Six medical workers have been condemned to die in Libya for deliberately infecting children with HIV as “as agents of Israel and the United States”, while an independent review cleared them of responsibility (the Libyan government rejected those findings).

Didn’t I predict it? Huh? HUH? Security factor may draw more events here, says The Straits Times.

While activists protested at the lack of freedom, the measures were appreciated by delegates.

Delegates recalled the IMF meeting in Prague, where dissenters also stormed a balcony at the hotel where many of the participants were staying. The police responded with tear gas and concussion grenades.

Some say the tight security has hurt Singapore’s reputation (once again, it’s not as though Singapore’s attitude toward public assemblies and protest is a secret, so I think they’re being disingenuous). If organisations like the [tag]World Bank[/tag] and [tag]IMF[/tag] are truly interested in engaging with civil society organisations, why are the researchers or academics from these groups not accredited as delegates? (At least, my impression is that they were accredited as civil society organisations, so they are still kept from being proper delegates. I could be wrong.)

[tag]Singapore[/tag] is extremely sensitive and paranoid about these sorts of things, sure. I think the activists are right in saying that the World Bank and IMF had deliberately chosen Singapore, because it ensures a calm and orderly event, with no free-wheeling protests and possible infiltration by those wanting to cause property damage and chaos. In saying the things the World Bank and IMF have said regarding Singapore’s heavyhandedness, they are making themselves the good guys who want to engage with protestors, and letting the Singapore security services play the bad guys who keep the ‘troublemakers’ out.

Meanwhile, the Today newspaper is very chipper about the whole thing.

Every time I go running (a jog, really), I remember how much I dislike long-distance running. It just doesn’t do it for me, I go extremely slowly, and nothing seems to make me go faster.

(However, see Slow Training: Why long, slow training runs may be best after all, which makes me feel better about my turtle impression.)

At school, I was on the athletics team, doing the 100m dash and 4x100m relay. I was somewhere in the bottom half of the team, being too short to have any natural advantage, but I was relentless. I think my fastest ever time running the hundred metres was about 14 seconds, and since we also had to run 2.4km during our annual physical fitness tests, my best time there was about 13 minutes. These days I think I’d be lucky to crack 17 seconds in the 100m, and my time for 2.4km is about 15 or 16 minutes.

I smoked for about eight years, always believing that I could still be fit — I had friends and boyfriends who smoked heavily but still performed well in the army-mandated physical fitness tests. Never once did I realise that some people are just genetically unable to do it, and I’m one of them. I tried playing Ultimate frisbee once when I was smoking (not at the same time, mind) and it took all my energy just to dash from one spot to another, let alone trying to catch or throw a frisbee. I also tried jogging and I don’t think I got much further than a few hundred metres.

Oh, how far the mighty had fallen.

And then I quit smoking (for reasons I have not yet fathomed). And started jogging to fill the time and work my lungs. And it was all going well until we moved to China, when various factors kept me from exercising regularly (the main one being laziness, the next one being that the streets were so polluted that running outdoors made me asthmatic). So coming back to Singapore was a bit of a Godsend — my mother goes to the running track regularly for exercise, and it motivates me, too. But running long-distance is a real pain. I think I’m one of those who is prone to getting a stitch, so it doesn’t matter how much preparation I do, I’m going to hurt. Singapore is so humid that running a few kilometres feels like running a half marathon. A few things, however, keep me going:

1. As I get older, I feel it’s harder for me to stay at a decent level of fitness.
2. I’ve said many times, jogging costs nothing; I don’t need to buy specialised equipment, I only need to make the time and effort to go out.
3. I may not like jogging long-distances, but it reminds me that being able to breathe deeply is an added benefit I did not enjoy while I was smoking.

Canadian Was Falsely Accused, Panel Says. Saw this news last night, along with part of an interview with [tag]Maher Arar[/tag], who I’m sure has been psychologically damaged by his experiences.

Is it really worthwhile locking up and torturing innocent people in the hope that using a scattergun approach will net you some real bad guys? Isn’t this sort of behaviour (imprisoning innocent Muslims who happen to have other Muslim friends who are suspected of being… bad?) only more likely to turn those who are already kinda unstable into full-on terrorists?

Sunday Times article tarnished our image: CHIJ chairperson. Oh dear. I’m from an IJ school, and my school is known for ‘nerdy’ rather than ‘easy’ students (just look at the picture on my site’s index and you’ll see what I mean). I think it’s quite mean to project a certain image onto young girls who are probably struggling with adolescence, body image, and self-esteem as it is. As I said in my comment on Jean’s site, it’s one thing if the encyclopaedia was a humour / satirical publication, like The Sarong Party Girl series, but it’s not.

Adult women who went to IJ schools back in the day do get it all the time. There is definitely a stereotype out there, and we really don’t need to institutionalise it.

Business grad students most likely to cheat: study. Aha. I want to study psychology, I do. I can help figure out why this is so. Although I’m just banking on ‘human nature and laziness’ as the most likely answer.

It is totally crazy that the Pope must apologise and clarify, over and over again, for a quote he used. The overreaction to his words, I think, underscores how freakin’ crazy this world has become, where people can’t speak honestly in public any more. Everything has to be spun and phrased so no one at all is offended. This guy is a religious leader, and he is seeking to engage other practitioners of [tag]religion[/tag] in debate. What he got was shrillness. Geez.

Researchers have discovered a fossil of a little girl, confirmed to be “a member of the Australopithecus afarensis species”.

The lower limbs supported earlier findings that afarensis walked upright, like modern humans. But gorillalike arms and shoulders suggested that it possibly retained an ancestral ability to climb and swing through the trees.

I really don’t know how people can reject the evidence pointing to our evolutionary history.