One demurral: Personally, I think Drug Prohibition is stupid, futile, and unconstitutional. It’s the illegality that produces the cachet that fuels demand and that creates the highly profitable black market that funds crime and cartels. Its also the illegality that causes deaths from overdoses. If heroin was still sold at your local pharmacy, packaged by Bayer, warnings about dosage limits would be clearly labeled, and nobody would be accidentally mistaking fentanyl for heroin. It is not the business of the government of Singapore or the United States to police people’s private behavior.
We used to punish murder and crime a lot more like the way Singapore does today, and back then, in the United States, crime was similarly rare.
If you love Gin, this new Singapore bar is Valhalla. Bloomberg:
Atlas, housed in what locals affectionately call the “Batman Building,†due to its similarities to Gotham City’s Wayne Tower, bills itself as having the world’s largest collection of gin. Its owner, Vicky Hwang, thinks that after a five-month renovation and two years of planning, the 7,400 square foot Art Deco space will be able to rival Raffles thanks to an extensive menu of 1,011 bottles and counting.
The drinks menu at Atlas is currently a work in progress but already stretches to 60 pages, and that’s without tasting notes. (The bar hopes it will be finished in May.) Inside, you can find Ki No Bi Kyoto Dry Gin, produced at Japan’s first dedicated gin distillery in the south of Kyoto using Japanese botanicals such as sansho leaf, kinome sprout and yuzu peel. If you prefer more of a dry style, go for the Forest Dry Gin Quersus, a classic Belgian gin aged in a former Montrachet white wine barrel that imparts notes of pear, lavender and baking spice.
Jason Williams, Atlas’s master of gin, describes the collection as “one of the world’s largest, most diverse and thoughtfully curated physical collections of quality gins.†They include Pollination Gin, which is made at the Dyfi Distillery in mid-Wales using botanicals foraged from the Unesco-recognized Dygi Biosphere Reserve. Another, called Gin La República – Andina, is a Bolivian gin distilled at 4,000 meters above sea level that uses Andean ingredients such as ulupica, huacataya, quirquiña and k’hoa.
One factor common to all the bottles in the collection is strength. Every one is at least 40% ABV, according to Williams. “Gin is better when it’s stronger. You get those botanicals like perfume.â€
The best of the collection is displayed in the three-story-tall gin tower with carved wooden columns and glass shelving that serves as the centerpiece of the room.
The fight went on for half an hour on a street near Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Both snakes apparently wandered into the city from nearby jungle.
The cobra was subsequently captured and deposited in the local zoo. The python was released in a wooded area, but it had been bitten by the cobra and is not expected to survive.
Oddly enough, the same photograph appears in two version, 1 and 2, on the web attributed to Melvyn Yeo, who also specializes in macro photography in Singapore.
Singaporeans are encouraged to show their patriotic fervor by displaying their country’s flag proudly, sharing snapshots of their favorite local foods and dancing along to a fresh new national theme song.
But there is another, distinctly unofficial, national song in Singapore these days. It is asking locals to try something else on their country’s big day: Make love for Singapore.
Mentos mints created an ad campaign to urge Singaporeans to increase the city-state’s birth rate, which is among the lowest in the world.
The soulful rap, which is part of a new ad campaign to promote Mentos mints, is called “National Night,” and it exhorts Singaporeans to “do their civic duty” to help solve the city-state’s low birthrate by making a baby on Aug. 9.
“It’s National Night, let’s make Singapore’s birthrate spike,” a female vocalist sings over jittery synthesizers and drumbeats, as her male counterpart shouts phrases like “that’s right” and “the birthrate won’t spike itself!”
“Singapore’s population, it needs some increasin’, so forget waving flags, August 9th we be freaking,” the rap continues.
The song has gone viral, taking on a life of its own on social networks across the famously staid city-state. It is also raising the eyebrows of older residents who fret that it is mocking a serious issue.
Singapore’s leaders have worried for years about the country’s birthrate, which is among the lowest in the world at 7.72 births per 1,000 people. …
My wife reminded me that not everybody is on Facebook, so here is a direct link to the 3:17 astonishing and appalling video.
And some people think that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg is intrusive.
