Interestin tech/engg gags & real life gaffes (or not)

The pics around the world, in relation to technology and engineering feats or freaks…

 – TIME

Just before it all fell apart…

 – IAHGames

Reminds me of some sci-fi horror-thriller where humans are so hooked on computers (was it HG Wells?) I can hear Mr Roboto playing in the background…KILLROY!!!

 – Likecool

Say, I thought I came up with the phrase, “There’s a Kitty in everybody” first?

– Collegehumour

If only life could be that simple!

 – msn

Seriously, MSN has been around for 15 years (they claim) and they can’t tell the difference between a 3210 and a 3310?

And finally, from the game that I’m currently hooked on, you have Nessie in the HOUSS!

 – Gtpla

But this is certainly not a gag (well, none of the pictures here are really gags; they just make one think):

 – TIME

Oh, you can actually turn it around!

And sometimes what is shown is politically correct–can you see what’s ‘wrong’ with this picture? (No monster will pop out…)

Well, better be safe than sorry, like these guys:

  http://counter.thestar.topscms.com/sports/article/896563–singapore-rebukes-water-polo-team-for-racy-swimsuits

I thought it was a well-designed piece of clothing. Oh well.

Just watched Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me the second time in my fast-food-fuelled life (but I’m eating responsibly now, with less stress and sugar!) and I remember seeing him in the star-spangled banner trunks, but hey, the whole show’s rather insulting to the Americans if they believe what they’ve been doing to their life has been right (in relation to food-choice, of course, and the majority).

 – 170869

Any one offended? No worries, Wonder Woman can do wonders!

Big Money Phenomenon

Finally, a credible take on this thing called Neuro-linguistic Programming and it appeared in the ST, written by Andy Ho (Of course, I wrote about it briefly once here at https://akbywerk2.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/fearful-phenomenon/):

Neuro-linguistic classes? Think twice

13 November 2010

WITH the end-of-year school holidays upon us, parents may be packing their children off to learning camps involving ‘neuro-linguistic programming’ (NLP). But some worried parents are asking if this is ‘brainwashing’ as NLP trainers say they analyse learning styles and reprogramme brains to improve learning.

Though popular among personal development circles, NLP remains taboo for health-care clinicians. This is because it has never been thoroughly subjected to scientific scrutiny.

The meagre scientific research on NLP involves mainly lab studies conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s. These did not find support for NLP.

However, the use of NLP in real clinical contexts has never been scientifically studied. Academics are leery of the fact that anyone can become a certified NLP practitioner after a 14-day course and then be certified to train others after a 21-day trainer course.

Conversely, there seems to be little reason for NLP practitioners to subject themselves to scientific studies as they perceive academe to be hostile.

Despite its name, NLP has nothing to do with neuroscience, linguistics or computer programming. Practitioners explain that ‘neuro’ in NLP refers to the neurons in the brain that send, receive and process signals that become information; ‘linguistic’ refers to the signals moving across the networks of neurons in our brains that are interpreted into thoughts; and ‘programming’ is about manipulating the content of those signals into useful thoughts. One’s internal experience (neuro), language (linguistic) and behavioural patterns (programming) are purportedly interconnected in systematic ways.

In traditional psychotherapy, building long-term individual relationships between therapist and client to unearth the roots of a psychological problem is stressed. By contrast, in NLP, dozens of trainees are together subjected to days of intense instruction on how to unearth their personal obstacles towards a fulfilling life.

Much is made about observing behaviour and learning how to read ‘body language’. Unlike psychotherapists, NLP practitioners do not look for the roots of a psychological problem. Instead, they focus on how to solve it by homing in on how one communicates. What they emphasise is one’s verbal language, body language and eye movements.

The basic premise in NLP is that how people express themselves outwardly reveals how they perceive and represent their problems internally. That internal representation may involve any of the five senses, which is supposedly mirrored in one’s choice of words, tone of voice, body posture, eye movements and so on.

For example, someone in a visual mode may say, ‘I see a way to…’, while a person who has auditory images could say, ‘That sounds right to me’. If I tweak my nose while talking to you, I think your idea stinks. And so on.

But the small body of scientific research available shows no correlation between word choice or eye movement and reported thoughts.

In NLP, your words are analysed, your facial expressions scrutinised and your body language monitored. In this way, your internal state is elucidated and any negative mental associations therein identified. Next, your thoughts are remodelled to overcome these associations. The way to do this depends on learning about and imitating the patterns of thinking successful people supposedly have. Thus recognising successful patterns of thinking is key to modelling human excellence in NLP.

Practitioners have supposedly studied the thinking, language patterns, internal imagery and behaviour patterns of individuals who are masters of a particular capability.

They have extracted models of how these individuals – say, Walt Disney – work, which lesser mortals may then adopt.

Writing with co-author Carmen Bostic St Clair, in the book Whispering In the Wind, NLP co-founder John Grinder says people can be trained to model these patterns and assimilate the exemplar’s capability.

NLP promotes the idea that ‘reality’ is something one defines and constructs individually. Such constructions are maps of the world to guide action even if they are not truly the same as the real world.

Trainers agree that NLP seeks to manipulate behaviour by installing new beliefs or ‘reprogramming’ the brain. They often exhort trainees to test NLP for themselves.

But such ‘testing’ is subject to peer pressure and the fear of a backlash (imagined or real) if a trainee expresses scepticism. Remember, trainee participants are closeted away from the real world in a small group where there is likely to be intense peer pressure to conform. Moreover, one is probably loath to express disbelief in something for which one has paid a tidy sum.

But glowing testimonials are no substitutes for real data from rigorous scientific studies conducted under controlled conditions to ensure people are not deceiving themselves.

If you have the money to put your child through some motivational programme, NLP may do little harm. But your child may not get straight As next year as a result. Take these claims with more than a pinch of salt.

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A lot of things are unproven in life but people still would believe in them, and the power of belief is strong (eg: placebo effect) and it may ultimately work. The trick/trigger is confidence.

Coincidentally where I’m working at now there is currently consideration about engaging a team of trainers to ‘impart’ some skills to some of the teachers/lecturers here, and strangely I ended up on this team by no design of mine. And coincidentally this team of trainers were the ones who were engaged by my previous employer to train us. There’s also no surprise if I am to tell you that we (at my previous employment) didn’t have many good things to say about takeaways of the training as we have already been either well-trained by Moe’s or seasoned by the brutality of time and tide at AMK. To be fair, they probably are useful, but we were the wrong crowd to be trained. I think I know who were those smarty pants who believed we needed those skills, who assumed we didn’t have those skills (I think there were indeed a few really clueless ones who needed the help, but nobody consulted us on the supposed needs where it was apparently not obvious that our needs were time time time.) That’s a lot of money wasted.

So anyway, after the initial meeting with the boss of the team (I think he was slightly harrowed when he was reminded that I was from that college), the impression I got was that it’s going to be the same old thing over again (I mean, who would want to invest so much time and effort recreating things when you can reuse, reduce and recycle? Only us folks at that college do! Well, most of us, and I’m proud of it.) But thankfully now I have a bigger say here in charting the direction of this workshop for my fellow colleagues, and so I proposed a few things just so that history doesn’t repeat itself (since we cannot do away with that training). I mean, I think some people will benefit, so I think the smartest thing to do is to check with would-be participants what they like to get out of it and we’ll try to ‘force’ the trainers into complying. wahaha… (I think I was really curt with my reply when my colleague, weeks ago when she heard that I had attended the workshop before, asked what I thought of it. There’s just so much animosity in me with regard to those not-so-useful workshops. The scars are deep. I didn’t know I was that traumatised!)

But it was doubly cathartic (when I scared the hell out of my colleague and the boss of the agency). But I shouldn’t be that mean to these ‘enrichment programmes’ since I may just want to dabble in that in future–that’s where the money is.

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 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)

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.

Musing Over Our Vulnerable Position

The Staff Contact Time (SCT) today was like the erratic weather in Singapore: the first part was not really insightful, maybe because I have beef over the official definition of the word “innovation”. With officials treating words the way corporations do (eg: Kbox [check out https://akbywerk2.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/gp-is-not-about-u/] and Wall’s [“Share Happy”; check out http://www.facebook.com/ShareHappySingapore]), I see Newspeak coming soon. Thanks, George, for 1984.

By the way, I’m still so totally digging Muse’s latest album (actually it was released last year), The Resistance. That is arts and politics conveyed through music and marketing, specifically through the piece, United States of Eurasia + Collateral Damage. Check out this Wiki entry:

• In a pre-release interview featured in the August edition of music magazine Mojo, vocalist and guitarist Matthew Bellamy reveals the song to be inspired by “a book called The Grand Chessboard byZbigniew Brzezinski,” explaining that “Brzezinski has the viewpoint that the Eurasian landmass, ie Europe, Asia and the Middle East, needs to be controlled by America to secure the oil supply.”^[6]Bellamy goes on to suggest that the song is also influenced by George Orwell‘s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.^[6]
• While initially thought to be the first single due to be released from The Resistance, the band confirmed on their Twitter profile that “Uprising” would in fact be released as the lead single, and that “United States…” would be the ‘prize’ achieved by completing the ‘treasure hunt’ activity set up by the band, “United States of Eurasia”.^[7] As of 20 July, all six sample segments of the song promised by the treasure hunt have been unlocked by the fan community; a message is currently being displayed on the project page, ordering viewers to report back soon for an “emergency flash briefing.”^[8] The main site then changed the green headline title from “Ununited States of Eurasia” to “United States of Eurasia”.
• At July 20th at approximately 12:00 PM (BST), the treasure hunt site “Ununited States of Eurasia” updated its map to include America and a banner reading “RECOGNITION FROM USA REQUESTED” with co-ordinates to a street in New York where the last phase is being played out. Interestingly, it is the only station that has a timed limit to it for activation and that failure in activating it will result in a Lockdown Crisis Mode which will mobilise “The Resistance”.^[9] A recent Twitter post by Matt in reply to a fan states that US would have the grand finale and that they would have “a tough decision to make”, hinting on the possibility that the final station should not be activated and that United States of Eurasia should not be recognised.^[10][11] Joe Ellis became the first DJ to air the new song on KXLL during his Sunday show on 19th July 2009.^[12]
• Following the conclusion of the treasure hunt on 21 July 2009, the song was made available for download^[13] from the microsite, complete with ending piano sonata “Collateral Damage”, a slightly altered version of Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne in E-flat Major Op. 9 No. 2, with additional sounds of playing children, and a jet fighter.

This is the first time I ever edited a Wiki entry! Well, it was just a minor deletion: the original entry read (in the last line) “…and a jet fighter or a missile”. After living in Jurong West for so long, I am absolutely sure it is a jet fighter. If Matthew Bellamy says otherwise, I will quit (Jurong West) and he and Kate Hudson could move over (I read they are looking for a big house, but who says they can’t have an Asian getaway that will further inspire him and his girlfriend) and I can get my S$1000000 COV!

Anyhow, I think critics might have missed the point when they claim that the song’s plugging US of America shamelessly. To the contrary, the song is like an absolute claim which should repel you to argue otherwise (the hint: “+ Collateral Damage”).

That’s innovation there.

Back to the SCT: the next part of it was a serious affair and it was a topic that has always intrigued me. It’s about the law and how we in our position are liable for a lot of things and the only protection we’re going to get is paperwork. Hmmm. I think I should seek clarification, because this can’t be right. I wonder what is our core business.

As I’ve always said, there are loopholes in laws and those who know them will exploit them just so that someone is answerable to their problems (and so, pay up). I wonder what happened to mediation. I remember my law lecturer ethically reminding us that the first thing that should be done in any conflict is to mediate. People will still pay up, sans trauma, if we just mediate, if the claims are indeed true. If the claims are not true, I will counter-sue for libel, if there was a lawsuit earlier. So taking people to court isn’t exactly a fun thing to do.

(Just heard over the news that the Hilton fall case is ruled an accident, and the hotel, though answerable, isn’t responsible. They have accounted for it. I just find it heart-wrenching that the wife subsequently committed suicide.)

(And the Swiss graffiti artist, after appealing his sentence, has an additional two more months to serve in jail.)

What’s up with society? Make peace, not war!

Cai Guo-Qiang’s Head On (2006) is a statement not just about Germany, but also society in general, with its herd-mentality and mindless obedience to “the cause”.

(If you look closely, you will see Ms Tay Li May and her husband looking at something on the wall at the back! Bumped into them by chance.)

(Photographs taken at the National Museum of Singapore on Aug 7, 2010)

The beauty with installation art is at every venue, the vibes you get is different. Check out http://www.caiguoqiang.com/project_detail.php?id=196 for more information. For this exhibition, the path of the wolves take a large portion of the space and it was impossible to capture the entire span in a single-shot, at least not with my camera!

And here’s my favourite shot:

Some day, this will all make sense

If numbers ruled the world and words sent to concentration camp, 75776/151552

51% ‘Learning’, 12% ‘Pastoral’, 8% CCA, 8% CCA, 14% Function, 7% ‘Training’

~ 26+8+4+4+0+7 = 1.5

Good job! Get ’em up way high, gimme gimme that high-5!

(Click me to grow!)

Caption: Centuries of rule by generals of different art have enriched the capabilities and resilience of 123. C4-C5. Nc3-Nc6.

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

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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.

Crying at other people’s misfortune

I like the way some people cry at other people’s misfortune. Looking at the toppled BMW makes some guffaw. Looking at how the foreign workers helped to push the expensive-looking car makes some snigger.

I think those foreign tourists are not those kind of people. They are just seeing the lighter side of things perhaps. I suspect they love Tokio Hotel’s Monsoon.

But nothing beats NTUC Income when it comes to such Misery’s Business. To a huge extent this is more cruel than posting ‘bad’ pictures of celebrities like Paramore’s own Hayley Williams.

This advertisement came after many pages of reports on the flood. I think the thing with insurance is that they may pay for your damages now, but ultimately you are paying for it later on with higher premiums. It doesn’t matter which company that is. But please, correct me if I am wrong and I do hope I am wrong on this one so that I know which is a better deal! Anyhow, if I were the owner of that car, I’m sure I would not go “Hey guys, look! That’s my car! Isn’t she pretty in the mud?” I wonder whether NTUC Income is ready to shoot an advertisement featuring a teacher with a bloody papercut in an attempt to sell their accident policies. (No offence to NTUC, but I think you need to hire someone to check the pragmatics of your ads [ahem].)

And I sympathise deeply with Wendy’s, whose staff (I read) heroically brought the customers to dry land, and towels were kindly handed out by Espirit. Wendy’s was only three days’ old. Liat Towers’ Hermes and Massimo Dutti ought to have their very own “Wash Out” Sale! Everything Must Go With The Flow!

 This ad was at the back of the page of the final report on the flood. And I thought they were really having a “Mud Down” Sale.

In the same issue of the Straits Times, this simply caught my eyes, especially after Spain just lost 0-1 to Switzerland. Nadal must be cursing Federer at that time. Oh, wrong sport.

 (Blurry image a result of my incessant laughter.) My new knowledge of Spain’s political problems gave this a new level of amusement. Real Madrid versus Barcelona. How appropriate! (Check out my previous post.) If you want your very own political fritas deathmatch, head on down to the NTUC Fairprice and grab your very own edible voodoo dolls!