10k

Words have it that there will be 2 marathons on the 5th of Dec this year. One by Singapore Sports Council, the other by Singapore Athletics Association. Honestly, SAA's marathon better start generating a lot more hype. Else, they are going to lose to potential participants to SCC's (which is already in swing). The latter's proposed routes cover Sentosa Gateway, Orchard, City Hall, Marina South and East Coast Park. It does not leave much road space for SAA's marathon. I have no idea how SAA's marathon is going to work out. We just have to wait and see.

Out of loyalty to Standchart, I signed up with SCC for a short 10km run. There. I can strike out one of my New Year's Resolution No. 4. There's just too much going on in my life now, I cannot keep up with training and running. 10km seems reasonable to help me ease in the scheme of things. Perhaps 21km mid next year and 42km end of next year.

Resolution No. 1 and 5 seemed slightly uncertain now, as my prof dropped me another carrot.

reverse rationality

It turns out that weekends are much more tiring than weekdays. There's so much catching up to do over the weekends that I am looking forward to weekdays. I pretty much like my work (i'm paid to learn), energy at the work place is high, PR cocktails and dinners are brief and light. Shuttle bus rides to and fro work are long but peaceful; bringing lots of convenience to my life and allowing me read quietly. Weekends, on the other hand, are unpredictable. There was a last minute request which almost robbed me of a whole long weekend.

Right now, I'm itching to go out as I have a whole day of shuttling around ahead of me. First, my grandma's place, NUS, Queensway shopping center, Funan IT mall and Parkway Parade. Except now I can't leave until my mum comes back from the market. Do you know the urgent feeling when you want to go to the washroom, but you cannot leave until the end of the talk? I'm getting the same feeling right now.

ironically, i will get recuperate over the weekdays.

murphy's law

After an unplanned sequence of clicking on follow up links on web pages, I ended up on a page explaining Murphy's Law. If you want to know, I actually started off at my homepage, ST online, and passed by a Great Nikon Sale page. Coming back to the point. It was pretty surprising to see Murphy's Law (something which we used so carelessly in our daily speech) to actually have a physical meaning in the form of murphy's equation.

"Murphy's Equation"-Joel Pel

* skip this part if you are not interest in the formulation

Here, P_M is the Murphy’s probability that something will go wrong. K_M is Murphy’s constant (equal to one) and F_M is Murphy’s factor, a very small number that can only be calculated on a 386-computer running Windows 3.1. Here we will approximate it by F_M ≈ 0.01. Similar to previous work, I, C, U and F are parameters on a scale of 1-10 describing the situation of interest. I is the importance of the result or outcome of the event, C is the complexity of the system, U is the urgency and F is the frequency. From these 4 parameters, virtually any event can be described. Plugging those numbers into the equation with the appropriate constants will then give the probability of at least one thing going wrong. To get an idea of how this works, lets look at some specific cases.

First, to start with a simple example, lets calculate the probability of the clutch on a 1989 Toyota Tercel ceasing to function 100km from home at night in the middle of a rainstorm. The importance of the clutch working in this situation is obviously high, but no one is dying, so lets estimate an 8. The system is fairly simple compared to other systems in the car, so C=5. It would be nice if the clutch worked soon, so the urgency U would also be around 8. Finally, the clutch only needs to work for one drive home, so the frequency is low, say F=1. Now, putting these parameters in Murphy’s Equation shows that P_M=1. Comparing to experimental data, this number matches exactly, as the clutch did indeed cease to function at this time. Repeating this calculation with I=7 also gives P_M=1, showing the robustness of this equation.

Moving to a more complicated example, lets examine the case where the clutch has failed in the above example, but calculate the probability that the flashlight needed to inspect the clutch doesn’t work, the front half of the hazard lights on the car don’t work and that the trunk where the few tools are kept has 3” of water in it (remember its raining). In this case, Importance is about the same, an 8 or so (its hard to justify higher than this without a life or death situation). Here, C=4, as the flashlight, hazard lights and trunk are all fairly simple systems. Because it is raining and the driver is now stranded, the urgency can be bumped up to a 9, while F=3 (three events need to occur). Putting these values into the equation gives a P_M of 1, which is indeed what did happen, showing that again this equation matches experimental data very well.

* from science creative quarterly

What I had thought of as a pessimist's explication of his world view had metamorphosed into a physical equation.

an equation derived from human's compulsion to measure everything..

comme d’habitude

One good thing came out of working at Changi. I am now waking up naturally before 7am; even before the alarm goes off; even on a public holiday.

time to run.

my life in paris

By Emma Jane Kirby, BBC News. Her piece speaks volumes about the cultural city; i hope you guys will take the time to read it to the end.

"The river Seine formed a key part of the backdrop to the three years I spent as the BBC's correspondent in Paris.

My apartment partly looked over the river and almost every time I opened my window I could hear Edith Piaf belting out La Vie en Rose as a bateau mouche, crammed full of tourists, floated past my window.

For a few beautiful seconds, my heart beat alongside hers... and then she was gone, her little sparrow's voice drowned out by the man on the loudspeaker saying: "Next stop Town Hall and sorry, but there are no toilet facilities on board this boat."

Despite its charm, the Seine has never been able to swim free of such splashes of scatology.

Until the late 19th Century one of the river's principal functions was to serve as the city's sewer, a job she carried out admirably, dutifully transporting dysentery and typhoid to any Parisian foolish enough to ingest her waters.

Today, as a result of concerted clean-up efforts by successive governments, it is alleged that Atlantic salmon have begun to return to her currents.

One hot night last summer I was standing with friends on the bridge by Notre Dame, staring down into the dark ripples of the Seine when a flash of moonlight picked out a large fish below us. I am no angler, but I can tell you now that the foot-long, blunt-nosed, prehistoric-looking creature we saw swimming slowly downstream shared no common ancestry with the salmon.

Hideous and unsettlingly alien, it swam into the blackness, leaving us all chilled and with a foreboding sense that the river had much bigger secrets to share.

'Running red'

Bobbing just beneath the glassy surface is the sluggish undercurrent of the Seine's dark past.

Throughout French history, from the religious wars to the revolution, the river has swallowed the last breaths of hundreds of unfortunates who found themselves on the wrong side of power.

And far more recently, in October 1961, during the Algerian war of independence, the river was said to have run red after scores of peaceful demonstrators were beaten to death and tossed into the water by the French police.

These days the Seine is carefully patrolled by the river cops and I used to love to watch them in their motorboats speeding up and down the river - until I realised quite what they were fishing for.

In the first year alone of my residence in the city, more than 50 bodies, mostly suicides, were fished from the water.

Straddled by prejudices

There is a great judgemental dividing line between the two very different river banks.

In choosing which side of the Seine you wish to live on, you immediately make a statement about your beliefs and your ideals.

Go left and your sympathies are socialist, your interests aesthetic and your passion, equality.

Go right and you are a conservative, your interests practical and your passion - business and money-making.

Surprisingly, given the ease with which it has taken so many lives over the years, the Seine has been unable to drown the deep-rooted prejudices that straddle it.

Each Saturday lunchtime I used to go for an aperitif at the Maubert market in the heart of the left bank's Latin quarter, where an impromptu club of local people talked politics around the stall of Ibou, a striking Senagalese art seller.

Naturally, being "left-bankers", the talk largely centred on ripping apart the recent actions and speeches of the right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy while Ibou - who always had a copy of the left-leaning Liberation newspaper or the satirical Canard Enchaine under his arm - skilfully directed the debate.

And then one day last year a stranger jogged past the stall and shouted a greeting to Ibou in passing.The left bankers enquired as to the stranger's identity and, slightly awkwardly, Ibou admitted that he knew him from his "other market stall club on the right bank".

When the shock had passed, one of the women, with nothing short of an anthropological curiosity, asked: "What are they like then, these people on the right bank?"

Drawn to water

I made a strategic decision to choose neither bank in Paris and instead had an apartment on the Ile St Louis, an island floating peacefully - and impartially - in the centre of the river.

I felt very much at home cradled in the bosom of the Seine, but in my building at least three of my French neighbours complained to me they suffered from a chronic insomnia, blaming the swirling, unsettled currents of the water that surrounded them for churning up their sleep.

Since I have moved back to Oxford, I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time strolling the banks of the river Isis - some strange, atavistic urge drawing me to water.

Sometimes I even catch myself searching for a bateau mouche among the sculling boats and punts.

Early this morning, in the backwash of my slumber, that prehistoric-looking fish I once saw in the Seine suddenly finned into my dreams."

i missed walking along la seine. eating ice cream. passing time.

she

has got a tongue piercing. I gulped as I watched her played with it. A metallic taste filled my mouth. Images of torn tongues and blood filled mouths flooded my mind. She must have noticed the blood draining from my face. "It's been a long time already.",she said. I swallowed my saliva and asked, "Doesn't it hurt?"

"shhhh... zip it. physically."-cj

If you observe carefully, for it to work, the zip shouldn't be at the edge of the tongue. it should be in the middle. You can only zip outwards.

do not make your bed

"Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe.

Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies. A Kingston University study discovered the bugs cannot survive in the warm, dry conditions found in an unmade bed...

...The scientists developed a computer model to track how changes in the home can reduce numbers of dust mites in beds. Researcher Dr Stephen Pretlove said: "We know that mites can only survive by taking in water from the atmosphere using small glands on the outside of their body. "Something as simple as leaving a bed unmade during the day can remove moisture from the sheets and mattress so the mites will dehydrate and eventually die." " - BBC News

Mum, u reading this? now i have a scientific excuse.