I Detest Social Studies.

After silently grudging it for so long, I'll finally come out and say it: I absolutely hate SS.

(For non-Singapore-resident readers, Social Studies is abbreviated to SS ~95% of the time, so I'll refer to it that way throughout this post).

(More) About Me

Before I start anything, I want to say: you guys are awesome.

No, seriously.

Guerre Sainte: An Article About Religion

Whether you believe or God or otherwise: I would like you to, just for a moment or two, imagine hell.

That is, hell in its most literal form. Full of burning flames, crumbling rock, screaming souls, what have you. Now imagine there’s a cliff that hangs precariously over this madness, just low enough so you can see and imagine what can happen to you if you’re so unlucky to trip and fall over.

Writing this article makes me feel like I’m standing on the edge of that cliff.

Hyperbole aside, there are good reasons why people tend to shy away from talking, much less writing, about religion. Probably the most sensitive subject on the planet, one slight misstep in this article will offend somebody out there.

So I beseech you, dear reader, to read the following with an open mind like never before, and hopefully this article will do something for you.

This point forward, I will criticizing many. And I’m going to split my criticism for two groups: fellow theists, and atheists, starting with the former (but I hope atheists will read it too, and vice versa).

Mädels, Part 2: Bridging the Divide

Read part 1 of Mädels here.

You know what I hate?

Umbrellas.

They're large and unwieldy. They're not exactly cheap. And they don't always do their job well; too many times have I had the unfortunate experience of returning home soaked worse than a shipwrecked pirate, even with a new, supposedly-high-quality umbrella by my side (or above me, depending on how you want to see it). And the absolute worse part: they lose themselves, so easily. I'm serious: one managed to go totally AWOL on me when I left the table for about fifteen minutes or so to meet someone. Needlessly to say, having an umbrella on me is now more of a grudging necessity than anything else.

But you know what I hate more than umbrellas? Fools. Specifically, brainwashed, society-pressured, traditionalist fools.