
Previously: The impossible art of Li Wei
• For users from 15-24 years old, Friendster is 2.2 times larger than Facebook and over 8 times larger than MySpace. Friendster has 313,000 unique visitors while Facebook has 141,000 and MySpace has 38,000.If you look at the 25-34 yrs old and the 35-44 yrs old categories (the demographics highly attractive to most advertisers), Friendster is only leading by a small margin and I think the results may not be that significant. We all know that the age group of Facebook users is a lot more mature than those using Friendster and this shows in the figures above. And judging from the increasing number of Friendster users migrating to Facebook, I think it's just a matter of time before Facebook takes the number 1 spot away from Friendster in Singapore. In fact, I won't be surprised that it already has.
• For users from 25-34 years old, Friendster is 1.5 times larger than Facebook and over 8 times larger than MySpace. Friendster has 248,000 unique visitors while Facebook has 164,000 and MySpace has 30,000.
• For users from 35-44 years old, Friendster is 1.6 times larger than Facebook and 5 times larger than MySpace. Friendster has 149,000 unique visitors while Facebook has 92,000 and MySpace has 30,000.
• For users from 45-54 years old, Friendster is 37% larger than Facebook and over 6 times larger than MySpace. Friendster has 100,000 unique visitors while Facebook has 73,000 and MySpace has 15,000.
Why would people want to get stuck with staid, stolid government careers when they think other people can offer them more challenging, more exciting, better-paid jobs? The proletariat classes have found job security to be based on nothing more than empty promises. Six years of indentured labor is not an asset, it is a fatal liability, a sign that they don’t trust their recipients to do the right thing. Is it any surprise that the recipients chafe under this paternalistic, supercilious arrogance?
The government agencies handing out scholarships have the power to tilt the balance. They set the rates, they set the agenda. They can make better deals than the ones that have served our country so well in the twentieth century. The government makes a big deal about maintaining Singapore’s competitiveness, and not being complacent. Yet it seems to turn its blind spot on its immense complacence regarding Singapore’s competitiveness in the top-echelon labor markets.
Minute one: In a darkened bedroom, Axl Rose, lead singer of the enormous Guns N' Roses, is taking tablets.
Sleeping tablets, we imagine, but we don't know how many. We could therefore assume that everything following this is either a drug-induced dream or a memory of events that might have led up to a sleepless/possibly suicidal state. We cut to a large G N' R concert filled with screaming fans, and then, in contrast, to Axl playing the piano alone in a deserted chapel and, for some reason, a desert.
Minute two: Axl tosses and turns in the large lonely bed. We cut to a cathedral, with cute flowergirls throwing rose petals and a statue of the crucified Christ that appears to be weeping blood. Down the aisle walks a beautiful bride who, though she has remembered her corset and train, seems to have succumbed to general memory failure when it came to the lower half of her dress.
A script has now been completed and one sneak preview of the screenplay has called it a "fanboy masterpiece" in which "Lord of the Rings meets Matrix and a little Batman Begins thrown in for good measure."Update: Here's the Grayskull: Masters Of The Universe script review. (Thanks GeekGod)
Marks also co-wrote the screenplay for the exciting superhero movie project Green Arrow: Escape from Supermax. His live-action adaptation of He-Man is titled Grayskull: The Masters of the Universe.
Information on Marks' first draft came out from movie site Latino Review but has gone largely under the radar, perhaps because it is at such an early stage with no director or actors attached to the project.
In the story, Prince Adam of Eternia is able to transform into the superstrong He-Man by raising his sword; at the same time, his cowardly tiger Cringer becomes Battle Cat. They and several companions defend Castle Grayskull from the evil sorcerer Skeletor.
Western newspapers, NGOs and human rights groups like the IBA's Human Rights Institute prescribe Western norms as the way for other countries to "join the ranks of modern democracies." But not every Western norm is suitable to all countries in the world. Singapore cannot allow those who carry no responsibility for Singapore's future to dictate its political and legal systems. Singaporeans know that they have a noncorrupt government and an independent judiciary. They live in one of the top five most transparent countries in the world, with the freedom to express their views, oppose the government and take part in free and fair elections. Singaporeans will choose for themselves the shape and norms for their society.Previously: Press Secretary to MM Lee responds to Wall Street Journal
We take naming objects in the solar system very carefully. We’ve picked out the names for Quaoar (creation force of the Tongva tribe who live in Los Angeles), Orcus (the earlier Etruscan counterpart to Pluto, for an object that appears much like a twin of Pluto), Sedna (the Inuit goddess of the sea, for the coldest most distant Kuiper belt object at the time), and Eris (the greek goddess of discord and strife, for the object that finally led to the demotion of Pluto). Each of these names came after considerable thought and debate, and each of them fit some characteristic of the body that made us feel that it was appropriate.
Coming up with a new permanent name for Easterbunny was the hardest of all of these. Orcus and Sedna fit the character of the orbit of the body. Eris was so appropriate it is enough to make me almost start believing in astrology. Quaoar was, we felt, a nice tribute to the fact that all mythological deities are not Greek or Roman.
But what for Easterbuuny? It’s orbit is not particularly strange, but it is big. Probably about 2/3 the size of Pluto. And it is bright. It is the brightest object in the Kuiper belt other than Pluto itself. Unlike, say 2003 EL61, which has so many interesting characteristics that it was hard choosing from so many different appropriate name (more on this later), Easterbunny has no obvious hook. Its surface is covered with large amounts of almost pure methane ice, which is scientifically fascinating, but really not easily relatable to terrestrial mythology. (For a while I was working on coming up with a name related to the oracles at Delphi: some people interpret the reported trance-like state of the oracles to be related to natural gas [methane] seeping out of the earth there. After some thought I decided this theme was just dumb.) Strike one.
A flying ghost at Changi Hospital, a playful tree spirit at Bedok Reservoir and the ghost of a girl who died at the famous Yellow Tower at...