The Job of the Year 2004

or, Why oh why do we have such liars serving as government economists?

In 2002, at the height of Singapore's grand "transition into a mature economy" (where do the mandarins in our civil service come up with crap like that?), and when our then-PM Goh lauded graduates frying chestnuts and selling porridge at hawker centres as entrepeneurs (and how did this piece of crap manage to float to the top of the civil service?), the Job of the Year was: Insurance Agent.

In 2003, when our government economists proclaimed that Singapore had grown marvellously despite the SARS outbreak (presumably, one has to admire their talent for looking for silver linings in very dark clouds, and ignoring the countless people who lost their jobs), the Job of the Year was: Multilevel Marketer.

For 2004, let's give a loud cheer for the 9% growth rate (projected)! It is a growth rate that shouldn't slide below 8% despite the dramatic slowdown in the last quarter! Indeed, as our government economists put it, even if the economy does come to a complete halt, we'll still have at least 8% growth, huzzah! Ah, the wonders of starting from a very low base: any improvement becomes spectacular. And the Job of the Year is: Telemarketer (aka Direct Marketer).

Do you hate it when telemarketers call?
(Link courtesy of Edward)

The Direct Marketing sector regards the telephone as one of its most successful tools. Consumers experience telemarketing from a completely different point of view: more than 92% perceive commercial telephone calls as a violation of privacy.

Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.

Why make life difficult for telemarketers?

Well, because they do make life difficult for us. Like making us ponder the mysteries of life, the universe, and everything:

1. Where did you get my contact from?
2. When on earth did I ever give my contact to your company? (especially if I haven't even heard of your company in my life)
3. Which company did you buy my contact from?
4. What makes you think you're not annoying me by calling at x pm?
5. What makes you think I'll give you my email address at the end of your unsolicited sales attempt?

But mainly because telemarketers are just one step above email spammers.

Rejoice, for I have returned to the Internets!

The philosopher and deconstructionist Jacques Derrida is dead; he shall live on forever.

The Fafblog has a very appropriate entry celebrating Derrida and his philosophy.

Black Humour

A Uniquely Singaporean Edition


Singapore's National Anthem is Majullah Singapura (Forward, Singapore!).
It is ruled by a conservative party whose slogan is Incremental Change.

Hall of Shame and Notoriety

Flip Flopper Number 1



Via DFA 2.0, which identifies the most outrageous flip-flopper in American politics.

It was Dick Cheney, but not as you know him. Thirteen years ago, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney gave the keynote address at the Washington Insitute's Soref Symposium. The speech was titled "The Gulf War: A First Assessment" and you're not going to believe some of what he said.

"Should we have gone in to Baghdad? Did we leave the job in some respects unfinished? I think the answer is a resounding "no."

"I think the proposition of going to Baghdad is fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, and once we'd done that we'd have to put another government in its place."

"It is vitally important for a President to know when not to commit U.S. military force. How many casualties should the United States accept in (the) effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?"

"It's my view that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

This is the man who makes hopes to win an election by portraying Senator Kerry as a "flip-flopper." Read the entire transcript from the Washington Institute.

Flip Flopper Number 2



During the Legislative Assembly Debate on 15 September 1955 the Great Leader, then an ordinary assemblyman, said:

"If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law - if that is not what we always cried out against in Fascist states - then what is it?"

The same Great Leader, upon assumption of power in 1959, went on shortly to jail without trial, launch defamation suits, and bankrupt all his political opponents for almost 50 years.

More on flats and singles

I had the feeling, two posts ago, that MiniLee had promised more than what he could give in his National Rally speech. Under the laudable initiative of liberalising Singapore, the new leader made several sweeping pronouncements which, in the course of just a fortnight, were "clarified" and nullified by himself, his ministers, and even the Police Entertainment Licensing Unit (an Orwellian name, if there ever was one).

On further consideration, I realise that the "clarification" by Mah Bow Wow on flats and singles issue was not even coherent. Let's take a look at it again, this time, in depth.

Rally Speech: "We originally allowed singles to buy flats if two of them paired up and were aged above 35 years... this year we have gone further and said you can buy 4-room, 5-room or bigger flats anywhere on the resale market."

Mah Bow Wow's clarification: Singles can grants (i.e. subsidies) to buy any public housing as long as they don't earn more than $3000 a month. The old limit was $8000 a month.

A detailed explanation of my original point: It doesn't take much for middle-class singles over 35 to earn more than $3000 a month. If we take 2004 as the benchmark, the average middle-class single over 35 would've spent an average of 15 years in the labour market. If you're middle-class, PBEM, and white-collar, it's very likely that you'd hit over $3,000 a month? The amount of subsidies left behind is substantial, and does affect the capacity to afford your new home.

And singles of this profile have been the usual buyers of public housing under the old scheme! Of course with the old limit of $8,000 only the ridiculously well-off singles (who should be bonking with each other and passing their filthy rich 'sucessful genes' to produce new generations of Singaporeans!) were excluded from buying public housing.

The government can and will quibble over just how many singles have been left behind with the new limits. In fact, it will quibble over the numbers (if challenged publicly by critics like myself) without feeling the need to produce hard numbers of its own. So the point is moot until we or some economist critic can construct the figures.

But we've missed something big that the government won't have a defense to.

Old scheme: Singles are free to be filthy rich, it doesn't matter what they earn, but they can only buy a small 3-room flat.
New scheme: Singles are free to buy any flat what they want, but they won't receive any subsidies or waivers if they earn more than $3K.

Well, just tell me what flat you can really afford if you earn less than $3,000 a month. And tell me how you can afford a flat if you earn more, but are now ineligible for the subsidies?

Perhaps the only way to mock this incoherent scheme is to take it very literally, very seriously and ask:
"What if I get a raise 2 years after I buy the flat? Will the government kick me out of my flat and make me pay back the 'subsidies'?"
"I plan to get my flat under the singles-over-35 scheme, then marry someone 2 years later. Will I get to keep my singles flat subsidy? Will we be able to apply for a new flat under the married couples subsidy?"
"What if I get myself temporarily underpaid. Will I qualify for the scheme then?"
"I'm the CEO of my company. If I pay myself $5,000 in terms of company shares and only receive a cash salary of $2,500 will I still qualify?" etc.

(It's a parody of the Encyclopedist who, under religious censorship, managed to poke fun at the concept of the location of hell by taking it far too literally and seriously)

Living in a Police State

Via Keywords: When the RNC crashed into New York City, they turned it into a Police state with arbitrary arrests, police brutality, spying on citizens, and a refusal to set protestors free after the maximum 3-day holding period.

Kerim's article:
Indiscriminate Arrests

That's the number of people they are saying were arrested in New York during the Republican convention. A judge ordered that 500 of them be released immediately:

A judge ordered the immediate release of nearly 500 protesters Thursday - just hours before President Bush's speech at the Republican National Convention - and then fined the city for refusing to comply with his order.

The NY branch of the ACLU has set up a special web site for reporting on police misconduct during the RNC. In their latest report they raise concerns about the following violations:

* Pre-emptive arrests: On a couple of occasions, massive arrests followed right on the heels of a negotiated agreement on the terms for a lawful march

* Indiscriminate arrests: The NYCLU has received reports from members of the press, legal observers, medics and even passersby who found themselves caught in the Spiderman-type orange mesh netting the police used to make arrests.

* Dangerous tactics: At one demonstration, the police suddenly charged into the crowd with metal barricades and a squad of plain clothes officers later drove their scooters into the crowd. Some arrestees and bystanders reported being kicked, punched or hit with batons by police. Some reported the incidents to local precincts and had their bruises photographed by police officials.

* Dangerous conditions at the Pier 57 detention facility: Having announced for months that it was prepared to handle over 1000 arrests a day during the RNC, the City chose to detain arrestees in this dank, filthy bus depot where people had to sit or lie on the floor covered with soot and quite possibly toxic automotive fluids. The conditions left many with rashes and respiratory problems during their detention stay and after they were released. The NYCLU is in the process of testing a sample gathered by a medic who was part of a sweeping arrest, although he was doing nothing more than monitoring a protest event.

* Excessive delays in processing arrestees: The criminal justice system ground practically to a halt as people – including hundreds whose arrests the police know were unlawful – were routinely held for 36 hours or more on minor offenses before receiving desk appearance tickets or being brought before a judge.

* Pervasive police surveillance: The pervasive videotaping and use of surveillance cameras to record lawful protest activity raises the specter of a return to the bad old days of the “Red Squad” and the keeping of political dossiers on critics of our government. A number of activists with a history of lawful protest activity also report being followed by individuals who appeared to be government agents. These practices appear to be designed – and certainly have the effect—of intimidating people from exercising their right to dissent.

Perhaps most troubling is the increased use of the term "preemptive" to legitimate arrests, wars, and other acts of state violence. Its like watching a bad science fiction movie, except its real.

UPDATE: The story in the Village Voice.

Time for some Clarifications

A Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them Edition

How are all of us doing, 2 weeks into MiniLee's dynamic reign of Singapore? Despite the lack of details in his speech, some critics gave the new emperor the benefit of the doubt, and some were even overwhelmed by his apparent reformist bent and wrote tearful letters to the Straits Times forum page...

Yet 2 weeks is all it takes for every major point in MiniLee's National Day Rally to be "clarified" by all the King's men and horses.

In no particular order (since every major 'promise' laid out in MiniLee's speech has been clarified), let's look at the lying lies and the liar who told them.

1. Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom!

Rally speech: MiniLee promises that there will be no need to apply for licenses to speak or even hold an exhibition at the Speakers Corner in Honglim Park.

"One: for indoor talks — we are going to do away with licensing."

Clarification: The Police Entertainment Licensing Unit (PELU) declares a few days later that talks that have foreign speakers or are held by organisations affiliated to foreign NGOs still have to apply for a permit to hold a talk.

2. Let a Hundred flowers bloom! pt 2

Rally Speech: "The second thing we are going to do is to open up the Speakers' Corner where you can go and make any speech you like and we are going to say, 'Well, if you want to go there and have an exhibition, go ahead.'"

Clarification: PELU declares on the same day that although you don't have to go to the police station to apply for a permit to hold a speech or an exhibition at the Corner, you still need to go to the police station to register. And you can only have the speech/exhibition between 7am and 7pm, where everyone else is still at work. And you still can't use any megaphone or microphone.

3. Let the Singles go!

Rally speech: "We originally allowed singles to buy flats if two of them paired up and were aged above 35 years... this year we have gone further and said you can buy 4-room, 5-room or bigger flats anywhere on the resale market."

Clarification: Singles can buy any public housing as long as they don't earn more than $3000 a month. The old limit was $8000 a month.

My beef: Do the math. The ceiling has been lowered by more than 50%. IF our omniscient MiniLee and Mah Bow Wow are confident that "not many singles will be affected", they should release full figures to show just how many singles are left behind. As a former sociology student dealing with actual figures in my university, I can assure you at least 25% of singles eligible (under the old "pre-liberalisation" scheme) have now lost their right to buy a home.

4. Making Babies

Rally speech: The government has a solution for everything! The new 5-day workweek will solve our underpopulation problem!

Clarification: New scheme unveiled just yesterday aims to solve Singapore's population problem by making it EVEN EASIER for any foreigner to get Singapore PRship and citizenship and jobs.

5. We welcome all post-1965 Singaporeans to join the political process!

Rally speech: "We want you to be part of our team. We don't mind if you have different views but you must have some views."

Clarification 1: Goh Chok Tong sternly states that MiniLee "will not change just to please the Western-influenced liberals who desire to apply their concept of democracy, pluralistic politics and freedom of the press unthinkingly to Singapore. He will take a practical approach of what works for Singapore."

Wonderful. Presumably they will listen to you as long as you apply MiniLee's concept of democracy...

Clarification 2: Opposition MPs were not invited to the rally speech. That's akin to opposition MPs getting shut out during the SOU address. Presumably, "Opposition MPs have never been invited to the National Day Rally as they cannot be expected to help the Government rally the ground to support its policies". At least MiniLee's saying this himself, and not through a proxy like Mah Bow Wow, Goh Chok Tong, Wong Can't Sing, or PELU.

What do we make out of this?

The summary of MiniLee's leadership so far:

1. Make a big speech that promises the sky and claim to be an inclusivist leader.

2. Get your cabinet ministers to explain the very fine print in the weeks to come.

Doesn't this remarkable leadership style remind us of some other great leader in the world right now?

Another Link Day

(and no, I'm still not talking about that hot elf)

Liberals have had a bad name in the mainstream press. To call someone a "liberal" is akin to uttering either a curse or a vulgar phrase. Yet most of the world as we know it depends on battles that liberals fought hard for, and won.

Sometimes rowdy, unmanaged forums throw up the best writing. In the spirit of Ralph Linton's essay "The 100% American", the original poster at DFA 2.0 has written this marvellous defence of liberals, which I title...

The Average Conservative

Joe gets up at 6:00 AM to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot with good, clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan. Because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast -- bacon and eggs this day. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower, reaching for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labelled with every ingredient and the amount that it contains because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and the breakdown of its contents. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer meets these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get worker's compensation or an unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should loose his home to temporary misfortune.

It's noon time. Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dad's; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification (those rural Republicans would still be sitting in the dark).

Joe is happy to see his dad, who is now retired. Joe's dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to. After his visit with dad, Joe gets back in his car for the ride home. He turns on a radio talk show. The host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees, "We don't need those big government liberals ruining our lives. After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

In the years to come, Joe's life will change dramatically. The U.S. dollar will be devalued as a result of our huge deficit, our living standards demolished, our standing with the world diminished and our social security gone...all because some conservative republican made sure he could take care of himself and his buddies.

Sustainable Development

And now, we're out of water as well.

I told you so here. Not only is the world running out of oil, it's running out of water.

Before you say I must be more nuts than the cranks who rave about Peak Oil...

Well. This isn't so funny now, is it?

The End of Teflon Blair?

An Impeach them, impeach them NOW! Edition

Tony Blair has survived 2 official inquiries, 1 vote of no-confidence, and a Labour Party conference. For that, he deserves to inherit the Teflon Leader crown from Clinton.

But wait... what's this about Blair being impeached?

Proceedings have begun to begin formal impeachment process against Blair shortly. Just like Clinton's impeachment, Tony Blair is expected to survive easily. However the impeachment process will surely force the PM to submit to yet another debate and even further scrutiny from his critics within and without the party.

But is he really that unassailable? Some people, while not baying for his blood, are clearly sharpening their knives.

Bush's "coalition of the willing" dwindles by the day. Spain and the Philippines have withdrawn, Japan is hesitating to send more troops, while his most ardent cronies in the UK and Australia face serious political challenges in the coming months.

Language as War

The Speak Mandarin Campaign Edition

Random Errata (i.e. it helps to think all these are random!)

1. Had to conduct an interview in Mandarin with an artist last week. I, apparently tried to speak with such careful diction and the proper neo-Beijing accent (overcompensation for marginally passing the subject in school) that my interviewee added 6 years to my age.

I just sound too sensitive or refined when speaking Mandarin. And OLD.

I'm going to speak less Mandarin from now on.

2. I watched the National Day rally speech by the newly-crowned Prime Minister. He speaks Mandarin much better than his predecessor, which is a blessing to my ears.

I timed his speeches.
The speech in Malay took 15 minutes.
Speech in Mandarin took 25 minutes.
There was no speech in Indian Tamil, but it will be a 5 minute broadcast by a cabinet member at a later date.

It's a good deal, considering that the "offical race demographics" taught in Singapore schools have the Chinese as 70%, Malays as 10%, Indians at 8%, and "others" making up the rest.

Now, the CIA World Factbook - which has more accurate (i.e. less faked) statistics than what our newspapers and schools teach - puts the Chinese population as 76%. Now you know how meritocratic our immigration policy is - there's a good reason why hundred of thousands of nationals from China have been given Singapore citizenship or permanent residence over the past decade.

3. There's a really fun programme on Channel U called 北京你好吗, which translates to "Bejing, how are you?" or "Greetings, Beijing" (or Peking, whichever romanisation tickles your fancy). Being the Mandarin chauvinists Channel U are, the title in English is "Beijing Ni Hao Ma".

But I digress. This entertainment programme aims to promote Chinese culture and Mandarin language, and does so by sponsoring Chinese Singaporean celebrities who can't speak much Mandarin on an immersion tour to China.

There, it's a matter of teaching the celebrity useful Mandarin phrases, making sure they use the language instead of English, and deducting cash bonuses the more mistakes are made. (I wonder why the celebrity contestants really need cash prizes...)

It's all in good, clean fun. Yes, some Chinese people can't speak Mandarin, but instead of kvetching about this deplorable state, why not inject lots of humour as we laugh with and at stage and TV actor Adrian Pang as he heroically mangles (unintentionally, of course) Mandarin?

It's harmless fun, unless you consider that the producers who have absolutely no guts to make alternate and equally arbitrary versions like:

a. A humourous programme about teaching English to Chinese Singaporean celebrities who can't speak much English. I mean, the population of Singaporean Chinese actors who can't speak English far outnumbers the population of Singaporean Chinese actors who can't speak Mandarin...

b. A humourous programme about teaching Malay Singaporeans to speak Mandarin.

Realistically speaking, they'd be accused of insensitivity and language-Nazism if they tried to pull off (a), and racial insensivitiy if they tried to pull off (b).

Let me rephrase: are you sure this Beijing Ni Hao Ma programme is harmless fun? What makes it harmless and fun now, when it clearly won't be considered so if the variables were tweaked just slightly? Do the Chinese population and Mandarin language hold some special position in Singapore?

4. Anyone who still thinks the race/language policy of our government is coherent and rational should read this. But our government is of the view that if the system it creates doesn't fit an individual, that individual is the one to blame.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

The Flag of Convenience Edition

Remember Bobby Fischer? The greatest chess player of all-time appears to have failed his legal challenge to halt Japan's extradition procedure, and is now considering a final solution: marrying the president of the Japan Chess Federation and applying for Japanese citizenship.

If Mr. Fischer fails, Singapore should seriously considering offering him citizenship on the condition that he takes up the post of head coach for chess in the country.

After all, Singapore's tried and tested approach to building entrepeneurs, artists, sportsmen, the economy in general... seems to consist of hiring the foreign guy and giving him citizenship, a nice landed property, and some cash.* If the foreign talent policy could work so consistently the past few years, why not invite Bobby Fischer now?

While he may have retired from competitive chess, this just means he has all the time in the world to analyse current chess competitions (instead of merely preparing for them), and coach young chess players here towards the goal of say, achieving a grandmaster rating for a Singaporean by 2010, and a FIDE or PCA championship contender by 2020. We might even surpass Cuba in the chess world!

* Factoid of the day: Did you realise Hongkong comedian Stephen Chow - yes, he of the Shaolin Soccer fame - was a Singapore PR for a grand total of 3 years in the early 90s? Offered a cool figure, the comedian sensibly accepted (Hongkong's movie industry was in a slump then, and he didn't make any movies in that period) and bought a condo here as part of the PR deal. When the time came to renew the PRship, the sensible Stephen Chow sold off the condominium and returned to Hongkong to make his greatest film to date...

The War on Journalistic Quality

An I told you so edition

I wasn't too surprised that the Straits Times eventually reported on the growth of the biotech industry in India.

As usual, they are 1. slow to report on any new trends, and 2. when they do, they leave out the most important points.

Because it's way too sensitive to claim that India's biotech industry is capable of outpacing Singapore's in just a few years, the article concentrates on local Indian pharmaceutical companies who are starting to get 'into the game'.

No mention of the billions of dollars US pharmcos are moving to India's biotech outsource companies, in fact, no mention at all of any biotech outsourcing. Why? Because that one word would set off all the alarm bells in Singapore.

But it is obvious that there has to be a vast amount of outsourcing from foreign pharmcos, in order for a huge pool of locals interested and skilled enough to amass and build their own pharmaceutical companies.

One of these days, I will explain why outsourcing is not just a matter of free trade, why it hurts job markets, and why it needs to be regulated.

The War in Outsourcing

India is poised to be an outsourcing powerhouse in the next 2 years... in biotech.

1. I predict the end of Singapore once this happens. There's too much our leaders have invested in this industry, too much to lose once someone starts outsourcing biotech in a big way, the only way the Indians are capable of.

2. More importantly, this is a battle worthy of the Iron Chef. Whose vision of how to build an industry is superior? Whose biotech shall reign supreme?

On one hand, the mandarins in Singapore continue to insist the only way to build up an industry is to airlift several aging, over-the-hill 'experts' in the field to transplant in local soil. Throw them enough money and hopefully they can build Singapore into a biotech hub.

What can I say? It's a tried and tested approach? Substitute foreign 'biotech expert' for foreign 'sportsman' and you have Singapore's Olympic and football strategy. Substitute with foreign 'artist' and you have Singapore's arts policy. And so on...

On the other hand, we have the Indians, who believe that a strong industry can only be built from the bottom up, not from the top down. And with local labour too.

3. Much more interesting is the idea of sustainable development. Both Singapore and India's biotech industries are ultimately driven by foreign capitalists. These industries will produce goods that are relevant not for the local population or economy, but for the North American First World.

Contrast that with the recent biotech breakthrough: the DNA sequencing of the coffee plant in Brazil.

It's a classic question: Do we really want to produce millions of Rebok shoes that will be exported immediately, or use the same resources to produce goods that our people need to use?

Sustainable Development

Peak oil and Olduvai Theory neatly explain the phenomena of soaring oil prices, Shell's recent debacle, and the US interventions in Sudan, Afgahnistan, Iraq, and Venezuela.

If you think it's bad enough that the world is running out of oil (no more electricty to power the Internet!), think of how bad it will be when we run out of water.

Discussions and Discourse, a Discourse on Discussions and Other non-Discursive Formations

As Chua Beng Huat pointed out a year ago, not all discussion is discourse. Never substitute the word 'discourse' when you just mean 'discussion', he warned. So, when is discussion not discursive?

I present to you the creativity of Singaporeans in killing off meaningful discussion.

1. The Non Sequitur

Usually a one-line reply that is either very tangential to the original discussion or completely irrelevant.

Like: during a discussion on the mechanics of water usage and ecological friendliness of bathing using showers vs. soaking in bathtubs vs. scooping water from a tub, X replies: "When Bathers get violent they hit the Showers, lolz!"

2. The I Don't Care

I don't care who you are, I don't care where you come from, all of you have no right to comment on X issue, and all of your concerns are irrelevant.

3. You have launched a personal attack!

Yes, personal attacks are unfair and should not be used in a civilised discussion. Instead, lots of people call every argument they don't like a "personal attack", and then use it as an excuse to launch a real one of their own.

What constitutes a personal attack? I'm in a charitable mood today (being on heavy flu medication helps), so here's a list.

An ad hominem fallacy refers to when someone makes an attack "on the person", and not the merits of the argument.

It begins by making a negative assertion of a person's character, state of mind, morality, or circumstances. Because of the imputation of the person, their argument is invalid and wrong...

Examples: "You are a thief, therefore your arguments against the DCMA are invalid." Or, "Michael Moore is an anti-Bush fanatic. Of course the documentary he makes will show Bush to be a nincompoop."

It is, however, not a personal attack to pick out in detail every single logical flaw in a series of statements or a process. The person who made the statement or oversaw the process may feel personally hurt to suffer such scrutiny, but it DOES NOT constitute a personal attack.

4. You are just an armchair critic!

Usually in the form of: Because A is just an armchair critic (i.e. denied power to effect change), A has no right to criticise B (the activist, the president, whoever's running the show)...

And usually followed by a challenge to A to offer 'constructive criticism' and provide 'real solutions' and alternatives to B...

We must learn to reject this "armchair critic" argument. It doesn't matter who the speaker is; what matters is whether his criticisms are logical and correct. Whether or not there are alternatives makes no difference to the merits of an argument or process under scrutiny. I would even suggest that if people took the time to refine their 'solutions' with more inputs from critics, they wouldn't end up with such disastrous results.

5. Blah, blah, blah!

Could possibly be accompanied by the speaker sticking their fingers in the ears while uttering the words.

It's disappointing that people, even - and especially - adults in real life, often do react in these 5 ways in discussions.

The National Day Speech by a Prime Minister

In lieu of a State of the Union address, Singapore has its annual National Day Speech and a National Day Rally Speech, usually given by its PM.

(Factoid alert: I'm told that mostly Communist countries celebrate National Days, whereas most of the free world (even in Africa) celebrate Independence Days. Can someone verify or falsify this claim?)

I find a most interesting and incomprehensible issue about these two speeches: that the Prime Minister (or a member of the cabinet) delivers them in English, Mandarin, Malay, and Indian Tamil. The 4 speeches are not identical to each other; instead, the main speech in English consists of mostly economic and political content whereas the rest of the shorter speeches have to do with emotional content.

On one hand, clear-headed and disinterested analysis of the State of the Nation (Mostly disinterested until he calls for able men to join politics - read PAP - to serve the nation); on the other, a babying and pandering of the various official ethnic communities.

Like most features of the most unique state of Singapore, the normal people have taken it as granted, as common sense - certainly not unquestionable, but if pressed, no questions are raised about it...

In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf asks why men have a fetish for uniforms, and another fetish for sticking medals up their uniforms to signify some status. Why not women, sprucing their gowns with sprigs of broomsticks? Or children, marking their shirts with symbolic blobs of ink to signify "scholar"? How ridiculous and arbitrary! But yet, so is the idea of sticking medals and pins on a uniform.

In the grand Virginian tradition, let me deconstruct the National Day speeches and rallies. Why shouldn't the PM divide his speech differently, like having separate speeches for

a. atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.
b. The lower classes, the middle classes and the elites ("People call you the elite but I call you my base!")
c. civil servants, Temasek-linked servants, and everyone else in the private sector.
d. The Singapore-born, the naturalised, and the foreign talents (of course no mention about the quitters).
e. members of civil societies, private companies, the Churches, and the think-tanks
f. Men, women, and children

and so on? All these are equally effective as demarcators of the population, some even more so than just 'race' or 'ethnicity'.

What is it about race that makes it THE paramount divider of Singapore society, that the PM must have separate segments for his National day rally and speech?

OR

Why is the PM so intent on dividing Singapore society on the principle of race (instead of say, class)?

Many people would point out that it's such a no-brainer: Singapore's National Day speech and rally are conducted in the 4 major languages as a nod to racial harmony. So here's a poser: what in the name of racial harmony allows the Chinese speech to be twice as long as the Malay speech, which is in turn usually twice as long as the speech in Tamil?

Perhaps the Malay community has lesser concerns than the Chinese?
Or smaller racial communities = less talk time on tv?

That's supposed to help racial harmony, how?

Sports is War!

Not the World Peace Edition

Sports facilitates world peace. Nations across the world put to rest violent rivalries in favour of civilized competitions. And the last time anyone believed in those two lines were...?

We need a more realistic way to talk about sports. That way, much heartache can be prevented. Just like how even children outgrow their beliefs in the infallibility of Santa Claus, the President and the Church, we owe it to ourselves to wean adults from the myth of sports.

1. Sports is big business.

A. Witness the amounts of corruption and jockeying at the IOC even as they choose a city to host the Games.

B. Witness the amounts of illegal sports betting that accompanies sports.

2. Sports is about winning.

It really is an old story, but people don't seem to realise sportsmen and sportswomen are mostly in it just to win. At any cost. Granted, we hardly see females swimmer grow beards these days (aside from the Chinese swimming team), but doping is now a big business involving top athletes and pharmaceutical companies.

3. Sports is war between nations.

Seriously, if you were to organise a sports competition that tried to reconcile nations, the first thing that comes to mind would be to organise it as a competition between nations?

Most recent case in mind: The Asian (soccer) Cup. Apparently the Chinese fans kept jeering at the Japanese team in all their matches in China. Even at the final match, the guests were booed during their national anthem, during every pass and goal. When they won despite the hostile crowd, the Chinese started a riot.

So much for sports facilitating peace.

The other lesson of the day? Apparently no matter how incompetent or unpopular the dynasty ruling China (Ming, Qing, Communist...), the rulers can always count on xenophobic patriots rising up to defend the nation, and even slaughtering a few foreign devils in the process.

Many such patriotic movements have done so throughout China's history, with the more recent examples being the White Lotus Cult and the Boxer Rebellion.

In a way, if I were an incompetent ruler, I'd want to turn a blind eye and hope the patriots get caught up in their anti-foreigner nationalism instead of getting interested in the corruption of the government.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Opens in Singapore on Friday

Things to note:

1. The film is rated NC-16 for "war images and coarse language".

No kidding.

They'd have to put the NC-16 rating for all news broadcasts too, to be consistent. And with Channel12/CNA's use of direct feeds from CNN and FOX 24/7 during both wars on Iraq, did any of that have to go through the censorship board for rating approval? They even managed to show Band of Brothers on national TV (not cable or PayTV) here at primetime, and I didn't see any huge PG or NC-16 rating for that.

2. Is there any way to find out which scenes have been deleted by Singapore's film censors? There has to be an official list somewhere.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I BET that 99% of the deleted scenes in the Singapore release would have nothing to do with violent war images or coarse language.

Do You Live in a Fascist State?

Here's a fun checklist you can go through in your free time! From "Facism, Anyone?" Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, p. 20

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

How Facist is your country?

Featured Link of the Day

The editors from The Poor Man are relentlessly funny.

"What if the Iraq war was a game of poker?"

excerpts:
The Editors: We'll take three cards.

Dick Cheney: Give me one.

Sounds of cards being placed down, dealt, retrieved, and rearranged in hand. Non-commital noises, puffing of cigars.

TE: Fifty bucks.

DC: I'm in. Show 'em.

TE: Two pair, sevens and fives.

DC: Not good enough.

TE: What do you have?

DC: Better than that, that's for sure. Pay up.

TE: Can you show us your cards?

DC: Sure. One of them's a six.

TE: You need to show all your cards. That's the way the game is played.

Colin Powell: Ladies and gentlemen. We have accumulated overwhelming evidence that Mr. Cheney's poker hand is far, far better than two pair. Note this satellite photo, taken three minutes ago when The Editors went to get more chips. In it we clearly see the back sides of five playing cards, arranged in a poker hand. Defector reports have assured us that Mr. Cheney's hand was already well advanced at this stage. Later, Mr. Cheney drew only one card. Why only one card? Would a man without a strong hand choose only one card? We are absolutely convinced that Mr. Cheney has at least a full house.

Like I said... the Poor Man is an excellent website! You should click on the link to read more.

What do People Consider Weird?

An edition where I do not call for the impeachment of Bush II or MiniLee

I own a portable fifth dimensional bag. Things get lost once they're inside... (on occasion, they REALLY get lost there for months!)

This could lead to "wildly entertaining" scenarios.

I.

Gets on the bus. "I remember my wallet's in the bag... It HAS to be!" Rummages in bag for an entire minute before locating wallet in previously unknown compartment behind the fourth zipper. OR: Finding wallet in PANTS POCKET after 10 minutes of searching bag.

II.

At the queue to get into cinema. The tickets are with me and my portable fifth dimension!

Check in pants pocket. Wallet easily located. The ticket, apparently, is in none of the 5 pockets of the wallet. Darn.
5 minutes gone. Entire contents of wallet are emptied on floor, just in case.

Is it in the multidimensional bag? 10 minutes gone. The entire contents of the bag are arranged on the floor, but no luck.

Or the OTHER pants pocket? No.

Then, in horror, I realise the tickets are in my SHIRT POCKET.

The Great Internet Firewall of Singapore

Officially, Singapore had migrated to server-side automatic proxies (aka "transparent proxies") more than 2 years ago, and no one needs to set the manual proxies on their pc.

However, about 4 months ago, Singnet subscribers complained that they were redirected to some very odd webpage whenever they tried to access any blogspot page. Unless of course, they manually typed in their proxy settings to proxy.singnet.com.sg.

I guess Singapore's ISP must be experimenting with more advanced censorship and usage-snooping technologies, causing a few very visible hiccups.

Singnet users, this is yet another chance to experience censorship technology from the Lee dynasty's favourite ISP.

Try this:

1. Disable your browser's manual proxy settings and change them to automatic or none.

2. You should be able to surf most websites normally.

3. Now, direct your browser to google or gmail.

4. Observe: no loading.

5. Change your proxy settings to the singnet-approved one.

6. Reload your browser to google or gmail.

7. Switch and repeat if insufficiently convinced.

8. Take bets on how long the 'hiccups' will continue.

And maybe, just maybe... wonder how to beat this very weird system.

The War on Intellectual Honesty

A special "Remaking English" edition

"A Defining Moment - How Singapore Beat Sars" is destined to hit the local bestsellers list for fiction. Droves of Singaporeans are snapping up the 204-page coffeetable book and depleting stocks at major bookshops.

I say to them: save your money.

Let's backtrack.
A year ago, after the first SARS epidemic died down in Singapore, the Minister of Information, Communication and the Arts (read: Minister for Propaganda) approached Prof Tommy Koh to publish a book to document the story of SARS, under his Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) think-tank. The Prof is a rare PAP man who is accepted as 'neutral' and independent - something that the credibility of his think-tank relies on.

Prof Koh agreed, on the one condition that "the author should have access to all relevant people and information, and the book should be intellectually honest".

From today's papers, it appears that the judicious use of that phrase has played an important role in the buying decision of the crowds. They see it as "objective and worth a read". After all, Tommy Koh is seen as an objective and fair person who is allowed to disagree with the PAP.

There are several problems.

1. The Author

So, after the Minister for Propaganda commissions Prof Koh's think-tank to publish a book, the IPS hires Chua Mui Hoong to do the research and write it.

Even though Ms Chua is a 'journalist', people SHOULD know that she is a "senior correspondent" who writes political analyses and social commentary on the op/ed pages. Most of the time, she defends the authoritarian system and the ruling party.

She also happens to be an ex-employee of the Internal Security Department. An ex-spook. In case you don't get the point, the ISD spies on Singaporeans, opposition parties and politicians, and recommends who should get detained without trial.

How would hiring Ms Chua ensure Prof Koh's clause of intellectual honesty?

2. The Context

So you have written a record on SARS in Singapore. The best way to keep it intellectually honest is to embed the book in the national-building discourse.

It is no surprise then, that the book is launched 2 weeks before Singapore's National Day. Or that the PM and all his cabinet ministers come out during the launch to say how important the book is.

Several forewords are written by PM and gang in the book itself, proclaiming that SARS is "a defining moment for Singapore", that "many (national) heroes emerged in the (national) crisis". During the launch, Prof Koh remarked that the book was also a "tribute to a leader who remade Singapore".

The point is, there is NO NEED to enmesh the record of SARS with a nationalist message. But they choose to politicize SARS, to escalate it into a National Event, a Moral Event, a Singapore Epic.

It's almost like how Bush II cynically uses 9/11 commemoration events for his re-election.

Dilemma

So one needs to ask... Was Prof Koh blindsided and coerced into making concessions on the appointment of the author, and did not have any control over the reception and his ruling party's publicity for the book?

Or was he complicit from the start?

Remaking English

The utility of the questions really depend on what we understand when Prof Koh said he wanted an "intellectually honest" book.

Suppose none of us are walking dictionaries and encyclopedias. If asked to consider the meaning of the phrase in its context, we might guess it means "unbiased", "truthful", or perhaps "ethical". And looking at the entire story thus far, we might further guess that being "intellectually honest" might not necessarily mean "emotionally honest".

This is how our leaders Remake English. Key phrases signifying important technical, philosophical, or academic concepts are regularly given the PAP treatment (read "bastardisation") and either mis-interpreted or completely refashioned to mean what our leaders want them to mean.

What does the rest of the world really think about "intellectual honesty"?

The phrase originates within the academy (examples here and here). It really has to do with avoiding plagiarism, using original work, proper citations...

It doesn't have anything to do with being objective or unbiased.

Let's look at Prof Koh's words again: ...the author should have access to all relevant people and information, and the book should be intellectually honest.

Did he use the phrase, knowing that it would be passed on from the Minister for Propaganda to the papers? that it would be misconstrued as meaning "unbiased and honest"? Because if he really meant what he said and nothing more... his sentence just means "the author should do proper research". Nothing more. And nothing profound. And nothing that boosts the credibility and unbiasedness that his think-tank needs, to be taken seriously.

The War on Error

Creative Capital Edition

Cultural theorists - both American and international - tend to study and formulate theories that take for granted as a starting point that the US
1. wields cultural hegemony over the world (Hollywood, MacDonald's, but not Starbucks...?)
2. is at the forefront of global creativity

This leads to an embarassment of recent major research trying to find out what US educational policies, immigration policies, and urban policies contribute to the "Creative Class" that we assume is a uniquely American phenomenon.

Cultural/political theorists, please consider the following list, and then explain your creative research to me again...

(not an exhaustive list...)

La Femme Nikita (France) vs. Nikita (US)
Abre los ojos (Spain) vs. Vanilla Sky (US)
The Seven Samurai (Japan) vs. The Magnificent Seven (US)
The Office (UK) vs. the Office (US, in production)
Absolutely Fabulous (UK) vs. Absolutely Fabulous (US)
Whose Line is it Anyway? (UK) vs. Whose Line is it Anyway (US)
Iron Chef (Japan!) vs. Iron Chef (US)
Ringgu (Japan) vs. The Ring (US)
The Eye (Hong Kong) vs. The Eye (US, in production)
Queer as Folk (UK) vs. Queer as Folk (US)

The War on Chess

The Searching for Bobby Fischer Edition

Fodon has beaten me to the announcement of the arrest in Japan, of chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer, in accordance to the US-Japan extradition treaty.

In 1992, Bobby Fischer went to Yugoslavia for an exhibition match against an old foe, Boris Spassky. Incidentally, these two men are the most imaginative and creative chess players of modern history. Fischer, on account of having defeated Spassky in the 70s in the great US-Soviet chess showdown, deserves to be called the greatest chess player of all-time.

"Bush I had imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia at that time, and as a result, Fischer's involvement in the chess competition made him an internationally-wanted criminal."

We need to rephrase the previous line in order to bring out the true facts of the case, since many stupid, uninformed newspapers will be parroting this line for the entire news cycle, and claiming that Fischer knowingly broke the law and got what he deserved.

1. Bush I signed an "executive order" to impose economic sanctions on Milosevic's Yugoslavia. An executive order is not a law. Only Congress and the Senate pass laws that can result in criminal prosecution.

2. Bobby Fischer is a chess player. Ergo, a sportsman. Under US and international law, Sports events are exempt from economic sanctions, for example, the one Bush I signed.

3. Bobby Fischer did NOT become an international fugitive because he broke the law, and spent 10 years on the run.

4. Fischer went on the run because Bush I signed another "executive order" demanding the arrest of Bobby Fischer.

5. What is not known is that the US Chess Federation did break Bush I's economic sanctions, by importing $500,000 worth of chess books to Yugoslavia under a contract with the government of the day.

6. As far as we know, the USCF was not prosecuted for their actions.

What is happening to Bobby Fischer, is an entirely baseless and illegal criminal indictment. It must be stopped.

Fodon has a neat theory that Fischer is arrested by Judas Japan, in exchange for letting Jenkins walk free. Such a deal can only be hammered out and approved by the highest offices in both countries.

We must impeach Bush II now.

Stem Cell Cloning in Singapore

The North Koreans have launched their very first national website! Be very, very afraid.

At least Singapore is still considered 'advanced' in setting up national websites, but I predict the Koreans will have their very own National Moblog soon.

Why should we view the North Koreans with such interest? Well, they've got a hungry look in their eyes that our leaders say we should have. And if you clicked on their national website, they have managed to achieve something Singapore's Billion-dollar Scientists haven't done yet: a successful somatic cell cloning of animals.

Yes. Be very very afraid of the North Koreans.

Iraq Now in Better Hands

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the US-appointed Prime Minister of Iraq is turning out to be quite a brutal dictator himself.

excerpt:
"Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings."

And we wonder about how 'evil' Saddam Hussein was?

The Vatican's War on Error

A special faith-based edition

The Vatican initially claimed, 5 years ago, that there was 'overwhelming support in the scientific community' that condoms cause AIDS. No scientist stepped forward to back that claim, obviously. So, the Vatican conducted its own scientific study and got the result they wanted.

And STILL the scientific community at large refuses to recognise the Vatican's science! How dare they!

Let's get this straight once and for all. Condoms do not cause AIDS. They prevent AIDS and other STDs.

Latex condoms have holes in them (YES they do! That's how guys get them on, you know), but contrary to the Vatican's scaremongering, most viruses are too big to pass through holes in condoms... [Aki: I'm told that the average size of a AIDS virus is 150nm, while the holes in latex material are 100nm. Aki to Mr. Pope: Do you take Math? How many people are you trying to kill?] At a molecular level, condoms have holes in them. At a molecular level, EVERYTHING has a hole in it, even a sheet of solid metal.

But y'know, that's why the US is insisting that 1/3 of the money it donates to the WHO has to go to faith-based abstinence programmes, instead of developing AIDS vaccines, or even to help children suffering from AIDS.

Recently, the Vatican released another scientific study which claimed (from a survey of historical records) that the Spanish Inquisition wasn't really as bad as everyone thinks. No kidding. Pre-modern murderous regimes weren't really in the habit of keeping records of how many people they slaughtered (or "processed"), and which regime has been completely frank about its murders (by reporting the full numbers, or even refraining from referring to them in euphemisms)?

The New Scientist had a recent run-in with faith-based science this year, when it first published a scientific report which claimed prayers do work in increasing conceptions in childless couples.

It later published an entire article explaining its retraction of the report, on the grounds that actually the study was poorly conceptualised, poorly conducted (no proper controls or placebos), and questionable (not peer reviewed; 2 of the authors apparently DENIED writing the report; the key writer was a conman who had no medical background).

Faith-based Science: everyone's alternative to Science.
[note: minor correction and addtional info posted 17 July on actual sizes]

NKF Charity Special

So the National Kidney Foundation wants my money (again)? I'm sorry, but they have to do better than that. For one thing, to people who apply their rudimentary knowledge of science or history of magic performances, the stunts appear faked and safe.

I'll donate money if let's say there's a Celebrity Russian Roulette stunt involving Jack Neo and Beatrice Chia. Or a Mediacorp All-Stars Battle Royale special.

The War on Genetics

Your logic is faulty! edition

When politicians are convinced that genetics affect *everything*, and construct elaborate political, economic, and medical theories out of 'genetics', it will only lead to major embarrassments.

Following the directions suggested by our Great Leader Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore's Qin Shihuang), scientists in the Population Genetics Programme (I didn't come up with these Orwellian names, our Great Leader and his fake scientists did) of the Defense Science Organisation announced last month that millions of dollars, all taxpayers' money, will be squandered to further the Great Leader's intellectually bankrupt and faulty scientific theories.

In particular, given Singapore's huge short-sighted population, our scientists want to find the gene that causes myopia!

Well. Just this month the American Journal of Human Genetics (vol 75, p 294) publishes a metastudy that convincingly and overwhelmingly debunks the "genetic theory of myopia".

excerpts from the New Scientist:

The argument is about why the rate of myopia is so much higher in east Asia than elsewhere. The conventional view is that people from the region have genetic variations that make them more susceptible. But after reviewing over 40 studies, Morgan and Kathryn Rose of the University of Sydney argue that there is no evidence to support this.

Contrary to popular belief, people in east Asia are no more genetically susceptible to short-sightedness than any other population group. "The simplest explanation is that you have a massive environmental effect that is swamping out the genetic influence," says the authors of the paper. In other words, given the wrong lifestyle, everyone is susceptible to myopia

I do hope the DSO calls off their expensive, myopic genetic research programme soon.

On the next "Your logic is faulty!" edition of the War On Error, tune in to: The Race to the SARS Vaccine! Featuring Singaporean scientists trying to identify the genetic markers of SARS, vs. the American scientists developing the vaccine through traditional means!

Someone should tell them the Americans have won this race as well.

Bond

Education is subsidised in Singapore's State-owned universities. In the recent years, the level of subsidies has been steadily cut back, forcing the debt share of local students to balloon after graduation. It is no wonder then, that they feel aggrieved about the level of educational subsidies foreign students receive.

In order to make the universities "competitive" (and frankly I'm not sure how that works), our leaders intend fees for local students to eventually be identical to the fees that foreign students pay.

Such moves will draw predictable and justified queries, such as:
Why are foreign students subsidised for their education?
Why are local students subsidising the fees of foreign students?

Even with the rabid privatisation of universities across the Atlantic, the common practice is still for national students or students the university's province to receive subsidies, and for foreign students to pay more. And even with the rabid privatisation, not even Blair's university reform plan demands that local citizens eventually pay the exact same fees that rich foreigners fork out.

These however are not our concern for today.

I want us to commiserate with the foreign students and the trap they've fallen into.

It is evident that foreign students in NUS and NTU are subsidised, even though they (currently, but not for much longer) pay more than Singaporean students. The two universities offer the cheapest educations for foreign students in the Austalasian continent.

The terms of their bond basically states this: Your fees are greatly reduced. Upon graduation, you will serve out this bond/subsidy by working in Singapore for the next 3 years in a permanent job.

With the bulk of foreign students in NUS and NTU studying engineering and other courses that involve a period of internship, what used to happen was that the student will be offered a bond or a promise from the intern company to work there for the next 3 years.

Since 1997 and 2000, there has been something like a very bad recession. Local students who had bonds or scholarships with private companies and GLCs have had their bonds "forgiven" immediately after graduation.

I'm sure that they feel damned instead, since the "forgiveness" is phrased as: The company is currently experiencing major financial difficulties due to the recession. It cannot afford to take on new employees at the moment. We understand you have a bond with to work for us. We forgive that bond, and wish you the best in your job hunt.

This has happened since the recession first broke out. If our ministers are correct (i.e. not lying or not misinformed) in their assertions that the economy is recovering, why is it foreign students are beginning to fall prey to this phenomena, when they used to be immune to this 'forgiveness' stunt in previous years?

So foreign student loses bond from company, but is forced under the original contract with NUS/NTU/Singapore to work here in a permanent job for a period of 3 years. Not just any job, but a Permanent Job. Not a Contract Job. Not a Temp Job. And no, don't expect the Singapore Government to find you a job. The government does not owe you a job, and is not obligated to help you find one - not even if you're a foreign student on a bond.

You can be stuck here for much longer than 3 years. Meanwhile, you have a country to return to. A career and life waiting at home. And you're stuck doing temp jobs HERE that have nothing to do with your education, which will be irrelevant to the job you want to do when you return. Meanwhile, the reply of the gracious Singapore government to these foreign students is: Just settle for any old permanent job, serve and fuck off.

Why isn't the Singapore Government forgiving the bonds of foreign students, like what the private sector has been doing?

Personally, I'd advise foreign students stuck in ridiculous bonds in Singapore to do the right thing. Take a vacation, visit home, and don't come back. We understand the shit you're going through because we experience it too.

The War on Economic Recovery

"A job recovery tends to lag behind the economic recovery". At least, that's what our politicians are telling us. Quit complaining about how hard it is to get a job, you'll get it easily in a few months!

For the most part, the general principle is correct: recoveries in employment markets tend to lag a quarter or so behind recoveries in the economy (i.e. Production figures, Inventories, Stock market bubbles).

What do you then need to do, in order to assess the strength of the Bush recovery? We just compare economic figures (job numbers, profits, labour wages) from previous economic recoveries, let's say... 12 or 24 months after the worst part of the recession has past.

And so you say, "Aki, that sounds so ridiculously simple. Why hasn't anyone shown us these figures? And if these figures exist, why isn't the US Dept of Labour or Singapore's Economic Liars... sorry, Economic Statisticians... publishing them?"

Oh well, the raw numbers ARE available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but it will take an economist to put them together into a chart. Which the Economic Policy Institute has done, and you can see why no one dares to tell you the full truth:



The chart with full analysis is available at the Economic Policy Institute.

One Day After Operation Iraqi Independence

Excerpts from the Guardian:

American commanders will risk launching high-profile military actions at targets in Iraq even if they go directly against the wishes of the new Iraqi government, a senior US general said yesterday.

Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, the second most senior American officer in Iraq and the force's tactical operations commander, said the US military was prepared to risk provoking "friction" with the new government in strikes against "professional terrorists".

His frank admission, just two days after sovereignty was handed back to the Iraqis, cuts to the heart of a likely source of significant political disagreement between the fledgling government and the US military in the near future.

Film Review: Winter Days

Review for 冬の日(Fuyu no hi), also known as Winter Days
Dirs. Kawamoto Kihachiro et al.
Runtime: 105 mins

"Trust the Japanese to make a one-hour documentary about a 30-minute animation."

Fuyu no hi marks its debut in the English-speaking world with its screening at Singapore's Animation Nation minifestival in June 2004.

The animation film is a print-to-screen adaptation of the seminal renku (連句 chain poem) written by the mid-17th century master haiku poet Matsuo Basho (松尾芭蕉) and his fellow poets. Just as Basho et al take turns to compose verses for the lyric poem in 1684, 36 master animators - including 3 Oscar winners for animation - around the world take turns to visually interpret each verse of the original poem.

Drawing from specialities as diverse as coppperplate engraving, bunraku (traditional puppetry), calligraphic drawing, stop motion filmming, as well as traditional and modern cell-animation, the creators of Fuyu no Hi adopt the aesthetics and production techniques of the original renku literary form and make it a wholly new, as well as a captivating feast for the senses.

On its own, the animation film manages to capture the abstract and impressionistic effects of chain poetry and haiku, but like all obscure poetry, a reader might actually gain a better understanding of what IS going on in the original interpretive community the poets operated in, by reading the footnotes. Hence, the (page-long) footnote is to a 3-line poem, what the hour-long documentary is to the 30 minute animation.

And this is what Fuyu no Hi (the documentary) achieves, in its alternating show-and-tell and interview segments for each verse of the poem/film.

From the simplest explanation of a renku, its structure, and its rules of composition and reading, one understands how each animated sequence relates to the previous, and sets the mood for the next, and how much leeway for free, unique, and personal interpretations each animator has in his/her adaptation of their assigned verse.

It is nevertheless apparent from the interview segments that the understanding of the literary allusions and codes of the renku is not a consistent value in each and every animator. The average pieces came from contributors who had an adequate cognition of the original verse; the best and most original from the artists' re-cognition and re-interpretation of the poetry to their own modern understandings; and the really boring and bland ones came ironically from mis-recognition.

If the animation portion sought to place the animators in a parallel position to the poets, the documentary seeks to recreate the film audience as the 'reading community' of the period, who understood the same literary rules, codes, and allusions which the poets worked within.

Of course, it is precisely because such a community of readers no longer exists that we need to have copious footnotes to even the shortest traditional poems, and why a film made in the philosophy of a traditional poem would need a much longer documentary to make sense of it.

It is then a marvel to realise at the end that it actually works, and works beautifully.







-End-

Notes. This reviewer is frankly disturbed by the fact that many in the audience chose to leave the cinema after the 30-minute animation concluded, without bothering to watch the documentary. Perhaps these Singaporeans were expecting to watch an anime instead of an animation piece.

冬の日 is also showing this month at the World Festival of Animated Films in Croatia, and will screen at the New York Asian American Film Festival later next month.

Official website for 冬の日: http://www.fuyunohi.com/

What Just Might Happen in November

GW Bush: (Holds a round object to reporters in the White House press room and proclaims)
Behold, the head of Osama Bin Laden!

Crowd: No, it's not - it's a large pumpkin with a pathetic moustache drawn on it!

Not A Nigerian Moneylaundering Scam Email

filed under: and now, for something completely different

urgent

request for urgent financial relationship

first, i must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction. this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and 'top secret'. i am sure and have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maxiimum confidence.

i am lynn cheney, wife of the vice president of the united states of america. $180 million dollars invested by my husband's company, halliburton is presently trapped in nigeria. in order to commence this financial transaction we solicit your assistance to enable us transfer into your library the said trapped financial goods.

the source of this financial opportunity is as follows; during the last military regime here in nigeria, the hallibrton corporation made "improper payments" to government officials.the securities and exchange commission has set up a formal investigation. there is also an iquiry by the u.s. justice department.

however, by virtue of our position as financial officers and members of this corporation, we cannot acquire these funds in our names. i have therefore, been delegated as a matter of trust by my colleagues of the panel to look for an overseas partner into whose bank we would transfer the heretofore mentioned illegal funds. hence we are writing you this letter. we have agreed to share the profits thus; 1. 20% for the nigerian government. 70% for the halliburton corporation 3. 10% to be used in settling taxation and all local and foreign expenses. it is from the 70% that we wish to commence the financial transaction.

please,note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the receipt of the following informatiom by tel/fax; 234-1-7740449, your company's signed, and stamped letterhead paper the above information will enable us write letters of claim and job description respectively. this way we will use your company's name to apply for payment and re-award the contract in your company's name.

we are looking forward to doing this business with you and solicit your confidentiality in this transation. please acknowledge the receipt of this letter using the above tel/fax numbers. i will send you detailed information of this pending project when i have heard from you.

yours faithfully,

lynn cheney

note; please quote this reference number (ve/s/09/99) in all your responses.

(from keywords.oxus.net)

Dispatches from the War on Cliches

"There is no smoke without fire." This is a proverb that's been around for ages, but apparently is more often than not misunderstood and abused by its users.

This proverb is generally understood to express the real-life observation that "wherever there is smoke, there is fire". In predicate logic, the relationship is transcribed as "Fire only if smoke", or in more mathematical terms, (Fire → Smoke).

In logical terms, a necessary condition can happen on its own. So while you can't have fire without smoke, you can have smoke without fire.

However, the standard understanding of the proverb precisely believes that you can't have smoke without fire.
How is this a 'misunderstanding' and an 'abuse'? That's adequately illustrated by how people apply this proverb in real life.

"There can't be Rumours without Some Truth"

This new proposition is phrased in parallel with the original proverb. From predicate logic, again we note that while you cann't have Truth without some Rumours of it, it's entirely possible to have Rumours without any Truth.

But try convincing that to any idiot who spouts that proverb (in either form) to you.

And if you sincerely believe there can't be Rumours without Some Truth, or there can't be Smoke without Fire...

Tell that to the innocents who died in witch-hunts.

Tell that to Joseph MacCarthy and the victims of his hunt for Communists in America.

Tell that to victims of slander and character assasination.

Tell that to the millions of Americans who believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 bombings because their leaders kept insinuating and suggesting it, even without any proof, and indeed are now known to have LIED about it.

Tell that to the thousands of prisoners the coalition forces arrested and detained in Abu Ghraib on grounds that they could "possibly be dangerous", and the US Senator who claimed that those prisoners are all thieves, murderers, rapists, who deserved it, and the Red Cross, who says that the majority of the prisoners were actually innocent, and were detained without even knowing their charges.

There isn't any rumour so false and baseless that people won't believe eventually, because they believe that "there can't be smoke without fire".

Return from Planet Reagan

AKA it's been a fun week with nice speeches, grand ceremonies, hagiography and a secular canonisation, but let's get back to reality.

From the BBC:

US probes trainee soldier beating

The US Army has opened an investigation into injuries suffered by a serviceman who was beaten up during a training exercise.

Sean Baker says he received injuries from fellow soldiers while posing as a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay camp for al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects.

He blames officers for the botched exercise, and says he suffers seizures as a result.

Mr Baker, 37, was a member of a military police unit based in Kentucky when it deployed to Guantanamo Bay in 2003.

He argues that other participants were not made aware that he was a soldier.

During the exercise, Mr Baker says, military police choked him and slammed his head against the floor. Mr Baker says he told them he was a US soldier but the beatings continued until the jumpsuit was yanked down, revealing his uniform.

Impeach them. Impeach them NOW.

On Maid Abuse

It's not even Sunday, and the Straits Times has splashed pictures of the mutilated boobs of a maid working in Malaysia, right across the front page of its Asian news section.

We should look carefully at what kind of 'horror stories' from foreign countries that our papers play up, give prominence to, and what kind of domestic horror stories are underplayed and under-reported.

For example, recent cases of school-going teens committing suicide out of maltreatment or emotional stress imposed by teachers have been reported in the Chinese press, but the English papers have been silent about.

Now, what of this piece of horrifying maid abuse? The Straits Times fails to inform its 4 million readers in Singapore is that "almost a hundred Indonesian maids had died falling from tall buildings in the island republic in the previous three years" - according to Chalief Akbar of the Indonesian embassy here, quoted in a BBC article. In addition, 10 to 20 maids flee their employers and seek refuge with the Indonesian embassy here each day.

The official story is that these maids, coming from rural villages in Indonesia, the Philippines, and subcontinental India, are unaccustomed to working in high-rise flats, and hence scores of maids fall to their deaths here each year while climbing out of the building to clean windows.

I can't see how anyone can take that laughable explanation seriously. It contains several blatant biases and fallacious assumptions:
1. There is no urban centre in the Philippines, Indonesia and the Subcontinent.
2. Because these are backward countries, unlike modern Singapore.
3. Hence, all maids who work here are unable to deal with an urbanised landscape, and kill themselves by falling to their deaths accidentally.
I don't know whether to be shocked at the assumptions in the argument, or at the fact that people buy into this story.

Since two years ago, it has been mandatory for maid agencies to include safe work training in their maid courses. That's not to say that no maid agency has prepared its maids for urban-based domestic work. Now despite all the (compulsory) safety training in the last two years, the death toll still remains at around 100 maids a year falling to their deaths.

Let's look at the figures again: every day, 10-20 maids run away from their Singaporean employers to seek refuge at the Indonesian embassy. Total number of deaths is therefore about 1/3 to 1/6 of runaways. The more likely explanation is that while some maids have the guts to run, other maids sink into depression - being forced to work more than 18 hours a day, without rest days, without permission to socialise outside of their 'workplace' will do that easily. What do depressed, isolated people stuck in a foreign land do? They might well jump to their deaths.

Now, add to the maid fatalities the hundreds of construction workers who lose their lives or are mangled each (normal) year in our building projects... What kind of country do we live in anyway?

The Rise of the Creative Class

One wonders why our bureaucrats here are so enarmoured with the creative class theory.

The article in the link explains the allure of the theory for civil servants with particular mindsets, and the pitfalls of the theory.

Straits Times fails at reporting news, leaves out key Rice 9/11 quote

Condoleeza Rice testified last Friday morning (Singapore time) to the Senate about the 9/11 attacks. Our national newspaper gives her a glowing report on Saturday, despite the fact that her testimony was clearly damaging to the administration. What's unforgivable is ST's reluctance to print the truth, to leave out key information in its reporting.

Rice said, "I don't remember the Al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about." And that's a quote you'll never see in your newspaper, and it took me under half a week to hunt for the transcripts to the hearings.

(As an aside, you can actually get a transcript of any Senate/Congress debate or speech within a week. How long would you have to wait for Parliament to publish its Gazette? And how easily accessible is the Gazette?)

The Straits Times should realise it IS in our national interests to show that Singapore does not have a monopoly on incompetent civil servants.

Future PM redefines marginally employed as entrepeneurs

I can't imagine Mini-Lee could be so shameless as to do that...

It's one thing to 'salute' the ITE graduate selling chicken pies, the NTU undergraduate turned undertaker, and the security guard cum part-time artist for their tenacity and will to survive, but it's bullshit to hail what are acts of desperation in the race to the bottom as "entrepeneurship".

For the second year in a row, Singapore's largest group of retrenched people belong to the white-collar PMET class. By extension Singapore's most unemployable group of people are the tertiary-educated - think of all the graduates and the would-be graduates who have been trained for the nonexistent PMET jobs.

Go tell these bunch of people when they finally give up hope of decent employment, give in to desperation, and open stalls in hawker centres, pasar malams, that you salute them as entrepeneurs. That's a very neat excuse and diversion to cover up the depressing fact that our Great Leaders have been incompetent and incapable of resurrecting the economy, don't you think?

Public rituals

First off, I'd like to condemn the news reporting of the Falluja incident where "4 US contractors" were killed, and their corpses then mutilated and lynched by public mobs in the Iraqi town.

Let's not get all mushy about this and treat it as though it's Black Hawn Down all over again: these weren't innocent "contractors". That's standard military doublespeak for mercenaries, paramilitary soldiers whose activities and functions are semi-legal and politically troublesome, and cannot be performed by the official coalition forces.

Even though the Shitty Times described these 4 men as "civilian contractors", a blatant lie that even the US media wouldn't be caught dead telling, the contractors were paid mercenaries working for Blackwater USA, which recently hired ex-soldiers from Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet's infamous and brutal military forces. On a professional level, Blackwater is part of the huge US industry that acts as a black hand of the Pentagon around the world, implementing its political policies on the sly, and often under the guise of providing "security services".

So, not only did the US illegally invade Iraq, part of their more illegal 'peacekeeping duties' are also farmed out to clandestine groups.

Now, if the 4 slain US citizens were members of the military, I would've given my sympathies - no questions asked. Ditto, if the 4 slain US citizens were civilians working there. 4 US mercenaries got slain, and their corpses defiled publicly? Don't cry on me.

Spot the Fake News Article

Every April Fools' Day, the Straits Times will include one fake news report in its broadsheet, often on the front page itself.

Here are the two frontline stories in today's edition of the ST:

Singapore exams go regional, where it seems there are actually fools in the Ministry of Education who want to export our exam system, and fools in other countries who want to buy it.

The other headline?

Commuters to share train security costs. Where Singaporean citizens will pay for the extravagant, needless, and ineffective "security measures" that our paranoid leaders will be installing for our rail network - armed marshals on every train, along with selective luggage checks that will make a mockery out of the phrase "Mass Rapid Transit".

It is a sign of the times that the second story is NOT the april fools' joke, and the improbable news is actually from the first headline.

Linguistic legacy of Singapore leaders

I propose that 50 years from now, historians will point to the coining of new words as the most important contribution of our leaders to their nation and the world. We have already redefined artiste to mean artist, and bohemian to describe the very bourgeois and poser-esque Holland Village. And that's not coining precious phrases like Confucian ethics and Asian democracy.

Sidenotes:
Artiste, in most dictionaries, refers to
1. musical or theatrical entertainers, like music-hall artistes or circus artistes
2. More generally, a person with artistic pretensions

Bohemian: lifestyle associated with liberal, penniless, and new artists or literary circles.

Bourgeois: mostly yuppies hang out at Holland V to imbibe expensive coffee and masticate gourmet food that real bohemians can't afford. These yuppies also hold artistic pretensions while posing at the Holland V bistros.

Today, our former Minister for Education, Teo Chee Hean, continues this rich legacy of linguistic deviation by coining a new use for an old word. The headlines have it: Public servants must think more like insurgents.

It's like watching a comedy in English, performed by Japanese actors who aren't quite sure what the N-word means...

Our poor minister clearly wants to say that the Civil Service needs to "take risks", "think out of the box", to be "less risk-averse", etc. It's just puzzling why his speechwriters chose the word "insurgent". Or mis-use the word and blame Gary Hamel for it.

Insurgent, according to the Webster
1. Person who rebels against civil authority or established government
2. One who acts contrary to policies and decisions of their own political party.

Onelook has it even better:
3. a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment

How should we make sense of the headline?
I can't choose between the following interpretations:

A. Teo welcomes insurgents because the government is afraid of mavericks. (linguistic faux pas theory)
B. Teo urges civil servants to take arms and rise up in revolution. (Webster, sense 1)
C. Teo urges civil servants to sabotage Singapore. (Onelook)
D. Teo admits that Singapore civil servants are members of the PAP. (Webster, sense 2)

Budget Roundup

It wasn't a case of writer's block, though I wish that is the reason why I haven't commented on it. Unfortunately, I needed to resist the urge to scream at my television screen, at the radio, and tear up the newspapers every day for the past 2 weeks of nonsensical speeches from our overpaid and underperforming clowns in Parliament.

The trade-off? Instead of an almost daily rant and snipe at our great leaders, Dear Reader, you will be subjected to just one long, but calm and measured post from me.

What can one write about without ending in a rant or a primal scream? I'll have to skip the great ideas from our leaders about the baby issue, or Sentosa Casino, or what I call the next big white elephant to rival the Tang Dynasty Village and the Esplanade. Or the budget, which Morgan Stanley's analysts complained was one of the most miserly, and certainly Not A Very Good Thing For Our Domestic Economy.

"It's the economy, stupid"

Our ministers have never been good orators, or skilled in any form of rhetoric, or cunning lingustics. They would do well to steer clear of the rubbish they've nevertheless uttered over the past 2 weeks, such as this little gem of a phrase from our infamous Manpower Minister, to "re-take jobs for Singaporeans".

What kind of jobs does our great Million-dollar Minister want to take back for our thousands of unemployed Singaporeans? Choice jobs in the marine, cleaning, and nursing industries, where there is a "shortage" of labour.

Translation: We want to be known as a nation of modern coolies, amahs, and nurses.

This is despite the fact that PMETs "were the biggest group of local workers retrenched last year", according to the Straits Times and the Manpower Ministry. Now, when Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (i.e. just about the white collared middle classes) form the largest group of unemployed Singaporeans, our great minister wants to solve the unemployment and recession problem by taking back the marine, cleaning, and nursing industries for us.

Why no one rubbished Mr. Ng Eng Hen in Parliament is a great mystery to me.

We have a shortage, really?

Having sources in nursing, I'll just talk about this sector and its apparent "shortage of labour" that needs to be filled by Singaporeans.

Firstly, there is NO SHORTAGE of nurses in Singapore's healthcare industry.

For almost 20 years, Singapore's national health system has systematically relied on employing and training foreign nurses for the industry. Nurses from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and China are a mainstay of our healthcare industry. They sign 5 or 10 year contracts with our hospitals, and our efforts have paid off - Singapore healthcare's "professional and dedicated" image is solely due to these matyrs.

There is a giant sucking sound

And that's the sound of disgruntled expat nurses voting with their feet. Year after year, expat nurses choose not to renew their initial contracts with Singapore hospitals, despite promises of an automatic PR status as a 10-year long service award gift. Instead they flock, not back to their homelands, but to Australia, New Zealand, the US and UK.

Over there, our former expat nurses (great export product, by the way) work much less for much more pay, and are offered PR-ship one month after they arrive, and that PR-ship is extended to their immediate families as well. This speaks very much for the "working climate" of the hospitals here, and how great our Human Resource departments are.

This situation has gotten so bad that most expat nurses here really treat Singapore like a stepping stone to a much more humane, sensible, and better-paid job in another country - they just need to suffer for a short while before hitting paydirt overseas. Even expat junior doctors from less-privileged countries working here see how lucrative and imbalanced things have become, and actually make the switch from being doctors, surgeons, and researchers... to nurses.

Thank you, Singapore, for fucking up the global healthcare market.

And this is why, this time round, our PAP Ministers have "learnt their lesson", and will now resort to hiring people who cannot escape Singapore, to become nurses. Yes, they are taking back the nursing industry for Singaporeans.

Or perhaps, will thousands of Singaporeans take up the exhortation to be nurses, serve their shitty contracts, then leave for greener pastures with the magic bullet vocations?

Schadenfreude

The Singapore Sentosa Cable Car Challenge is on! Only here do you have a contest that's designed to eke out the maximum amount of suffering from contestants for the maximum pleasure of the viewers and media.

Consider the rules: Couples are required to spend 7 days on a cable car. They can get out of the cars as often as they like, except they're limited to a total of 10 minutes a day, total. Even the Guiness Book of Records has some notion of human rights when they set the break times for record attempts.

I just heard an interview on the BBC, where one of the organisers boasted they had to "make the event exciting and memorable", hence justifying the horrific rules and 'temptations' that they distract participating couples with.

Well, I know ONE WAY to make this competition even more exciting and memorable. Let's subject the contestants to another Sentosa cable car disaster!