Singaporean

television is big on explaining Singaporeans to themselves.
Model families, Chinese, Malay, or Indian, act out little playlets
explicating the customs of each culture. The familial world implied in
these shows is like Leave It To Beaver without The Beave, a sphere of
idealized paternalism that can only remind Americans my age of America's
most fulsome public sense of itself in the mid-1950s.

The local papers,

including one curiously denatured tabloid, New Paper,are essentially organs of the state, instruments of only the most desirable propagation. This ceaseless boosterism, in the service of order, health, prosperity, and the Singaporean way, quickly induces a species of low-key Orwellian dread. (The feeling that Big Brother is coming at you
from behind a happy face does nothing to alleviate this.) It would be possible, certainly, to live in Singapore and remain largely in touch with what was happening elsewhere. Only certain tonalities would be muted, or tuned out entirely, if possible. . . .

Bookstores in Singapore,

consequently, are sad affairs, large busy places selling almost nothing I
would ever want to buy - as though someone had managed to surgically
neuter a W.H. Smith's. Surveying the science fiction and fantasy sections
of these stores, I was vaguely pleased to see that none of my own works
seemed to be available. I don't know for a fact that the UPU had turned
them back at the border, but if they had, I'd certainly be in good company.

(I didn't

see a single "bad" girl in
Singapore. And I missed her.) A thorough scan of available tapes and

CDs confirmed a pop diet of such profound middle-of-the-road blandness
that one could easily imagine the stock had been vetted by Mormon
missionaries.


"You wouldn't have any Shonen Knife, would you?"

"Sir, this is a music shop."


Although you don't need Mormons making sure your pop is squeaky-clean when
you have the Undesirable Propagation Unit (UPU), one of several bodies of
official censors. (I can't say with any certainty that the UPU,
specifically, censors Singapore's popular music, but I love the name.)
These various entities attempt to ensure that red rags on the order of
Cosmopolitan don't pollute the body politic.

Young,

for the most part, and clad in computer-weathered cottons from the
local Gap clone, they're a handsome populace; they look good in their
shorts and Reeboks and Matsuda shades.

There is less in the way of alternative, let alone dissident style in
Singapore than in any city I have ever visited. I did once see two young
Malayan men clad in basic, global, heavy metal black - jeans and T-shirts
and waist-length hair. One's T-shirt was embroidered with the Rastafarian
colors, causing me to think its owner must have balls the size of durian
fruit, or else be flat-out suicidal, or possibly both. But they were it,
really, for overt boho style.

Business Times editor

Patrick Daniel, Monetary Authority of Singapore
official Shanmugaratnam Tharman, and two economists for regional brokerage
Crosby Securities, Manu Bhaskaran, and Raymond Foo Jong Chen, pleaded not
guilty to violating Singapore's Official Secrets Act.
South China Morning Post, 4/29/93
Reddi Kilowatt's Singapore looks like an infinitely more liveable version
of convention-zone Atlanta, with every third building supplied with a
festive party-hat by the designer of Loew's Chinese Theater. Rococo
pagodas perch atop slippery-flanked megastructures concealing enough cubic
footage of atria to make up a couple of good-sized Lagrangian-5 colonies.
Along Orchard Road, the Fifth Avenue of Southeast Asia, chocka-block with
multi-level shopping centers, a burgeoning middle class shops ceaselessly.

Today's Singapore

is far more precisely the result of Lee Kuan Yew's
vision than the Manchester of the East ever was of Sir Stamford Raffles's.
Lee Kuan Yew's People's Action Party has remained in power ever since; has
made, some would say, quite drastically certain that it would do so. The
emblem of the PAP is a cartoony lightning bolt striking within a circle;
Reddi Kilowatt as the mascot of what is, in effect, a single-party
capitalist technocracy.
Finance Data a State Secret
SINGAPORE: A government official, two private economists, and a newspaper
editor will be tried jointly on June 21 for revealing an official
Singaporean secret - its economic growth rate.

And Raffles's

theme park boomed for 110 years - a free port, a Boy's Own
fantasy out of Talbot Mundy, with every human spice of Asia set out on a
neatly segmented tray of sturdy British china: "the Manchester of the
East." A very hot ticket indeed.

When the Japanese came and took it all, with dismaying ease, the British
dream-time ended; the postwar years brought rapid decay, and equally rapid
aspirations for independence. In 1965, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, a
Cambridge-educated lawyer, became the country's first prime minister.

A

mere eight years later came Sir Stamford Raffles, stepping ashore amid a squirming tangle of kraits and river pirates, to declare the place a splendid spot on which to create, from the ground up, a British trading base. It was Raffles's singular vision to set out the various colonial jewels in Her Majesty's crown as distinct ethnic quarters: here Arab Street, here Tanjong Pagar (Chinese), here Serangoon Road (Indian).

The facades

of the remaining Victorian shop-houses recall Covent Garden on some impossibly bright London day. I took several solitary, jet-lagged walks at dawn, when a
city's ghosts tend to be most visible, but there was very little to be seen of previous realities: Joss stick smouldering in an old brass holder on the white-painted column of a shop-house; a mirror positioned above the door of a supplier of electrical goods, set to snare and deflect the evil that travels in a straight line; a rusty trishaw, chained to a freshly painted iron railing. The physical past, here, has almost ntirely vanished. In 1811, when Temenggong, a local chief, arrived to resettle Singapura,
the Lion City, with a hundred Malays, the jungle had long since reclaimed
the ruins of a 14th-century city once warred over by Java, Siam, and the
Chinese.

These few

very deliberate fragments of historical texture serve as a
reminder of just how deliciously odd an entrepot Singapore once was - a
product of Empire kinkier even than Hong Kong.
The sensation of trying to connect psychically with the old Singapore is
rather painful, as though Disneyland's New Orleans Square had been erected
on the site of the actual French Quarter, obliterating it in the process
but leaving in its place a glassy simulacrum.

an affluent

microcosm whose citizens inhabit something that feels like, well,
Disneyland. Disneyland with the death penalty.
But Disneyland wasn't built atop an equally peculiar 19th-century theme
park - something constructed to meet both the romantic longings and purely
mercantile needs of the British Empire. Modern Singapore was - bits of the
Victorian construct, dressed in spanking-fresh paint, protrude at quaint
angles from the white-flanked glitter of the neo-Gernsbackian metropolis.

Singapore

is a relentlessly G-rated experience, micromanaged by a state
that has the look and feel of a very large corporation. If IBM had ever
bothered to actually possess a physical country, that country might have
had a lot in common with Singapore. There's a certain white-shirted
constraint, an absolute humorlessness in the way Singapore Ltd. operates;conformity here is the prime directive, and the fuzzier brands of
creativity are in extremely short supply.
There is no slack in Singapore. Imagine an Asian version of Zurich
operating as an offshore capsule at the foot of Malaysia;

Outside, the organic,

florid as ever in the tropics, had been
gardened into brilliant green, and all-too-perfect examples of itself.
Only the clouds were feathered with chaos - weird columnar structures
towering above the Strait of China.The cab driver warned me about littering. He asked where I was from.He asked if it was clean there. "Singapore very clean city." One of thoseannoying Japanese-style mechanical bells cut in as he exceeded the speed
limit, just to remind us both that he was doing it. There seemed to be
golf courses on either side of the freeway. . . .

WIRED

Disney Land with the Death Penalty
WIRED sends William Gibson to the future: Singapore
"It's like an entire country run by Jeffrey Katzenberg," the producer had
said, "under the motto 'Be happy or I'll kill you.'" We were sitting in an
office a block from Rodeo Drive, on large black furniture leased with
Japanese venture capital.Now that I'm actually here, the Disneyland metaphor is proving impossibleto shake. For that matter, Rodeo Drive comes frequently to mind, thoughthe local equivalent feels more like 30 or 40 Beverly Centers put end to
end.Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they
learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore's airport, the Changi
Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL
world. There was no dirt whatsoever; no muss, no furred fractal edge to
things.

and we're on

Mars" is being added to a permanent collection of space-related
quotations on the façade of Disney's latest attraction, "Mission:
SPACE." The popular attraction launches visitors on a simulated space
adventure to the Red Planet. "Mission: SPACE" combines NASA-based
technology and imagery with the creative minds of Walt Disney
Imagineering to deliver a one-of-a-kind exploration experience.

"The attraction builds on a foundation of science fact and provides
visitors a fantasy ride into the future of exploration," said
Administrator O'Keefe. "It's a realistic experience that can
introduce a new generation of explorers to the excitement of science,
technology and discovery."

"Mission: SPACE" officially opened Oct. 9, 2003.

April 6, 2004

Glenn Mahone/Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1898/1600)
Miguel Piedra
Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
(Phone: 407/566-5317)
RELEASE: 04-114
NASA'S MARS SUCCESS HONORED AT DISNEY WORLD DAY OF DISCOVERY
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe joins NASA scientists, mission
managers and a Mars rover today to help Disney's Epcot, at the Walt
Disney World Resort, celebrate the success of the Mars Exploration
Rovers Spirit and Opportunity.
The Administrator's now famous quote, "We're back. . .

mm

Na handheldu GBA by se v srpnu měla objevit roztomilá plošinovka Disney's Magical Quest Starring Mickey & Minnie, jíž si sice mohli v minulosti projít již vlastníci SNESu, ale tato její reinkarnace se dočká některých příjemných vylepšení, kam lze zahrnout i multiplayer. Příběh se točí okolo náhle zmizelého psa Pluta, jehož se Mickey a Minnie vydají hledat až do království zlého Emperora Peteho. Vedle obvyklého žánrového skákání a přeskakování se nadějete i využití rozličných dovedností a propriet (vystřelovací hák či kouzelnický háv), jež pak přijdou vhod třebas při setkání se zdejšími bossi.

Pocahontas

Ona ukládala kolonie Jamestown, Virginie od zániku tím, že zásobí to jídlem, a je řekl, aby měl předešel jejímu otci od vykonávat kolonistu John Smith. (Smithský popis této epizody je obecně ne myslel být přesný.) v 1612, ona byla zachycena a držela rukojmí u Jamestown. Její sňatek s jedním z kolonistů, John Rolfe, v 1614 vytvářel klima míra mezitím Jamestown kolonisté a powhatanské kmeny na několik let. Předchozí k jejímu manželství, ona byla pokřtěna a byla známá jejím křestním jménem potom, Rebecca Rolfeová.

Strašpytlík

Strašpytlík je malé kuřátko, které se ve svém rodném městě Praštěné Duby stane terčem posměchu poté, co vyvolá paniku díky žaludu, který mu spadne na hlavu. Zamění totiž žalud za oblohu.
Ale co se stane, když mu spadne skutečně obloha na hlavu? Pouze Strašpytlík a jeho podivní přátelé mohou společně zachránit svět. Chce to ovšem více než jen chladnou hlavu a naplánované pohyby pro úspěšné dokončení mise. Zachraňte svět s pomocí arsenálu šikovných pomůcek a vynálezů, svých přátel a se sílou pravého hrdiny.
Hlavním hrdinům ve hře propůjčili své hlasy stejní herci jako ve filmu. Můžete se těšit na Luďka Sobotu, Kryštofa Hádka, Zdeňka Žáka, Miroslava Moravce a další.

...

00:00:47:Dawno, dawno temu|w dalekiej krainie
00:00:51:w pięknym zamku|żył młody książę.
00:00:55:Ale pomimo tego, że posiadał|wszystko czego zapragnęło jego serce
00:00:58:był on próżny,|samolubny i zły.
00:01:03:Ale pewnej zimowej nocy
00:01:06:u bram jego zamku|stanęła stara żebraczka,
00:01:09:która w zamian za schronienie|przed strawszliwym zimnem
00:01:12:chciała mu ofiarować zwykłą różę.
00:01:15:Wygląd kobiety|był tak nędzny i odrażający,
00:01:18:że książę wyśmiał podarunek|a następnie postanowił ją wyrzucić.
00:01:23:Lecz one zdążyła go jeszcze ostrzec|żeby nie zwiódł go sam wygląd,
00:01:26:że piękno znajduje się wewnątrz człowieka.
00:01:30:Lecz kiedy książę mimo tego ją oddalił
00:01:32:brzydota rozpłnyęła się
00:01:35:aby ujawnić prawdziwe piękno.
00:01:38:Książę próbował przepraszać,|ale było już za późno.
00:01:43:Dla niej w jego sercu|nie było ani kropli miłości
00:01:46:i za karę,|przemieniła go
00:01:47:w odrażającą bestię
00:01:49:A na koniec rzuciła klątwę|na zamek
00:01:52:i wszystkich jego mieszkańców.
00:01:55:Zawstydzony swoim potwornym wyglądem
00:01:57:ukrył się w zamku
00:02:02:ze swoim magicznym zwierciadłem
00:02:06:jako jedynymi oknami na świat.
00:02:08:Róża, którą otrzymał|była zaczarowana.
00:02:11:Miała kwitnąć|do jego 21 urodzin.
00:02:15:Jeśli nauczy się kochać|i zasłuży na miłość innej osoby
00:02:17:póki ostatni płatek róży nie opadnie
00:02:22:klątwa zostanie zdjęta.
00:02:26:Jeśli nie, pozostanie bestią na zawsze.
00:02:34:Lata mijały,|a on wpadł w rozpacz
00:02:40:i stracił wszelką nadzeję,
00:02:43:że ktokolwiek zdoła|pokochać bestię...

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