Vote for Name of Malaysian Darwin Awards!

We are proud to announce that we will be holding a Malaysian version of the Darwin Awards!

After skimming through all fabulous submissions for the name of this award on our Facebook page, we have decided to narrow it down to these five:

1. Anugerah Pak Kaduk by Ihsan Khairir
2. Anugerah Jalan Mati by Angeline Woon
3. Anugerah Toyol by Balamurugan Gurusamy
4. Anugerah Malaysia Darul FAIL by Jordan F. MacVay
5. Anugerah Si Kafir Laknat Darwin by TheLord Panda

Now we would like the help of our readers, followers and fans to vote for the best name! Voting will close on 12pm, Friday 12th of February. We will announce the result after Chinese New Year.

More info on the Darwin Awards after the poll:

Link to poll page: http://poll.fm/1kmmv

You can also share this poll on your blogs or sites using the codes available at the poll page.

For WordPress.com blogs, you can use this code:

[ polldaddy poll="2642071" ]

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So, what is the Darwin Awards anyway?

Darwin Awards is a tongue-in-cheek award—so named after Charles Darwin—to those who “do a service to Humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool”.

Put simply, it is given to any of those who died or made themselves sterile in a supremely stupid way.

Everyone who died/made sterile according to these rules, will be bestowed an award. Guess what? 836 awards have already been given worldwide.

We decided to run our own local version of this award after a comment made by The Lord Panda.

We will open nominations all year-long for any stupid Malaysian death/jadi mandul, and submissions can be made to our FB Discussion Board (will be up soon).

For now though, let us vote for the name. May the best choice win!

MP Watch: Secular State (Pt 1)

The Nut Graph is running a novel special feature called MP Watch: Eye on Parliament.

In this feature, they attempt to get all 222 Members of Parliament (MP) to answer a list of six questions.

Naturally, we are much more interested in this one question:

Do you think Malaysia should be a secular or an Islamic state? Why?

So where do our MPs stand? Let’s take a look at the first ten answers (we will list ten answers each week). [All emphasis ours]:

Loke Siew Fook (DAP-Rasah)

The status quo of the basic framework of the Federal Constitution, which is secular in nature, must be upheld. The status of Islam as the official religion of the federation will never be questioned.

However, separation of the state and religion is fundamental in any democracy. The country’s governance must be based on the written constitution. In short, any theocratic form of government is not suitable and is unacceptable in a multiracial society such as Malaysia.

Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin (PAS-Bukit Gantang)

Malaysia should be a baldatun tayyibatun wa rabbun ghafoor (a state which is virtuous and forgiven by the almighty God). Whatever its name, it must have those qualities and philosophy.

Chor Chee Heung (MCA-Alor Star)

The present status of Malaysia is good enough. According to the interpretation of our constitution and highest court, Malaysia is a secular state with Islam as its official religion. Loosely it can also be called an Islamic state since Islam is its official religion.

M Kulasegaran (DAP-Ipoh Barat)

The framers of the Federal Constitution [considered] Malaysia a secular country. The social contract we entered [into] when Malaysia was formed in 1957 was based on secular principles.

We must bear in mind that Malaysia is a multiracial country. Hence Malaysia should be a secular country, where the justice, freedom and equality pursued by the people is based on and is compatible with the principles of democracy, and not an Islamic state.

Mohd Shafie Apdal (UMNO-Semporna)

The Federal Constitution clearly sets out the position of Islam as the state’s religion. At the same time, it ensures the religious freedoms of non-Muslims. Ironically, the constitution also provides for those of no particular religious belief, i.e. secularists. I see no need whatsoever to change this.

[More quotes after the jump]

Why we believe in superstition: Lesson learnt from a rental car and iPod Shuffle

Today bukhariramli strikes back! This time he tells how superstitions come about, why he kept seeing Hyundai Elantras and why your iPod Shuffle is not really haunted.

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Let me spare you the suspense: we believe in superstition because we have decided to believe in it. Everything else just snowballed from there.

Allow me to explain.

Hyundai Everywhere
Four years ago, I rented a Hyundai Elantra for a trip. Not that I chose it specifically; I just chose a price range and the price range chose the Elantra. Nevertheless, I accepted it, the trip was awesome…but that’s not the point.

The point is, after I got back from the trip, I noticed Hyundai Elantras. E-ve-ry-where.

I didn’t see them before. Some reasons: Either a) before that, all Elantras were painted to match the background thus making them invisible; or b) because I was such a trendsetter—after I rented one, there was a sudden interest in them.

Both theories suck. I made them up, obviously.

So what really happened?

It turned out that the Elantras were indeed “invisible”. To me, at least.

There’s this thing I would like to call selective recognition. If we were to pay attention to every information received by our senses, we will be overwhelmed by the massive amount of information. Instead, our brain filters, cross-checks and selects information worthy of our attention.

Who provides the filter? It is you, mostly.

If you’re an accountant, you would notice the KPMG headquarters you’ve just passed by. To your friends who couldn’t care less about anything accounting & auditing, the building would just be another building.

It would be invisible.

You might have this experience: once you bought or really want to buy something, you see it everywhere. In fact, you cannot not see it.

So, the only reason I saw Hyundai Elantras everywhere was because I’ve rented one.

The insignificant, faceless, invisible Elantras had been given a meaning (i.e. the trip) which allowed me to recognise it from a sea of cars. Well, at least while the meaning was still there.

Once I forgot about the trip, Elantras became invisible again.

iPod Even
In an iPod Shuffle, the songs are played in… why, shuffle mode, of course. The shuffle function should, in theory, select songs at random and play them.

In reality however, some songs are played more frequent than others. Some are played even before all songs are completed.

This seems to contradicts the notion of random selection of songs, right?

As you might have guessed (because our readers are very smart and intelligent), it is wrong.

(More after the jump)