Chatter Of The Squirrel

Jeepers!

A caffeine inhaler?!

I wonder if it’s legal to import this… Whether the health department would approve it.

I can think of a number of friends who can use something like this.

And I can probably make killer sales during the exam season.

24 is Lame!

OMG!!

The writing is just so incredibly lame!!

In order to create tension, little girl goes to bathroom. Washes hands. And for no freaking reason, sits down on floor and cries.

Crying wakes up wounded mommy. Mommy calls for girl. Girl goes on crying.

Mommy has a bullet wound. For what retarded reason decides to get up to comfort daughter.

Falls, knocks head, and lose consciousness.

Geesh!!

My rule of thumb:

The more Deus Ex Machina a story needs to invoke to keep the plot going. The greater a failure the writing is.

Frank Miller’s 300

“SPARTANS! TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL!”

They’re making a movie of Frank Miller’s 300!!

Catch the trailer here!!

Maybe you missed Sin City, or maybe you didn’t. But here’s another one of his graphic novel made into a movie!

And from the trailer, it’s looking sweet.

This is the story of King Leonidas, king of Sparta. As he led an army of 300, to halt a Persian invasion into Greece.

300 Spartans, against a tide of Persians numbering in the millions.

It’s a great tale of heroism and  betrayal.

And following the success of Sin City, the director appears to be using an interesting filming technique. Can’t describe it. But you can see it in the trailers. The muted colours, the hi-def slow-time effect seems to capture the action beautifully. It’s an odd twist of making action static, in the similar way a graphic novel tries to make action dynamic. Thus, making the translation from picture to film, meet somewhere in the middle.

But then again, it could just be the trailer.

It looks like there’s going to be a lot of Troy-ish fighting scenes. But with the good news, that Brad Pitt won’t be in it!! Instead, it’ll be Mr. Phantom of the Opera.

March, 2007. A fair while more to wait…

But before that, there seems to be a new fantasy trilogy starting this Christmas. Not read the book before, but it’s got a dragon in it, so maybe it should be given a chance. Eragon.

Crime Rates in Malaysia

More numbers have been released.

To quote some of the numbers here:

Overall, violent crime was up by almost a fifth and the Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation (MCPF) said the index as a whole rose by 12.6 per cent compared to the same period last year.

A total of 170,481 crimes were reported since the beginning of the year.

And the data showed that overall, violent crime saw an 18 per cent increase.

Rape cases totalled 1,833 compared to 1,384 over the same period last year while murder cases increased from 375 last year to 473 cases this year.

Do the math. Everyday, 7 women will report a rape in Malaysia. Factor in the ‘9 out of 10 rapes go unreported’ study… That’s probably 70 women raped everyday. That’s 3 every hour. In Malaysia. And this statistic only counted reported cases. Not incidence. Some victims may have been assaulted multiple times before someone found out or took them to the authorities. So, please feel free to inflate the numbers appropriately.
This statistic bothered me enough, that I went to dig up some census data.

Malaysia 2000

Popn both sex   Popn male       Popn female

Total, all ages       21,793,293     10,956,005     10,837,288
0-  4                    2,674,365      1,376,948      1,297,417
5-  9                    2,557,459      1,314,579      1,242,880
10- 14                  2,380,019      1,222,585      1,157,434
15- 19                  2,176,323      1,116,678      1,059,645
20- 24                  1,795,018        916,813        878,205
25- 29                  1,771,980        898,604        873,376
30- 34                  1,650,642        835,815        814,827
35- 39                  1,537,363        759,552        777,811
40- 44                  1,297,005        622,588        674,417
45- 49                  1,059,498        512,883        546,615
50- 54                     858,153        427,457        430,696
55- 59                     613,266        303,945        309,321
60- 64                     538,331        261,171        277,160
65- 69                     353,445        161,333        192,112
70- 74                     259,983        115,709        144,274
75- 79                     151,016         62,884         88,132
80+                         119,427         46,461         72,966

Slightly out of date, as our 2006 estimated population size is 26-27 million already. But what I really want here is the break down of population by gender and age group.

I’m just doing a little mathematical exercise. I have no academic grounding in demographic studies and such. But I do know a bit of maths and know how to use excel.

I’ll begin with an assumption, that the ‘rape’-able age of women be 10-44 years old. By this, I am not saying that women above 45 are unattractive!! Or that younger children don’t get assaulted. Stories of 6 yr-olds being raped by their grandfathers happen all too often in the papers. But this exercise is already repugnant enough without thinking of such cases. So let’s just take 10-44. I know it’s a bit arbitrary, but just chill and see where the number takes us.

As of 2000, the 10-44 female age group accounts for 28.6% of the population.

Taking the Malaysian 2006 population as 26.64 million.

In 2006, the 10-44 female age group numbers (26.64m x 28.6%) = 7.62 million.

In the first 9 mths of 2006, we’ve got 1833 reported rape cases.

By the end of 2006, that’s (1833 / 9 x 12) = 2444 est. reported cases.

Assuming:

1) only 1 in 10 cases are reported

2) that almost all the cases will happen in my arbitrarily selected age-group

Then, (2444 x 10) / 7.62 m = 0.32 %.

So, If you are a woman, aged between 10-44, you have a 0.32% chance of getting raped this year.

Put into this perspective, that’s not too bad… Or is it?
But what if you are only 10yrs old now… You still have 35yrs more to go to escape this statistic. And the 0.32% chance is only your odds of getting assaulted this year.

Assuming that the crime rate doesn’t get any worse than it is already… The odds of you getting assaulted before you hit 45, is 11.2%. Look around you. If you’ve got 10 other girl friends. One of you is gonna get assaulted once in your life.

Remember that the trend is only increasing year on year.

Two years ago, it was 4 reported rapes a day. Last year it’s 5 a day. This year, 7.

Those days, I still buy The Star. After the stats were reported, some police chief goes on the paper explaining that they are overtaxed, and cannot handle so many cases happening everyday.

That’s like a headmaster telling the whole school, “Tomorrow all the teachers will be busy with some other work, and will have no time to take class attendance.” And be surprised when nobody shows up for classes.

Within the week of the announcement, I noted an increase in the audacity of the criminals. I particularly noted a Perak girl in KL, waiting at a bus-stop, at 5pm in the bright afternoon, being pushed into a car, by a man armed with a screwdriver! It’s almost as if the rapist drove past the girl. Liked what he saw. Remembered the police chief’s announcement. Thought he could probably get away. Stopped his car. Dug around for something ‘weapon’-ish. Found a screwdriver. Drove back to the girl. Pulled her on. Then took her somewhere and had his fill before dumping the traumatised girl somewhere deserted.

This is the world we’re giving to our children.

24 Agonies

The show should be more appropriately named: “Bad Things Happened to Women who Don’t Listen”.

Agonising through season 2 now.

Daddy tells daughter to leave L.A.
Daughter thinks it’s daddy’s sad needy ploy to mess with her life and hangs up.
Daddy tells her a nuke is going off and not to tell anyone.

She doesn’t listen. Goes and tell her boyfriend, and kidnaps a girl.  Takes the girl’s daddy’s car and drive away. Cop stops them for speeding and finds girl’s mommy’s body in the trunk.
All sorts of stupid things happen one after another just for the sake of building tension.

Stupid characters.

Stupid rich girl finds purpose in life by funding and helping terrorists?

Stupid rich girl’s sister in denial about her sister’s involvement. Almost getting herself killed and letting her terrorist sister get away.

Stupid guy living alone in the forest. Lets girl go, sends her out into the woods in the middle of the night with a pistol to scare away cougars. But why didn’t he remember to give her a flashlight? And in the next episode, she has a flashlight anyway.

Stupid whiney loser breaks into convenience store and whines about pregnant wife.

And all the clumsy ways to build inter-character tension and betrayal… So often, the characters could just open their mouth and communicate their intentions instead of generating unnecessary tension to cause everyone to stumble over each other.  Such as, “I’m being such an ass cos I just inhaled a lungful of plutonium and I’ll die in less than a day. Now, will you stop second guessing my orders?”

But why am I still watching this, right?

For the same reason why Plan 9 From Outer Space has such a cult following.