This has a point. Muslims should take all three dimensions into consideration when calculating the angle at which Mecca is. Prayers travel in a straight line, you know. Or else, why the need to face Mecca at all?
However since the Universe is a donut shape, they are really facing their backs during prayer. Then again, you're always facing your back no matter where you're looking, so what's the point of this paragraph anyway?
I used to think that the oppression of American natives is over but in Brazil it's still happening.
To construct a dam somewhere in the country, the energy company blew up an ancestral burial ground of one of the tribes. In response, several tribes including the one whom the ground belonged to took the workers hostage to demand a stop to the construction.
Apparently the destruction of their ancestral graves was really the last straw. Before that, they were already suffering because their river has become so polluted they couldn't catch any fish in the past two years.
They can't say that the company didn't know because I'm very sure the tribal people would have tried desperately to stop the workers from taking over the burial site. I know I would if my ancestors were buried there since time immemorial.
And if my grandfather's body was blown up with dynamite like that, I would definitely be pissed off enough to take people hostage, even though I never knew both my grandfathers.
Pretty fucked up, yea? Just because they live in shacks in the jungle doesn't make them subhuman, but obviously a lot of people in Brazil don't see things this way.
People who sleep 9 hours or more, or 5 hours or less a day have higher chances of developing certain heart conditions. I sleep nine hours a day. Oh crap.
Sleeping fewer than five hours a day, including naps, more than doubles the risk of being diagnosed with angina, coronary heart disease, heart attack or stroke, the study conducted by researchers at West Virginia University's (WVU) faculty of medicine and published in the journal "Sleep" says. Study participants who said they slept nine hours or longer a day were one-and-a-half times more likely than seven-hour sleepers to develop cardiovascular disease, the study found.
So we should sleep between 6-8 hours a day. Then again, I'm jumping to conclusion if I say that sleeping too much or too little is the cause of these illnesses. It's just as likely that these people are already at getting close to have heart diseases so their body is resting more to repair the damages more desperately.
Who knows? All the study says is that they're related, not that either is the cause of the other.
But they pointed out that sleep duration affects endocrine and metabolic functions, and sleep deprivation can lead to impaired glucose tolerance, reduced insulin sensitivity and elevated blood pressure, all of which increase the risk of hardening the arteries.
See? I was getting too worked up over something I merely assumed. Bleh. This report meant nothing to us laymen. The researchers need to do some more work before drawing the correct conclusions for us because obviously this study doesn't say anything.
Starcraft 2 is selling for S$109 for the normal edition, though a few shops are selling them at about S$90.
Just finished the campaign on Normal difficulty and I have to say that this is by far the best RTS campaign I've ever played. Every single round is unique, unlike other RTS whose campaigns are mostly about building bases and wiping out the enemies.
For example, a few missions in SC2 are about collecting resources. One makes you race against an enemy AI to collect crystals but you also have to spend these crystals to build your army to defend yourself or attack the enemy bases to slow down its collection speed.
The other has you collecting minerals on a map that is regularly flooded by lava but has many isles that aren't flooded. The problem is that all the crystals are on the low grounds, so you have to watch both your SCVs and your troops either while they defend your SCVs from enemy attacks or while explore the map for more resource-laden areas.
The news reports by the Dominion (the Terran government, also the enemy) and the conversations with all the NPCs you gradually collect on your ship just adds that something to the experience. Together with a few choices you have to make, like how you have to choose to either cripple the Zergs' land attacks or their air units in the final mission, just makes it feel like an RPG a little.
FYI I betrayed the NPCs I had on my ship whenever I was given a choice. Most of the time the choices are both right, so it's more of a question of practicality than morality. In the previously mentioned choice, I rejected the idea to reduce their land attack capabilities which was suggested by a NPC on my ship. It was not to spite him but that I frickin hate air attacks for their longer ranges that, if I wasn't watching, can keep attacking my defences forever. Zerg land units are 99% melee attackers and the race's air defences are horrible with the exception of the Spore Colony, so as a big-time Battlecruiser fan I'm completely cool with the other option.
Seriously, they can easily make a movie out of this franchise if they want to in the future.
For anyone who hasn't played SC2, it's really what a sequel should be - the same game but with an extreme makeover. Many of the units and structures in SC2 are the same as SC1 like Wraiths, Goliaths, Zerglings and Engineering Bays (a useful structure in competitive Starcraft because it's cheap and it flies, hence players sometimes position it to cover turrets or units to make it look like they have no defences in that area).
All the units have their looks redone and new units are thrown in to make things more complicated. The old units sound very similar to their counterparts in SC1, like the artificial voice of the Goliath.
Again, I wouldn't say that this game's worth a hundred bucks. 50 would be a more reasonable price when they're earning commissions for selling custom maps made by players.
So yesterday I had an interesting conversation with a taxi driver. Mainly it was him telling me how this "auntie" has been trying to ask him to go swimming with her. He's a middle-aged man so that I guess it's normal. Apparently they knew each other during the classes for their taxi licences.
Anyway the funny thing was how she bought swimming trunks for him... using her son's size to estimate. It was not too tight that he couldn't wear it, but tight enough that he found it uncomfortably sexy. In the end he had to change back to his clothes and buy another that's more conservative.
According to him, it was a hint from her.
I can't decide whether it was just his narcissism or if she was really trying to seduce him. I know there are quite a number of middle-aged Singaporeans who cheat on their spouses or try to get new partners after a divorce or two. Even my mum was hit on some years back by a freshly divorced guy working at the building where her office was. But guys having wishful thinking are common too.
Singapore's much less conservative than I thought. Apparently having an active sex life is pretty important for local people and ranks higher than the obligation to not cheat on their spouses.
Of course, these middle-aged people have no need to maintain their marriages for their children since they're all grown up. That's one excuse I hear sometimes. If their kids no longer need them to be together to bring them up properly, why stay in an unhappy/unsatisfactory relationship? Hence in this situation, cheating isn't wrong.
Will the guys in the BC do it too? We'll find out in 25-30 years. All guys love their wives like crazy in their 20s and 30s. After that, I'm getting the impression that it changes. I wouldn't know because my father's been dead for over decade and my mother still worships him.
Anyway if anyone in the BC has an extramarital relationship in the future, I won't reveal it here. But what are the chances? Only 1 in 10 couples in Singapore get divorces per year. What are the chances?
Oh no! Internet causes depression!
Nah, it's all just theories.
They can't get their minds off the Internet, they feel agitated if they don't get back on after a short period of being away... They don't want to see friends, don't want to join family gatherings, don't want to spend time with parents or siblings.
I don't seem to have a problem with the first two the last time I checked while in Malaysia. As for the rest, it's pretty true for me only because I hate to sweat, and I sweat profusely when I step out of my home. Anyone who knows me knows that. In fact I keep 2 spare clean handkerchiefs in my bag whenever I go out.
But I can also kind of understand why they "don't want to see friends, don't want to join family gatherings, don't want to spend time with parents or siblings." If you spend as much time online as I do, you get used to the different style of communication used online. It's different. For one, you have plenty of time to think and research before replying to anything when chatting online. Another difference out of the many I can think of is that you can lie very easily online.
Real life conversations require instant reactions. I don't like to respond instantly. I make tons of mistakes whenever I do that and sometimes become incoherent when I'm tired.
If you spend most of your time typing instead of talking with your mouth, eventually you'll find speaking to feel slightly unnatural. Sucks that you can't hit Backspace while in speech mode.
The study involved 1,041 teenagers aged between 13 and 18 years in China's southern Guangzhou city who were free of depression at the start of the investigation.
Nine months later, 84 of them were assessed as suffering from depression and those who were on the Internet excessively were one-and-a-half times more vulnerable than moderate users.
Another possibility is that people whose characters and mental states are more prone to depression tend to use the internet more often.
Several other studies showed a link between the two without clearly pointing which was the cause and which one the result.
That would add a little weight to my suggestion above. The experiment for this would be easy. Find a thousand depressed people and give them free broadband internet access plus an introduction to websites that may catch their interests.
Normal people like me avoid that board. All they do is persuade each other to commit suicide, regardless of the askers' problems.
The loading screen music of Starcraft 2 reminds me of Planescape: Torment. I think it's the instrument used and not the music itself but I have no idea what was used to play the piece.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMEe7JqBgvg&feature=fvw
Can't embed. Guide to internet trollbait comments for dummies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs&NR=1
Again, can't embed. If you're familiar with Minesweeper and its rules, this should be funny to you.
"The clock's gonna keep ticking till it reaches 999!"
"What happens then?"
"Nothing. You just suck."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzgEi_u9-88&list=SL
Like before, can't embed.
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