The importance of being dishonest

This post will likely be updated again–very likely in two month’s time because that is the amount of time a particular government agency takes to do so. In any case, it is not going to be a pleasant wait. If the outcome of the wait is in favour of truthfulness and logic, then this post shall not see any updates. The odds are stacked against honesty though.

But Blair has been rather honest, as reported in ST, Sep 3, 2010: “It’s a strange thing, politics and sex [well, are you admitting it is unnatural?]…Politicians live with pressure [so do many professionals]. They have to be immensely controlled to get anywhere [so too my taxi driver], watch what they say and do, and behave [teachers and parents too]. And your free-bird instincts want to spring you from that prison of self-control…Then there is the moment of encounter, so exciting, so naughty, so lacking in self-control. Suddenly you are transported out of your world of intrigue and issues and endless machinations and the serious piled on the serious, and just put on a remote desert island of pleasure, out of it all, released, carefree [if you are in heat and you can’t take the heat and the hot seat, go free yourself and get another job].” (For the uninitiated, Blair’s talking about extra-marital affairs.)

Probably society isn’t ready for straight talking, and honesty is best hidden from view. Blair could have observed the Gricean Maxim of Quantity in his writing by simply telling the world it is fine for politicians to be infidel, but that would probably give the sense that he’s going to be a weasel of a premier. Or it will sound too casual and irresponsible for anyone like that to qualify as the head of the nation. As you can see, it hurts to be plain truthful. The truth must be concealed by some make-up (such that it is rather beyond recognition). People do love a beautiful lie more than an ugly truth, and certainly a beautifully designed truth wins hands down.

The Straits Times

October 16, 2010 Saturday

The young general’s realm; Straits Times Correspondent Sim Chi Yin was among foreign journalists allowed into Pyongyang when it celebrated the 65th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party last weekend. She first visited North Korea in mid-2008, and gives her latest impressions of the hermit kingdom as it embraces a new leadership.

THERE he stood, beaming a rare smile and clapping as his father waved to the cheering crowd with an unsteady hand.?The chubby, civilian-clothed Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s anointed next leader and youngest son of the ailing Kim Jong Il, was making his second appearance before his people and the world’s media, whose cameras were trained on him.?Piercing the still, autumnal Pyongyang night with their loud cheers, emotional young dancers hailed the leadership from their perfect formations across the grey- slabbed Kim Il Sung Square, named after the country’s founding president and the younger Kim’s late grandfather.The sickly father and his chosen son looked down from a balcony just above a giant painting of a grinning Kim Il Sung – completing the three-generation family portrait, as it were. They had just watched a mass dance and song performance to mark the 65th anniversary of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party which, along with a massive military parade on Sunday morning, was the coming-out party for the leader-in-waiting, widely believed to be about 27 years old. Symbolically enough, the last segment of the night was an energetic modern dance by teenagers dressed in fluorescent orange and green, while shots of computers played on two giant screens on the square, projecting a North Korea ready for the 21st century. It may be no coincidence then that while little is known of the mysterious Kim Jong Un, he has been referred to in the North Korean media as ‘CNC’, short for ‘computer numerical control’ – as if to boost his credentials as a leader for the future.? Following months of murky murmurs about the secretive communist nation’s succession, the younger Kim, who has emerged in the past two weeks to be appointed a four-star general and anointed heir, may be seen as a source of stability at home.? North Korea expert Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul said this may be so, since Mr Kim’s oldest son Jong Nam – a former favourite to succeed his father – has told the Japanese media in recent days that he is opposed to the hereditary transfer of power to his younger half-brother but seems unlikely to challenge him. But that stability, Professor Lankov said, will hold ‘only as long as the leadership does not reform, continues with the policy of zero tolerance for dissent (everybody who openly expresses doubts about the system should be shot) and does its best to roll back changes – like private businesses springing up – which have happened spontaneously’. Much also depends on how much longer the current leader is around.? ‘If he lives for several more years, Kim Jong Un has time to grow into the responsibilities of running the state as well as to put in place within the top levels of officials some of his favourite people,’ noted Professor Brian Bridges of Lingnan University in Hong Kong. ‘But if Kim Jong Il passes away in the near future, then the son may take over as a figurehead, while three factions – the military, the party, and the family – jostle for real power. That would be destabilising.’ Nonetheless, some within and outside of North Korea’s borders hope this changing of the guard and the future leader’s youth might usher in a new era of change and more openness, with Western diplomats already calling on Kim Jong Un in recent days to engage with the world in a way his father did not. But North Korea watchers warn there are few signs yet that the young man is any different from his dad or that he is in a hurry to bring about change.? Prof Lankov told The Straits Times: ‘We do not know anything about him. His face was first shown to the public a couple of weeks ago. Nobody is aware about a single act or policy decision which is initiated by him.? ‘But the fact that his rise began from the promotion to general and that his coming-out took place during a military parade does not look too encouraging.’ After all, the North Korea that Kim Jong Un – now commonly referred to as the ‘Young General’ by ordinary people – will inherit is still an impoverished state which locks its citizens away from the outside world, and a temperamental, nuclear- and missile-armed nation which causes regional powers to lose sleep.? And the Pyongyang he lives in seems to stand still in time.? Tired-looking, boxy, grey or pastel-coloured apartment blocks line the capital’s wide, smooth streets – as neat as milk cartons, as I had described them on my first visit two years ago. Save for a couple of new buildings, a construction site, and spanking new restaurants lining two sides of the street leading up to the downtown Koryo Hotel where I stayed on both trips, not much appears to have changed.? Outside, women cut the grass with scissors and scrubbed pavements with hand brushes, while children wielded toy guns and swords shaved out of wood, or roller-skated or ate ice-cream.? A row of food stalls selling buns, pancakes and grilled chicken across from the hotel seemed busier than before, bustling as Pyongyang residents were out on the streets to enjoy the long weekend public holiday for the anniversary. Flags lined the streets while women walked home in traditional chima jeogori dresses, lending an air of festivity. Bright red and yellow flowers sat in pots on almost every balcony in the city, as if all Pyongyang residents were uncannily green-fingered.? At night, streets and apartment blocks which sat in stony, pitch-black silence on my previous trip to the electricity-starved country were lit this time. But middle-aged men and women strolling or sitting at the foot of their blocks for a leisurely chat at night held torches, hinting that power outages might not yet be a thing of the past. In the morning rush hour, men in Western-style suits and red ties, school children with backpacks and teenagers with fashionable calf-high boots jostled on the electric trams with middle-aged women with worn shoes and scruffy bundles on their backs. ? There were few hints of the crisis brought on by a currency devaluation late last year which reportedly, for some North Koreans, was the worst disaster since a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the mid-1990s. Prices of food and other items were said to have doubled in the months following that devaluation, but have since levelled off. Still, past 11pm on the night before Sunday’s massive military parade, women waited in line at a store holding big cooking oil bottles.? At a seven-storey department store near the railway station, only two counters had queues. One was selling porcelain ornaments of a pig holding a fruit The ornaments cost 850 won each. The currency exchange rate for the North Korean won is somewhat secret – the hotel had it as 140 won to 1 (S $1.82). In this city, which is known to be home to only the politically approved and the privileged elite, there appeared to be more cars on the streets this time around, including new Toyota four-wheel drives and China-made BYD sedans.? While private enterprise is still not officially allowed in North Korea’s command economy, young couples and families washed down three- or four-dish lunches with beer and soda in a local restaurant, where three journalists including this one had a similar meal for 10 – suggesting the possibility of a growing middle class.? More Pyongyang residents seemed to be able to afford mobile phones now, using a 3G network installed by the Egyptian company Orascom Telecom in 2008. A government official I had met that year who did not have a cellphone back then told me this time: ‘All my friends have mobile phones now.’ Perhaps, seeing how excited I must have looked, he added, somewhat apologetically: ‘Domestic calls and text messages only.’ ? For foreign journalists whose phones are still confiscated upon arrival at the airport, that sounded like an improvement.? But to veteran North Korea watchers, this is nothing new – cellphones were first introduced 10 years ago, only to be recalled in 2004 – and not a sign of new openness, but just another symptom of Pyongyang’s two steps forward, three steps back way of ambling along.? There is little doubt the country’s leadership could take the advice that its top ally, China, and many others have been giving it – to open up and marketise its economy – should it want to. But that would mean risking all the accompanying sweeping changes marketisation would bring to its society and puncturing the carefully cultivated and protected image of the Kims as all-caring leaders who have given the good life to their people.? The fact that foreign journalists were even let in to cover the political anointment is read by some as a tentative signal of greater openness to come, perhaps with the younger Kim at the helm. But even if that were true, other indications show Pyongyang to be as contradictory and unpredictable as ever.? Reporters were packed off home by Tuesday morning, having served their purpose by covering the parade, despite some having seven-day visas. And while many took the opportunity to walk around the streets, minders ran after some to yank them by the backpack and order them to return to the hotel. At least one journalist was told to erase pictures she had taken of a heap of corn by a military post, and I was chastised by a military-uniformed man for taking pictures of residents cheering parading tanks. When a British photographer took pictures of two women bearing cloth-wrapped boxes on their heads, an agitated minder yelled, getting his English idiom a tad wrong: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romanians do.’ In the Rome that is Pyongyang, what is constant and unchanging is the cult of personality that surrounds the leadership.? Giant paintings of Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung pop up in crop fields, in housing estates, bookstores and at monuments. There are no books, posters or drawings yet of the chosen one. But it may only be a matter of time.? At a flower exhibition set up for the 65th anniversary, portraits of the two older Kims stood among beds of a purple-pink orchid which is the ‘Kimilsunglia’ and a red begonia, the ‘Kimjongilia’. A young woman guide who spoke pitch-perfect English explained: ‘The bright red of the Kimjongilia symbolises a person with passion. The style of the flower is just like a lion’s mane. Its stem is just like a pillar.’? Asked if there was a Kimjongunlia flower named after the ‘Young General’, she smiled and said: ‘In the future, we will.’

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In such a hermit kingdom, what the photographs can capture are less powerful than words because your camera is unlikely to shoot anything without the permission of the officials or you risk losing it. I think the writer did a great job in this report.

Truth is easily mired in fear and what results may be inconsistent knowledge or warped memory. It happens.

Review – Others

The myths behind fears of nuclear power

David Ropeik

18 October 2010

Straits Times

GERMANY’S ambivalence about nuclear energy, common in many developed countries, has been on display again recently, following Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to extend the operating life of the country’s 17 nuclear plants for an average of 12 years beyond their currently scheduled closure dates.

Dr Merkel says this will help Germany develop the ‘most efficient and environmentally friendly energy supply worldwide’. Opposition leaders say that the government is ‘selling safety for money’.

Both sides argue about the facts, but underlying that debate is an argument about how those facts ‘feel’.

Decades of research have found that risk perception is an affective combination of facts and fears, intellect and instinct, reason and gut reaction. It is an inescapably subjective process that has helped us to survive, but sometimes gets us into more trouble, because we often worry too much about relatively smaller risks, or not enough about bigger ones, and make choices that feel right, but that actually create new risks.

Consider the two aspects of the risk of nuclear radiation: the facts and feelings.

For 65 years, researchers have followed nearly 90,000 hibakusha, the name in Japan for atomic bomb survivors who were within 3km of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions in 1945. Scientists compared them to a non-exposed Japanese population in order to calculate the effects of the radiation to which they had been exposed. The current estimate is that just 572 hibakusha – a little more than 0.5per cent – have died, or will die, from various forms of radiation-induced cancer.

Research by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) found that the fetuses of hibakusha women pregnant at the time of the explosions were born with horrible defects. But the RERF found little other serious long-term damage – even genetic damage – from exposure to those extraordinarily high levels of radiation.

Relying on the Japanese research, the World Health Organisation estimates that over the entire lifetime of the population of several hundred thousand people exposed to ionizing radiation from Chernobyl, as many as 4,000 might die prematurely from cancer caused by the leaked radiation. That is tragic, of course, but it is a smaller number than people assume.

So, if ionizing radiation is a relatively weak carcinogen, why is nuclear power so scary? Research into how people perceive and respond to risk has identified several psychological characteristics that make nuclear radiation frightening:

It is undetectable by our senses, which makes us feel powerless to protect ourselves, and lack of control makes any risk scarier.

Radiation causes cancer, a particularly painful outcome, and the more pain and suffering something causes, the more afraid of it we are likely to be.

Radiation from nuclear power is human-made, and human-made risks evoke more fear than natural threats.

Nuclear power plants can have accidents (many still believe that they can explode like bombs), and people are intrinsically more afraid of risks associated with a single large-scale ‘catastrophic’ event than they are of risks that cause greater harm spread over space and time.

Many people don’t trust the nuclear industry, or government nuclear regulators. The less we trust, the more we fear.

Despite all these fears, public attitudes towards nuclear power are shifting. The psychology of risk perception explains that too. We are more aware of the benefits of CO2-free emissions, and when the benefits of a choice seem larger, the associated risks seem smaller.

These psychological factors have nothing to do with the facts about the actual risk of nuclear radiation. But, as is often the case with risk perception, emotional filters, more than the facts, determine how afraid we are, or aren’t.

Whether this is rational or irrational is irrelevant. It is, inescapably, how it is. But we must recognise that our response to risk can pose a danger all by itself. Our fear of nuclear power has led to energy economics that favour coal and oil for electricity, at great cost to human and environmental health. Particulate pollution from fossil fuels kills tens of thousands of Europeans every year, and CO2 emissions fuel a potentially calamitous shift in global climate.

No amount of education or good communication can get around this. Subjective risk perception is hard-wired into our architecture and chemistry. What governments can do is to learn what psychological research has established: our perceptions, as real as they are and as much as they must be respected in a democracy, can create their own perils.

With that understanding, government risk assessment can account not only for the facts, but also for how we feel about them and how we behave. That way, we can reduce conflict over nuclear power and other risk issues, and foster wiser and more productive policies for public and environmental health.

The writer is is an instructor at Harvard University and the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match The Facts

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Editorial Desk; SECTWK

Magic by Numbers (ST, Oct 18, 2010: Magic numbers influence decisions? It all adds up)

By DANIEL GILBERT

17 October 2010

The New York Times

I RECENTLY wound up in the emergency room. Don’t worry, it was probably nothing. But to treat my case of probably nothing, the doctor gave me a prescription for a week’s worth of antibiotics, along with the usual stern warning about the importance of completing the full course.

I understood why I needed to complete the full course, of course. What I didn’t understand was why a full course took precisely seven days. Why not six, eight or nine and a half? Did the number seven correspond to some biological fact about the human digestive tract or the life cycle of bacteria?

My doctor seemed smart. She probably went to one of the nation’s finest medical schools, and regardless of where she trained, she certainly knew more about medicine than I did. And yet, as I walked out of the emergency room that night with my prescription in hand, I couldn’t help but suspect that I’d just been treated with magic.

Certain numbers have magical properties. E, pi and the Fibonacci series come quickly to mind — if you are a mathematician, that is. For the rest of us, the magic numbers are the familiar ones that have something to do with the way we keep track of time (7, say, and 24) or something to do with the way we count (namely, on 10 fingers). The ”time numbers” and the ”10 numbers” hold remarkable sway over our lives. We think in these numbers (if you ask people to produce a random number between one and a hundred, their guesses will cluster around the handful that end in zero or five) and we talk in these numbers (we say we will be there in five or 10 minutes, not six or 11).

But these magic numbers don’t just dominate our thoughts and dictate our words; they also drive our most important decisions.

Consider my prescription. Antibiotics are a godsend, but just how many pills should God be sending? A recent study of antibiotic treatment published in a leading medical journal began by noting that ”the usual treatment recommendation of 7 to 10 days for uncomplicated pneumonia is not based on scientific evidence” and went on to show that an abbreviated course of three days was every bit as effective as the usual course of eight.

My doctor had recommended seven. Where in the world had seven come from?

Italy! Seven is a magic number because only it can make a week, and it was given this particular power in 321 A.D. by the Roman emperor Constantine, who officially reduced the week from eight days to seven. The problem isn’t that Constantine’s week was arbitrary — units of time are often arbitrary, which is why the Soviets adopted the five-day week before they adopted the six-day week, and the French adopted the 10-day week before they adopted the 60-day vacation.

The problem is that Constantine didn’t know a thing about bacteria, and yet modern doctors continue to honor his edict. If patients are typically told that every 24 hours (24 being the magic number that corresponds to the rotation of the earth) they should take three pills (three being the magic number that divides any time period into a beginning, middle and end) and that they should do this for seven days, they will end up taking 21 pills.

If even one of those pills is unnecessary — that is, if people who take 20 pills get just as healthy just as fast as people who take 21 — then millions of people are taking at least 5 percent more medication than they actually need. This overdose contributes not only to the punishing costs of health care, but also to the evolution of the antibiotic-resistant strains of ”superbugs” that may someday decimate our species. All of which seems like a rather high price to pay for fealty to ancient Rome.

Magic ”time numbers” cost a lot, but magic ”10 numbers” may cost even more. In 1962, a physicist named M. F. M. Osborne noticed that stock prices tended to cluster around numbers ending in zero and five. Why? Well, on the one hand, most people have five fingers, and on the other hand, most people have five more. It isn’t hard to understand why an animal with 10 fingers would use a base-10 counting system. But according to economic theory, a stock’s price is supposed to be determined by the efficient workings of the free market and not by the phalanges of the people trading it.

And yet, research shows that fingers affect finances. For example, a stock that closed the previous day at $10.01 will perform about as well as a stock that closed at $10.03, but it will significantly outperform a stock that closed at $9.99. If stocks close two pennies apart, then why does it matter which pennies they are? Because for animals that go from thumb to pinkie in four easy steps, 10 is a magic number, and we just can’t help but use it as a magic marker — as a reference point that $10.01 exceeds and $9.99 does not. Retailers have known this for centuries, which is why so many prices end in nine and so few in one.

The hand is not the only part of our anatomy that gives certain numbers their magical powers. The tongue does too. Because of the acoustic properties of our vocal apparatus, some words just sound bigger than others. The back vowels (the ”u” in buck) sound bigger than the front vowels (the ”i” in sis), and the stops (the ”b” in buck) sound bigger than the fricatives (the ”s” in sis). As it turns out, in well over 100 languages, the words that denote bigness are made with bigger sounds.

The sound a number makes can influence our decisions about it. In a recent study, one group was shown an ad for an ice-cream scoop that was priced at $7.66, while another was shown an ad for a $7.22 scoop. The lower price is the better deal, of course, but the higher price (with its silky s’s) makes a smaller sound than the lower price (with its rattling t’s).

And because small sounds usually name small things, shoppers who were offered the scoop at the higher but whispery price of $7.66 were more likely to buy it than those offered the noisier price of $7.22 — but only if they’d been asked to say the price aloud.

The magic that magic numbers do is all too often black. They hold special significance for terrestrial mammals with hands and watches, but they mean nothing to streptococcus or the value of Google. Which is why we should be suspicious when the steps to sobriety correspond to a half turn of our planet, when the eternal commandments of God correspond to the architecture of our paws and when the habits of highly effective people — and highly trained doctors — correspond to the whims of a dead emperor.

Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard, the author of ”Stumbling on Happiness” and the host of the television series ”This Emotional Life.”

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 (Apr 23, 2008)

Campaign City: Life in Posters

Been to this wonderful exhibition featuring local artists at one of those back alleys I’d never known, and it’s pretty cosy I’d say; I was the only visitor on a warm Thursday afternoon. Took 166–it’s been a long time since I last took a long journey on a bus–to Niven Road and the place looked really rustic… 

I'm not sure if the surveillance camera's part of the exhibition...

One of the two mock-ups requiring audience participation (standing by the heart-shape balloon within the photographic frame) such that you are indeed part of the campaign--for mockery or sincerity

One of my two favourites...

Here’s eeshaun’s site: http://www.gardensilly.com/projects/2010/world-of-watches (he’s one of the artists who designed this year’s NDP goodie bags, which I am still looking for around dumpsters.)

Bunnies breed really quickly...somehow I was reminded of the Killer Rabbits in Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Reminds me of David Beckham's Hindi tattoo

My second favourite work, by Ian Woo...you know why...

And here are the souvenirs I bought: one for Ivan, in commemoration of the publication of his short-story about a loser and the Aedes. I didn’t have much cash on me and these cost me $8; I wanted to buy more cool stuff, but unfortunately they only accepted cash. Thankfully, the girl was nice enough to agree to my request to buy two of the postcards in the pack of 10. That’s flexibility!

Anyone interested in discussing the works, please let me know. I don’t think there are many, so I didn’t post extra comments about them here. Operators are standing by, nonetheless.

And more shots of the works can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artituteart/sets/72157624909726628/

Malthusian days

It’s been many days now since I last drove to work and I have more opportunities to see if the Malthusian way is still the highway on the MRT tracks. I may be overgeneralising, but I think people are less aggressive and more polite when they board or alight at stations now.

On the roads, things are still pretty much the same and the implementation of schemes to ease the driver’s pain either relies on fake reasons and false hopes or contradictions. The Erp is one, and I had quickly argued my point in a previous post. The Opc is another, though less problematic to the larger population of this land. I had the time to read up on the Law governing the use of such a breed of cars; the sentences on Lta’s site are too vague to be of real use (to safe-guard yourself), and for the less initiated (or those without the luxury of time to find out), money trouble lies ahead. So It reads that the Opc cannot be driven on any roads without a proper supplementary licence (paraphrased in human syntax). By that count, over the past 3 years and 3 months at my previous work place, I would have committed the offence no less than five times, no thanks to events like the Ptm. It doesn’t matter if there are only ghost cars on the non-gazetted (or private) roads besides the vampirish Opc, if the latter’s seen without an amulet on the forehead (that’s before the electronic licences were invented, pre-2010), the ghostbusters may be there bustin’. The crime: going against the Law, though common sense prevails. As it is, there are fundamental inconvenience that one can adjust to, but if you commit a foul based on technicality, it will hurt very badly especially if you are one who obeys the Law which you may not be well-acquainted with. Yet.

Who you gonna call? Those lawyer$.

So spread the word of Road Traffic Act Chapter 276 Section 11A, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of Law [16/91; 28/2001]. Salvation to Opcians.

Thankfully I have been lucky on those counts, but now I am more than eager to damage the environment further just so that I don’t feel the malaise creeping up on me. The uncertainty, the insecurity. I am looking forward to transforming my vampire red into a normal black! Just to be…normal!

Laws are laws, but you may choose to outlaw yourself if you wish, or if by the definitions of nature you don’t fit, a pity then. But there should always be room for debate, and that’s where art comes in for the challenge (recall this year’s M1 Singapore Fringe Festival: Art and the Law–and next year, the theme’s Art and Education). But more on the arts later; here’s everyone’s favourite freak of nature, science! Frankie did it the Mary Shelley way.

TIME

Monday, Jun. 28, 2010

The Risks and Rewards of Synthetic Biology

By NANCY GIBBS

Right about now, it would be great if we could release into the Gulf of Mexico a vat of bugs that did nothing but eat gobs of oil and digest it into harmless smaller bits. Meanwhile, we’d power the cleanup vessels with microbes that swallow grass clippings or seaweed and spit out fuel, so we’d no longer need to punch holes in the bottom of the Gulf in the first place.

Such is the promise of synthetic biology, which, according to the people who have tried to explain it to me, is basically a marketing term for all kinds of research in which scientists tinker with biological bits to make useful things — sort of like living Lego blocks. The latest breakthrough in the field came a few weeks ago, with news that left headline writers torn between Genesis and Frankenstein: the biopioneer Craig Venter was said to have become the first to create life in the lab. What Venter did was replace the natural genome in a cell with a slightly modified synthetic one, which then issued the orders by which the cell reproduced — and brought science a little further into the realm of science fiction.

The gift of man-made life — biofuels made of algae, tumor-seeking microbial missiles — comes wrapped in a risk: What if the oil-eating bug mutates, as the horror-movie version inevitably does, and starts eating other things — like us? It’s perhaps not surprising that when bioethicists describe synthetic biology, they sound like the characters in Jurassic Park. “When dealing with biological entities,” notes Thomas Murray, president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics organization, “life has a tendency to find a way.”

Accidents at power plants are bad enough. But a leak from a bioreactor could be worse, since bacteria can learn new tricks when you’re not looking. Microbes excel at exchanging DNA, Murray notes — “like microbial French kissing.” That bug we introduce into the ocean to sip the spill might end up swapping DNA with other living things. “We have a ways to go,” he says, “before we can really know what risks we’re running if we release these organisms into the environment.”

All of which confirms the need for careful oversight, but we haven’t proven very good at this. The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place. For proof, you have only to consider that for all the furor in the past dozen years, there’s still no federal law banning human cloning; there’s only, so far, scientific restraint. In 2001, President George W. Bush was condemned for politicizing science with his decision to limit federal funding for stem-cell research; in 2009 President Obama was praised for reversing it, even though his decision was arguably just as political. You can object to Bush’s stem-cell decision because you believe embryos have no moral standing, or to Obama’s decision because you think they do. But neither President should be attacked for “interfering with science,” as though research — especially publicly funded research — should be immune from regulation. The left may have faith in the findings of think tanks, the right in the freedom of markets, but on this one, I want a more inclusive, expansive debate. Without public oversight, we are certain to wake up one day to news of some private breakthrough that rattles our bones: a human-animal hybrid, a cloned child, a fetus grown solely to harvest its parts.

As laboratories incubate new blends of man and machine — creatures whose creators used a keyboard — it seems mad to say that philosophy should not intervene. And indeed, when the news about Venter broke, Obama called on his bioethics commission to “undertake, as its first order of business, a study of the implications of this scientific milestone,” including an assessment of “any potential health, security or other risks.”

The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political — and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone’s deeply held beliefs. Venter’s bombshell revived the oldest of ethical debates, over whether scientists were playing God or proving he does not exist because someone re-enacted Genesis in suburban Maryland. Others dismiss the worry on the grounds that creating new forms of life is not the same as creating life. One doctor friend of mine suggested that “they haven’t created life in any sense of the word, other than a person playing a cassette has invented the tape recorder.”

People are bound to disagree about when scientists are crossing some moral Rubicon. That is all the more reason to debate, in public and in advance, where those boundaries lie — rather than doing so after the fact, when researchers are celebrating some technical triumph and the rest of us are wondering what price we will pay for it. 

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Some deviancy towards nature and the law can develop funnies. Sue, you will, but what you are about to see are not surprisingly easily mistaken to be Singaporean students’ writing; they are, in truth, a compilation of American students’ works (although some Singaporean students’ essays are similar). This dates back to an email sent by my colleague in 2008…

The “Anals” of Human History

(a compilation of US students’ history essays)

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked “Am I my brother’s son?” God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother’s birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns – Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in “The Illiad”, by Homer. Homer also wrote the “Oddity”, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn’t climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello’s interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted “hurrah.” Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear’s famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Macbeth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote “Donkey Hote”. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote “Paradise Lost.” Then his wife dies and he wrote “Paradise Regained.”

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim’s Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post without stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared “a horse divided against itself cannot stand.” Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, “In onion there is strength.” Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called “Candy”. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon’s flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the “Organ of the Species”. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

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Nothing beats universal unspoken sarcasm in hilarity.

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I didn’t know my name would be published here! Will I get into trouble with the law? Haha!

Second days

This is the second day of work at my new place and it’s been fine. I do know I will be taking Teamwork & Cooperation Skills and Critical Reasoning Skills modules, so I am happy! Will be working on a kind of Liberal Arts/GP programme here with the rest of the team too. What’s more impressive is my new workstation; I’m sharing a room with another lecturer here (and I was totally unprepared for this) and here’s a shot of my new desk!

– Bookshelf not fitted into the frame!

The pace is still rather slow currently, but it will pick up from next week onwards, I am sure, and once the students come in, the real test begins!

In the meantime, I shall allow myself the liberty to drift into the mood of tranquility best defined by the days at Scarborough Beach…that was a lovely beach; loveliest I’ve ever been to. Great weather and climate, lovely Indian Ocean. I picked the right hotel! (But there isn’t much to do around here; I was just here to ‘detoxify’ and chill out.)

Here’s dusk at Scarborough Beach as viewed from my hotel room on the second day:

(All pictures here were taken with a 2.0MP camera!)

And that was my maiden trip on a plane!

It’s all plane-sailing.