The Who: Baba O Riley

What bad hairstyles!



Out here in the fields
I fight for my meals
I get my back into my living
I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right
I don't need to be forgiven
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Don't cry
Don't raise your eyes
It's only teenage wasteland

Sally, take my hand
We'll travel south cross the land
Put out the fire
And don't look past my shoulder
The exodus is here
The happy ones are near
Let's get together
Before we get much older

Teenage wasteland
It's only teenage wasteland
Teenage wasteland
Oh, yeah
Teenage wasteland
They're all wasted!

statistics and lies.

we could set out an entire website on the misuse and abuse of statistics. some of them involve drawing spurious correlations from sparse data sets.

but then there is also stupid probability and lies dressed up as something interesting, or as page fillers. what not to do if you are a journalist:

Excerpt from the Daily Mail, about the FA Cup draw

"Once Clemence had plucked Blackburn from the bowl, the odds were stacked hugely in the FA's favour. A 66 per-cent chance of getting the winner from the two remaining replays. Only a 33 per-cent chance of drawing poor old Watford next."

This is absolute rubbish. Blackburn had a 66 percent chance of facing Man Utd or Chelsea before the first ball was drawn. The fact they were the first ball to be drawn changes nothing.

To illustrate this, say Man United had been drawn first. What is the conditional probability that Blackburn would face them. 1 of 3 remaining balls was blackburn, thefore 33%.

If Chelsea had been picked, the conditional probability is 33%. If Watford was picked, also 33%. Sum up the conditional probabilities and they add to 1, the daily mail has taught us nothing new with that statement.

Still, there are many desperate and smart Russians around who would tell you the same thing. It is interesting how many postgraduate scholarships there are for someone of Eastern European origin

"Nous chassons la richesse quand nous avons la vie
Nous chassons la vie où nous avons la richesse."

kena ask to translate by alex. interesting how when we write, we want to think that everyone is reading/listening, that we have this device that can warp time and space. for example, i didn't read this until march 9, 2007, but when he wrote it on the 28th of february he wrote it as if i were reading it already.

yah it sounds cheem whatever, but it is not one of my favourite french phrases. you also forgot to mention that german also sounds cheem, but that it doesn't look sophisticated and sounds like philosophy or things tumbling over themselves. sorry german speakers. but they must have very precise long words though.

we chase wealth when we have life
we chase life where we have wealth

actually, this kind of thing english also got equivalent saying also right?

occasionally when i stay up late at nights i have the opportunity to trawl through blogs, stay on msn, and do all the things an ex-lonely boy used to do. materially, nothing much has changed, it isn't that my life is positively full and bursting of people.

i wish i were an evangelist now. evangelists irritate people sometimes. i occupy a hole between different types of friends. some friends say, why blog? why share your love, joys and insecurities? on the other hand i have friends whose blogs i trawl, heart on sleeve etc. associated with the first camp, is the viewpoint that the thoughts that matter, you share with someone you can talk to, or otherwise they are invalid and teenage anyway. with the second camp, a kind of shouting from the mountain top. "i want to sing, it's fresh like spring... i want yes i want to pass yes to pass it on passiton passiton passitpassitpassiton." couldn't resist.

why tell the world that you love someone? why don't you just tell her? write it in your diary? but you know, i think it's difficult sometimes. what is in the literature known as "quality time" is in short supply. sure you could create it, but when you feel like talking, i'm doing work, when i feel emotional, maybe you're already sound asleep. so you put off what you have to say sometimes, and the impetus goes away, or comes as unexplained tears (of happiness/sadness?)

when i was lonelier, i wanted to project my feelings onto things. i wanted to think that trees felt sad, or daffodils were happy, or that this protagonist of that book over there was going through the same depths of despair. you notice things more. i was more sensitive.

haha,actually alex blog very nice to read. it's like watching the progression of someone. mine has started to fill with gaps.

no, i guess i don't take a lot of photos of me and michelle anymore. we should more often. maybe posting photos of us together would be my evangelical message. shun the non-believers. shun. i do love her, i wish i had the ability to succintly summarize our relationship in a paragraph without embarassing anyone, (because we did have many experiences, and how many will we forget?) and to sing "jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. red and yellow black and white we are xxxx in his sight, jesus loves the little children off the world.

i have succeeded in attracting mortal scorn, but i have written what i wanted.

just went to read a student's blog, freezingpainoflife.blogspot.com, one of my ex-students, who is now doing o levels now.

come to think of it, from when i taught him (sec 2) and now he is sec 4, and in the same 2 years, i went from post-army to year 2. i seem to think that i learn less than him when i actually think i learn more. i learn to be overseas, for example, like independence and all that. but somehow, thinks seem more constant.

i like how secondary school blogs are all about pain death and destruction and the constant crush of homework. but, his life still sounds quite fun, and normal anyway. nothing too bad. he is a good catholic boy and will grow up to be well-adjusted. interestingly, under dislikes, he lists boot lickers, backstabbers and weird people. i thought these people were by definition bad.

aiyah, i thought i was quite weird also leh. i am not mould-breaking, but i am a little bit weird. if only i can let teenagers come to grip with weirdness. i think that should my aim in life. btw, he so young also think abt aim in life... respect.

today, must go advise year ones don't gey kiang, cause got course choice advice meeting. haha. see, how to use advise vs advice. spelling not accidental one. got rules.

the power of sleep

i must have forced myself to sleep before 12 last night and actually slept until 7.45 or so. the power of 8 hours of sleep. instead of nightmare i have nice dream about a couple who should be together awww.... it was so tempting, either play game for 1 more hour, do some econometrics, prepare for presentation today. in retrospect, alcohol makes me sleep well i think. because it forces me to sleep. cider is mild enough for me.

i cannot imagine how i used to wake up at 5.35 everyday. In retrospect, i guess it must help being sent to school because i did enjoy waking up early and getting to school early, sometimes to do work, but otherwise to waste time. its inhuman by the time it gets to the afternoon though. in jc, at least you could skip lectures to sleep but i was always so tired. ok, army also everyday wake up at 5.25 to do 5BX but everything was inhuman about the army lah.

the biggest reform to singapore's education system is to start school at 9. i think some ex-sleepyheads will finally catch on to school and start doing well.

received this poem today. i like it.

you're dirty baby you know it's true
if only everybody were dirty like you
no more wars we'd all be through
staying at home masturbating or wanting to screw
each other's asses with a giant bamboo

http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/di971051/97p0034z/0

article on why we obey authority, procrastinate, and join deviant cult groups. and why simply having a price mechanism for incentives is not as effective as deadlines, bans and outright rules. examines the role of time-inconsistency in our decision-making. i think economics in the states is cooler, they interview drug addicts and all!

i like the part about how doing stuff in groups, with much vaunted teamwork and all, can lead to "groupthink" and the gradual giving up of principle. this happens everywhere.

"The problem is, Jesse, I don't think you really understand procrastination."
- comment on my attempted exposition of time-inconsistency

You are speaking to someone who sits on his ass the until deadlines come and even then fails to meet them. yeah yeah i know i do get my work done on time mostly but still...

it's a simple concept, but i think i haven't delved deep enough into it.

I think you need ATHENS or some sort of university journal access though.

I went to see a certain faculty member today, and i realised that one of the qualities an academic should have is to never shut up. regale undergraduates with your war stories about seeing meade and keynes and etc. i think its interesting how people who love talking function, i guess it just has to come from deeply wanting to share what you've experienced as well as honesty, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. i think you realise it can hurt people sometime, but it's a good thing, because you knock them early. i am utterly amazed by people who can just say what they feel.

but it's still nice to see somebody so happy to talk about work. now i respect people who are happy. i think it is very difficult to be happy in the modern world. not happy in the content sort of way, but happy enough to be able to keep talking and talking and living in a child's world. not entirely successful. "I don't publish enough because i only really get down to writing when i feel its right." It's not success then it's doing what you're comfortable with.

"madam, life without you is like a broken pencil."

"explain?"

"pointless."

london saw proper snow last week, snow enough to build snowmen and to drench you as you walk to school. snow that makes everything white and pure and clean.

falling in love is like writing a book for some.
wannabe authors are always looking out for beautiful, or beautifully ugly things to write about. then they find something to write about, and they get quite proud of it, and soon they want to write a story and share it with the whole world. then they grasp for words trying to write an introduction, and many give up, because what they have seen cannot be put down in words. all just for want of a proper introduction - Jesse Oeni

COOL.

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.

What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.

"Against Unworthy Praise" W.B Yeats

~~~~~

SHE is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I have gone about the house, gone up and down
As a man does who has published a new book,
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook
Until her praise should be the uppermost theme,
A woman spoke of some new tale she had read,
A man confusedly in a half dream
As though some other name ran in his head.
She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.
I will talk no more of books or the long war
But walk by the dry thorn until I have found
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, and there
Manage the talk until her name come round.
If there be rags enough he will know her name
And be well pleased remembering it, for in the old days,
Though she had young men's praise and old men's blame,
Among the poor both old and young gave her praise.

"Her Praise", W.B Yeats

I'm sure Mill would approve.

I had such a good time trading puzzles today.
If you're interested in reading a bit about economics, visit http://economics-society.com/journal/
layout isn't complete yet, but i look forward to have more articles as contributors for lent term come in.

was feeling down today, but luckily there was that great working-class opiate, football to the rescue. except it wasn't really working class, i ended up in stamford bridge watching abramovich's millionaires thrashing wycombe (my football manager squad)

just as i was around virgin megastore, they played alanis morrissette's "that i would be good". sort of a sign perhaps, or just perhaps a desperate plea, that we'd all be accepted even when they're our worse selves. the problem is, we hardly know how bad we look at the time do we?

i don't know how much of my life is different because my alcohol dehydrogenase gene clearly not as effective as the normal-type ones. i've tried training up my drinking, but the fact that i puke easily, go red quickly is surely a sign of poor ethanol metabolism.

interestingly, it is caused because the mutant strain causes my liver to metabolise ethanol to ethanal too fast, but ethanal to ethanoic acid too slowly. ethanal is more toxic to the body than ethanol, thus the build up produces the wide array of side effects. on the other hand, it prevents you from drinking more and developing fatty acid deposits in your liver cells.

i always thought though that i'd be healthier because i'd consume less alcohol, but i've been poisoning my body with ethanal all this while.

"Although many people with this condition view it as a lifetime inconvenience, some people have suggested that they can condition their body to be more tolerant of alcohol with repeated, moderate drinking, perhaps increasing the concentration of ALDH2 to metabolize acetaldehyde. Unfortunately, acetaldehyde is a known carcinogen; recent research suggests that Alcohol flush-afflicted individuals consuming alcohol continually may be at a higher risk for alcohol-related diseases, such as liver and esophageal cancers and digestive tract cancer"

i puke because alcohol irritates my gastric lining and causes it to increase production of gastric juices. if i take famotidine (heartburn medicine), it will reduce this, and apparently is a competitive inhibitor to the faulty alcohol dehydrogenase. this will remove the ethanal clog, but ethanol levels remain high for longer periods, causing you to get inebriated easier.

well, i hate alcohol. don't let me touch it again. i'm not gonna get euphoric, relaxed or have my CNS depressed anyway. i need something else to keep my GABA ion channel open longer than normal.

i have experienced this before, once or twice. it's the 3rd level before stupor:

Confusion (BAC = 0.18 to 0.30 %)

• Profound confusion ? uncertain where they are or what they are doing. Dizziness and staggering occur
• Nausea and vomiting often occur.

my nausea usually comes after just a few drinks though. so more often that is probably caused by the aldehyde?

more commonly

• Lethargy (BAC = 0.09 to 0.25 %)
  • Subject may become sleepy
  • Their vision becomes blurry. They may have trouble sensing things (hearing, tasting, feeling, etc.).

and occasionally, short periods of time (the good part)

• Euphoria (BAC = 0.03 to 0.12 %)
  • Subject may experience an overall improvement in mood and possible euphoria.
  • They may become more self-confident or daring.
  • Their attention span shortens. They may look flushed.
  • Their judgement is not as good ? they may express the first thought that comes to mind, rather than an appropriate comment for the given situation.
  • They have trouble with fine movements, such as writing or signing their name.

ergo, not worth it. harder to make friends though.

today we started on game theory, and they started with the nash bargaining problem. deep down i want to be an asshole cause it's all cool and rational and i'd bid ?1 out of ?1 (the game is where 2 people bid for portions of a pound, and if the bids sum to ?1 or less, each person gets the money). of course, any 2 bids summing to 1 make sense. if i wanted to maximise my utility i'd bid for the whole pound, but who would bid 0? mayb 99p then.

why not bid 99p? there is a chance he is so risk averse he just ends up with 1p (better than nothing right). and if the bid goes over ?1, heck, both of you didn't get any money anyway, so none of you is relatively better off. if you're an asshole, perhaps no one matters.

except everyone plays the game everyday in pairs. when you get nothing, you're not comparing yourself with your partner (although probably the partner occupies a disproportionate weight when you're comparing). but you look at other pairs and see them getting 35-40, 67-20, not perfect, and you wonder whether your 0 is great.

so you think, well, isn't there the trust thing. play it many times. we'll learn to each bid 50, cause you can punish people for being assholes. but in life it doesn't work that way. assholes look for other suckers who do not know your game history, so in effect, you're starting the game anew. how to stop getting suckered? bid 99p. but you'll find that so many times you'll end up getting nothing and you're so desperate for some absolute payoff (not relative ones) that you'll start bidding lower. don't flinch.

the cheaters in life win, subject to the conditions above. but they need suckers to do it.

but watching house, you seem to think life is scary either way, whether you're always bidding 99p and ending up cold, lonely or settling for some 1p marriage that is all a pretend sham and you'll be divorced anyway. trust is a pipe dream, love is an illusion, only sex and babies and wedding rings are real.

THIS IS ALL PSEUDOSCIENCE. DON'T BELIEVE ME.

i'm now looking for "what i learnt in a-level or year one" but written and published in an economics journal. figured i won't have jstor forever. it's my new hobby, to improve my economic literacy.

Why you should do an econ PHd. (just a suggestion)

Economics now is like medicine in the 1800's. we didn't know what dna was, we didn't have mri's, most patients died from surgery and even childbirth could kill. we didn't care much about cancer because malaria and TB got to everyone first, and even influenza.

claim 1: economics is hardly a science because they disagree so much about fundamental things in the economy (such as expectations)

i remember jeff sachs said once in his book about ending poverty that good economists should be like doctors.

econometrics are like diagnostics tests. they use an mri, we us m0 to see what is happening to the money supply (strangely enough, nobody bothers anymore, because we disagree whether to use m0, m1 or m2). we take all sorts of statistics, (cpi or rpi) for inflation, national income statistics to watch the deficit.

the problem with the limited economics i have learnt so far is not that people disagree. it's because you treat macroeconomics as one whole big body of people who seem to behave the same way (because the mathematics is too complicated if we try to individualize them).

maybe we envied the wrong science. if we break down macroeconomics into pathways and relationships between the various organs, (bond market and money market), housing, central bank etc etc, we'd be able to arrive at the differential diagnosis. now we only know that gdp is going down, (oh no, myocardiac infarction), so we take out defibrillators, nitroglycerine, morphine, etc. and pump pump pump. we don't know what causes the underlying, so it could keep coming back.

we need to know the biochemical pathways of economics. that way we will eventually have slaves of statisticians injecting colourless dye into money or doing whatever it takes to find out where money flows, why it flows and how we can make it flow faster or slower.

economics has its successes, and like good medicine, it needs crises and anomalies to learn. unfortunately, more people die everyday than economies go into collapse. economists shouldn't be responsible for gdp growth, that's the workforce. it's supposed to be responsible for recommending the right incentives and institutions. and i think we learn from our past cases, we do have central banks regulating money supply, we know how to react better when a stock market crashes, but we still can't get it 100% right everytime because we don't know the pathways. pathways will teach you motives.

it's the japans and bolivias of this world that make it interesting.

and we haven't even talked about microeconomics yet!

"get me a wald test on whether B is 1"

the blonde guy on house is called jesse!

"It was great seeing Annie again and I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, you know, the, this, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, uh, my brother's crazy, he thinks he's a chicken,' and uh, the doctor says, 'well why don't you turn him in?' And the guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they're totally irrational and crazy and absurd and, but uh, I guess we keep going through it...because...most of us need the eggs."

Woody Allen

happy new year

kingsway tunnel. one of the few occasions there's no cars and only new years revellers going back. i always enjoy the new year fireworks, they were f***ing fantastic this year. best i've ever seen in intensity.
we had fun smuggling in the sparkling rose (no champagne?!) into the "no glass bottles" area. i've always been a by the book guy, so i'm bad at that kind of thing. jingxiang did it for me. we found 2 other people with real champagne and we threatened each other menacingly. when new year came my memory of it was three groups of people popping sparkling foamy alcohol gushing into a sole empty spot which no one wanted to stand in for fear of getting doused. cheers and drinks.

happy new year. my official resolution is to be more sociable. i say official because it was what i was forced to say.

watching house enthralls me though and i am more absorbed by his personality than any f***ing post-new year resolution archetype.

so perhaps my resolution is to be a failure in my interpersonal relationships but have a great sense of humour and also to be right most of the time. this will allow me to keep all my eccentricities at the slight expense of occassional depression. but it also comes with the ego of knowing someone can't forget you cause you're special and oh-so irresistible the way you save peoples' lives with complete irreverence and while fiddling with some random thing, and have an unconventional moral compass.

oh come off it, it's a tv show.

are you charlton in disguise?

fa cup 3rd round weekend... almost every league club in the uk is involved in this fixture this week. my team went down 3-1 of course, but my adopted team fared rather better


fantastic away support today from brighton... 5000 of them packed the centenary stand.
it was quiet at first, sitting with the home support, and they taunted us with "are we gonna hear a song?"



bobby moore stand, where the more hardcore west ham fans would be. at least the more vocal ones. players come on the field and they sing "bubbles", which is their "you'll never walk alone"

I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high, nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams they fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.

aww... how sweet. and apt, probably, for a team that isn't gonna win the league soon.
and it's fun to dream anyway, like getting to the finals of the fa cup and letting in a last minute equaliser cause stevie g is only at one club. just like life! it's unfair. i like.




"one carlos tevez. there's only one carlos tevez"
i thought it'd be a better pun if it was "juan carlos tevez", but i don't think his first name is juan. sung to the tune of "guantanamera" btw.

every match i attend live, the home side wins. no exception, 3-0 this time, tevez actually is suited to the english game. by that i mean he has enough upper body strength usually to hold on to the ball, and can cut through defenders easily. doesn't pass as much as he can now does he cross fantastically well though he caused some problems. certainly not as lazy as made out to be, seeing this short guy jump up with tall brighton defenders. luis boa morte played well on debut too. you can really feel it when it rains, and it's hard to play good football. all the goals went in when the rain dried up.

it's fun after you score the first goal.
massive relief for upton park crowd who aren't used to winning.
then you can sing "you're not singing, you're not singing, you're not singing anymore! you're not singing anymore"

2nd goal
"are we singing, are we singing, are we gonna sing a song? are we gonna sing a song?"
followed by
"let's pretend, let's pretend, let's pretend to sing a song. let's pretend to sing a song."

3rd goal
"easy easy easy easy easy!"
the confidence is back, and even the young 7 year old kid says "charlton f*** off"
clearly they believe they can avoid relegation though.
but i think all this stuff about buying shawn wright-phillips is getting to their head.
i think they'll escape though, curbishley is a sensible manager and they have money to spend. it's hard to see who will go down in their place but sheffield united are looking shaky.
they've got games against fulham, newcastle and villa they have to win.
but i think they've still got charlton and watford at home.