I am very much disheartened by the reactions of the anti-homosexual bigots. I do not understand why they cannot listen to properly reasoned arguments, and instead choose to continue beating the straw man.
In fact, here’s the latest volley of rubbish.
Students are very impressionable and prone to hero-worshipping teachers that they like. By admitting that he is gay, Mr Otto Fong has issued an open invitation to students to find out about his lifestyle and perhaps some of them might want to follow in his footsteps.
Mr Fong’s sexual lifestyle is his own to live. As a teacher, as his ex-students have already testified, he has maintained a separation of his personal life and his profession. The author is very rude to question Mr Fong’s professional integrity, and his ability to keep his personal life separate from Teaching.
It is the gay lifestyle and its implications that most people are wary of.
“It is Patricia Maria De Souza’s battle cry for discrimination against another person’s lifestyle and its implications that most people are wary of.” Any person who looks carefully can see that both statements are similarly unsubstantiated.
There are gays who live their choice of lifestyle quietly but there are others who aggressively try to influence people to follow suit.
I don’t understand why this is wrong. Christians aggressively attempt to convert people to Christianity all the time.
These are the ones who, if they are teachers, may cause the most harm in schools and elsewhere.
In so, we can also conclude that Christians cannot become teachers, because they are the ones who, if they are teachers, may cause the most harm in school and elsewhere. The “harm” in this sentence isn’t clear.
Let us not be too harsh on gays but let us not be blind to the dangers they pose to society and mankind.
This sentence is the main source of my irritation. The author is actually concluding that gays are a danger to society, but we should not be harsh on them? People, if something is dangerous to society and mankind, do you keep a warm hand of tolerance? This is akin to saying that “Terrorists are a danger to society and mankind, but we should not be too harsh on them.”
Gays are NOT a danger to society and mankind – the only danger they pose is towards conservatives who cannot bear to have their sensibilities tainted by the fact that someone else likes another person of the same sex. There is, and never was evidence that homosexuality has harmed the world. I invite those who think otherwise to pursue the full list of notable homosexuals, and perhaps reply in the comments below on how each of the people on that list has harmed society and mankind.
The problem doesn’t lie with the people per se (you would have seen the reaction on the Internet is quite the opposite the official position stated in the newspapers) – in fact, there are more views that support non-discrimination against gays online, versus the extremist conservative position in the Straits Times. Given its reputation as the “nation building” broadsheet, it is a strong reflection of PAP members’ stand towards gay people.
I apologise for making analogies to Christianity to this post; however, it was necessary to explain the absurdity of this author’s argument. It is unfortunate that these bullet-ridden holes in logic manage to gain acceptance in this country as one of the tenets to discriminating gays in this society. However, I have long since understood that logic can be thrown out of the window in the presence of politics, as Ho Peng Kee has demonstrated.
That given, the debate on homosexuality will likely continue for the forseeable future with the anti-discrimination camp dragged into illogical argument after illogical argument.
Scribbled under:
Current Affairs
My semester results came out last Wednesday, but I’ve been thinking about whether to post them on my blog. It’s embarrassing, actually; what with all that bravado and talk about “crushing the competition”. In fact, I haven’t even told my parents of the outcome, because I don’t even know how they’ll react.
In fact, the school was quite thorough with its duties: it made sure to send the result slip to my house (although it was still addressed to me), which I quickly intercepted.
However, after thinking really hard and long (this post of around 200 words took 3 hours to write), I think that I should come clean with everyone. I won’t tell my parents yet though, because we’re having some disagreements, and I don’t want to aggravate the situation.
See the results
Scribbled under:
General
Approximately 2 years ago, Blogger was hosting this blog. They had many problems with their servers, and I got quite frustrated by the downtimes. So I thought, “Ok, I might as well host the whole thing myself! At least I can do better than them!”
I was so wrong! Managing your own hosting is a different game altogether – you would have to make sure that the server is running, and that it isn’t overloaded because your neighbours (I’m sharing the servers with a few other people) decided to host pornography on the same server as you. Plus, you would have to manage your own blog publishing software, which in my case is WordPress. You have to make sure that you update the software each time there’s an upgrade, complain to the web host when things don’t go right, and stay on your toes for hackers. Thank goodness for the fact that my web host is managing all the security patches for the operating system, the firewalls, router configuration, etc, or else I might unwittingly turn into an unpaid web server administrator!
Well, managing a server is not that bad, but given the choice of having more free time versus spending time managing the back-end stuff for a blog that doesn’t make any money, I’ll choose the former; but being the darn cheapskate, stereo-typical DIY-to-death person that I am, forking out money to have someone manage my web hosting is way out of my options. In fact, I spent an entire day wrestling with a non-working graphics card on my PC to diagnose a problem, rather than call in the technician, even though my PC was still under warranty. The good news is that Stubbornness has so far allowed me to learn a lot more about electronic gadgets than I would have if I bought a new one each time something broke, and it would probably be very useful when I struggle with program codes that refuse to work correctly.
Even so, there are still some things I am powerless to fix.
Here’s a snap-shot of the server statistics during normal hours. You can see that there is a decent amount of CPU time lying around, doing absolutely nothing – which is good. Servers are supposed to sit around and do nothing until a visitor requests for a web page.
Now take a look at this snap-shot taken when the whole world is trying to reach the server. The load average shows a 7, which is quite bad. A normal web server should have a load average of around 2 or 3.
For a start, this server is shared with other domains, some of which I know are porn websites. It kind of turns you off when you think about it. The high load was probably not generated by SgBlogging sites, since I’ve checked the statistics: we only account for about 2% of the total server load in a day.
Ah, then what about the remaining 98% of the server load? Who took them? I have no idea. In fact, I don’t know how many people are sharing this server, but I feel a bit exploited, kind of like you share in the money equally to buy a cake, only to get… 1/50 part of the cake? I wouldn’t have really cared for this, if not for the fact that it has come to a point that the sites on the SgBlogging domain have started to crawl really badly. 37 seconds to get to a page is too long!
I’ve already sulked to DreamHost about this situation, but there’s been no reply so far. I’ll see how it goes. Virtual Private Servers at some other web hosts look quite inviting.
Scribbled under:
General
Don’t you think that everyday, we look as if we’re taking some mode of transportation? The happier days seem to take off and land even before you’ve finished doing nothing in bed, while the downer days are the CTE morning traffic – smoky, noisy, frustrating.
 Well, these days I feel like I’m on the EKSPRES RAKYAT. It’s like you’re hopping from station to station at a constant rate: neither too fast, nor too slow. It’s the poly school holidays, people! I know that it could have been better I can share the same vacation period as the rest of my close friends, but an evil plot to keep polytechnic students away from undergraduates has made sure that vacations are “sure-miss” events. It hasn’t driven me crazy, but I’m way social-life-less than I liked.
Some bad news: apparently, through some weird miscommunication, I missed the registration deadline for the eGenting programming competition. The registration form looks to be still alive, so I’ll send in the application now, and hope that they don’t notice late-comers…
Aside from reading up casually on Java and Visual Basic.NET, I have been lurking around current affairs blogs more frequently. Reading and ranting on nonsensical Straits Times forum letters make up the rest of the day, and I participate very keenly in complaining about people who complain about little stuff. You’ll be shocked that there are people whose letters get published, simply for suggesting establishing fund transfers for hell money. It’s not like there are letters on topics of more concern to the people, like the implementation of annuities, raising the CPF withdrawal age, increasing ministers’ salaries, hiking GST rates, squeezing of more expensive bus fares from the common citizen, and the police’s harassment of joggers in public, are there?
Dear me no, from the looks of it, it appears that the Straits Times is hard pressed to find letters to publish! That implication really sickens me. We know that’s not true. So while most of the country lies safely ensconced in the little bubble created by the Straits Times, I fret like a mad old man, writing about how things aren’t what it seems. Heck, these days, only educated retirees bother to write about these things. Me? I feel terribly aged already.
It’s a trend in Singapore – only retirees have the time to keep watch for the common citizen’s interests. The rest of Singapore is too busy making money to stay alive to write anything meaningful. Those who post credible arguments are taunted by the PAP to join a political party. Duh! People have to work for their own living, unlike politicians who get the job easily through walk-overs. If everyone with a political opinion were to join a political party, 80% of the United States would all be politicians (and I would have gone over there to pick up all that work that won’t be done, and earn mega bucks!).
I’m sorry to have digressed, but you’ll see that vacation is just about the only time when I have the time to rant like a retiree. I’m not a political activist, nor do I foresee myself becoming one. My dedication is to my family and friends. Short of getting a traumatic concussion that turns me into a babbling conservative, I do not believe I’ll ever enter politics. I need to start planning for my life. Already, I’m considering relocation as a start. With the government’s possible implementation of yet another scheme to take control of my own money out of my hands, this land might be the worst place for me to eventually retire in.
Anyway, my semester results are coming in on the 12th this month, and the anticipation is tying me up in knots: this is my first assessment grading after my NS stint, and I want to set it off with a huge surge. You know, like blitzkrieg. George Bush would have called it “shock and awe”. I just hope I don’t give myself the shock by awing the world with a fail grade.
Scribbled under:
Current Affairs, General
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