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| Keep em short, sweet and to the point |
| 05.05.04 (12:40 am) [edit] |
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I have made up my mind, that I'm not going to get read otherwise. Also have to start linking to other people and posting this site up on chatboards. Oh boy, here goes.
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| The American Idol - Jennifer Hudson fiasco |
| 04.28.04 (7:57 pm) [edit] |
Elton John says American Idol is racist!!!
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0" title="http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0" target="_blank"http://www.eonline.com/News/I...,1,13984,00.html?tnews
So as the self-designated Dispeller of Myths the Dumb Populace Hold About Themselves, I have to tackle this one.
What exactly do people expect of American Idol? There are all these middle class dreamers out there that think the show actually finds these amazing diamonds in the rough, and that one actually gets to watch a superstar being made on tv.
What a load of crap.
American Idol is a show that identifies one hit wonders that are likely to appeal to white teenage girls between the ages of 12 and 19.
This is the Leonardo di Caprio set. The Brittany Spears set. The teeny bopper hearthrob set.
I admit, the range of viewers for this show is huge, but the people who feel passionate enough to vote are not representative of the whole. And that is the problem.
Let's look at the facts:
1. Quality of the talent: some of these kids are really good singers. But really how good is good? As we all know, good enough for Paula Abdul is not the same as good enough for Simon Cowell. In the same way, good enough to be a one-hit wonder is not the same as being good enough to be Diana Ross or Madonna.
The fact is that it's really not that hard to be a platinum selling rock star.
American Idol is watched by about 20 million people a week in the US alone.
The winner at the end of the show will have had by my calculations, somewhere is region of 120 minutes of prime airtime. According to Nielsen, a 30 second ad spot on American Idol costs $250,000.
So what does that translate to?
That's right, the American Idol winner would have had the equivalent of a cool [u][b]60 MILLION DOLLARS [/b][/u]spent on advertising him in three months.
Hell, with that kind of money, anyone could become a rockstar. Even William Hung.
But these kids are not real musicians, and will not have any more than 3-4 years in the limelight. Look forward to turkey follow up albums.
2. Demographics
Demographics definitely played a part in Ms. Hudson's sending off. AI, just like the presidential elections, is a democratic contest. Hence the same factors come into play.
Everyone has different musical tastes. Some people hate country, some people love rock etc etc. Hence everyone is going to be predisposed to a certain type of music, and a certain kind of character that delivers it.
The problem last week arose because you had three divas dividing up the same R&B/soul loving fanbase.
Meanwhile on the other side you had:
Jasmine Trias = the cutest girl left, exotic to boot = the teenage boy's heartthrob
Diana Degarmo = the only white cheerleader type girl left, the pick of white moms and aunts all over the country
John Stevens = Both the hearthrob and the momma's boy rolled into one. The only white male left. I can't stand this kid, can you please grow out of your sick Freudian fascination with your grandmother?
George Huff= the cute entertaining black man. Have you noticed yet that the black men in AI are the least threatening, teddy-bearish black men you will ever find. Won't ever find George talking about bitchas and hos, no massuh.
Sooner or later the demographics start collapsing into one another, as eliminated fanbases get rolled into one another.
So there's my take, my predictions for the winner coming up soon.
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| ghastly numbers on this blog |
| 04.13.04 (1:18 am) [edit] |
How do I get more visitors dammit!!!!
I want more people to read this damn thing.
Maybe I should spice it up a little, I don't think anyone wants to read my moralistic, hell bent orations on the state of the world and Singapore.
Especially Singapore.
Ok, so I need to change the topic of this darned thing.
look for more interesting things on the morrow.
[url=http://blogs.salon.com/000200...]Aha![/url]
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| More NUS and NTU entrance foolishness |
| 03.15.04 (7:13 pm) [edit] |
Singapore Varsity Entrance Changes
You know why the dumbass Singapore government is having this problem don't you? Because they're afraid to tell people that you don't have to work that hard to get ahead. And that would mean that you don't have to be a scholar to be a minister and that would mean...
Yep.
That those assholes in the PAP have no right to be there anyway and wouldn't if Singaporeans weren't such as ass-whipped bunch of sissies.
How do I make this conclusion?
It starts off with the fact that places like Stanford have admitted for a long time that the pool of qualified candidates exceeds the number of places available.
Qualified by their definition means a minimum GPA and SAT score. Beyond these minimums, other 'soft' factors like the extra-curricular activities and the essay come in.
But admitting to the same standards in NUS would be insane. It would mean that NUS would admit that 3 Bs in the A-Levels is enough qualification for Medicine!!! Which is the grade that most British universities use as their minimum.
Shocking.
And if that's the minimum for medicine, imagine all the other courses??
Talk about reducing the incentive to study in JC.
And then there is the problem of selecting from this huge pool of people with qualifications then.
ECAs. The government has already installed this ridiculous points based CCA system. It's absolutely stupid. I mean what if I'm very involved in community service with my local community centre, IT'S NOT COUNTED!!!
The CCA points system obviously shifts the purpose of getting involved in these activities from doing it out of interest to doing it because you have to. Also this forces students away from doing what they love anyway. So my private piano, guitar sessions with my band, my interest in bird watching and photography and scuba-diving, all interests that cannot really be catered to in a school environment, all made to seem like a waste of time.
See the problem is that the government refuses to stand for the tenet of letting intelligent people choose for themselves.
University admissions officers don't have to be stupid. Let them pick the best students using more broadly defined criteria. Let essays, interviews, ECAs and test scores play a part. But don't SET THE STANDARDS. Maybe a below average student should get in because he's more interested. The acid test should be HOW LIKELY THE STUDENT IS TO SUCCEED IN LIFE. Not academics alone.
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| Kansas, Iowa football sex recruiting scandals |
| 03.07.04 (5:33 pm) [edit] |
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/aponli...]This just in[/url]
Ha, how shocking. A college football recruit might actually have been offered sex while on a recruiting trip.
I never.
Good God, when are people going to get the fact that tons of college athletes get laid because they're athletes anyway.
And that the college campuses of America are full of dumb coeds who would bang an athlete just for the heck of it, hell, even the smart ones do once in a while.
But no... we have to get all hoighty toighty about it. Why? because we have this crazy puritan morality
jeses
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| International Women's Day and Ivy Sing-Lim |
| 03.04.04 (6:12 pm) [edit] |
So the Channel News Asia breakfast morning show today had Ivy Singh-Lim, President of the Netball Association of Singapore, and Raj Kumar, radio sports broadcaster sparring about the role of women in sport.
And Ivy just had a bone to pick, you know she was making all these broad generalizations and Raj was not intelligent or well spoken enough to play defense. So I'm going to have to step in to regulate.
1. Golf and women playing in men's tournaments: Ivy went on about how men are scared, and women should be allowed to play in men's tournaments and blah blah blah. And it was all one big jumble of penis envy and rhetoric without really looking at the issues.
Issue: Lot's of people think that Annika Sorenstam should not have been allowed to play in the men's tournament, and neither should Michelle Wie and the rest.
Why the issue exists? Not because of discrimination (as Ivy implied). The issue exists because Annika nad Michelle getting the right to play in these tournaments is unfair to the male players as a group.
huh? Are the guys scared of the girls, as Ivy said? no.
Then why?
The reason is that Annika and Michelle should compete with the men on the same terms. Golf tournaments run Tuesday to Sunday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, players who are not good enough to enter the tournament proper are invited to play. From this field, 4 will receive spots on the actual tournament. This is the sponsors exemption. Then on Thursday to Sunday, they will play with the great players who did not need to qualify. There will be the cameras and the fame and the pleasure of playing in an actual PGA tournament and playing with the best players in the world.
Annika and Michelle received AUTOMATIC SPONSORS EXEMPTIONS WITHOUT NEEDING TO EARN THEM.
This is what pisses people off. A sponsor like Amex, is giving an exemption in order to get some extra free publicity for the tournament. This exemption is given to someone who has already earned their fame and fortune in their own right. Meanwhile SOME POOR BLOKE who wants nothing more than to spend his life playing the game he loves, who earns 20,000 dollars or less a year, who drives to tournaments in his ten year old car, lives in cheap cockroach infested motels and plays to qualify, hoping to someday win and make it, is deprived of the opportunity.
This matters because last year, there were major tournaments won by unknowns like Ben Curtis.
This matters to people like Vijay Singh, who used to be a poor journeyman golfer, who was hitting golf balls in Borneo and teaching loggers golf, while refining his swing.
So what do you have to say to that?
2. Women's sports have no funds because men control the world and they don't want to fund women's sports
Ivy said Singapore netball, which has a much higher ranking than Singapore soccer, receives insufficient funding and that this is because of a male conspiracy.
Oh please.
There is only one female sport that receives more funding than its male counterpart and that is women's tennis, because the girls are cure, wear short skirts etc etc.
It's a market forces thing. Women just don't watch sports as much as men do. Men are obsessive about it. Women just aren't.
Secondly men are simply superior atheletic machines. Stronger, faster, etc etc. After having watched the amazing things that men can do with a basketball, who is going to impressed by a women player? Viewers don't cut women the slack, they DON'T WANT TO WATCH SOMETHING THAT'S AMAZING FOR A WOMAN,
THEY WANT TO WATCH SOMETHING AMAZING, PERIOD.
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| Ethics in Finance |
| 03.01.04 (10:01 pm) [edit] |
So I'm taking my Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1 Exam in June. It's supposed to be this hot financial knowledge qualification charter that allows you to get a nice cushy job in the finance industry. It's from the [url=www.aimr.com]AIMR.[/url] 10% of the exam is about financial ethics.
SO I start reading the Standards and Practice of Ethics Handbook.
What a load of crap. If anybody followed that set of ethics they would be be stuck in the lower rungs of every company they ever work for.
For eg, it is against the Standards to leave a firm and try to take your personal clients with you, or try to take your valued personnel with you to your next firm.
Ha.
It is against the Standards to obtain a slightly better deal on your company's employee trading accounts in return for allowing slightly higher fees on the client accounts.
Ha.
It is against the Standards to give a friend of yours from Business School a slightly better deal just because you know him.
Ha.
If your supervisor tells you to do something unethical, for eg, rate a stock a buy instead of a sell, you should consult your firm's general counsel, then your own legal counsel and if all else fails, resign from your position, citing ethical conflicts.
Ha.
Really.
In my opinion, the purpose of having these ethical guidelines and requiring people to study them, is to point out the difference between the unethical and the illegal. This is the area I would call the PROFIT MARGIN.
After all, if unusual profits must arise from somewhere, no?
In fact, the Standards and Practice were a great introduction to how make unusual profits, thanks for teaching me the tricks of the trade guys.
It is yet another inconsistency in the American psyche. How publicly we have to avow our good intentions and good deeds, while privately throwing them out the window in order to benefit ourselves.
I bet every single one of those guys with that CFA charter, sitting on the board of directors of the AIMR has committed multiple violations of the Standards. I bet actually that they've done it millions of times and don't even give a fuck anymore, except in public.
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| Ethics: Window Dressing and Lip Service |
| 02.26.04 (6:48 pm) [edit] |
:oops: This morning the spying on Kofi Annan's office debacle hit the fan. There was such shock on all sides that the British government went as far as bugging the office of the SecGen of the UN!! Oh my god, it's the end of the world.
:wink: Let's get really honest. When the stakes are high enough, ethics fly out of the window. I'm always amazed at the level of hypocrisy and dishonesty that exists at the highest levels. "I did not inhale", "I did serve in the Alabama National Guard". As a future Wall Streeter, I'm required to take a course on ethics, what we learn is to recognize what the ethical guidelines are IN ORDER TO PROTECT OURSELVES BETTER WHEN WE IGNORE THEM.
:( This is a sign of our times. In the modern era prior to the end of the Cold War, people had real security and economic issues which forced them to ignore ethicality in favor of survival. But today, when the dangers have receded, suddenly ethics become an issue and the laws of the game have changed.
:shock: But this is all absolute bullshit. As Enron and the Iraq war, as well as sports doping have demonstrated, the only rule that still exists is DON'T GET CAUGHT. It's not surprising that corporate law students are being taught by their law professors to advise clients to retain only the bare minimum of documents and get rid of everything else as soon as possible.
:x And then there are those poor middle class SOBS, suburban soccer moms still teaching their kids to tell the truth, be good and you will be rewarded. Get a life.
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