Gender

I’m doing revision for my Japanese Studies paper now for the Gender section by reading the intranet forums for the module. We were made to watch a drama in which a female character with questionable sexual orientation was the protagonist (Ruka).

Without delving into much details about the drama, I have to say that the forum thread on the drama is the most popular in the entire module forum.

Also, it seems that the girls like to think that Ruka is clear of her gender identity from the start and doesn’t have Gender Identity Disorder, while the guys like to think she is incredibly confused and doesn’t have an idea whether she is female or male. I will not provide evidence to prove or disprove either stand, but I find this rather interesting. As clicking post after post show that girls and guys support the respective stands.

Yes, I didn’t have time to read the forum posts on this topic during the semester and am trying to make up for it 1 day before the exam D:

Symbolic Universes and Pseudo-science

Caution: This post is just a collection of concepts linked together with a minimal amount of interesting real-life examples. Its not completely useless but it will be very different from other posts around here. Just wanted to collate my thoughts in some place.

I’m going to talk about taken for granted realities again and its going to be a more refined form of my previous posts, as I’ve more time to digest what I’ve read about 6 months or so ago. That’s what public transport does to ya.

Every one of us has a symbolic universe which essentially constructs our reality. We peer into social reality through this symbolic universe. You could say that this symbolic universe is like a pair of glasses that you wear to be able to make sense of social life around you. Without this pair of glasses, you would go insane and start doing all kinds of weird stuff, since you can’t figure out why things are happening.

Sociologists of knowledge like to talk about two kinds of reality: subjective reality and objective reality. Objective reality is the reality presented to you by the institution, in this case the Singapore government. Subjective reality constitutes a huge part of your symbolic universe. It is the reality that you feel and perceive when you have just left your mother’s womb. Individuals that have just been born into this world have a very skewed view of objective reality and usually reject it (thats why babies cry all the time). This all changes when the infant receives primary socialisation from his or her parents. Primary socialisation is deemed successful when the individual subject to socialisation achieves a high symmetry between the given objective reality and his personal subjective reality. Overlapping parts of objective reality and subjective reality, makes up an individual’s symbolic universe.

Symbolic universes are, fortunately or unfortunately, taken for granted. A huge part of symbolic universes are constructed out of what most laymen call “common sense”. When someone does something that does not agree with a socialised individual’s symbolic universe, we say that our symbolic universe has been impeded upon. Sometimes you hear one of your friends say “that guy has no common sense!”. Your friend has just suffered an invasion into his symbolic universe. He has seen something through his “lens” that does not agree with his subjective reality and thus has to be ejected quickly. Or else his symbolic universe is at risk of being destroyed. His symbolic universe is threatened, and he has to do something about it. Usually, he would solve the problem by getting a coffee and complain about the invasion to you.

Common sense is never verified but accepted by everyone. It is a piece of knowledge that is omnipresent and omniscent. It is functional in the sense that it simplifies the daily interactions between people. It would be difficult to get along in life if you cannot take the people around you for granted, if every sentence that everyone says has to be verified scientifically and empirically. Imagine all your daily conversations with your friends turning into some form of oral defense. That wouldn’t be pleasant, right?

I have said that common sense is accepted by everyone, but what about pieces of knowledge that are not accepted by everyone, but only selected groups of people? When people get together, they will be able to verify whether their symbolic universes overlap and check what kind of knowledge is taken for granted. For example, when one of my peers say “Get a life lar, Kian Wee!”, I know exactly what he means even though I don’t verify what he means down to the minute detail. People sharing the same symbolic universe will be able to use taken for granted knowledge within the symbolic universe. If I say “Get a Life!” to my father for example, his “lens” will not show him the same imagery that I get when one of my peers tell me to get a life, because he has constructed a seperate symbolic universe for himself. These pieces of taken for granted knowledge within symbolic universes are what sociologists call pseudo-science.

Pseudo-scientific concepts, like scientific concepts, have to be understood before they can be applied. But the big difference between pseudo-scientific knowledge and scientific knowledge is that, scientific knowledge at least has some empirical proof behind them while pseudo-scientific knowledge on the other hand, is more based on feel and the symbolic universes shared by people who happen to have to be together. Good examples of a formal pseudo-scientific constructs are astrology and Emotional Quotient (EQ). Even though there is no proper scientific basis for such constructs, their participants still nevertheless actively partake in their usage and promotion.

Banning something non-addictive is never the solution

Remember when the Soviet government banned Christianity during the cold war?

Ok u might not remember, but i remember it from my reading packages.

When the ban was lifted after the cold war, 25% of the country became devout Christians in a short period of 2 years.

Point is, banning something is NEVER the solution to any social problem or good that is non-addictive. Wake up your ideas noobs.

A Beginner’s Guide to Warstorm

I’ve been playing this really fun online TCG called Warstorm and wish I played it earlier. For starters, it was not originally created on Facebook but rather, is a port onto Facebook. Which means having neighbours isn’t going to help you as much as other Facebook games. It may look like Magic at first glance but is really completely different. There is no summoning sickness for example, and you are not allowed to use detailed tactics and control. You just build your squad and the computer will take over and pit your squad against the enemy squad in automatic battle.

To a person who has played magic, this may seem really dumb since you can control everything in magic. But as the game creators put it, Warstorm puts you in the combat boots of a general choosing the correct squad to do the job. You are not a Captain or a Lieutenant on the ground directing specific combat maneuvers. You just select the men and junior commanders for each squad, choose the squads you want to deploy and set them loose on your enemy. There is an inherent luck factor involved but if you have better tactics (choose the correct cards) and cards than your opponent, it is unlikely that you will lose at all.

The first big difference from magic is that one squad only consists of a hero and 6 other cards (for a maximum of 7 cards) which can either be artifacts, spells or soldiers/creatures. The heroes I’ve seen so far can utilise a minimum of four creatures and a maximum of 2 artifacts or spells. So if your hero commands 6 creatures, you cannot utilise artifacts and spells. Since the victory condition in Warstorm is either killing all your opponent’s creatures or reducing his morale (life in magic) to zero, choosing the correct hero for the correct type of battle is crucial. You don’t want all your creatures to die too quickly, because you will lose even if you still have plenty of morale.

To provide a glimpse of the depth of strategy involved in Warstorm, I am going to compare the difference between 2-squad battles (total of 14 cards in the deck) and one squad battles (7 cards in the deck). As a Magic player first-hand, I would expect choosing cards with very low delay (equivalent to mana cost in magic) as a good strategy for one squad battles. Turns out that this is exactly what you DON’T want to do in one squad battles. Using a good mixture of creatures with different abilities, some artifacts and a longer delays is what turns out to work best in one squad battles. I’m providing pretty advanced strategy here because I realise its the easiest to plan for 2 squad and 4 squad battles, but 3 squad and 1 squad battles are still eluding me (especially the bloody 3 squad battles). But what I know is that for one squad battles, variety works best.

For 2 squad battles, the best strategy is to just use a ton of monsters with low delay (like the weenie concept in magic) and just rush your opponent. For my 2 squad battles i have a total of 8 creatures with 2-turn delay, 2 attack and 2 defense. And they just rush rape my opponent’s morale to zero before he has a chance of bringing out any high delay (more powerful) monsters. Don’t have to use advanced spells or artifacts seriously.

The battles may be automated, but if you don’t pay attention to the automated battles running, it is very unlikely you will be able to improve your card selection decisions for any particular battle. I find this really refreshing and interesting, and its counter-intuitive in a sense. After losing about 6 battles to a very strong army and watching every battle, I greatly improved my selection strategy for 3 squad battles and crushed the enemy with a 25 morale difference.

In a nutshell, it is a fairly complicated game and definitely worth playing. However a problem is that you should have to spend some money to at least get more squads for multi-squad battles, because the game only gives you 2 to start with.

My nightmares are getting less scary but more creative

Dreamt I was talking to a bunch of aunties in navy uniform and they were telling me how its up to the commander of the ship whether they are able to manage their personal lives well. Luckily their commander is a good one, and gives them off at appropriate times.

Then met an auntie in policewoman uniform that tried to drag me and my sister into a cell but I gave her a good one on her nose. Then I woke up.

Aunties got me going for the 8am tutorial even tho i planned not to go for it.