Never Let Me Go

This post is in dedication to Kazuo Ishiguro’s hauntingly sentimental novel which I have not yet read but will one day soon (and so any adjectives that preceded it here should not be trusted without doubt!) But Corliss gave a reflective look at the story from print to screen, from fiction to reality. Read it here:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2015774,00.html

“Any story about what it is to be a clone implicitly asks what it is to be human,” echoes Corliss. “Whether we live to be 30 or 90, we all have a death sentence hanging over us. Live and love well, so that long before our time is up, we will truly have reached completion. That way, we can live forever.”

The story reminds me immediately of Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail, but this is well-contextualised in contemporary time where science pushes boundaries while romantic love remains evergreen like a musk over the hard edges science cuts.

What remains debatable is–once again–the way the East and the West view heroism. As Ishiguro commented, “It’s antithethical to the American creed of how you should face setbacks.” Submit to your fate.

The option has always been there: to submit or to retaliate, to do something about it.

This story somehow reminds me of the issue of adoption, the life after: when the adopted cant adapt

I never go down without a fight, so I will find the story disturbing, as with a ‘prescribed’ life. I personally don’t quite like Sparta. Plato and Confucius can say all they like about self and the State, but I am probably selfish.

This Sep 16, 2010 comment by Prof Koh Tai Ann should make sense: “These days, people talk about tolerance as a virtue. But tolerance is a kind of sloth because it’s passive: you’re not doing bad, but neither are you doing good. So we have to ask: ‘What good can we all do?'” (Read the full interview here; check out her take on the 3Cs of Singapore–witty.)

AP Ian Macduff was also stressing the importance of thinking and the role of philosophy in an earlier interview (May 26, 2010).

Because we are always short of time, because we are forever fighting to stay ahead, because we want to survive in an environment that doesn’t endow us with the treasures of nature, sacrifices have to be made. The arts are the next best alternative forgone in the cold world of economics. Now, there seems to be a kind of restlessness about the soulless (or mindless) people here.

I think when science and the arts flow as one, great things can be achieved. Here are more examples of what, together, we can achieve:

Bamboo bikes are in

Science diplomacy

Shun blood diamonds go for cultured

 And here is a sketch done by my favourite doctor, Tan Cheng Bock, when I last consulted him for my throat problem about a year or so ago. A pity he retired from politics and I’m not sure if there are many more hearty and compassionate political leaders like him nowadays.

 (Non Sequitur, Oct 4, 10)

Never let me go insane, never let me go away alone. A little love and critical thinking can go a long way.

The Collector of Things

People collect things as a form of recollection later on, especially if they are things that are unlikely to be easily attained in future, and I think I’ve just been attracted by the bibs used in runs or walks. Have just proudly stuck the two bibs I’ve ever received in my life on wall of my bookshelf. One more to come at the end of the year…

A few days ago, I also received a specially designed class tee from an ex-student, and that was a real surprise too. Such commemorative t-shirts are to be worn with pride, and once I get a wardrobe for my office, I will be hanging it there with the other special t-shirts from students. But this one is special; it’s got a poem on the back. The gusto of the message reminds me of Yue Fei’s mother. *haha*

I haven’t really quite finished decorating my workspace, but I will be moving to the section by the window soon, once my room-mate leaves in December. So I think I will ‘renovate’ the place after that. Currently I have a special shelf with some of the nice paraphernalia from my good friends and ex-students displayed there.

I do wonder why people quit this place (maybe I haven’t been here long enough to know why, and the ‘outside world’ is not as open as the small enclave of teachers in most MOE schools); perhaps I have been through a more gruesome pace and I can take the heat better than most. I think this is the quality of most people who have survived at least two years there in Ang Mo Kio. But I just realised–having been idealistic all these years–that money is number one on the survival kit list in Singapore, and if somewhere-out-there offers me a bigger pay, I will go for it. Hell, I’ve almost maxed out all my savings on a new home in Yishun and my wedding and all. This money misery business could be averted, but I simply couldn’t wait till the end of the month for my supposedly big bonus, and so I forfeited it when I left; I couldn’t wait till the end of next year for my supposedly big monetary reward called the “Connect Plan”, and so I forfeited that too when I left. But it wasn’t a mistake; it’s just opportunity cost–money or sanity.

I’m beginning to love the principle of Cristiano Ronaldo, as Giggs slowly belongs to the past. Rooney has just caused Man U to suffer from a sort of identity crisis where Loyalty, Giggs, Scholes and Neville will all retire at the same time. Old Trafford is no longer the Theatre of Dreams it used to be, but a Theatre of Dreams of the Rich and Mercenary. They might as well merge with Manchester City in future–Great City of Manchester Re-united. Wow. But I am more worried about the rich Indian woman who now owns my favourite club, Blackburn Rovers. She even talked about renaming the club ground to raise funds–I hope Ewood Park will not become Bollywood Park, but if her millions could bring in Messi and Kaka, I don’t mind.

Some collect football clubs as if they were horses because they are a mark of prestige and affluence. Some collect sweaty handshakes from footballers as if sweat was blood because it shows they are one of them at the ground, touching base: some are likely to be genuine while others have been accused of some hidden agenda. I remember about 20 years ago, one PAP member, while doing her rounds at a hawker centre, had to wash her hands at the wrong moment and that cost her the Gombak constituency. I’m not sure if Merkel’s washed her hands after visiting the German national team dressing room–maybe she’s some fetish over sweaty bodies–but she’s received some dressing down from some purists:

 (crying foul over merkel’s dressing room visit)

I would guess that she had to do something like that after saying something like this…germany wakes up

On the topic of naked bodies and integration (we’re not talking about sex, although some people do believe the world will become a better place if we have more inter-racial marriages), Ground Zero is (was) really hot. (See one hot, sexy article here.) In the name of political correctness, I wonder if some rednecks would actually want to come to the primary schools in Singapore and beat up the kids playing Zero Point during recess or after school–or is Zero Point history?

As people and things slowly become history, the green ones hope to make the problem of the environment a problem of the past too. And technology will expand as far as the human will and imagination can stretch to do good for the world…

The human race can one day collect the badges of honour and the purple heart in the fights against evils and recollect the past in the present which would not have a future if there were no dreams of a better tomorrow.

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.

*

Nothing beats universal unspoken sarcasm in hilarity.

*

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

The violence, the hurt, the scare

I am speechless with the way that President described the weapon.

Jun 8, 2010 (ST)

Lessons from the age of the Crusades

By Ross Douthat

WATCHING the Israeli government’s botched, bloody attempt to enforce its blockade of Gaza, I kept thinking about Outremer. That’s the name – French for ‘beyond the sea’ – given to the states that the Crusaders established in the Holy Land during the High Middle Ages: the principality of Antioch, the counties of Edessa and Tripoli, and the kingdom of Jerusalem. Out of a mix of amnesia and self-abnegation, we tend to remember the Crusader states only as deplorable exercises in Western aggression. (Never mind that in an age defined by conquest and reconquest, they were no less legitimate than the Muslim states they warred against – which had themselves been founded atop once-Christian territories.) The analogy between Israel and Outremer is usually drawn by Israel’s enemies: ‘Jews and Crusaders’ is one of Osama bin Laden’s favourite epithets, and Palestinian radicals often pine for another Saladin to drive the Israelis into the sea. But Israel’s friends can learn something from Outremer as well. Like today’s Jewish republic, the Crusader kingdoms were small states forged by military valour, based in the Middle East but oriented westward, with distant patrons and potential foes just next door. Like Israel, they were magnets for fanatics from east and west alike. And when they eventually fell – after surviving for longer than Israel has existed – it was for reasons that are directly relevant to the challenges facing the Israeli government today. The first reason was geographic: the Holy Land is easier to conquer than defend because its topograpy and regional position leave it perpetually vulnerable to invasion. The second was diplomatic: the Crusaders were perpetually falling out with their major neighbours, from Byzantium to Egypt, and the support they enjoyed from Western Europe was too limited to save them from extinction. The third was demographic: the ruling class of Outremer, primarily Frankish knights and their retainers, was a minority in a territory whose inhabitants were largely Eastern Orthodox and Muslim, and they had difficulty achieving the kind of integration that long-term stability required. A decade ago, before the collapse of the peace process, the Israelis seemed to be faring better than Outremer on all three fronts. Their potent armed forces and nuclear deterrent more than offset the weakness of their geographic position. After decades of isolation, they had forged reasonably stable relationships with many regional powers – including Turkey, Jordan and Egypt – and an enduring bond with the world’s superpower, the United States. Their substantial Arab minority was better treated and better integrated than minority populations in almost any other Middle Eastern state. And they appeared to be disentangling themselves from the long-term occupation of a much larger Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank. Ten years later, though, only the military advantage endures. Diplomatically and demographically, Israel increasingly faces the same problems that bedevilled the 12th-century kings of Jerusalem. In the wake of the Gaza and Lebanon wars, and now the blockade-running fiasco, the Jewish state is as isolated on the world stage as it has been since the dark Zionism-is-racism years of the 1970s. Meanwhile, its relationship with its Arab citizens is increasingly strained, the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank seems destined to continue indefinitely, and both Arab populations are growing so swiftly that Jews could soon be a minority west of the Jordan River. Israel can probably live with diplomatic isolation so long as the American public remains staunchly on its side. But it will have a harder time surviving the demographic transformation of its territory. If Israel can’t extricate itself from the West Bank, it may be forced to choose between the quasi-apartheid of a permanent occupation, and the dissolution that would likely follow from giving Palestinians a significant voice in Israeli politics. Israel’s critics often make this extrication sound easy. In reality, it promises to involve enormous sacrifices, of land and everyday security alike – whether in the form of extraordinary concessions to a divided Palestinian leadership, or a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank. What’s more, either approach would almost certainly invite stepped-up violence from the Palestinian factions and their Iranian and Syrian backers, who will see any retreat as a cue to escalate the struggle. As American foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead put it recently, Israel may ‘have to pay virtually the full price for peace… without getting full peace’. Nobody should blame Israelis for shying from this possibility. Yet it may be the only way to guarantee their survival as a nation. Outremer was finally overrun by Muslim armies. But if Israel is destroyed, it will be destroyed from within. NEW YORK TIMES

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Violence is part of everyday life, taking on different forms. With Israel, the author might be suggesting  a calculated pullout. It is a well-planned article, well-thought and well-meaning.

But some tend to use bad arguments and they threaten the dignity of others:

What a headline! I hyperventilated.

Maybe that’s why companies believe that teachers are not properly trained to engage students, and they probably believe that teachers can’t spot spelling errors which will decrease their credibility:

And three days later, on Aug 23, 2010, another ST headline caused me to do a double-take: “Students who can’t afford tuition ‘won’t lose out’: Education Ministry is monitoring tuition trend, says Ng Eng Hen”

The implicit message seemed to be that tuition is certainly needed, so if you can’t afford it, the ministry is looking into it and is perhaps going to regulate the market price of tuition. Oh my.

That really saddened me, until I read on and realised that it is one of those usual cock-up by ST in their attempt at sensationalising the news (or it’s a case of not being careful with the use of words):

[Ng Eng Hen] said: “I want to assure you that over the next few years, we will continue to build an education system where it doesn’t mean you have to be rich, or that your child has to have tuition, (but where) if he works hard, he will succeed.”

The paraphrased paragraph before that in the article was also misleading, but if indeed the Minister had that intention in mind, he would probably have not said the cited statement, or he might have realised that it was a boo-boo and he was correcting himself.

There’s a need to be careful with the use of language, if you are in such an important position.

Aug 22, 2010 (ST)

The power of words to heal and hurt

‘Ground Zero Mosque’ debate illustrates how language can be used to stir up passions

By Paul Farhi

No matter where you stand on the question of building a mosque near Ground Zero, you have to hand one thing to the framers of this issue: They understood the power of words to create and perpetuate an issue.

Calling the proposed Islamic cultural centre in Lower Manhattan a ‘mosque at Ground Zero’ stirs up a far more passionate response on either side of the issue than calling it ‘an Islamic cultural centre and mosque in Lower Manhattan’.

Strictly speaking, the proposed 13-storey edifice at 51 Park Place isn’t exactly a mosque, at least not as that term is generally understood (domes, minarets, et cetera), and it certainly isn’t going to be a mosque that’s 13 storeys tall.

The proposed building would contain many things – a cooking school, basketball courts, a swimming pool, childcare facilities, a restaurant, a library, an auditorium, a Sept 11 memorial and, yes, a Muslim house of worship, or mosque.

It would be located two blocks from a corner of the Ground Zero site, in a neighbourhood already packed with places of worship, including another Muslim prayer house that predates the events of Sept 11, 2001.

Read the preceding paragraph and ask yourself: Doesn’t ‘Mosque at Ground Zero’ sound more like the sort of thing that could get opponents like Newt Gingrich to declare the project ‘a political statement of radical Islamist triumph’?

(The Associated Press and The Washington Post are advising their journalists to avoid the terms ‘Ground Zero mosque’ or ‘mosque at Ground Zero’ because they’re inaccurate.)

Politicians, revolutionaries, editors and advertisers have long understood the power of a single word to recast and reframe an issue to explosive effect.

By calling the estate tax the ‘death tax’, conservatives broadened a narrow debate over the obligations of wealthy families into a question of taxation for all. Similarly, ‘pre-owned’ vehicles sound a lot nicer than ‘used’ ones.

Journalists, at least the ones still obligated to neutrality, have tried to dance around loaded phrases for years. What to call someone who takes up arms against a government – a ‘terrorist’, an ‘insurgent’, a ‘partisan’ or a ‘militant’? Who or what are ‘freedom fighters’?

Is Israel’s barrier on the West Bank and Gaza Strip a ‘security fence’ or a ‘separation wall’? Are they ‘illegal aliens’ or ‘undocumented workers’? Is it fair to label someone who opposes abortion ‘pro-life’ when doing so suggests that an opponent is ‘anti-life’?

In Washington, naming a piece of legislation is a dark semantic art, fraught with deception and political manipulation. No matter what their flaws or merits, on name alone it’s hard to be against something called ‘the Patriot Act’ or ‘the Clean Skies Act’.

Calling anything a ‘reform’ or ‘progressive’ initiative implies that the reform is necessary or that opponents are regressive.

The general rule in navigating this minefield is clarity and accuracy, says Ms Teresa Schmedding, president of the American Copy Editors Society, an organisation dedicated to maintaining both of those things in newspapers, magazines and websites.

‘Terms that get caught up in religious or political ideology can be misleading, so we try to avoid those,’ she says. But even ‘neutral’ labels have limitations and can be misleading, she adds.

If you oppose abortion except in cases of incest and rape, are you therefore ‘quasi-pro-life’, she asks. If you oppose abortion but are in favour of the death penalty, what are you then?

Corporations try to play the opposite game. Instead of bland neutrality, they spend millions of dollars annually on names they hope will evoke a positive, emotional connection with consumers, says Mr Hayes Roth, the chief marketing officer of Landor Associates, a company that creates names for marketers and organisations. Ideally, he says, a great brand name is connected to ‘a great story’. Apple, for example, is an ingeniously simple and resonant name for a computer because it suggests simplicity, familiarity and ease of use, all attributes for a potentially intimidating device like a computer.

This is where the promoters of the downtown Islamic cultural centre/mosque may have let events slip beyond their control, he suggests: They didn’t come up with a name that would have blunted the emotional uppercut of ‘mosque near Ground Zero’.

Indeed, Mr Roth says, the entire controversy might have been averted if the organisation behind the project had selected a name that recognised the neighbourhood as the site of epic tragedy and conveyed unassailable, unarguable intentions, using words like ‘memorial’, ‘reconciliation’, ‘international’, ‘interfaith’ or ‘understanding’.

Not coincidentally, Landor recently completed work on logos and brand identifiers for the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, located at Ground Zero. Landor’s shorthand ‘identity’ for the project is simple and to the point, and unlikely to raise any hackles at all: ‘9/11 Memorial.’

The Washington Post

Solving the puzzle

You participate in a quiz show in which you are shown two locked boxes, one of which contains a carrot and the other a diamond. The keys to the boxes are held by two ladies, one of whom always tells lies and the other always tells the truth. You do not know which is which. You are allowed one question to be put to one of the ladies. How can you discover which box contains the diamond?

Ah, those stones are always intriguing. And I am tempted by the sale…The price of diamond

To buy or not to buy, that is the question, and it is a question plagued by ethical discussions. I’m not sure if people would still buy the diamonds after knowing the high probability of any diamond being a blood diamond.

Aug 26, 2010

Blood clouds the diamond’s sparkle

By Andy Ho (ST)

WHAT is British supermodel Naomi Campbell doing at The Hague’s special Sierra Leone war crimes court?

A small west African republic of four million, Sierra Leone was racked by civil war between 1996 and 2002. The former president of neighbouring Liberia, Charles Taylor, is currently on trial at The Hague, accused of recruiting for the Sierra Leone insurgents and supplying them with arms.

The armed insurgents forced civilians to mine for diamonds, with which Taylor was allegedly paid. According to a 2003 United States Congressional Research Service report, the rebels terrorised the local population. Most egregiously, they amputated the limbs of men, women, children and infants. Women and children were made sex slaves, while boys were also forcibly conscripted. More than 120,000 were killed and two million displaced. Understandably, the stones mined under such circumstances have been called ‘blood diamonds’.

Ms Campbell allegedly received some of these from Taylor. Thus, she might be a key link in the chain of events that connects the former dictator to crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

Blood diamonds have also been mined by rebels fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Angola. The trade in blood diamonds first attracted media attention in the past decade or so, after human rights activists like Global Witness highlighted the plight of their amputee victims in Sierra Leone.

A 2006 Global Witness study estimates that 20 per cent of the diamond trade involves such illicit stones. According to a 2006 US Government Accountability Office report, this illicit trade – which has a link to Al-Qaeda that was identified in 2003 – continues to this very day despite the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme.

De Beers is the firm that has dominated the world’s diamond market since it was founded 130 years ago. In May 2000, it met human rights activists and African political leaders at the diamond mining city of Kimberley in South Africa. (Many producer nations in Africa, like Botswana and Namibia, are in profit-sharing schemes with De Beers.)

The parties agreed to set up a global certification scheme to prevent the trade in blood diamonds. States began adopting the scheme from December 2002, including the US and all European Union nations, which then passed laws to enforce it.

For instance, the US passed its Clean Diamonds Trade Act in 2003. But the law left the process of certifying diamonds to industry itself. The industry, in turn, merely set up a voluntary system of proper invoicing to ensure that blood diamonds were not bought or sold.

How did human rights activists even get the traditionally opaque industry to act in concert with producer nation governments? The key was the highly oligopolistic industry’s Achilles heel: Diamonds are not only merely sparklers with little intrinsic value, but they are also not even scarce. Yet their worth to consumers depends largely on an illusion of their scarcity and mysteriousness.

To boost sales after the Depression, De Beers began advertising heavily in the 1930s. Its efforts transformed the sparkler into a rare and mysterious yet ‘traditional’ symbol of eternal love. So successful was De Beers in this regard that the diamond ring came to be regarded as a must for any man proposing to a woman.

By the same token, the industry is extremely vulnerable to public opinion. Publicity about the human rights abuse in Sierra Leone could link diamonds to amputated limbs and child rape. If this led to consumer outrage, especially in the US, which accounts for two-thirds of all consumer purchases of diamonds, the industry could be dealt a mortal blow.

In Blood Diamonds (2004), Greg Campbell notes that De Beers began speaking up against blood diamonds only after activists threatened a boycott of its products. Thus industry had to act, which was made easier by the fact that De Beers is not merely a diamond retailer but also owns 40 per cent of diamond mines worldwide. Moreover, it buys up 70 per cent of the world’s production of rough diamonds – hence its huge stockpile of diamonds, as Ingrid Tamm notes in Diamonds In Peace And War (2002).

While De Beers’ mining is large-scale and capital-intensive, that in Sierra Leone was labour-intensive and involved enslaved locals digging for the stones along alluvial streams. The rough diamonds from these operations were small and easily smuggled out of the country. They then passed through many hands before ending up in secretive diamond bourses.

These stones get ‘mixed and re-mixed, traded back and forth’ between large and small bourses, according to the 2006 General Accounting Office study mentioned above.

Since their origins cannot be determined, this means licit and illicit stones may be traded side by side. It helps that the Central Selling Organisation – also created by De Beers – controls two-thirds of the trade in these bourses the world over.

At the retail level, jewellery certification is meant to attest to their origins in rough diamonds that are not illicit. Yet a 2004 Global Witness survey of 30 leading US diamond retailers found that only five kept records of Kimberley Process invoices. A 2007 Global Witness and Amnesty International survey of 37 top retailers – half of which did not respond – found that only eight kept records.

While it may foster an impression that the business has been thereby decontaminated, the Kimberley Process has no meaningful enforcement mechanism. Hence those who do not abide by it face no sanction.

So the truth is that whatever processes now exist do not do much to stamp out blood diamonds – and these continue to sit on many a woman’s ring finger.

*

(http://www.giddykipper.biz/WordPress/?m=200908)

It’s a question of faith, what you choose, what stand you take.

Pascal’s wager: “If God exists and if I believe in Him, I will get eternal life and eternal happiness. If God does not exist and if I believe in Him, I will get nothing. If I do not believe at all, I will definitely get nothing. Therefore, if I believe, I may get an infinite reward and I have nothing to lose.”

*

This is a SICK ASS chapter, featuring “S”

The beauty of logic in stand-taking

(x.1) Negating a Universal statement: “All X have Y” becomes “not all X have Y.” (~ p is true when p is false; ~ p is false when p is true.)

I: All cows eat grass. Do you agree?

Possible S’s:

Yes, I agree that all cows eat grass.

(Negation) No, some cows eat grass (while there are mutant cows who eat humans).

(Absolute negation) No, no cow eat grass–what planet are you on?

(x.2) Negating compound statements (de Morgan’s laws): ~ (p and q) = (~ p) or (~ q) while ~ (p or q) = (~ p) and (~ q).

I: Every one should provide food aid and financial assistance to poorer nations.

S:

Not every one should provide food aid and financial assistance to poorer nations. Some one should not provide food aid to poorer nations, or some one should not provide financial assistance to poorer nations.

Then, the Issue becomes: who should…? why should they…?

*

Tower of Bramah: In the great temple at Benares rests a brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles. On one of these needles, at the creation, God placed sixty-four discs of pure gold, the largest disc resting on the brass plate, and the other getting smaller and smaller up to the top one. Day and night unceasingly the priests transfer the discs from one diamond needle to another: he must not move more than one disc at a time and must place this disc on a needle so that there is no smaller disc below it. When the sixty-four discs shall have been thus transferred from the needle on which at the creation God placed them to one of the other needles, the world will vanish. How long will the complete transfer take?

*

If you are at a reception attended by 400 guests, you can be sure that there will be at least two persons with the same birthday.

If MCYS had imbued such lovely mathematical GPish facts and puzzles in their dating campaign, then foreign press like the AFP will stop ridiculing Singapore…

Singapore woos singles in latest dating campaign

AFP

Sunday, 15 August 2010

Singapore is launching yet another campaign to promote dating among its notoriously love-shy singles as the city-state grapples with low marriage and birth rates.

The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) issued a tender this month through the government’s official procurement website calling for proposals on how to encourage singles to date.

“This tender is called to engage a communications agency to conceptualise, plan and implement a public communications campaign to promote dating,” said a notice on the site.

No details of the tender were given in the notice but the Straits Times newspaper said the winner will produce a television commercial to promote dating and draw up a “unique dating concept” to get singles to interact.

Targeted at people aged 20 to 35 who do not date, the initiative is the latest effort by the government to act as matchmaker for its loveless singles population.

It comes amid falling marriage and fertility rates in the tiny but affluent island-state with a population of about five million, more than one million of whom are foreigners.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in February urged citizens to ignore superstitions about the Chinese zodiac and make more babies during the Year of the Tiger, which began in February.

Lee said he was particularly worried about ethnic Chinese couples who choose to hold back from having babies during Tiger years because of a superstition that children born during the period will have the animal’s fierce attributes.

Singapore’s fertility rate dipped to its lowest level ever at 1.23 babies per woman in 2009, down from 1.28 in 2008 and well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed for a stable population, he said.

The marriage rate hit 6.6 marriages per 1,000 residents in 2009, down from 7.8 in 1999, the Straits Times said, citing government statistics.

A fresh university graduate reacted coolly to the latest campaign.

“I think it’s a bit silly,” Koh Hoon Kiat, 25, told AFP.

Asked if a television commercial would prompt him to find a date, he said: “I’m not at a very desperate stage yet.”

Previous government attempts to heat up romance and encourage couples to make more babies have so far failed to reverse the falling birth rates.

A campaign dubbed “Romancing Singapore” involved month-long carnivals to celebrate love, and another initiative called “Beautifully Imperfect” carried the message of loving one’s partner despite imperfections.

Singapore, which has a reputation as a nanny state that interferes in citizens’ private lives, regularly carries out campaigns to instill discipline, promote courtesy and discourage the use of broken English.

Other initiatives included a campaign urging wedding guests to arrive on time and rating public toilets for cleanliness.

Being humane

Never laugh at one’s aspirations, because it will show others the manners you lack. (This too comes from Desperate Housewives Season 6 Episode 7 [I think], which also indirectly puts teachers and foreign workers on a pedestal!) Having manners like being polite and tactful are a rare quality in social animals called humans nowadays. Perhaps the Americans might be readily blamed (by the British), for such degeneration which parallelled the simplification of the language.

This ecareers.sg portal is a wonderful initiative by the Ministry in helping children plan ahead, and the formality of the portal does reflect the kind of manners required in a job hunt. (That’s why I give it a place here in this post, instead of a spot on the blogroll on the right, which is where you can find the link to my clinic opening hours.)

School is the place to start the habituation of good manners. When things go wrong in future, for instance one’s failure to observe the good manner of “verbal hygiene” (to borrow the term from Deborah Cameron) or to abide by the law (think of acts like graffiti or sexual crimes as futher degeneration of the lack of manners and morals), prison is the only place where your ‘problems’ will be rectified and good manners re-instituted.

Whether or not this particular prison makes sense is your call:

Norway Builds the World’s Most Humane Prison

By William Lee Adams

May 10, 2010

By the time the trumpets sound, the candles have been lit and the salmon platters garnished. Harald V, King of Norway, enters the room, and 200 guests stand to greet him. Then a chorus of 30 men and women, each wearing a blue police uniform, launches into a spirited rendition of “We Are the World.” This isn’t cabaret night at Oslo’s Royal Palace. It’s a gala to inaugurate Halden Fengsel, Norway’s newest prison.

Ten years and 1.5 billion Norwegian kroner ($252 million) in the making, Halden is spread over 75 acres (30 hectares) of gently sloping forest in southeastern Norway. The facility boasts amenities like a sound studio, jogging trails and a freestanding two-bedroom house where inmates can host their families during overnight visits. Unlike many American prisons, the air isn’t tinged with the smell of sweat and urine. Instead, the scent of orange sorbet emanates from the “kitchen laboratory” where inmates take cooking courses. “In the Norwegian prison system, there’s a focus on human rights and respect,” says Are Hoidal, the prison’s governor. “We don’t see any of this as unusual.”

Halden, Norway’s second largest prison, with a capacity of 252 inmates, opened on April 8. It embodies the guiding principles of the country’s penal system: that repressive prisons do not work and that treating prisoners humanely boosts their chances of reintegrating into society. “When they arrive, many of them are in bad shape,” Hoidal says, noting that Halden houses drug dealers, murderers and rapists, among others. “We want to build them up, give them confidence through education and work and have them leave as better people.” Countries track recidivism rates differently, but even an imperfect comparison suggests the Norwegian model works. Within two years of their release, 20% of Norway’s prisoners end up back in jail. In the U.K. and the U.S., the figure hovers between 50% and 60%. Of course, a low level of criminality gives Norway a massive advantage. Its prison roll lists a mere 3,300, or 69 per 100,000 people, compared with 2.3 million in the U.S., or 753 per 100,000 — the highest rate in the world.

Design plays a key role in Halden’s rehabilitation efforts. “The most important thing is that the prison looks as much like the outside world as possible,” says Hans Henrik Hoilund, one of the prison’s architects. To avoid an institutional feel, exteriors are not concrete but made of bricks, galvanized steel and larch; the buildings seem to have grown organically from the woodlands. And while there is one obvious symbol of incarceration — a 20-ft. (6 m) concrete security wall along the prison’s perimeter — trees obscure it, and its top has been rounded off, Hoilund says, “so it isn’t too hostile.”

The cells rival well-appointed college dorm rooms, with their flat-screen TVs and minifridges. Designers chose long vertical windows for the rooms because they let in more sunlight. There are no bars. Every 10 to 12 cells share a living room and kitchen. With their stainless-steel countertops, wraparound sofas and birch-colored coffee tables, they resemble Ikea showrooms.

Halden’s greatest asset, though, may be the strong relationship between staff and inmates. Prison guards don’t carry guns — that creates unnecessary intimidation and social distance — and they routinely eat meals and play sports with the inmates. “Many of the prisoners come from bad homes, so we wanted to create a sense of family,” says architect Per Hojgaard Nielsen. Half the guards are women — Hoidal believes this decreases aggression — and prisoners receive questionnaires asking how their experience in prison can be improved.

There’s plenty of enthusiasm for transforming lives. “None of us were forced to work here. We chose to,” says Charlott-Renee Sandvik Clasen, a music teacher in the prison and a member of Halden’s security-guard chorus. “Our goal is to give all the prisoners — we call them our pupils — a meaningful life inside these walls.” It’s warmth like that, not the expensive television sets, that will likely have the most lasting impact.

*

When something makes you laugh and think, it should be something you will remember for a longer time than the knowledge of what you ate for breakfast. At The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf at Changi Airport Terminal 3 on Saturday, while I was enjoying my Salmon and Egg Sandwich and coffee, and marking, something dawned on me: I was actually not displaying proper manners! I was multitasking, eating and marking. I was reading through the lines when I stumbled upon the one which talks about the hectic daily grind and how people walk and eat or work and eat. While there isn’t much of a choice for us, it may actually not be bad manners if it is something that has been largely accepted by society, especially that of an urban one and such capability is actually a concrete jungle survival skill.

And so it is much ado about survival that people here have been reminded so frequently that we don’t have any natural resources but ourselves to build a prosperous future. And unfortunately, we are not reproducing fast enough over the decades. The ruling party’s policies have been deemed as ineffective by many, but there’s nothing much the policymakers can really do. Perhaps we need a new party…sex party.

Sex Party promises ‘real action’ for Australians

The Australian Sex Party on Tuesday promised to spice up campaigning for next month’s elections with a manifesto “unlike Australia had ever seen before”

By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 20/07/2010

Party chief Fiona Patten launched a risque national campaign at a Melbourne bar, saying her policies “would make (opposition Leader) Tony Abbott’s hair stand on end and would turn (Prime Minister) Julia Gillard’s hair grey”. prospective

“We’ve always been forward and we actually enjoy real action,” Patten said, mocking Gillard and Abbott’s “Moving Australia Forward” and “Stand Up For Real Action” slogans.

The party’s policies include legalising euthanasia, decriminalising all drugs for personal use, and watering down strict anti-pornography laws.

Although sure to attract criticism from church groups and other conservative elements in society, Patten said it was time an Australian political party pushed the boundaries.

Patten said personal freedom issues affect people’s lives more often than tax or immigration, and wanted to break down “nanny state” policies that she said had been built up over several decades by the major parties.

While the party will struggle for mainstream support, Patten remained confident of at least one Sex Party candidate being elected to the country’s Senate.

“In the privacy of the polling booth, anything could happen,” she said.

The Sex Party is running a candidate against Abbott in his Sydney electorate, a comedian who has offered to doorknock voters wearing a “mankini” — a type of bikini designed for men.

*

Humour or not, I don’t want to know what’s happening down under.

But seriously, such a topic has become blatant and brazen in contemporary time, and formality has been deemed by some to be an attempt at elitism and discrimination. When there is a “high variety” and a “low variety” of some thing, like language or humour or music, snobbery is rife (according to some, while many would kindly refuse to comment).

This good essay (a really long read) sums up the history: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/allen/ch5.html (THE REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS).

Of Birds, Brands and Bvlgari

Those who have seen Rajul Mehta’s works in my class may find the following uncannily familiar. For those who need a refresher, check out http://www.artists.de/rajul654.html

I saw this full-page advertisement in ST only recently (Jul 11, 2010), but apparently it’s been around since March.

I think this is a pretty ironic ad, given the knowledge of what Rajul Mehta has done. But Jeehov Hz has more insights to this series of ads, which I think is a brilliant analysis:

http://lovegarbageinc.com/?p=409

While Julianne Moore may appear artistic here, Hossan Leong has just become a Knight of Arts and Letters (Kitano received his title of the Commander, two ranks above a Knight, months ago).

2010 X100 = The World’s Most Influential People

Every year, Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People is bound to provoke the logic of some. This year, we have people like Didier Drogba, Lady Gaga, Sarah Palin, Gen. McChrystal, Rob Pattinson, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince Now Known As Prince Again Who Said “The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.” And Lee Kuan Yew.

There are, thankfully, a couple whom I’m also glad to see on the list:

 CHRISTOPHER MORRIS / VII FOR TIME

Taylor Switf!!!

BANKSY/ FOR TIME

Banksy!!!

Well, you know me, I don’t take most ceremonies seriously. But seriously, no man may be ever greater than the man whom so many revered, who can charm the crowd at any ceremonies with the mere mention of his name (granted you are not one of the rare ignorant ones in the world who don’t know him), who can silence the vuvuzelas with his mere presence. Most people do take ceremonies seriously and countries bank on ceremonies to lift morale and reputation of the nation, which is why this man must grace the occasion, and grace he did:

(ST, Jul 13, 2010)

“Democracy is a game that you have to play; you can’t give up.”

– Dr Cheng Yinghong, historian, replying to a rebuff by Dr Poh Soo Kai, ex-Barisan Sosialis leader and political detainee during Operation Cold Storage, at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ST, Jul 15, 2010)

Like what Racist Mel’s William Wallace says in Braveheart, “Men don’t follow titles; they follow courage.” Such is the man.

And of course there were brutes on the pitch on the final day of the competition who might have soured the sales of Dutch Lady milk.

(ST, Jul 13, 2010)

As some careless–or overly emotional Spanish fanatics–would write, these hellish creatures must have come from the Netherworld. They made the Neanderthals modern.

Thankfully, Spain won, or all hell breaks loose in the press around the world where justice and beauty are honoured above ugly victories. I think. And they scored a beautiful goal as I just woke up and walked past the TV at 5am Singapore time. They scored for me! Sweet reward for waking up at 5am every weekday for the past three years.

For that, I may be supporting Spain in the future. Maybe Starhub could convince me…

And yet another full-page advertisement the day after:

That’s oneupmanship for you, Singtel. But I really am pitying Singtel and its recent problems setting up subscribers’ homes. If you don’t have that many arms, don’t try to do too many things, unless you are a clairvoyant octopus. A lot of people will hate Singtel for a long time. High cost of the World Cup matches in Singapore, presumably higher costs for future World Cup and English Premier League matches, untrustworthy live streaming, England’s poor performance… It’s good they did not retaliate against Starhub’s campaign. The odds are stacked against them. I think Singtel should stop considering acquiring other regional companies. Their next acquisition should be Paul. With the CEO’s recently announced payhike, she could easily buy Paul and have some to spare to save the S-league:

SingTel CEO gets 22.6% pay hike
By Mok Fei Fei | Posted: 29 June 2010

SINGAPORE : Telco SingTel’s CEO Chua Sock Koong received a 22.6 per cent increase in her pay package for the firm’s financial year ended in March.

In its annual report, the firm said Ms Chua received S$4.15 million in all, with a fixed component of S$1.36 million. She also received cash bonuses of S$2.7 million.

For the previous financial year, Ms Chua had received S$3.38 million.

The CEO’s hike in remuneration came as the telco rang in a net profit of S$3.91 billion, or a 13.3 per cent on-year increase for the full year.

The next highest paid senior management staff is Paul O’Sullivan, CEO of SingTel’s Australian unit Optus, who earned S$3.48 million.

CEO of SingTel’s Singapore business, Allen Lew, follows in third place with S$2.88 million.

SingTel said it is anticipating change in the local and global telecommunications space.

It added that it has been transforming its businesses, people and processes to meet the explosive demand for mobile data.

The telco also pledges to continue to exercise financial discipline to remain nimble and manage costs, even as it expects growth in the global economy in 2010. – CNA /ls

*

Spain has never been my team, even though I’m enthralled by its internal historical and political strife. I’ve always rooted for the country of the deft left-wing wizard (in his prime) whom England has always coveted (some might still wish that Giggs was English.) But I’d love to support Singapore at international football tournaments.

Some say money is lacking in the sport in Singapore. Men’s football, that is, while it has been a foregone conclusion with women’s football here (check out the plight in the report in ST on Jul 18, 2010–I’m not pasting it here as it’s too much of a tear-jerker.) Prof Tommy Koh argued that it’s not so much about the money:

(ST, Jul 11, 2010)

By the way, that talk about money and happiness–it’s replayed there in the right column. This is a perennial ‘issue’ because people don’t really know about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Let’s set this straight, period. Basic needs must be fulfilled first, before you talk about the higher rungs of needs, which allow one to survive and be happy. Most basic needs require money (like paying for the exhorbitant Cash Over Valuation for a flat in Singapore). So money is important before self-fulfillment can be attained–in the 21st century.

Just a quick rejoinder to Prof Koh’s analogy, as with my critique of most analogies: ultimately, the teams that won 1st, 2nd, 3rd in the World Cup 2010 are nations with a collection of highly paid footballers.

Anyway, money is important in sports like football–and table tennis (I’m sure you will agree on that); and it’s just that prices in football have been hyper-inflated, which is why our investment in that sport is never seen to be enough. So I urge Singtel to start sponsoring Singapore football! I think Wayne Rooney will shine with his balding head under the crescent moon and five stars rising. Beijing 101 could even chip in and get him to endorse their products. Hua Yu Cool can also get a boost. And he has a future in Mediacorp too: we do need some badass baddy-lookalike for those police-and-thief drama. (Of course he’s not going to be in the team due to the laws of the game, but his kids could!) Look, this is such a good investment deal that those religious groups in Singapore which own Suntec or any other commercial buildings should not miss this opportunity! (I read in ST, Jul 17, 2010, that New Creation owns Marine Cove, the “beachfront cluster for food and recreation at East Coast Park.”) If Rooney isn’t religious enough for you, you can get Kaka, the Brazilian. Brazilians love the beach. We’re talking business, man.

But Prof Koh is also right in saying money isn’t everything, like what I’ve said and we’ve said so frequently that it sounds like a cliche. Well, it is a cliche. Culture is vital and if soccer flows in your blood because it is the one thing that gives you the moolah to survive (I bet Maslow is swinging in your head now, still), the culture of the nation will be defined as such, like in Brazil. You’ve heard it all from rich Brazilian football stars about the slums there. ST interviewed an ex-Brazilian now Singaporean Permanent Resident, Fabio da Silva, about the love of the sport (Jul 18, 2010). “When a kid turns one…his birthday present is usually a football, even if you’re a kid from the favelas…We were desperate to get selected as we would be given free boots…for a child in the favela, football is the ticket out to become a man of respect.” And out of poverty.

So passion for the game still comes from a passion to survive, and that passion is related to, if not caused by, money.

Money aside, many politicians and leaders see sports as a kind of bloodless event where rivalry is remembered and “re-enacted”, or more positively a kind of social glue where ties are rekindled. Politics and sports have never really been separated, from the myth of Heracles in Ancient Greece to Mandela in South Africa:

Jul 13, 2010

World Cup still in play in game of politics

By Jonathan Eyal, Europe Correspondent (ST)

SPAIN was yesterday celebrating its first World Cup triumph with its customary exuberance: vast crowds dancing in the streets, and flags flying from almost every building.

The excitement will soon die down. Hawkers will begin discounting the prices of their souvenir items, and many of the players will follow the money to clubs outside their country. But the political implications of the World Cup tournament are likely to prove more enduring, at least in Europe.

Just a few decades ago, football was still the exclusive preserve of Europe’s working men. But now, Europeans who would never dream of taking their seats on the damp, hard and often foul-smelling terraces of a football stadium, enthusiastically follow the fortunes of their country teams on television screens.

Immigrants, still disadvantaged in other job opportunities, are idolised for their football prowess. Sports nationalism has provided Europe with a much-needed glue for its various social and racial cracks.

At the same time, football also helped foster Scottish and Welsh nationalism. Scotland and Wales have adopted separate anthems and begun reusing their old flags, largely through their participation in this sport.

And football also rekindled dormant pride in other nations. After decades of trying to live down their World War II legacy, the leaders of Germany were pleasantly surprised to see the outpouring of national fervour in their country during the last World Cup competition in 2006.

European Union leaders, eager to pounce on any indication that their continent is not declining in political importance, tried to derive some benefit from the current tournament. ‘The presence of two European teams in the World Cup final indicates that Europe should not be underestimated,’ intoned Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, the boss of the European Central Bank.

But the attempt fell flat, partly because Mr Trichet – whose bank is sited in Frankfurt – annoyed his German hosts with his praise for Spain and the Netherlands.

Besides, Europe’s domination in world football is hardly unique. Of the 19 Fifa World Cup competitions to date, the Europeans have won 10, with European teams occupying the top three positions in seven of these tournaments. But this has made no difference to pride in the continent as a whole; Europeans are interested only in the fate of their own national players.

Nevertheless, some of the political implications of the current World Cup final are unique.

The confrontation between the Netherlands and Spain mirrored the broader European divide between the north of the continent – much wealthier and with its finances in order – and the southern part, which is now facing severe economic difficulties.

Spain is one country which could still face ruin if it cannot repay its national debts, while the Netherlands leads the camp of European nations arguing that those who are irresponsible with their finances should face the consequences. For the Spanish, therefore, football victory had an added piquancy.

And then there are the domestic political consequences.

Dutch football was revived during the heady days of the ‘flower power’ culture in Amsterdam in the late 1960s. It emphasised excellent sport, and regarded losing honourably – which the Dutch frequently did – as good in itself.

But as Mr David Winner, the author of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius Of Dutch Football, accurately predicted, the country’s team is now keen on winning, regardless of the methods.

And so it proved in South Africa. The referee ended up flashing 14 yellow cards and one red card, a record for such a match.

The Netherlands’ abysmal performance is certain to fuel a bigger debate about the character of a nation that prided itself on its reputation for fairness, tolerance and decency, but which is now showing its rougher edges, including the revival of racist, anti-Muslim parties.

But in Spain, World Cup victory spells a respite from its many domestic problems. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero did what is expected of every politician suffering from record-low approval ratings: he rushed to congratulate his country’s team, in the hope that some of the glory would rub off on him.

More importantly, ordinary Spaniards, deeply divided by historic and ethnic loyalties, suddenly found themselves coming together again. For football was always a politically charged matter in Spain. The rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona, the country’s top clubs, goes back to the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, and mirrors the divisions between the heart of the nation and Catalonia.

Only on Saturday, a vast crowd demonstrated on the streets of Barcelona, Catalonia’s capital, against a ruling by Spain’s constitutional court, banning the use of the term ‘nation’ for Catalonia.

Yet the subsequent night, all Spaniards got together to cheer their national team, and Catalan separatists fell silent.

Still, victory has revived another unusual identity problem for Spain: its national anthem has no words. Various politicians have suggested new lyrics, only to get bogged down in disputes over whether these should include a reference to Spain’s various regions and languages.

Now that the Spanish team has won, the demand to spare future players the pain of remaining silent while their national anthem is played will become irresistible. And with it, Spain’s old ethnic and linguistic disputes will restart.

Perhaps the Spanish should take some inspiration from the words of the Netherlands’ national anthem which, for odd historic reasons, promises to ‘honour’ none other than the King of Spain.

*

It seems like a portent, but this article somehow echoes Nadal’s premonition about Spain’s football future:

(ST, Jul 13, 2010)

Maybe that guy who tried to grab the Cup will make it to Time 100 next year.

Food So Good one wanna Glob. it down

I read in an advertisement in the ST that there’s some kind of “food balloon sculpture” art exhibition at Vivocity and that got me excited on Saturday, so I headed down to take a look after my dinner at Coffee Club at IMM:

And these were what I saw (among others) at the display along a relatively narrow alley in the mall:

Well, these two were the best of the lot and they aren’t bad, but I was expecting Jeff Koons.

So I was rather disappointed (especially arriving there after a massive traffic jam on the roads outside the mall). Looking on the bright side, at least it showed a creative use of some rubbery plasticky products, the way to go for an environmentally friendly approach in “(over-)consumption”.

Yummy. Plant-based. Erm. Yucks. Read more at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983894,00.html

If the Vivocity exhibition really were a travelling Koons-inspired exhibition of Singaporean food, perhaps that would be one great attempt to bring gloss and floss to the international foodies who would blend art and food for a heightened experience. Then, Singaporean food can truly be an international cuisine, like Japanese food or Chinese food. And perhaps soon, Korean food too:

Jul 13, 2010

Seoul food for the world

S. Korea standardises recipes, translates menus and supports research to globalise cuisine

By Lee Sun Young, for The Straits Times

SEOUL: Think Korean food and kimchi and bibimbap are likely to come to mind. The pickled cabbage and dish of mixed rice with vegetables are to Koreans what sushi is to the Japanese.

A team of food experts, however, is hoping to introduce another typically Korean item to the list – ‘topokki’, a traditional dish of finger-thin rice cakes cooked in red chilli sauce.

In South Korea, it is a beloved national snack, sold at just about every other food stall on the streets for as little as 2,000 won (S$2.30).

Dr Lee Sang Hyo, president of the Topokki Food Research Institute, wants to make it as well-known as kimchi and bibimbap.

‘Topokki could become something like Italy’s pasta,’ he says.

It is hardly wishful thinking. At a two-storey research and development centre in Gyeonggi, south of Seoul, Dr Lee and his five-man research team are cooking up a mix of Western and oriental sauces, and adding a dash of ingredients from abroad, as they work on reinventing South Korea’s No. 1 street food, making it a gourmet item to be served round the world.

They are also studying how to improve the sticky texture of the rice cake, and trying to find its optimal size and shape.

‘Original red topokki is too spicy for foreigners,’ says Dr Lee. ‘We’re focusing our studies on developing fusion topokki dishes to charm international palates.’

The aim is a national one, and is fully backed by the South Korean government as part of a larger plan to establish Korean food as an international cuisine, just like Chinese and Japanese fare.

This year alone, the government has committed 24.1 billion won to its food globalisation initiative, which also aims to grow the number of Korean restaurants abroad from the present 10,000 or so to about 40,000 by 2017. It also hopes to boost the nation’s export of agricultural and food products from US$4.4 billion (S$6 billion) to US$10 billion by 2012.

Apart from topokki, the government has targeted three other Korean favourites – kimchi, bibimbap and makgeolli, an unrefined rice wine. Like topokki, each is being studied by a dedicated R&D centre.

The research goes well beyond laboratories and kitchens. In March, a Korean Food Foundation was set up to orchestrate the globalisation of the four items and other local cuisines.

Among other things, it is working on standardising recipes, translating Korean menus into English, supporting research into the nutritional value of Korean food, strengthening the competitiveness of Korean restaurants abroad, and organising training programmes for Korean cooking.

As it seeks to bring its food to tables around the world, Korea is also trying to make it an easier meal for foreigners to handle. A ‘hotness’ index for gochujang, a red, spicy chilli paste – from ‘mildly hot’ to ‘extremely hot’ – promises to help overseas diners decide how adventurous they want to be.

The names of some food items have also been reworked, to make them easier to pronounce and remember. Topokki, for instance, was renamed from ‘ddeokbokki’ last year. The search is still going on for an appropriate English moniker for makgeolli, which is also written as makuly or takju.

But it is not just raising global recognition of food that South Korea is after, says Mr Park Sun Yeon, who leads the Korean Cuisine promotion team at the Agriculture Ministry.

‘Internationalisation of local food helps build Korea’s brand as a nation, promote our culture abroad, and will eventually bring in sizable benefits to the economy,’ he says.

The government is looking to carve out a bigger slice of the global food industry, estimated to be worth US$4.4 trillion – or about 2-1/2 times more than the car industry.

South Korea’s new-found interest in food is also in part a by-product of the Korean Wave – the export of its traditional and pop culture which has boosted tourism and promoted the national image.

The country, which has up to now relied heavily on cars, ships, computer chips and mobile phones to drive economic growth, is discovering the lucrative business of cultural exports. Sales of TV dramas, for instance, have been growing at an average of 23 per cent since 2004, hitting US$3 billion last year.

Now, officials are hoping to stir up a new round of the Korean Wave with food.

‘In some Asian countries, people are already interested in Korean food thanks to the Korean Wave,’ says Mr Park. ‘This is certainly a good marketing advantage.’

*

Well, I wish them luck, though I must admit that I don’t like Korean food. Different tastebuds. No hard feelings. And I wish them luck and success like how one store has seemingly monopolised the entire market, bringing the colourful and asthma-inducing Slurpees to you one block closer (there are at least two other branches in the vicinity):

I wasn’t talking about the tree branches. This cowboy has come a long way, from Texas, 1927, and they believe in the “servant leadership” principle. Well, it just took over the shop-space vacated by a convenience store owned by a Burmese family (I think I was told it’s a Vietnamese family, but I can’t be sure; anyway it’s inconsequential, now) who lived in my block.

Giddy up!

Spicy spies password for this document is invisible

I wonder how much 7-11 employees are paid. I also just realised that for many private companies, remuneration rates must not be divulged, because they pay individuals differently (I guess). Maybe not for people in my line, or those in 7-11 or Mc. But in some countries like mine, minimum wage seems like a distant dream that I think a Happy Meal will cost them two hours of work.

(ST, Jul 15, 2010)

While some people are cost-benefit-analysing the enforcement of a minimum wage so that the poor don’t die slowly by inflation, others have perhaps discovered why some die suddenly:

(ST, Jul 15,2010)

This article reminded me of three things:

(1) The plastic mushroom in an earlier picture here looks like the one pictured here.

(2) I miss playing RTKXI. I never got to really invade Yunnan (because it’s too remote and not strategic to any conquest), and my armies were readily wiped out by the poisonous air there. Sounds like Jurong West.

(3) HMV still hasn’t called back concerning my order for this T-shirt:

While some still love the mushroom till death, the Japanese authorities want the Japanese to love rice all over again, with a little help from technology (this is the country which made it possible to make love to a robot! ):

(ST, Jul 15, 2010)

For me, I still love my new creation: Hot Gingy Marshmallow Milo, inspired by Coffee Bean’s Double Hot Chocoloate with Marshmallow:

Next up, Hot Gingy Marshmallow Man Milo Dinosaur!

A song for National Day, Teachers’ Day, and MOE’s recruitment campaign

Gotta give it to them for such a multi-purpose music video for the song (do I get an NDP goodie bag for plugging this?)

This video was brought to my attention by a fellow comrade, and he really likes the song, though it hasn’t really grown on me yet. At least I’ve decided to stay in the country during the National Day break, unlike this comrade who is going to do the Singaporean thing by going to Malaysia on such an important day. Maybe it’s his way of reconnecting with Singapore’s history!

It’s actually quite a good song, Song For Singapore, by Corrinne May. At first I really thought Evanescence have also decided to become Singaporeans, but it’s May, to some dismay. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought we have so many big songs for big occasions (like the YOG and Shanghai Expo) that we can have a mega-combo album featuring Singapore stars past and present. Not forgetting Chen Liping’s Good Morning Teacher.

It’s about time someone wrote an MV for teachers, though it’s really just trying to glamorise music teachers (and I guess there’s a shortage of music teachers and we need to hire more by such indirect advertising?) I would want to believe it’s a song for all teachers!

Channel more positive energy!

Jun 20, 2010; in ST, YOUR LETTERS

It’s disrespectful not to pay attention in class

I refer to the article ”A’ for Uncle Earnest’ by Dr Lee Wei Ling last Sunday. I must say that I’ve been reading all her articles as I find them enlightening, true-to-life, frank and, at times, humorous. However, there is one paragraph in last Sunday’s article that I disagree with. May I recapitulate: ‘The way GP was taught at RI, I felt I was merely being coached to pass examinations, and that put me off. My seat in class was in the first row. The GP teacher could see me doing non-GP work under her nose. I am grateful she pretended not to notice.’ I’m commenting with the experience of being a teacher. I would have felt very insulted by a student who was not following my lesson. It would have been my duty to stop her from doing non-GP work. What if the principal were to pass by and see that happening? Definitely, out of duty, any principal would have called up the teacher for an explanation. I suppose the GP teacher pretended not to notice her because she was the daughter of the then-Prime Minister. She cannot compare the quality of the teaching in a classroom environment and one-to-one tuition by her uncle. A teacher faces the constraints of time and syllabus, and he or she is teaching more than 30 students in a class. I have given one-to-one tuition before and found it so much easier to motivate a pupil with great results. Matthew Yeo