GP rules for class 24/05

back from the cold

2005-11-13T01:44:00.000-08:00

Hellloooo!

Phew! What a term this has been! Are you all partying "like it's 1999" after the OP? That's what Prince (I think that's his name now) the music artist would say in one of his songs.

Are all of you happy with the promotional examination results? I must say I was quite shocked at the results for the comprehension paper. After looking through the paper and also, looking at how you all did for individual questions, I think the reason for many who didn't do well was that most of the questions were phrase questions that required you not only to define the phrase or word but to also use a higher degree of inference. And sadly, I have not given you much practice nor challenged all of you sufficiently on that.

I will be looking into ways that we can all improve in this area next year. And doing so, I will be sharing the difficulties you had experienced with... your new GP tutor. Unfortunately, I will not be teaching your class next year. In fact, I'd be teaching the next batch of year ones. This might work out to your advantage as a more experienced teacher with perhaps a more refreshing way of teaching GP will be able to impart something of value to you.

I'm sad about this as i've gotten to know your class much better. The saying that "Familiarity breeds contempt" holds no truth at all in this situation. I want to thank all of you for putting up bravely and... patiently, with the trying moments when I was still fumbling with my teaching skills and classroom management. I am truly grateful for the times that we had because I had learnt much and I enjoyed myself just being with your class.

You might already know that you'll be having a new teacher even before you read this. But this is just my way of saying "goodbye" by saying (or typing) all the things that i wish to say before "it's too late".

HAha. Sounds like some sappy movie when the lead character is dying. So don't be a stranger when we meet each other in school! You can still sms or contact me if you need any help.

Oh I don't know as yet who will be your new GP teacher. It will surely be someone of more experience than me so you'll be in good hands i'm sure of that. I'll be checking it up with the rest of the teachers...

But do you know??

Signing off,
Mrs Yim

Blowing up the union to save the union

2005-09-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Dear students,

Here are the answers to the above mentioned article. I won't be going through the answers in class so if you have any problems, feel free to leave your comments on this site.

Mrs Yim

1. AARP takes over benefits that were formerly given by the company and only requires the company to contribute a minimum sum to these benefits. This is not so in older versions of the trade union as the scope of the older version was narrower and was only limited to the welfare of workers in that particular company. AARP includes all workers from different companies and works hand in hand with company policies for the benefit of both employer and employee. Older versions of the trade union saw the trade union in loggerheads with employers.

2. AARP will be appealing to workers because a majority of them want better working conditions but are afraid that they will be retrenched if they resorted to the traditional method of wage negotiation that is collective bargaining. AARP will appeal to corporations because the measures taken by AARP will ease the cost of maintaining benefits by the companies.

3. The connotation of this phrase is that Stern’s education policy for California goes against conventional labour policies and the traditional notions of labour. Furthermore, Stern’s ideas will cause much discomfort and disagreement among others.

4. Democrats think and behave in a conservative manner as they are not willing to try new ideas and methods like Stern’s. They are also narrow-minded because they are unable to put aside their agendas like the welfare of the poor to look at larger issues for the greater good.

5. Andy Stern is innovative and creative as he is able to come up with solutions for the trade unions and employers such that both are in a win-win situation. He is also very charismatic as the writer contrasts his engaging style with another senator’s dry and uninteresting speaking style.

6. The writer’s motive is to bridge the gap between the two political parties, Conservatives and Liberals, such that the problems that America faces will be resolved speedily and effectively. Thus, his write up on Andy Stern serves to illustrate the point that Andy Stern’s ideas may resolve not only problematic relations between trade unions and employers, but they may also resolve the differences between the two political parties and achieve greater benefits as a result.

Some interesting sayings

2005-08-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hi there,

Here are 2 common sayings that you might find amusing and interesting to know. Hopefully, you may use this in your essay or when it appears in a comprehension passage, you will know what the writer is trying to imply.

If you are up to it, you may construct a sentence for each saying that clearly shows the meaning of the saying in the sentence. And I will give you my comments on your sentences.

Achilles' Heel
Definition
It refers to the weak and vulnerable point in something, or in a person's character, which is otherwise without fault.

Origins of the saying
It originates from the story of Thetis who held her son by the heel, when he was a child, and dipped him in the river Styx to make him invulnerable. During the subsequent Trojan wars, in which Achilles distinguished himself as the bravest of fighters, he was finally slain by an arrow directed to the one vulnerable part of his body - the tendon of the heel by which his mother had held him, and which had therefore remained dry, when she dipped him in the Styx.

An albatross around one's neck
Definition
It refers to the guilt one has to bear, which may be with one for a long time, for something one has done wrong.

Origins of the saying
The albatross is a remarkable sea bird with an 11-14 ft (3-4 m) wingspan, depending on the species, which enables it to sail with and against the wind, without visible wing strokes, for half an hour or even more at a time. These birds circle the globe in eighty days, and this is not uncommon. They make use of the Roaring Forties and other trade winds, only landing in remote oceanic islands to breed. They can live to over thirty years of age, although some are believed to have reached seventy.According to nautical superstition, it is considered unlucky to kill an albatross as these birds are believed to embody the souls of departed mariners. Coleridge's well-known poem The Ancient Mariner, first published in 1878, tells of the story of a sailor who kills an albatross. When this brings bad luck to his ship, the dead bird is hung round his neck by his shipmates as a sign of his guilt. Although he repents, and is eventually forgiven, his conscience continues to distress him, even though he goes from land to land warning others against the cruelty of killing God's creatures.

Evolution at its "best"

2005-08-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

Since we are on the topic of evolution, I thought this picture was rather apt. :)

Bush weighs into evolution debate

2005-08-09T20:10:00.000-07:00

Bush weighs into evolution debate
By Jonathan Beale BBC News, Washington
9 August 2005
BBC News

Bush said students ought to hear different schools of thoughtPresident George Bush has started a national debate in the US over the teaching of evolution in school. The president has suggested that a theory known as "intelligent design" should be taught in the classroom.

It proposes that life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and an unseen power must have had a hand. President Bush's championing of intelligent design will be interpreted as further evidence of the growing influence of the religious right.

The US president told newspaper reporters in Texas that children should be taught about intelligent design so they could better understand the debate about the origins of the universe.
Intelligent design differs from biblical creationism in that it is not tied to a literal interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis. Nevertheless, intelligent design points to the role of a creator, and it has become increasingly influential in Christian circles.

Scientific arguments
Yet even those on the religious right, such as Republican Senator Rick Santorum, are cautious as to how it should be taught.

"I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom," he says.
"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes, and I think there are legitimate problems and holes in the theory of evolution."

The debate, though, is already having a real impact.

In Kansas, the board of education has been re-evaluating the way evolution is taught - a sign that more conservative politicians and officials want to reflect the theory of intelligent design.
Many scientists insist, though, it is just that - a theory.

Alan Leshner, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that the proponents of intelligent design are "trying to cloak a religious concept in the mantle of science".

"There is no science to intelligent design, it's not even a scientifically answerable question," he says. In 1925, the Scopes trial marked a defeat for creationists and opened the way for evolution to be taught in US classrooms. Eighty years on, intelligent design is offering the creationists new comfort.

Once again, they are putting evolution on trial.

Look out for these Documentaries!

2005-08-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

Hope you have been enjoying your break! Well, here is some good news to share with all you GP enthusiasts. Every Sunday on Channel News Asia, a documentary would be screened at 7.30pm. I caught one last sunday and it was about Hiroshima and the atomic bombings on Japan. Absolutely riveting because of the true life account of many witnesses and its interesting perspective on the historical event.

You can visit this link for more information.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/documentary/list.htm

Happy viewing!

AIDS: Too much morality, too little sense

2005-08-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

The Economist
July 28th 2005

Politicians must suspend moral judgments if AIDS is to be defeated
Get article background

THE world is not winning the war against AIDS. By the end of this year, 3m poor people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are supposed to be receiving the treatment they need. So far, though, barely 1m are. At present, about 40m people are living with HIV, some 5m are infected with it each year and over 3m die from it. The human and economic cost is huge. India may well have more infected people than any other country. China's epidemic has the potential to dwarf all others (see article).

In most of the world, AIDS tends to affect fairly discrete groups, usually prostitutes, homosexuals and drug addicts. In most societies these people are frowned upon. Democracies like them no more than autocracies. When it comes to receiving help from taxpayers, they are never at the top of anyone's list, especially in countries so poor that basic health care is not available to most citizens.

But if AIDS is not contained among the groups that harbour it, it spreads into the general population, as it has in Africa. There, it affects every section of the population—slum-dweller and sophisticate, peasant and professional. Everyone who engages in that near universal activity, sex, is at risk. As it is, AIDS is no respecter of morals: it affects babies as they are born, children as they are orphaned, nurses as they are accidentally pricked by a dirty needle, patients of any kind as they receive a transfusion of contaminated blood. Indeed, it affects the entire society in which its victims live and die.

It also affects the faithful wife of the unfaithful husband. That is why the ABC slogan so beloved by the Bush administration—Abstinence, Be faithful and Condoms—is, in practice, a slap in the face to many people. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief commits at least a third of its promised $15 billion to “abstinence until marriage” as the main way of stopping the spread of AIDS. It also urges that the use of condoms be confined to people who engage in “risky behaviour”—prostitutes or couples with one member who is HIV-positive. Many groups are reported to be ending or reducing their condom-promotion schemes to qualify for American money.

That might not matter if condoms did not matter, but they do. In the absence of a proper vaccine, an absence that is likely to continue for years, condoms are the best prophylactic available to anyone at risk of HIV infection through a sexual encounter, within or outside marriage (see article). Abstinence might, it is true, be better still, but abstinence will not, in the real world, be practised widely enough to bring AIDS under control. Now, in a further demonstration of its moral zeal, the Bush administration is insisting that all groups, American or foreign, that are engaged in the struggle against AIDS must declare their opposition to prostitution if they are to receive American money. The administration is also against all needle-exchange projects for drug addicts, one of the groups most likely to contract, and spread, AIDS in Russia, India and China.

The poor countries that have got on top of nascent AIDS epidemics—Brazil (see article), Thailand, Uganda and Cambodia—have done it by changing behaviour. That is no easy task, involving as it does a variety of actions across a wide front. It has proved possible because limits have been set on the endeavour: people have not been asked to act morally, merely in their own self-interest, which happens to be in the interest of society.

The lesson for rich and poor alike is that to contain AIDS morality must take second place. Politicians may find it easier to yield to sanctimonious lobbyists than to explain why refraining from judging other people makes more sense. But that does not excuse them. Too many lives are at stake.

GP consultation groups for 1st common test essay

2005-07-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dear class 24/05

Here is the list of names that are scheduled for the various slots. Do let your gp rep know if you are not able to make it. This is so that the gp rep may compile a list of names of those who are not able to attend.

If you will like to attend the session that covers the question that you have not attempted, please feel free to do so. :)

Thank you everyone and hope to see you in class soon.

Consultation groups for 1st common test:

Friday 22nd July
1615-1655hrs
venue: 10-27
topic: Why do parents find it increasingly difficult to protect...
Names:
Min Yuan
Pamela
Vincent
Elvin
Priscilla

Monday 25th July
1455-1535hrs
venue: 10-25
topic: Computer games and Education system
Names:
Jerica
Warren
Kenneth
Shuwen
Kuan Yan
Shu Ying
Ee Ting
Ser Kun
Ada

Tuesday 26th July
1455-1535hrs
Venue: 412
Topic: Tourism
Name:
Arlene
Yi Yang
Clarence
Shu Min
Ashley
Sophia
Yi Zhen
Jasper
Joshua
Lay Koon

GP groups as of next week Monday 11 July

2005-07-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Class 24/05,
Greetings everyone! I'm typing this as I'm about to go for my Sunday service in church. Still waiting for my husband to get changed.

I'm sorry that right now, I am unable to post the consultation groups for the GP common test essay. By a sudden twist of fate, I lost the list that I had compiled. I will have to start from scratch today. Looking on the bright side, this presents an opportunity for me to arrange a better listing. The previous one that I lost had some of you seeing me only the week after. This time, I will arrange in such a way that we will be able to see one another within the week to come. I will post the consultation groups online on Monday latest.

Meanwhile, I have just included in this post your different groups for GP as we discussed on Friday. Have a blessed day! I've got to wear my contact lenses. :)

Group 1: Joshua Xie, Ada Chan, Priscilla Lee, Elvin Chen, Arlene

Group 2: Tan Kuan Yan, Jasper Tan, Zhang Meiqing, Mok Shuwen, Tan Min Yuan

Group 3: Quek Ser Kun, Sophia Yue, Clarence Chew, Pamela Lee, Teo Shu Min

Group 4: Lim Lay Koon, Toh Kah Hwee , Tan Yi Zhen， Teo Shu Ying, Ashley Frois

Group 5: Kenneth Mak, Vincent, Warren Tuan , Tan Ee Teng, Tan Yi Yang

FORTUNE magazine's "10 tech trends"

2005-07-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hello fellow bloggers of class 24/05!
I'm heartened to see your erm.. hearty response to the previous posting. Thank you Warren and Arlene for that lively exchange. I had some laughs myself. :) I hope the rest of the class will join in too. If you have any suggestions to improve this site, do continue to post your suggestions on the tagboard.
Riding on the theme of the first post, I'll post here an article by Fortune magazine on the perennial hobby of our time, blogging. This is not the full article. If you are interested to read more, do go to the website. Look forward to see you in class...
Mrs Yim.

10 TECH TRENDS
Why There's No Escaping the Blog. Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore.By David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth

These are still the early days of blogging, and the form is still morphing. Blogs that host music and video are popping up, people are starting to blog text and photos from their phones, and sites like NewsGator, using a technology called RSS, allow people to subscribe to blogs. Plus, an arms race is building behind the scenes. Venture capitalists last year invested a still tiny $33 million into blog-related companies, but that was up from $8 million the year before, according to research firm VentureOne. Blog ad companies, which place ads and pay per response, are enabling bloggers to earn money from their sites. And blogging publishers have emerged. Two of the most prominent, Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton, are going head-to-head with stables of popular blogs (Engadget and Autoblog vs. Gizmodo, Gawker, and Wonkette, among others). More important, some of the most competitive companies in tech are throwing their weight behind blogging.

The newest kid on the blog block, Microsoft, has already seen what the sites can do for it. Now it thinks it has a chance to grab the youth market. Blake Irving, the VP who oversees Hotmail, the e-mail service, with 187 million users, and MSN Messenger, with 145 million IM accounts, views MSN Spaces as "the third leg of the communications stool," one that Microsoft hopes to turn into an advertising-fueled business. MSN is already selling ads on some Spaces for things like Lacoste shirts at Neiman Marcus online. E-mail is for old people, says Irving; kids prefer to communicate by phone and IM, and, now, by keeping blogs. So Spaces is tightly integrated with the latest version of MSN Messenger. Says Bill Gates, who claims he'd like to start a blog but doesn't have the time: "As blogging software gets easier to use, the boundaries between, say, writing e-mail and writing a blog will start to blur. This will fundamentally change how we document our lives."

Google, the company that Microsoft is playing catchup with (its Blogger.com division is the largest blogging service right now), also expects blogs to become as important as e-mail and IM. Right now, it's working on ways to better help people find content they want in blogs, says Jason Goldman, Blogger's product manager. But if Google's internal use of Blogger is any indication, it also sees it as an essential business tool. Since 2003, when it bought Pyra Labs, the company that launched Blogger.com, Google's employees have created several hundred internal blogs. They are used for collaborating on projects as well as selling extra concert tickets and finding Rollerblading partners. Google's public relations, quality control, and advertising departments all have blogs, some of them public. When Google redesigned its search home page, a staffer blogged notes from every brainstorm session. "With a company like Google that's growing this fast, the verbal history can't be passed along fast enough," says Marissa Mayer, who oversees the search site and all of Google's consumer web products. "Our legal department loves the blogs, because it basically is a written-down, backed-up, permanent time-stamped version of the scientist's notebook. When you want to file a patent, you can now show in blogs where this idea happened."

But when you live by the blog, you die by the blog (or at least feel serious pain). Perhaps the best example comes from Mena and Ben Trott, the husband and wife team who founded Six Apart, creator of Movable Type, the blogging software that now runs some of the most prominent blogs on the web, including InstaPundit and Jarvis's BuzzMachine. The Trotts, both 27, started the company after the success of Mena's blog, Dollarshort.org. ("A day late and a dollar short," she says. "A lot of my stories were about people picking on me and being a dork.") Unhappy with the software she was using, Mena enlisted programmer Ben to design their own blog software. They announced the product in October 2001 with just a post on Mena's blog, and had 100 downloads the first hour. Companies paid a flat rate of $150 and individuals were invited to pay what they thought the product was worth. "If we got $50 or $60, that was nice," says Mena.

The Trotts soon started a hosting service for blogs, called TypePad, and lured $11.5 million in venture financing—along with some big customers, including Disney, the U.S. Air Force, Fujitsu, and Nokia. Yet until May, Six Apart was relying on its original pricing scheme. The Trotts decided to upgrade. Mena posted a long message describing the new fee structure on her company blog, Mena's Corner. Less than three hours later, the first comments started rolling in. "Looks like I'll be dumping Movable Type soon" was the first. Many others echoed that outrage in what became a total of 849 customer comments in about ten languages.

Six Apart didn't erase any of the comments, even the most negative ones. Mena read every comment in full, then kept posting notes explaining why the company had changed the pricing structure and that it was still working on revising it. Looking back now, she says, "We made people feel heard." And she knows that sooner or later, the process will start all over again. Says CEO Barak Berkowitz: "When everybody has a tool for talking to the rest of the world, you can't hide from your mistakes. You have to face them. Once you commit to an open dialogue, you can't stop. And it's painful." As the impact of blogs spreads through global business, that pain—and promise—will be something companies will have to deal with. And if they don't? You're bound to read about it in a blog.

Singapore's Creative struggles to rival iconic iPod in booming MP3 market

2005-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

Hi class 24/05,
I've just returned from my malacca trip. Had a great time getting to know more people and enjoying excellent food. Anyway, i thought this article here would be a good start to gauge the usefulness of this website in terms of GP matters. I will like you to read through it and give your comments. See you around and hope your revision is not killing you.

Mrs Yim.

SINGAPORE: After boldly stating he intended to rival Apple's Steve Jobs as the world's leading maker of portable music players, Creative Technology founder Sim Wong Hoo is now facing his toughest challenge, say analysts.

The Singaporean, whose soundcards transformed the home computer into a mini-entertainment system in the 1980s, remains a long way off leader status in the booming MP3 market following nearly a year of poorer-than-hoped for sales.

Analysts say that although Creative is still selling millions of portable music players, profits are slumping as Sim's products remain unable to attain the "iconic cool" status of Apple's iPod. Locked in a fierce price war with Apple and other electronic giants, Creative's net profits in the March quarter fell 72 percent to 15.9 million US dollars from 57 million dollars a year earlier. In contrast, Apple's profits for its quarter ended March 26 shot up six-fold to 290 million dollars, with the iPod the main driver behind the gains.

The challenges facing Creative are unlikely to ease given that other major Asian consumer electronic firms such as Samsung and Sony are also launching an assault on the booming MP3 player market, analysts say.

"It will be (Sim's) greatest challenge because he has effectively bet the company on the MP3 player," Dharmo Soejanto, an analyst with Kim Eng Securities in Singapore, told AFP. "We think that it will be difficult for Creative to make a decent return on MP3 players in the next few quarters especially when other consumer electronic giants are starting to pile it. "(Companies) like Sony and Samsung have bigger marketing budgets and distribution reach."

When Sim launched his 'Zen Touch' in a direct challenge to the iPod last year, he announced an ambitious target of selling one million personal digital entertainment (PDE) units, mainly MP3 players, a month. "We are now playing in the big league. We are ready for the prime time. The PDE market is exploding and we cannot be left behind ... today, we are very confident to take on this market," Sim said at the launch of the Zen Touch.

But in the three months to March, Creative sold two million MP3 players compared with 5.3 million iPods. Industry figures show Apple holds a commanding 60 percent of the market. "Creative's Zen is a good product ... the main problem is this is a market that has nothing to do with specifications," said Claudio Checchia, research manager of consumer devices at International Data Corporation in Singapore. "It goes beyond things like battery life, gigabytes ... the thing is that the iPod is an iconic thing, (it has) the quintessential cool factor."

However, even if Creative cannot match the likes of Apple and Sony, analysts say a smaller-than-hoped piece of the global MP3 pie would still be substantial and Sim's big gamble could indeed pay off. In 2004, 40.3 million MP3 players were produced, up from 14.3 million in 2003, according to US-based technology research firm Gartner which expects that figure to grow to 74.4 million this year.

Founded by Sim in 1981, Creative gained worldwide fame for its SoundBlaster card that allows a personal computer to be used also as a mini home entertainment machine. More than 70 percent of the world's PC audio systems use Creative's music card technology.

Sim has transformed his company over recent years to become a consumer electronics player in a bid to wean Creative's dependence on the increasingly saturated soundcard business. PDE products now account for 68 percent of Creative's total revenues.

Analysts say Creative's long-term success hinges on its MP3 players achieving "hip and cool" status, primarily by offering a seamless process for users in a similar concept to the iPod. "Apple is unique in this market because they not only make the hardware (the iPod) but they also design the PC software (iTunes) and the online music store (iTunes music store)," said Jon Erensen, Gartner's US-based analyst for consumer applications. "Competitors have focused on matching and even exceeding Apple when it comes to hardware features but what they need to focus on is the out-of-the-box experience, specifically the integration between the hardware, PC software and online music store."

First Impressions

2005-05-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

Hey class 24/05! I've finally created a blogger site for our GP class. Hope you don't mind putting up with the aesthetics of this website for the moment. For a start, we'll just be using this until someone with lots of enthusiasm and skills can come up with a better design. *hint hint* :)

Hope you take the time to explore this site. Here are just some basic rules you would need to adhere to on this website. Other than that, I'm sure we will all have an enjoyable and definitely educational time here.
1. Please write in Standard English for all comments to any postings. You may use Singlish or slangs in your messages on tag board but as this is a GP website, make this an opportunity to brush up your language skills.
2. No vulgarities and insensitive remarks or comments on postings and the tag board. Continual violation of this rule will lead to the shutting down of this website.

Ok I'll come up with more guidelines as we go along. See you around..