I’ve thought about it and the only situation that warrants the use an analogy to bring home a point is when one has run out of examples and facts. Analogies feed on emotions rather than logic. If you can come up with one quick enough, you will appear spontaneous, funny and clever and win the audience even if your logic is faulty. Often, a person is led to belief that their point has been “proven” by their clever use of analogies – which is another way of saying analogies make idiots think they’re smarter than they really are.
I cannot argue with the entertainment value of analogies, but apart from that, I don’t see them carrying all that much weight – not unless they are very closely related to and carry useful meaning to the topic at hand. But then again, if they were that accurate, I’m not sure if they can still be called analogies.
They are still very much in vogue now, but in a few years time, they will be passé – first in humour and then slowly, in general use. If you don’t believe me, find your favourite comedian now and catch them using an analogy now, and record them. Come back in a couple years and listen to it and see if you don’t say, “Wow. I used to find that funny?”
Trust me, they’re on their way out. You read it here first.
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As mentioned earlier, we were getting our election updates on Saturday from MalaysiaKini.com and its mirror sites. The traditional media (all the TV stations and many of the newspaper web sites) were several hours behind in their reporting. Utusan was also giving very up-to-date reports that day.
Malaysia Kini made their web site free for one week to give the public a source of independent news so that they could make more informed choices at the election. Today is the last day it is free. Give it a read. If you like it, subscribe to it. Don't be left out of the loop like this poor guy.
My wife is already subscribed, so I can read over her shoulder.
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Before the elections on Saturday, many people were telling me that they thought Barisan Nasional wouldn't get a 2/3 majority of parliamentary seats like it had always done in the past. I was contrarian and thought that they surely would - partly because I didn't dare to hope otherwise, and partly because I was skeptical of the so-called new transparency implemented by the Electoral Commission.
My wife and I stayed up late reading about all the BN's shock defeats across the country on MalaysiaKini.com. I want to say it was a pleasant surprise to finally receive the news at 2.42 am that the BN had finally lost its 2/3 majority but the wait was actually really nerve-racking. Now my faith in the EC and in parliamentary democracy is somewhat restored.
We've had a day to let everything sink in. Everybody I see and meet are still talking about how shocked they are at the way the BN lost. The truth is they still won by a comfortable (simple) majority. Forget about the historical context for a moment and just see the present for what it is. Then you'll realise that the BN is still our ruling coalition - only, with an opposition presence, which is no big deal in a real democracy.
The fact that we have been trusting our ruling party with a big enough majority for them to change the constitution willy nilly for 51 years is actually then the extraodinary part.
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Our baby goes everywhere with his portable clip-on fan. I threw the box away long ago but I think it's called a Laser Fan. It runs on two AA-sized batteries and when it's on, some mesmerising LED lights come on and keeps your baby in a trance. Or at least, that's what it does to our baby. I was a bit concerned about it triggering epileptic seizures at first, but after awhile, it was just mildly annoying. After awhile, the lights stopped working on ours and some friends have asked how we managed to disable them. I wasn't sure, but for the past few months, we've been very happy with our lightless fan until it broke down recently. I took it apart and found a wire had detached from the motor. While I fixed that, I had a look at the lights and figured out how you could easily disable them.
All you'll need is a small Philips head screw driver.
The motor compartment is held together from the bottom by three small screws. Remove these.
You can see the motor here but the picture doesn't show the two screws in front of the motor, holding the fan blades/light circuit compartment together. Carefully take the motor out to gain access to these screws and remove them. Be very gentle with the wires as the solder joints are very fragile.
This is what it looks like inside. Two button batteries power the light circuits. One springy thing acts as a switch. When the fan turns, centrifugal forces push the spring outwards to make contact and close the circuit, turning on the lights. These batteries won't last forever, so if you don't want to take the fan apart, you could always wait for them to run out. But since we've already got the fan in pieces, let's move on to the next step.
Grab the whole circuit board and wiggle it loose. The whole thing should come out easily. You can cover the holes where the LEDs poked through with some masking tape if you don't want them to collect dust.
Put everything back together and you're done. Your AA batteries might even last a bit longer now that there is less mass for the motor to turn.
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There's no end to the amount of products out there that claim to help your baby eat, sleep, learn, breathe, walk, jump, crawl, exercise and defecate better. Lately, I've been taking pictures.
This thing is called an Exer-saucer. Talked my wife out of buying it. It's a pair of pants that keep the baby upright, kind of like a walker, but instead of walking, the baby just learns to spin around and play with the toys around him.
Talked her out of this one too. It's a diaper bag that doubles up as a seat cushion. It seemed only marginally useful, didn't seem to fasten securely to the chair we tested and cost more than a good high chair.
These aren't books, they are your "Infact Development System". How do you keep a straight face saying that to a customer?
The rest of the pictures are quite self-explanatory...
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