(Part 3) Top products from r/singapore

I think this might be what you're looking for if you're only interested in getting some basic legal knowledge that would be useful for the layperson. It's published by Law Society so the information is definitely legit, but the language can be fairly utilitarian and dry.

The Singapore Academy of Law also has a detailed information portal [here] (http://www.singaporelaw.sg/sglaw/laws-of-singapore/overview), but it might be a bit too in-depth for casual reading and seems to be written more for people with some background in the legal sector.

If you're more the philosophical type and want to get a bird's eye view of what "law" is and how common law legal systems operate more generally, I recommend picking up "An introduction to Law" by Cambridge University Press. Although it's written from the UK perspective, most of the things it talks about are relevant here as well given that we share much of our legal heritage with the UK. It's available at our libraries and makes for much better casual reading than the other two links.

I see most things have been mentioned already. Project euler is good if you don't have a project in mind (and if you like math). The pragmatic programmer is also a great book to read after you have some beginner knowledge.

Hey, awesome! Can I add two things to the order:

• https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Take-Hindmost-Financial-Speculation/dp/0452281806/
  
• https://www.amazon.com/SamYang-Nagasaki-Champong-xC0BC-xC591/dp/B00FQISFJY/
  
  Thank you!

Thanks for posting this. I've been so desensitised by the waves of TED-worthy solutionism way of thinking. Locally, the Yale-NUS kids are especially notorious for such ideas because THIS is the way they gain prestige among their circles. Doesn't matter if the ideas actually work, just need that notch on their CV and they're ready to ride it all the way to an upper management level in McKinsey.

Unfortunately, this will be the norm among the upper-middle and upper classes for a long time to come. Here are some books for those interested to learn more.

Winners Take All

To Solve Everything, Click Here

Geek Heresy

Not to say that people shouldn't strive for social change, etc. But real change requires real grind and understanding. The people doing so aren't usually in the media limelight either.

This book was my saviour during those days, hope it helps you too

https://www.amazon.com/Happiest-Baby-Block-Harvey-Karp/dp/0553381466

IMO, it's a judgement call and there is no clear right and wrong answer.

Let me put it this way, I have a few friends of various calibre and even they have told me that psychology is not what it seems to be. (Specifically, they complain that uni psychology is more about the boring research methods rather than the interesting theories borne from it. Other times, they complain that all the memorising is largely pointless in real psychology research). This is roughly what I meant be the "disillusionment"... What makes you think you won't fall into the same trap?

> had enough crap from sec school already, i don't want another 2 years for JC.

While you were not the first to mention Junior College... this is the key mentality I was afraid of that you might have. Almost all my poly friends in uni (of varying calibre and courses) now have expressed JC as a more advantageous route as a prep for university. Psychology is an interesting course whereby you do have to mug almost as rigorously as JC. (I can go on about if there is any difference if you mug what you like or whether disillusionment is even a thing.)

For now, maybe you can pick up a textbook and answer a couple of questions. I'm sure you will take this advice... After all, you claim you like what you study right?

to summarize, it will depend on three points: [1] your race (or the one you pass as) relative to [2] its history in the place you go to, as well as [3] the purpose of your visit.

[warning: a lot of generalization] for example, as a Chinese person in the US would be viewed as a model minority in most spaces (especially employment) and would not face disproportionately higher incarceration rates as your black or latinx peers. To assimilate into the local lifestyle and culture can help you blend in, but it definitely won't completely prevent incidents of name-calling, racial aggression, etc.

On the other hand, if you went to Indonesia for job opportunities, despite still being Chinese, you are probably more likely to be met with hostility and discrimination, because the impressions Indonesians have on their local Chinese populations is different to what Americans have on theirs. HOWEVER if you make it clear that you are there as a tourist (and not a threat to their employment opportunities) the reaction might differ.

Of course, all of these are generalizations to be taken with a grain of salt; they are simply there to illustrate how there can be differences in how you are treated based on the abovementioned factors. I'm here not to help you predict what you, in your context, will face in the country you would be visiting/residing in, instead I am here to introduce to you factors that you have to consider and apply to your particular situation.

Here are more examples to further illustrate how history can further complicate how you can be treated based on race:

• We as Singaporeans view white people as almost homogenous, but there very much is racism within whiteness.
  
  

1. Aryans in Nazi Germany discriminating (and lots of murdering) against Jewish people, despite both being essentially white to us.
   
2. Put an Irish person in White America and there's a history of how they went from being discriminated against to being largely incorporated into whiteness.
   
3. Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins are treated as just Slavs in their diaspora, but put them in the Yugoslavian region and suddenly the identity divides and they discriminate each other based on their national identities despite speaking mutually intelligible Serbo-Croatian languages and sharing overlaps in culture & history.
   
   

• Sikhs in India have a history (of brutal tension) with Muslims, but put them in the US and they will in most instances actually pass off as Muslim and will frequently be the target of Islamophobia.
  
  The answer to such a broad question is truly more complicated than what the analogies in the comments section can give. The solutions to helping cope with or reducing the incidents of racism in such circumstances will also differ, and you might have to look beyond the advice of "just assimilate and you will be fine".
  
  Do your research!

https://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineering-Anniversary/dp/0201835959

Time to gift them this book during their birthdays

OP isn't looking for neutral, he's looking for insights into how Singapore came to be. My recommendation: Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World. Not a book written by LKY, but a collection of his thoughts.

<== has a BA in International Relations

If you really want to get into International Relations, the LKY School of Public Policy isn't very highly-regarded in the field. NTU's RSIS is far more respectable. Main reason is: Kishore Mahbubani of LKYSPP is a prolific huckster who spouts a lot of BS in order to drive sales of his own books.

And then there's the issue of your reason for wanting to pursue this Masters. You need to ask yourself on what you really want to get out of it, because admissions committees are going to pay a lot of attention to your reason for making them bother to read your application in the first place.

There's also the problem where you don't seem to know a lot about IR. If you don't, this beginner's guide is very effective at covering what undergrads usually go through in a semester-long Intro to IR course.

For more detailed reading, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics presents one of the dominant theories of International Relations and according to my very biased opinion, the one which represents what our global order moving towards in the next couple years.

Read those two at the very bare minimum, then you should have a fair idea if you're keen on this path. If reading those two makes you bored, then forget it, because you'll be reading a lot of this kind of material.

https://www.amazon.com/Family-Book-Todd-Parr/dp/0316070408

Should be compulsory reading for whoever makes these calls.

https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-150th-Anniversary/dp/0451529065

If you gave me a choice of five years in jail or two years and 10 strokes, I’ll pick the latter every time.

There’s a book by a US liberal talking about this:

https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Flogging-Peter-Moskos/dp/0465032419

Worth the read.

To add to u/nusgawker re: South China Sea, look up Bill Hayton's book The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia

https://www.amazon.com/South-China-Sea-Struggle-Power/dp/0300186835

The public libraries should have some copies available.

They should just read Bryan Caplan.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-against-Education-System-Waste/dp/0691174652

IQ test + 360 degree personality test = sufficient signal for employers to make hiring decisions?

Do we really need to put children n adolescents through 12 years of pressure and torture to get that signal?

Edit: Here's a nice summary of Caplan's book. A lot of it should resonate with anybody involved in our education system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/

I'm going to post this here for anybody else who might be interested.

The Trident by Jason Redman - Autobiography of a SEAL who fucked up majorly and repeatedly (he ragequitted US Ranger course after being sent there as a "punishment" for a previous mistake), then came back from it. If you've heard of the story about the note outside the hospital ward which goes like, "do not come into this room to pity me", it's this guy.

SEAL Team Six by Howard E. Wasdin - One of a handful (two?) of SEALs who participated in the infamous Operation Gothic Serpent and Battle of Mogadishu. Despite all the experiences, he says the biggest success over there was when he defied orders in order to treat a child's rotting leg.

And of course, Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. Do take note that he has been criticized for many inaccuracies in the book, and the general consensus seems to be that a more reliable account would be Victory Point.

A few anecdotes:

Lt. Michael Murphy, while severely wounded from falls, cuts, gunshots, and shrapnel, and having lost two of his men, made a satellite phone call for help in an open area exposed to gunfire. He finished the call with a "thank you".

Marcus Luttrell received a service dog to help grief his fallen teammates. The dog's name was formed by combining the initials of his teammates. That dog was shot dead, for fun, by a bunch of young punks who didn't know who its owner was. He chased them in his truck across the state and when he finally caught up with them, he handled the situation professionally, even though he was armed and completely capable of laying the smackdown on the punks for shooting his dog.

>inner city Baltimore areas where drugs have absolutely devastated entire neighborhoods.

I think you have it the wrong way around. Drug use and drug trades in poor areas are a symptom of economic devastation, not the cause. Although it does make it harder to pull a population out of poverty once a drug trade takes hold.

Bruce Alexander thoroughly covers this in his book (http://www.amazon.com/The-Globalization-Addiction-Poverty-Spirit/dp/0199588716)

My view on weed is that while it's not good for you, it's not so bad that it's worth criminal penalties and the amount of effort of law enforcement and the court systems. You said yourself that you tried it before...do you think you should have gone to jail for doing so? Obviously all that effort that goes into law enforcement isn't working if you managed to try it when it was illegal.

As a European also myself, I'm waiting to see how long it would take before another European was to call you out on your nonsense, but it seems that's not going to happen.

For those who want a bit of context, the views held by /u/bjarkebjarke represent the nationalist segment of Europeans, in a continent where literal Neo-Nazi groups like Jobbik and Golden Dawn (before they got arrested) - whose active role is to march in groups and physically attack minority individual citizens who are simply living their daily life - are prevalent.

To give context, PEGIDA is one of these groups, stemming from a part of Germany known for its Neo-Nazi population, and found containing a large number of Neo-Nazis and football hooligans. This explains why the counter-demonstrators outnumbered the demonstrators - because no rationally-minded person wants violent groups legally condoned to attack people on the streets and create division.

This situation in Europe is exactly why Singapore, with its lack of violent mobs roaming the streets and stupid people preaching hate being given a voice, is a better country at the moment than European countries to reside in.

As for the anti-Muslim claims, almost all of which are false and/or misleading, have a vast amount of reputable academic literature - such as this - opposing such nonsense claims.