Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Plausible Risks
Updated: Music section. A new music file uploaded.
I paid a visit to the Pasir Ris community library on Sunday - part of my mad "quest" to visit all the libraries in Singapore, which to this date is nowhere near completion, of course, due to the fact that some libraries are found in out-of-the-way locations like Bukit Panjang and Bukit Merah where no one really visits at leisure except the people who live there. Admittedly, travelling around the island to pay little visits to libraries is a strange pasttime, but it is rather enjoyable and exciting. Oh dear me, what will people think. I find visiting libraries exciting. Hardly says a lot about the overall level of excitement in my life.
Of course, I did not travel to Pasir Ris just to look around (duh, what do you think I am, rich?). I was there to get a few books that were on loan in all the other convenient libraries. Thank goodness for relatively remote libraries like Pasir Ris and Geylang East where normally rabidly popular books can actually be found on the shelves.
Anyway, I think the Pasir Ris library is really poorly designed, what with the shelves in the various sections arranged in such strange diagonal angles to one another that it is quite impossible to look at a point a hundred metres in front of you and not have your line of sight blocked somewhere along that distance by a bookshelf. Very disorienting. And the fiction section is tucked in some alcove behind a section of wall such that only the first shelf of the section is visible from the main library area, and only in certain positions where your view is not frustratingly blocked by the multitude of diagonally placed shelves.
The reason why I am yet again complaining about something really boring is because I got lost in the library, trying to look for the fiction section and always ending up at the young people's fiction section. So I had to go back to the entrance and look at all the pennants they hang from the ceiling to indicate the various sections. Only then did I find the fiction section. How totally infuriating. I mean, it's the fiction section, not the Malay Collection. Why in the name of Dewey can they not place the fiction section someplace more visible?
I was rather surprised, to be honest, to see Indian labourers at the library looking for books. Then again I realised I really shouldn't be. I mean, really. I have nothing against the intelligence of Indians, it really is their olfactory unpleasantness that makes me cringe.
Speaking of current reads, I think The Broom of the System is a lot better than Infinite Jest. And a lot thinner too. Should be able to finish reading it soon.
After watching Chrno Crusade my interest in eschatology has been greatly stimulated (well actually I should say I have a long-standing interest in eschatology, just that I really haven't much energy to read up on it). So I picked up several books from the Left Behind series. Hopefully they make good reading.
Argh I'm nowhere near finishing the books I listed in my reading list! I should watch less anime from now on and read more.
---------------------------
I saw this commercial on television lately about osteoporosis. If you have not seen it, it says that for people above the age of forty, if the difference between their age and their weight is less than zero, they have a risk of being osteoporotic. Which to me seems rather ludicrous.
What does the commercial imply to normal people? Well to me it seems to imply that for any person above the age of forty, this person should ideally have a weight equal to his or her age in order to not be at risk of having osteoporosis. Thus someone who is ninety should ideally weigh ninety kilograms? Now that sounds a bit strange, do you not think?
Of course, I realise that the silliness of the math is derived from the fact that the health authorities are only trying to simplify things for normal people who understandably are not going to dig out calculators and punch in some complicated equation to discover if they're at risk of having osteoporosis. The keyword is really "risk", so people who have a negative age-weight difference are only "at risk", and "should see a doctor". By encompassing a large group like this (well, honestly, I would be surprised to find old ladies who weigh more than their age) the health authorities make sure that they do not miss out on people who might have osteoporosis but are do not seek professional advice, because they get a false-negative result for an alernative equation to calculate risk.
But still, everyone with half a mind will know it's ridiculous to not have a negative age-weight difference when you get old, so it might not work out as they plan either. So much for using the media to dispense healthy-living advice.
Avaris / 6/29/2004 02:57:00 PM
0 consumed