To oversimplify society for analytical purposes, we can assume that society is made up of two kinds of people: conformists and deviants. Conformists are people who believe in conforming to social norms, and do not question such norms. Examples of such social norms include being hardworking, empathetic, accepting that only certain types of media are appropriate for consumption and so on. Unlike conformists, deviants break established social norms. The sociological definition of a deviant is someone who breaks established social norms.

Conformists are afraid to break established norms because they are afraid to receive sanctions, or social punishments, for breaking these norms. A good example would be being afraid of being chided by friends for skipping lectures or tutorials. This is despite the fact that some established social norms are inherently unfair to the individual, and are outside his control. When a conformist encounters a situation where he is being punished for a social norm which he is unable to prevent, even though already invested much effort in preventive measures, he usually externalises the event as an exception to the norm. If you are unable to visualise such an event, you are either not old enough or you are so anal that you will block out unpleasant events and think that life is 100% fair. If I am required to provide an example, I would usually refer to unpleasant incidents that occur during group projects in a university due to the perception of certain group members as opposed to the perception of some other group members. Or I could refer to the perception of the parents of Generation Y citizens on computer games or K-pop. This is where I believe that the conformist is wrong.

The conformist is usually caught in a never-ending dilemma when required to confront such situations. He instinctively is able to recognise that such situations are unfair, because he usually does not have an IQ of a rock. He is usually given two choices as dictated by society in such situations:

1. Resist. Prove that the existing norm is wrong and risk receiving social sanctions over and over again.
2. Give up and conform to the norm.

By choosing option one, the conformist in effect has become a deviant. If the conformist chooses option one, it becomes starkly obvious that he is deviant. Other conformists that witness the deviant making a fool of himself over and over will be reminded why it is not wise to deviate and thus, usually choose option 2. The conformist can stick to option 1 and remain deviant, or like most people eventually choose option 2. Other conformists that witness the deviant in question being punished before becoming conformist again will then conclude that, it isn’t worth the effort to choose option 1 and in the future, are likely to choose option 2 in such situations.

What I have described so far is one sociological device that maintains an oversupply of conformists in society. By studying this device in detail, it is possible to see that the reason why this device is so highly effective is precisely because deviants are fooled by society into believing that they have only two options. It is also precisely the reaction of the deviant that prevents other conformists from breaking existing norms and thus deviating. It is also the reaction of the deviant that causes him to suffer sanctions in the first place. This is because even though he chooses to break some social norms, he still doesn’t break other norms such as honesty and integrity, as an example.

Intermission summary of concepts:

1. Deviants deviate in society because they feel some established norms in society are unfair.
2. When choosing to deviate, most deviants do not deviate for long due to the way they react while deviating. This maintains an oversupply of conformists in society.
3. The reason why many conformists do not deviate in society is because of the reaction of deviants to social sanctions applied on them when they make clear their intentions to deviate.

Now I know many people usually accept that life is unfair. I however, after accepting unfairness for very long in life I would have usually done the same. But i was fortunate enough to take a sociology module in my first year of university studies. It is however faulty to believe that everyone who studies sociology thinks the same way as me, although it is possible that they can. Most people I know, even sociology majors, keep sociology separate from their lives. It is the choice to apply sociology to your lives that makes the difference. It is however not that easy a choice to make, because sociological theories are rarely biased towards a set of beliefs like for example religion. And thus accepting it as a whole can sometimes be quite painful.

I have already established that it isn’t “wrong” to choose to deviate in life, because life is inherently unfair. However, it is definitely unwise to deviate from all social norms at once, because some norms are actually fair and not unfair, and those are the norms you want to leave alone as they are good and have reason to be part of society. Another trap some deviants fall into is taking the “all or nothing” approach when they choose to deviate and go and commit murder or suicide. This is another sociological device that will again reinforce the status quo on how conventional deviants react to social pressure. Thus if you need to deviate from select norms, what should you do?

You should do is of course, not react in a way a conventional deviant would react. This means, you shouldn’t make it obvious that you are deviant. This is the trap that most deviants fall into, and some of them even take pride in their deviance and make it part of their personality (i also have a sociological critique of the concept of personality as a sociological device, but I will leave it for another post). A more easily recognised deviant phenomenon can be derived from Japanese 2D sub-cultures such as anime and manga related spin-offs such as cosplay. Being proud of a deviant activity will place you into choice 1 outlined above, and you will thus eventually slip into choice 2 like a “fool”.

Also when breaking a norm, it should be noted in order to be successful in breaking the norm without being caught, it is required to break many other norms as well. Believing in universal norms is another trap that you will fall into. Breaking one norm without breaking others such as honesty and integrity will usually lead to failure. You must remember that you are dealing with unfairness here, and thus there is some justification in breaking said norms.

Well that is all for now I guess. Please look forward to subsequent editions of Sociological Application, if you enjoyed this edition.

There are 4 Main Qualities in Echo Bazaar:

Dangerous – Your competence at combat and intimidation.

Watchful – Your deductive and intellectual capability.

Persuasive – Your skill at influencing others through speech or in writing.

Shadowy – Your ability to remain physically undetected to others. Also a measure of criminality.

It is only necessary to focus on two attributes for the duration of the entire game in order to fulfill an ambition. It is not necessary to concentrate on Dangerous, just because it determines your combat ability. Focusing on any other attribute is similar to focusing on Dangerous, as the game isn’t combat focused. The rewards are similar if you choose not to focus on Dangerous. You however have to focus on your Dangerous quality if you wish to engage in player versus player combat. For this reason, I chose an ambition that requires me to build my Dangerous quality (although building Persuasive seems fun too because you can unlock storylets that allow you to two-time two ladies at once).

Even though there is no explicit hit point system in Echo Bazaar, you will be punished by increasing levels of Menaces when you reach the higher levels (Dangerous 34, Watchful 35 etc etc.):

You acquire Wounds if you fail a high level Dangerous challenge. If your Wounds quality hits 5, you will be sent to a slow boat passing a dark beach on a silent river.

You acquire Nightmares if you fail a high level Watchful challenge. If your Nightmares quality hits 8, you will go into a State of some Confusion.

You acquire Scandal if you fail a high level Persuasive challenge. If your Scandal quality hits 5, you will be exiled to the Tomb-Colonies.

You acquire Suspicion if you fail a high level Shadowy challenge. If your Suspicion quality hits 5, you will be sent to New Newsgate Prison… Again!

There are various ways to reduce the various Menaces before they become a problem, but I will not discuss them here.

I feel one of the most important RPG-style decisions you have to make early on is selecting free items based on the Main Quality you want to focus on, and later on choosing an ambition that requires that quality. For people who like PvP, then Dangerous is unavoidable. Otherwise the Persuasive ambition seems lots of fun.

Truth was, I enjoyed the company a lot more in those 3 hours down there rather than the need to quell the anticipation. best_lame (we really dislike calling him Ignatius, or Iggy, or whatever other weird iterations of the base name) wasn’t there with us, but in my company was Daniel Tan and Nicholas Lee, both of whom I’ve known since secondary school. I really wanted to follow them elsewhere after getting the pre-ordered copy, but I had to be back home to run an errand, then shower and change to go drinking with a few other buddies. Didn’t get to install the game until the next day at night.

I gotta say that, having no beta experience and having watched very little beta game play SC2 videos, my first impression of the game was “wow, Blizzard impresses again”. Off-hand, the feel of the game was great and it both felt like playing an old game and a new game together. Quite a feat accomplished by Blizzard there.

But after maybe give and take, perhaps 8-10 hours of gameplay over a week plus or so, I have to say that the single player campaign is getting a little too draggy for its own good. I’m pretty sure those who have completed the campaign are going to want to punish me by revealing spoilers if they found out (I’ve gotten to the plot twist already though), but to be honest, I’ve never found the StarCraft storyline to be very exceptional, especially since I have experienced many well-varied forms of story-telling. The Lore isn’t bad, but the story isn’t anything to wow at.

Which brings me to another gripe about Blizzard games in general, especially for busy Singaporeans. Busy Singaporeans in general don’t want to worry too much about computer games, and thus they only go for the best. And in Singapore, Blizzard seems to be the best (as evidenced by the 10k people who turned up at Funan). Having experienced many Blizzard games, I have noticed that Blizzard games tend to force players to concentrate more on the mechanics of the game rather than innovate on story-telling or the video-game experience in general. This is especially true for Diablo II, where even though some poor-misguided people may label as Satanic, the hardcore players know is all about the items.

A good example would be how a StarCraft gamer is left with the rather ridiculous impression that all that makes up a Terran fleet is whatever is available in the game. Anyone with some experience in the aerospace industry will know that the starship market isn’t going to be oligopolised by just 4 main players in 4 distinctly different classes of aircraft. Granted I understand that StarCraft is a RTS game and thus, such loopholes in lore should be excused and can left to RPGs such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect. But hey, Diablo 2 is a RPG and game-mechanics are the main focus of Diablo II rather than an innovative storytelling experience. It is thus questionable to label Blizzard games as the best.

So since I found the single-player to be rather boring as of now (will get it finished in the future definitely) I decided to go ahead and watch some replays before I attempted multi-player. Sometime during the period I was slaving for my nation, I decided that I would give a shot at playing StarCraft I more intensely. When I thought back about my days playing SC1 in secondary school, where I played without a proper build order and just massed my favourite unit (Hydralisks), it was a really far cry from the way I played WarCraft III in JC. So I decided to use the WC3 model (watch replay > practice > watch replay > practice) for StarCraft I for awhile.

What I discovered was the elegance of playing Zerg. Hydralisks in SC1 were not really a grunt unit that most people think it was, at least not against the terran definitely (they are quite viable against the toss, but weren’t used all the time). A SC1 zerg player typically opened with 6 zerglings, and would add lurkers and mutalisks to his army depending on the situation. The most skilled SC1 zerg players could control zerglings, mutalisks and lurkers together in sync, which to a learning zerg player like me was like fine art. I could only manage zerglings and lurkers, or zerglings and mutalisks. Never all three together. And I never did control them too well either.

Having watched some replays by pro Zerg players in SC2, I have to say that I am utterly disappointed with what Blizzard did to the Zerg. Banelings, seriously. Are stupid. And yet they are the cornerstone of many of the Zerg games I watched. Running Banelings into worker lines is considered pro. Ok it is pro, but wth.

I’m considering picking up Terran now because I think the Reaper has lots of potential to pleasure me. Of course thats if I even will drop lots of time into MP anyway. School is starting.

1. Stress does not cause suicide. It is statistically proven the more responsibilities a person is given, and thus the higher his acquired stress, his probability of committing suicide will lessen. A good example would be how married people have a lower chance of committing suicide compared to singles.

2. Men have historically committed more suicide than women, and this is nothing new contrary to what the report implies. This is not because men are weaker minded or anything like that. It is because men tend to be integrated less strongly into society as compared to women. A good soft example would be how it is much easier for men to be loners (there is lesser social pressure on men), while it is much harder for women to be loners.

To understand the above, I will explain very quickly 3 types of suicide:

1. Egoistic Suicide. This occurs when the person’s social integration into society is too low.

2. Altruistic Suicide. This occurs when a person’s social integration into society is too high.

3. Anomic Suicide. This occurs when a person is extremely unsure of his accepted stratification in society. This occurs when society is in a state of transition e.g. pre-industrial to industrial age.

Since no one has overthrown the PAP yet, anomic suicide is completely out of the question. The causes in the spike of suicide rates can be attributed to either egoistic suicide or altruistic suicide. Egoistic suicide usually occurs among singles who have accumulated big debts due to the recession. Since they are not burdened with the responsibility to keep a family together and their parents probably have enough retirement money, it is easy for them to take their lives without much consequences on others. Another possibility is altruistic suicide, where someone feels that he or she is a burden on his family and because of the recession, decides to take his or her life. This occurs if the said person is too well integrated into his or her family.

All statements in this blogpost have their evidence in Emile Durkheim’s book, Suicide.

The characters in the above picture are derived from a manga turned anime series titled Hetalia by Himaruya Hidekazu, which personifies the various countries of the world as human beings. In the above picture, Taiwan is represented by the Asian girl, Japan by the Asian guy, and the ang moh guy should be America if I am not wrong. I believe the Chinese in the above picture should be simple enough for most to understand. For others, Taiwan is showing us how to draw the Taiwanese flag that was used from the period of 1893 to 1906. Japan notices that the sun in the Taiwanese flag is placed at almost exactly the same place as the Japanese flag, and asks her whether she is thinking of him. Taiwan blushes and decides to relocate the sun to the upper left hand corner of the flag.

Even though the above characters are derived from simply manga, I would say that the author of Hetalia has shown herself to be quite accurate in the personification of countries, displaying adequate historical knowledge. During my tour in Taiwan, the tour guide has emphasised time and time again that the Japanese have a very good understanding of the Taiwan people. It would seem to those that have grown up reading Singaporean history books that a Japanese occupation would result in negative sentiments towards the Japanese. But even though Japan has occupied Taiwan for around half a century, many elements of Taiwanese popular and non-popular culture can be said to be heavily influenced by Japanese culture. In fact after listening to the tour guide for a good 8 days, I would say that there is a stark lack of animosity between the Taiwanese and Japanese people. And that Japan is a country that remains foremost in the minds of the Taiwanese people (together with China, of course).

Japan supporting Taiwan when she is weary.

During my tour in Taiwan, it also became slowly apparent to me that the task of reuniting China and Taiwan is an enormous one. My tour guide, for one, was hardly apologetic of his anti-Mainlander comments, which resulted in much laughter throughout the tour. In one of his many stories, he recounted how one of the Mainland tour groups he took hung their underwear and socks in the tour coach to dry, after realising that it wasn’t possible to do so in the hotel room. He said he aged 10 years taking that Mainland tour group, and told us that it was a luxury to take a Singaporean one.

I would say that the reason Himaruya chose to draw Taiwan as a young and pretty girl as opposed to many of the other countries she personified, usually in the form of young men, is firstly because Taiwan is inherently weak, and will not be able to withstand an invasion from the Mainland alone (China is seen fending off Germany and Japan alone in the anime). And from the top of Building 85, I would say that Taiwan does possess quite a breath-taking cityscape. And for a moment up at the 85th floor of the said building, I longed for Singapore to have a cityscape as beautiful as the one Taiwan has. In fact, Taiwan is also known as Formosa which means “beautiful island” in Portugese, which I hopefully am able to demonstrate in the following pictures that I have taken.

But if there is one thing that most people go to Taiwan for, its for the food in their night markets (incidentally the reason why this blog post is named thus, in case you are wondering) which is nothing short of incredible. To wrap up this picture heavy blog post, I would say that my trip in Taiwan was thoroughly enjoyable, and I definitely wouldn’t mind re-visiting on my own at a more leisurely pace (the tour group basically rushed from one place to another very quickly).

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.