupted Choi Jung-yun, who grew up in San Diego. Minjok students play sports, take part in many clubs and even have a rock band, she said. Ambassador Vershbow, who plays the drums, confirmed that with photographs that showed him jamming with Minjok’s rockers during a visit to the school last year.

There are other hints of slackening. A banner once hung on a Minjok building. “This school is a paradise for those who want to study and a hell for those who do not,” it read. But it was taken down after faculty members deemed it too harsh, said Son Eun-ju, director of counseling.

South Korea is not the only country sending more students to the United States, but it seems to be a special case. Some 103,000 Korean students study at American schools of all levels, more than from any other country, according to American government statistics. In higher education, only India and China, with populations more than 20 times that of South Korea’s, send more students.

“Preparing to get to the best American universities has become something of a national obsession in Korea,” said Alexander Vershbow, the American ambassador to South Korea.

2 fun youtubes

1. "I will derive" (We should get certain person to sing this in math class hahaha)



2. Organic Chemistry: 7 Clues from Obi-Wan

epiphany

HUMANITIES: sociology, international relations, econs etc are core humanities through which society is modeled and predictions made. geog and hist are tools to study society, lenses through which we can learn about humanity. philo and lit are underlying skills.

(a similar comment about the sciences will earn me a lot of pokes... )

Celebrate... think about celebrating

see comments below


Today - Weekend, May 31, 2008

ONE of the greatest inventions in human history, and certainly the most delightful, is the celebration.

No other creature on earth celebrates. Some say the elephants have learned to mourn, and everyone knows the dolphins have learned to play. But people are the only creatures on the planet who actually celebrate a happy event.

You don’t see birds dance around an egg or antelope fuss over a birthday. And you can’t really count a doggie jumping up and down at the joy of receiving its master (doggies jump up and down at pretty much anything).

So if one of the greatest gifts of mankind is the capacity to celebrate, why is it so hard for the adult Singaporean to have a celebration?

It’s not about just having a good time. Expatriates havealready told us we don’t know how to party. When they invite us to one, we go, we eat, we hang out with our own families and then scoot early. We don’t stay and celebrate. Or party. At a party.

But the celebration is something more. It is that moment or day or period we mark something good, usually an achievement of sorts, and it can be done loud with a party or with as little as a drink at the coffeeshop with friends.

And that, it can be safely said, is not a strength of Singaporeans.

You seldom hear of people here calling for a celebration. When someone hits a milestone, they seem to look right past it to the next — an endless marathon with no tape to breast.

Okay, say we put it down to Asian modesty. We are not the sort to trumpet our achievements with a party, even though we may show off in other ways, with the flashy phone or latest car or coruscating jewellery.

Some even say it is the legacy of the immigrants’ culture. We are transients, collecting, never truly spending unless it is on an investment to make more. Gratification is waste.

Perhaps we even fear the curse of the third eye, so we look past the milestone and don’t dwell on it in case the heavens humble us with a calamity. It’s very Asian to be negative.

After all, statutory holidays aside, all our major celebrations are imported from the West, commercially manufactured events that probably bring more delight to people who run the classifieds sections than the actual targets waiting in long queues for dinner on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

But in modern Singapore, shouldn’t we stop now and then and mark a milestone in the life that our grandparents and parents gave up their own countries and families to build for us here?

If we could celebrate a personal milestone, invite home for a drink the ones who helped us make it possible because nothing good can be achieved only by self-will, no matter what we think — every pinnacle has a broader base.

And a thousand times better, pull together a celebration for someone we love or just like, to mark their personal milestones. Or if we are the focus of a celebration, can we accept it with grace, not embarrassment? Do we know how to receive a toast, let alone give it?

Imagine what a country we would be then. The MRT, the buses, the taxis and cars would be filled every day with a million people heading off every evening after work to a celebration of one sort or another. There would be more smiles, even for the stranger.

Now you may say this is a strange time to call for a culture of celebration when for many Singaporeans the struggle of daily life just got worse, with the price of nearly everything up by a measure. The mood, one could say, is suitably grim.

But we are already famously grim. We are one of only a handful of countries in the world, which have spent millions of taxpayers’ dollars just to ask ourselves to smile.

So perhaps it is in the tougher times we need to look for cheer the most, and flit to it like a moth to light. What else is there in life worth doing?


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Comments:
First, we should ask ourselves "what kind of celebration". It is a fallacy to equivocate all kinds of celebrations. An element of conspicuous, boisterous, and seemingly superficial fun seems intrinsic to the author's concept of celebration - indeed Singaporeans seem to lack this. Is this the only kind of celebration? Quiet reflection or a warm dinner would do as well, and in fact may be more valuable.

McImposition: The subservience of consumers to the commodified fast food culture (RA Geog Assg)

ABSTRACT

The continued popularity and growth of McDonalds in the age of SuperSize Me eludes intuition. It is the result of Mcdonalds’ exploitation of the consumer, and a microcosm of larger narratives in modern consumer society. This case study provides a basis from which to elucidate the power dynamics of consumption. I will analyze various scales of dialectics: (1) individual consumers’ subservience to fast food culture, (2) The Americanized fast food culture and its erosive hegemony over local postcolonial cultures, (3) plotting McDonalds on resultant sociocultural landscapes, and (4) possible recourses, hence showing how consumers and cultures are indeed subservient but not powerless in the face of the commodifed fast food culture.



INTRODUCTION

In the age of Supersize Me, the Class Action Lawsuit, and growing consumer health consciousness, it eludes intuition how McDonald’s maintains its grip on the more than 47 million customers (McDonald’s, 2007) it serves worldwide each day. Americans spend more on fast food than on PCs, cars, and college education (Schlosser, 2002); more than a third of British adults prefer a diet consisting mainly of fast food and beer (Pryer et al, 2001). In the developing world, 2000 McDonalds open each year.
Fast Food joints are reluctant to sell just food – they may go bankrupt – rather, they shove “extra value meals” of digestive and emotional gratification down the throats of unwitting consumers, carefully-engineered to program the consumer to come back for more. How does the fast food industry pull this off?


1. THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER’S SUBSERVIENCE TO FAST FOOD

Capitalism is widely perceived to be the dehumanizing antithesis of aesthetic interests, and yet, one defining feature of contemporary mature capitalism is the “convergence of the economic and the cultural” (Scott, 2000), where “cultural meanings are regularly appropriated for commercial ends, and human agency subordinated to the logic of capital” (Jackson, 2002). An emphasis on meaning, identity and representation does not trump the continued capitalistic salience of the economy.

Fast food is one instance of a commodified symbolic form (after Scott, 2000), where ‘commodifed’ in the Marxian sense denotes goods and services produced for capitalist profit, and ‘symbolic form’ denotes goods with significant emotional content. McDonalds is not in the business of selling food, more importantly; they sell customers the desire to consume their food. The means and relations of production have been revolutionized, such that fast food is masked in the materiality of the commodity (after Marx: commodity fetish) - i.e. severed from the social and spatial relations that structure its productions (Goss, 1993), and given artificial and hollow meanings and social place. This meaning and place is the construct of the mammoth fast food industry, and in its face consumers are subservient “passive and vulnerable victims of the force field which they don’t understand” (Goss, 1993), such that find food wrapped in McDonald’s wrappers better tasting than identical samples in generic wrappers (Robinson, 2007). I shall now elucidate the meaning and place of fast food, and how it is constructed.

For instance, consider how McDonalds takes pride in being ‘fast’ food, an inherently quick and easy food concept because little forward planning, waiting, or clearing up is required. While time poverty is the product of the post-modern capitalist sociocultural milleu, and not fast food per se, the Fast Food industry “understands, profit from, and encourages an occupation with haste” (Gleick, 1999). McDonalds relentlessly emphasizes its speed: it once gave out free apple pies if food was not ready in 60 seconds; advertisements have drawn parallels between Tennis champion Ivanisevic’s serve (216kph) and McDonalds quick burger assembly. With relentless subliminal messaging, McDonald’s (together with the rest of capitalist society) subtly imposes on consumers the perceived threat that time is in chronically short supply, Brewis (2005) concludes that “many of us could therefore be seen as cultural slaves to M-time – we lose a more organic and rhythmic sense of time as the natural context of life”.

Similarly, fast food branding tends to juxtapose vivid, recognizable symbols (e.g. the golden arches, Ronald McDonald, the burger) alongside the corporate images McDonalds’ seeks to portray: themes of youthful exuberance or being ‘cool’, healthy lifestyles, sheer enjoyment (e.g. smiles on children’s’ faces upon getting a Happy meal), and friendship (e.g. KFC’s buddy meal). (Also note caption on page 2). McDonalds creates lifestyle and culture built around it, shaping and exploiting the sociocultural landscape for profit (this will further discussed in part 3)

There are multiplicities of forces working against McDonalds: health concerns (championed by Supersize Me), the frequent consumer’s gastronomic boredom, and the “high-cultural disdain for conspicuous mass-consumption resulting from the legacy of a puritanical fear of the moral corruption inherent in commercialism and materialism” (Goss, 1993). I extend Goss (1993)’s argument against the fear of conspicuous con-sumption in shopping malls to address fast food: McDonalds assuages this collective fear and guilt over the evils of fast food by designing a fantasized disassociation from the act of consumption (i.e. you consume the lifestyle, not the burger) to distract consumers from the emptiness of the burger.

The sheer irony of fast food being promoted as ‘healthy’, and what was cheap American street food being divorced from its history and rebranded as ‘trendy’ expounds the muscle of the fast food industry holds over consumer perceptions. The caucus locus is the social power relations of production and consumption (Sack, 1988) – the capital and the brainpower of fast food giants acting from young on the individual mind, subordinating the individual to the postmodernist “consumption of artificial and hollow signs over and above material utilities” (Baudrillard, 1981). The world is not merely represented in commodifed images, but consists of such images – the image having more substantive effect than reality (Baudrillard, 1993). It’s all a lie – one that allows McDonalds to sidestep its replaceable material utility to create an irreplaceable image consumers flock towards.

The realist view sidesteps this to state that perception does not matter, because “a real world independent of human perception” exists (Unwin, 1992). And yet the consumer’s ‘choice’ – or lack thereof – whether or not to step into McDonalds is predicated upon perception and not higher ‘truths’ that are not privy to their decision making, even if such ‘truths’ exist.

This view may seem overly deterministic; power play and presiding influences restricting the field of human agency being restricted does not prove that this agency is itself dead. We may argue that it is ultimately the consumer’s sovereign choice to step into McDonalds.

Consider, however, how “consumption undoes contexts to create contexts, undoes social relation to create social relations, and undoes meaning to create meaning” (Sack, 1988). Whether or not truth is relative, in a world where interpretations are relative, such that the “interpretation that persists at a particular time is a function of power and not truth” (Nietzsche), we see the contexts and meanings of consumption being engineered by those at the profiteering end of consumption, such that the agency of the consumer exists only within the boundaries drawn by the mammoth industry; consumer sovereignty over the consumption of the irreplaceable images and identities constituted by McDonalds is not dead, but it is a limited and elusive ideal.


2. THE AMERICANIZED FAST FOOD CULTURE AND ITS EROSIVE HEGEMONY OVER LOCAL POSTCOLONIAL CULTURES

The global McDonalds presence is not just a product of post-Fordist economic globalization, but one of cultural globalization (Americanization); the exportation of fast food is not only that of commodity but also that of culture and lifestyle. Such a culture, of course, promotes consumption and hence profits.
In this section I shall focus on postcolonial societies. In contrast with other colonial powers, such societies bear little native commonality with American culture and hence exhibit marked cultural change. I deliberately exclude societies like China, as such societies were subject to imperial power but not formal colonies, and “the colonial epoch is not the defining feature of societies with longer historical trajectories. (Sidaway, 2000).”

Culture is of exceptional significance in postcolonial societies, in which contradictions between local cultures and colonial influences lead to defining tensions that mark a colonial present: “underlying all (postcolonial) economic, social, and political resistance is the struggle for representation” (McEwan, 2003). Arguably, culture, being a set of predominant attitudes and way of life shared by members of a society (Hofstede, 1997), is by definition organically grown. By logical extension, Americanization can only happen if a society willingly drifts in that direction.

Indeed this is to some extent the case. Layers of historical change and the lived experience of the colonial past have led to the subliminal acceptance of the superiority of the colonial masters and more generally the West. Hence “what is in the west is referred to modernity and progress” (McEwan, 2003). This is the universalizing knowledge produced by neoimperialist power. Hence the propagation of the fast food culture can be seen as an inevitable part in the larger currents the colonial present, not the doing of fast food companies.

And yet this fails to discount my core argument that consumers and cultures are subservient to the fast food culture. Indeed the propagation of the fast food culture is not merely McDonald’s doing, but a larger structural tug by Western influences; this, still, cannot absolve McDonald’s.

We see today’s world order as one shaped by the economic and political clout of the first world, echoing Nietzche’s postmodernist view that the “interpretation that persists at a particular time is a function of power and not truth”. Capitalist paradigms, expounded by Ritzer’s (1998) tenets of McDonaldization (efficiency, control, calculability, predictability), and the hegemonic order of cultures have led to the convergence of cultures towards greater uniformity and the sacrifice of the “unique, personal, communal, spontaneous and free dimensions of human life” (Ram, 2004).

Ritzer (2003a) draw a dichotomy between two extremes of globalization: glocalization (the integration of the global and the local) and grobalization (the global consuming the local). My argument thus far has pointed towards grobalization, but there are also cases where the local survives to some extent. McDonalds offers localized fare, exploiting local culture to its benefit: McKebabs are served in Israel, McVeggie and McCurry Pans in India. Such surviving local flavours, however, seem merely superficial and symbolic, and in fact show how cultural meanings are appropriated for commercial ends. They in no way discount the structural uniformity of the fast food culture.

To some extent Americanized fast food culture creates new cultural space, providing a “surrogate identity for those who do not identify with their own” (Ram, 2004) (hence greater acceptance among youth). On the other hand, the appeal of McDonaldized efficiency has diminished that of slower-paced local cultures; “Attempting to defend traditional cultural forms against cheap consumerism while simultaneously encouraging market forces as the only logical arbiter of human emotion is a losing game” (Ram, 2004). McDonalds has shifted the goalposts of expectations. To compete, traditional food are often forced to McDonaldize i.e. implement the McDonaldization tenets to appeal to consumers (Ritzer, 1997). In Israel, street food like the traditional falafel, once an Israeli tourist symbol have “been rescued from parochialism and upgraded to a world standard-bearer of ‘Israeli fast food’, or as one observer put it, transformed from grub to bread” (Ram, 2004). French cafes have likewise “adopted the fast food formula” (Fantasia, 1995). Varieties of local cultural identities licensed under the uniform structure of global capitalist commercial expansion disguises the unified formula of capital, thereby fostering legitimacy or even sales (Ram, 2004).

McDonalds is not a death knell for local foods, but the McDonaldized culture and structural uniformity that prevails as truth in the age of Western hegemony, easily accepted by the capitalist soul, entails the erosion of old ways of life.


3. PLOTTING MCDONALDS ON URBAN SOCIOCULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Human behaviour is moulded by social forces and relations of production (after: Marx). McDonalds produces, simultaneously, “the objects of consumption and the social subjects to consume them” (Goss, 1993). Let us plot McDonalds on the sociocultural landscapes that it has taken over.

The pricing and ubiquity of McDonalds such that it is accessible to large sections of society has, in a way, made it a mass-market social leveler in most societies (except for the very rich or the very poor). Fast food is seen as a “ubiquitous point of assembly, if not worship” (Stephenson, 1989) simply because it is accessible and acceptable to almost all. In social contexts where fast food joints are the de-facto meeting place, individuals tend to conform to keep up with this norm of reputability (this parallels the conspicuous consumption in Veblen’s 1899 theory of the leisure class).

The power dynamics and ubiquity of McDonalds has led to a distinctive transformation of urban sociocultural landscapes. A geographical sense of place is not irrelevant from this discussion: localities are the totality of social structure and human agency in space – such place includes both the physical ‘real’ conception of urban space and the human ‘imaginary’ construct of consciousness of place. The actions of “mass consumption is among the most powerful and pervasive place-building processes in the world” (Sack, 1988), place it is the expression of cultural symbolism.

Fast food seems universally present across postmodern urban sociocultural landscapes. McDonalds has shaped a distinctive landscape designed to sell its products and “condition an emotional and behavioral response from those whom they see as their malleable customers” (Goss, 1993). Such a landscape is the resultant of the power logics of McDonalds and the fast food culture, and the subservience of consumers and local cultures, as elucidated in the previous sections. As Breen (1993) put it, it is not a personal, private act by the consumer, but a very social act wherein symbolic meanings, social codes and relationships are produced and reproduced. What defines such a landscape?

First, such as landscape is inherently postmodern, where the “perceived dependency on products and their claimed utilities wanes – no object has greater inherent value independent of the symbolic, and the illusionary separations between the real and the simulation dissolve” (Firat, 1995). As argued in section 1, the material utility of McDonalds is irreplaceable; rather, it thrives on the postmodern consumption of images and constituted identity. In many ways (e.g. through the long-standing “happy meal”) McDonalds’ has postured its selling point to be this identity and symbolism, not merely the product itself.

Ritzer (2003) would interpret the ubiquitous distribution of McDonalds (in fast food and in other McDonaldized institutions) as a “fantasy archipelago of consumption islands”, “isolated worlds of enchantment”, to which “there is a kind of magnetism”. Indeed this is best manifested by the 2003 thinly-veiled McDonalds tagline: I’m lovin’ it, where “it” unabashedly refers to the McDonalds lifestyle and culture, not the product per se. At the same time, Ritzer (2003) argues that McDonaldized islands are dead, in that they lead to a dull, boring, and routine form of existence, separated and alienated from the rest of society. Hence his description of the social geography of McDonalds as ‘Islands of the living dead” (2003).

Such imagery hints at the distribution of McDonalds on our postmodern sociocultural landscape, but beneath it lies severe flaws. First, Ritzer did not reconcile the obvious contradiction between McDonaldized islands simultaneously being both of two extremes: living and dead. If these were a thesis-antithesis pair, a synthesis is lacking. Furthermore, Ritzer portrays fast food as islands isolated from the rest of society, neither as part of larger currents in society, nor having any Marxist influence they have on it.

I would see the ubiquitous McDonalds islands of attraction in our sociocultural urbanscape as plums in a pudding – randomly located in the pudding’s deep-seated structural uniformity, embodying the quintessence of the constituted identity of postmodern consumer culture, and at the same time representing the concentration of hegemonic power over consumers and cultures through which such identity and symbolism are carved, yet part of a greater whole and never divorced from the rest of society. This is how I would plot Mcdonalds on the larger sociocultural landscape – Marxist plums in a postmodern pudding.


4. POSSIBLE RECOURSES (INCL. CRITIQUE OF APPROACH)

The critical analysis in this paper may seem to lack rigor, schematic methodology, and hence cannot give any conclusive proof. Postcolonialism operates on many assumptions (that colonial masters treat colonies and shape their society in a particular way, and such influence is long-lasting) that may not be justified. Postmodernism, where anything can be correct, can cut dangerously close to being truistic (e.g. “Mcdonalds creates meaning”).

But such is the nature of anti-positivist discourse. Postmodernism itself acknowledges versions of the truth, none of which is more correct than the other, such that it is futile to prove one as a positivist singular truth. Critique analyzes phenomena’s and illuminates the human condition, offers perspectives and creates constructive discourse. Hence critical analysis serves as a means of self-reflection and the “conscience of society” (Unwin, 1992).

The above discourse on Marxist power dynamics may border on being overly static and deterministic. Structuration (after: Giddens, 1981:27-30) offers an optimistic counterthesis: like Marxism, it accepts power logics as an inevitable fact of life, but argues that the fate of agents is not just the deterministic product of ain imposed structure, but that of a 2-way dialectic in which actors can effect change to the structure. Hence structuration would give greater credit to the agency and power of the consumer, without the violent radicalism of Marx.

Indeed the consumer has several possible recourses to retrieve the commodifed identities and sociocultural space shaped by McDonalds from calculated control: to “expose the fetishism of the commodity and the re-problematization of the relations of consumption” (Goss, 1993). We have seen this in consumer activism, Supersize Me and class action lawsuits being the most seminal examples. Given sufficient momentum, the collective action by a group of actors will force the profit logics of fast food giants to make progressive changes (e.g. McDonalds already publishes nutritional infon and offers salads), brought about by the notion of corporate social responsibility (staying credible to stay profitable).

I therefore conclude that consumers and cultures are subservient but not powerless in the face of the commodifed fast food culture.

Flower macro

Artist's statement for visitor's lounge:

The quintessence of the flower macro is peace. It is a subtractive process, about choosing to ignore the superfluous distractions of the world, and focus on nature's intricate beauty. It is a moment in time - the moment in which the flower is in its full glory. It is escapist and idealistic - the search for an island of beautiful tranquility in a sea of ugly chaos. In a world where truth is relative, and the truth that prevails at a particular time is a function of power, the flower macro carries absolute, refreshing, inalienable meaning.

Depressing pics

someone sent these to me:

some pictures :-)

Debate exco 08.. see we are fun pple


Something i hope does not come out tmr....

EDIT: ok what transpired during the chem CCT was worse. PQRS ><

Go west / pet shop boys

Context: Critique of communism ("go west" from Russia?). Note space-time construct.

Come to jesus / Chris Rice

Weak and wounded sinner
Lost and left to die
O, raise your head, for love is passing by
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus
Come to Jesus and live!

Now your burden's lifted
And carried far away
And precious blood has washed away the stain, so
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus
Sing to Jesus and live!

And like a newborn baby
Don't be afraid to crawl
And remember when you walk
Sometimes we fall...so
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus
Fall on Jesus and live!

Sometimes the way is lonely
And steep and filled with pain
So if your sky is dark and pours the rain, then
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
Cry to Jesus and live!

O, and when the love spills over
And music fills the night
And when you can't contain your joy inside, then
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus
Dance for Jesus and live!

And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side, and
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live!

Scarcity in abundance: The parable of the water tank

The parable of the water tank / Edward Bellamy

There was a certain very dry land, the people whereof were in sore need of water. And they did nothing but seek after water from morning until night, and many perished because they could not find it.

Howbeit, there were certain men in that land who were more crafty and diligent than the rest, and these had gathered stores of water where others could find none, and these men were called capitalists. And it came to pass that the people of the land came unto the capitalists and prayed them that they would give them of the water they had gathered that they might drink, for their need was sore. But the capitalists answered them and said:

"Go to, ye silly people! Why should we give you of the water we have gathered, for then should we become as ye are, and perish with you. But behold what we will do unto you. Be ye our servants, and ye shall have water."

And the people said, "Only give us to drink, and we will be your servants, we and our children." And it was so.

Now, the capitalists were men of understanding, and wise in their generation. They ordered the people who were their servants in bands, with captains and officers, and some they put at the springs to dip, and others did they make to carry the water, and others did they cause to seek for new springs. And all the water was brought together in one place, and there did the capitalists make a great tank for to hold it, and the tank was called the Market, for it was there that the people, even the servants of the capitalists, came to get water. And the capitalists said unto the people:

"For every bucket of water that ye bring to us, that we may pour it into the tank, which is the Market, behold we will give you a penny; but for every bucket that we shall draw forth to give unto you that you may drink of it, ye and your wives and your children, ye shall give to us two pennies, and the difference shall be our profit, seeing that if it were not for this profit we would not do this thing for you, but ye should all perish."

And it was good in the people's eyes for they were dull of understanding, and they diligently brought water unto the tank for many days, and for every bucket which they did bring, the capitalists gave them every man a penny; but for every bucket that the capitalists drew forth from the tank to give again unto the people, behold, the people rendered to the capitalists two pennies.

And after many days the water-tank, which was the Market, overflowed at the top, seeing that for every bucket the people poured in they received only so much as would buy again half-a-bucket. And because of the excess that was left to every bucket, did the tank overflow, for the people were many, but the capitalists were few, and could drink no more than others. Therefore did the tank overflow.

And when the capitalists saw that the water overflowed, they said to the people "See ye not the tank, which is the Market, doth overflow? Sit ye down, therefore, and be patient, for ye shall bring us no more water till the tank be empty."

But when the people no more received the pennies of the capitalists for the water they brought, they could buy no more water from the capitalists, having naught wherewith to buy. And when the capitalist saw that they had no more profit because no man bought water of them, they were troubled. And they sent forth men into the highways, the byways, and the hedges, crying, "If any thirst let him come to the tank and buy water of us, for it doth overflow." For they said among themselves, "Behold, the times are dull; we must advertise."

But the people answered, saying, "How can we buy unless ye hire us, for how else shall we have wherewithal to buy? Hire ye us, therefore, as before, and we will gladly buy water, for we thirst, and ye will have no need to advertise." But the capitalists said to the people: "Shall we hire you to bring water when the tank, which is the Market, doth already overflow? Buy ye, therefore, first water, and when the tank is empty through your buying, we will hire you again."

And so it was because the capitalists hired them no more to bring water that the people could not buy the water they had brought already, and because the people could not buy the water they had brought already, the capitalists no more hired them to bring water.

And the saying went abroad, "It is a crisis."

And the thirst of the people was great, for it was not now as it had been in the days of their fathers, when the land was open before them for everyone to seek water for himself, seeing that the capitalists had taken all the springs, and the wells, and the water-wheels, and the vessels, and the buckets, so that no man might come by water save from the tank, which was the Market. And the people murmured against the capitalists and said: "Behold, the tank runneth over, and we die of thirst. Give us therefore of the water, that we perish not."

But the capitalists answered, "Not so. The water is ours. Ye shall not drink thereof unless ye buy it of us with pennies." And they confirmed it with an oath, saying, after their manner, "Business is business."

But the capitalists were disquieted that the people bought no more water, whereby they had no more profits, and they spake to one another saying, "It seemeth that our profits have stopped our profits, and by reason of the profits we have made we can make no more profits. How is it that our profits are become unprofitable to us, and our gains do make us poor? Let us therefore send for the soothsayers, that they may interpret this thing unto us." And they sent for them.

Now the soothsayers were men learned in dark sayings, who joined themselves to the capitalists by reason of the water of the capitalists, that they might have thereof and live, they and their children. And they spake for the capitalists unto the people, and did their embassies for them, seeing that the capitalists were not a folk quick of understanding, neither ready of speech.

And the capitalists demanded of the soothsayers that they should interpret this thing unto them, wherefore it was that the people bought no more water of them, although the tank was full. And certain of the soothsayers answered and said, "It is by reason of overproduction." And some said, "It is glut." But the signification of the two words is the same. And others said, "Nay, but this thing is by reason of of the spots on the sun." And yet others answered, saying, "It is neither by reason of glut, nor yet of spots on the sun, that the evil hath come to pass, but because of lack of confidence."

And while the soothsayers contended among themselves according to their manner, the men of profit did slumber and sleep, and when they awoke they said to the soothsayers, "It is enough. Ye have spoken comfortably unto us. Now go forth and speak comfortably unto the people, so that they be at rest and leave us also in peace."

But the soothsayers, even the men of the dismal science - for so they were named by some - were loath to go forth to the people lest they should be stoned, for the people loved them not. And they said to the capitalists:

"Masters, it is a mystery of our craft that if men be full and thirst not, but be at rest, then shall they find comfort in our speech, even as ye. Yet if they thirst and be empty, find they no comfort therein, but rather mock at us, for it seemeth that unless a man be full, our wisdom appeareth unto him but emptiness."

But the capitalists said, "Go ye forth. Are ye not our men to do our embassies?"

And the soothsayers went forth to the people and expounded to them the mystery of over production, and how it was that they needs must perish of thirst because there was overmuch water, and how there could not be enough because there was too much. And likewise spoke they unto the people concerning the sun-spots, and also wherefore it was that these things had come upon them them by reason of lack of confidence. And it was even as the soothsayers had said, for to the people their wisdom seemed emptiness. And the people reviled them saying, "Go up, ye bald-heads! Will ye mock us? Doth plenty breed famine? Doth nothing come out of much?" And they took up stones to stone them.

And when the capitalists saw that the people still murmured, and would not give ear to the soothsayers, and because also they feared lest they should come upon the tank and take of the water by force, they brought forth to them certain holy men (but they were false priests), who spake unto the people that they should be quiet and trouble not the capitalists because they thirsted. And these holy men, who were false priests, testified to the people that this affliction was sent to them of God for the healing of their souls, and if they should bear it in patience and lust not after the water, neither trouble the capitalists, it would come to pass that after they had given up the ghost they would come to a country where there should be no capitalists, but an abundance of water. Howbeit, there were certain true prophets of God also, and would not prophesy for the capitalists, but rather spake constantly against them.

Now, when the capitalists saw that the people still murmured and would not be still, neither for the words of the soothsayers nor of the false priests, they came forth themselves unto them, and put the ends of their fingers in the water that overflowed in the tank and wet the tips thereof, and they scattered the drops from the tips of their fingers abroad upon the people who thronged the tank, and the name of the drops of water was charity, and they were exceeding bitter.

And when the capitalists saw yet again that neither for the words of the soothsayers, nor of the holy men who were false priests, nor yet for the drops that were called charity, would the people be still, but raged the more, and crowded upon the tank as if they would take it by force, then they took council together and sent men privily forth among the people and all who had skill in war, and took them apart and spake craftily with them saying:

"Come, now, why cast ye not your lot in with the capitalists? If ye will be their men and serve them against the people, that they break not in upon the tank, then shall ye have abundance of water, that ye perish not, ye and your children."

And the mighty men and they who were skilled in war hearkened unto this speech, and suffered themselves to be persuaded, for their thirst constrained them, and they went within unto the capitalists, and became their men, and staves and swords were put into their hands, and they became a defense unto the capitalists, and smote the people when they thronged upon the tank.

And after many days the water was low in the tank, for the capitalists did make fountains and fishponds of the water thereof, and did bathe therein, they and their wives and their children, and did waste the water for their pleasure.

And when the capitalists saw that the tank was empty, they said, "The crisis is ended": and they sent forth and hired the people that they should bring water and fill it again. And for the water that the people brought to the tank they received for every bucket a penny, but for the water which the capitalists drew forth from the tank to give again to the people they received two pennies, that they might have their profit. And after a time did the tank again overflow even as before.

And now, when many times the people had filled the tank until it overflowed, and had thirsted till the water therein had been wasted by the capitalists, it came to pass that their arose in the land certain men who were called agitators for that they did stir up the people. And they spake unto the people, saying that they should associate, and then they would have no need to be servants of the capitalists, and should thirst no more for water. And in the eyes of the capitalists were the agitators pestilent fellows, and they would fain have crucified them, but durst not for fear of the people.

And the words of the agitators which they spake to the people were on this wise:

"Ye foolish people, how long will ye deceived by a lie, and believe to your hurt that which is not? For behold, all these things which have been said unto you, by the capitalists and the soothsayers are cunningly devised fables. And likewise the holy men, who say that it is the will of God that you should always be poor and miserable and athirst, behold, they do blaspheme God and are liars, whom He will bitterly judge, though He forgive all others. How cometh it that ye may not come by the water in the tank? Is it not because you have no money? And why have ye no money? Is it not because ye receive but one penny for every bucket that ye bring to the tank, which is the Market, but must render two pennies for every bucket ye take out, so that the capitalists may have their profit? See ye not how by this means the tank must overflow, being filled by that ye lack and made to abound out of your emptiness? See ye not also that the harder ye toil and the more diligently ye seek and bring the water, the worse and not the better it shall be for you by reason of the profit, and that forever?"

After this manner spake the agitators for many days unto the people and none heeded them, but it was so that after a time the people hearkened. And they answered and said unto the agitators:

"Ye say truth. It is because of the capitalists and of their profits we may by no means come by the fruits of our labour, so that our labour is in vain, and the more we toil to fill the tank the sooner doth it overflow, and we may receive nothing because there is too much, according to the words of the soothsayers. But behold the capitalists are hard men, and their tender mercies are cruel. Tell us if ye know any way whereby we may deliver ourselves out of our bondage unto them. But if you know of no certain way of deliverance, we beseech you to hold your peace, and let us alone, that we may forget our misery."

And the agitators answered and said "We know a way."

And the people said: "Deceive us not, for this thing hath been from the beginning, and none hath found a way of deliverance till now, though many have sought it carefully with tears. But if ye know a way, speak unto us quickly."

Then the agitators spake unto the people of the way. And they said:

"Behold, what need have ye at all of these capitalists, that you should yield them profits upon your labor? What great things do they wherefore ye render them this tribute? Lo! it is only because they do order you in bands and lead you out and in and set you tasks, and afterwards give you a little of the water yourselves have brought and not they. Now, behold the way out of this bondage! Do ye for yourselves that which is done by the capitalists - namely, the ordering of your labor and the marshaling of your bands, and the dividing of your tasks. So shall ye have no need at all of the capitalists, and no more yield them any profit, but all the fruit of your labor shall ye share as brethren, everyone having the same; and so shall the tank never overflow until every man is full, and would not wag the tongue for more, and afterwards shall ye with the overflow make pleasant fountains and fishponds to delight yourselves withal, even as did the capitalists: but these shall be for the delight of all."

And the people answered: "How shall we go about to do this thing, for it seemeth good to us?" And the agitators answered:

"Choose ye discreet men to go in and out before you and marshal your bands and order your labor, and these men shall be as capitalists were; but behold they shall not be your masters as the capitalists are, but your brethren and officers who will do your will, and they shall not take any profits, but every man his share like the others, and there may be no more masters and servants among you, but brethren only. And from time to time, as ye see fit, ye shall choose other discreet men in place of the first to order the labour."

And the people hearkened, and said the thing was very good to them. Likewise it seemed not a hard thing. And with one voice they cried out, "So let it be as ye have said, for we will do it!"

And the capitalists heard the noise of shouting, and what the people said, and the soothsayers heard it also, and likewise the false priests and the mighty men of war, who were a defense unto the capitalists; and when they heard they trembled exceedingly, so that their knees smote together, and they said one to another, "It is the end of us!"

Howbeit, there were certain true priests of the living God who would not prophesy for the capitalists, but had compassion on the people; and when they heard the shouting of the people and what they said, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy, and gave thanks to God because of the deliverance.

And the people went and did all the things that were told them of the agitators to do. And it came to pass as the agitators had said, even according to all their words. And there was no more any thirst in that land, neither any that was a-hungered, not naked, nor cold, nor in any manner of want; and every man man said unto his fellow, "My brother," and every woman said unto her companion, "My sister," for so were they with one another as brethren and sisters which do dwell together in unity. And the blessing of God rested upon that land for ever.

River systems!

Identify positivist, hermaneutic, and critical analysis!

Mad World

The Minature Earth





Mad World - Gary Jules




All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad world
[Mad World lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
And I feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very
Mad World
Mad World
Enlarging your world
Mad World.

Panoramas!

Koped from Wikimedia :-)

This better not come out for TA/CCT/EOY

Prove...


If this comes out for TA/CCT/EOY it's GGXXED
Thanks HY for the solution!

Busy?

Satan called a worldwide convention of demons.

In his opening address he said,

'We can't keep Christians from going to church.'

'We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth.'

'We can't even keep them from forming an intimate relationship with
their saviour.'

'Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken.'

'So let them go to their churches; let them have their covered dish
dinners, BUT steal their time, so they don't have time to develop a
relationship with Jesus Christ..'

'This is what I want you to do,' said the devil:

'Distract them from gaining hold of their Saviour and maintaining that
vital connection throughout their day!'

'How shall we do this?' his demons shouted.

'Keep them busy in the non-essentials of life and invent innumerable
schemes to occupy their minds,' he answered.

'Tempt them to spend, spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow.'

'Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to
work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a day, so they can afford their
empty lifestyles.'

'Keep them from spending time with their children.'

'As their families fragment, soon, their homes will offer no escape
from the pressures of work!'

'Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice.'

'Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they
drive.' To keep the TV, VCR, CDs and their PCs going constantly in
their home and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world
plays non-biblical music constantly.'

'This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ.'

'Fill the coffee tables with magazines and newspapers.'

'Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day.'

'Invade their driving moments with billboards.'

'Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order catalogs,
sweepstakes, and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering
free products, services and false hopes..'

'Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines and TV so their
husbands will believe that outward beauty is what's important, and
they'll become dissatisfied with their wives. '

'Keep the wives too tired to love their husbands at night.'

'Give them headaches too! '












'If they don't give their husbands the love they need, they will begin
to look elsewhere.'

'That will fragment their families quickly!'

'Give them Santa Claus to distract them from teaching their children
the real meaning of Christmas.'

'Give them an Easter bunny so they won't talk about his resurrection
and power over sin and death.'

'Even in their recreation, let them be excessive.'

'Have them return from their recreation exhausted.'

'Keep them too busy to go out in nature and reflect on God's creation.
Send them to amusement parks, sporting events, plays, concerts, and
movies instead.'

'Keep them busy, busy, busy!'

'And when they meet for spiritual fellowship, involve them in gossip
and small talk so that they leave with troubled consciences.'

'Crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek
power from Jesus.'

'Soon they will be working in their own strength, sacrificing their
health and family for the good of the cause.'

'It will work!'

'It will work!'

It was quite a plan!

The demons went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians
everywhere to get busier and more rushed, going here and there.

Having little time for their God or their families.

Having no time to tell others about the power of Jesus to change lives.

I guess the question is, has the devil been successful in his schemes?

You be the judge!!!!!

Does 'BUSY' mean: B-eing U-nder
S-atan's Y-oke?



fwd from conan - thanks!