“We are controlled and worried enough by women at the present time”

The reason why a British MP opposed the vote for women all those years ago.

— “We are controlled and worried enough by women at the present time, and I have heard no reason why we should alter the present state of affairs.”

He got a point.

LKY should have heeded this reason

— “You have at the present moment certain statistics which show that both the birth and marriage rate are decreasing.

“Can you adopt at this time a policy which might mean an immense destruction of the population of the country which it is essential should not only be retained, but increased.”

But I assume Mrs Lee told him to give womwn the vote or else. Btw, she made sure he ate simple disgestable food. No Straits food from his sisters when she was ruling the roost.

Other reasons other MPs gave for not giving women the vote:

— “Women are tremendously accessible, extraordinarily impressionable, noted for the adoption of any new thing, and for the easy acceptance of other people’s views.

— “Intuition is far more largely developed in women than in men, but instinct and intuition, although good guides, are not the best masters so far as Parliament is concerned.

“Parliament exists for the very purpose of opposing feelings, fancies, and inclinations by reason.”

— “I daresay that the idealism of the feminine mind and its deadly logic which we have all experienced in private life are qualities superior to those of men, but I do say that in governing a great country and in considering the problems which we have to consider every day in this House such qualities are not valuable, but destructive.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43740033

 

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Clinton fixed Clinton

Or be careful what u wish for. It could come true and bit your member.

Bill saboed Hilary because he had urged Trump to run for the Republican nomination expecting that such a run would make things a lot easier for Hilary especially if in the unlikely event Trump became the nominee.

Being too clever by half is a problem for the Clintons. Bill and Hilary tot they had the perfect money making machine when she became secretary of state. He would get donations for his foundation from those who wanted access to her.

Well the money poured in but when the shake down became public (Thanks to the Russians), it made a big dent in her reputation.

Btw, Trump had the best excuse for alleged sexual predations and lewd comments, “What about Bill?”

Why I no ak the Select Committee hearings on Deliberate Online Falsehoods

The problem about lies or “fake news” is who gets to decide what is or is not a lie or “fake news”.

In liberal democracies, even the president of the US cannot get his view of what is or is not a lie or “fake news” accepted by even a majority of the voters. There’s some sort of consensus (“conventional wisdom”) driven (manipulated?) by the elites and media about what is or is not a lie or “fake news” in which facts often play an important part.

In a one-party state (de facto or de jure), the ruling party decides what is or is not a lie or “fake news”

— Keeping power in a one-party state

— Would this happen in a one-party state?

— Coldstore: Why Harry’s narrative or the highway

The planned tackling of “fake news” is a smokescreen for muzzling further netizens, not juz cybernuts. The internet and social media has made it a lot easier for S’poreans to share facts, ideas, and criticisms of the way we are governed by the PAP.

— Minister wants his cake and eat it/ PAP doesn’t get the Internet

— Ingratitude, uniquely S’porean? Blame the internet? Not really

— Us Netizens: Comancherios of the Internet?

This freedom (relative) to share facts, ideas, and criticisms of the way we are governed by the PAP worries the PAP (juz like the CCP worries about the internet and social media in China), hence the plan to further muzzle the internet and social media.

Najib on Tun M

Well looks like Tun M is like our Harry. But he couldn’t be M’sia’s SM and MM because UMNO and the Malays don’t believe in perpetuating one-man rule.

Mr Najib spoke of his falling out with Dr Mahathir, who has accused the Prime Minister of everything from theft to redrawing electoral boundaries to Umno’s advantage.

Mr Najib said Dr Mahathir presided over several district redraws and the recent changes were to “take into account some demographic changes”.

“I think he’s obsessed about control, about calling the shots, in fact, when we were quite close together he even suggested establishing a council of elders,” said Mr Najib.

“Of course, you can imagine who’s going to chair the council of elders and a sitting prime minister after every Cabinet, I suppose I would have to march to his office to get his consent.”

“He wanted me to do his bidding,” Mr Najib said.

Bloomberg via https://www.todayonline.com/world/najib-predicts-hell-extend-grip-power-malaysia-election-after-2013-vote-scare-1mdb-mistakes

NTU’s global first in AI

Did u know that artificial-intelligence researchers in Singapore have managed to teach industrial robots to assemble an IKEA chair? And that this is no mean feat? It’s a global first.

More details from the Economist

In a paper just published in Science Robotics, a group of researchers at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, report having managed to get a pair of ordinary industrial robots to assemble most of a piece of flat-pack IKEA furniture.

The chair in question was a model called STEFAN. The robots’ job was to assemble the frame. This requires several pieces of dowelling to be inserted into pre-drilled holes before the parts are pressed together. In total, says Pham Quang Cuong, one of the paper’s authors, 19 components are involved.

The robots were off-the-shelf arm-shaped machines of the sort found in factories around the world, combined with a stereoscopic camera that can produce three-dimensional images. A pair of videos released by the researchers show the robot arms making various mistakes, dropping dowelling on the floor or misaligning components, before succeeding at their task after almost nine minutes of slow, careful work.

Even with that abundance of caution, though, the robots needed quite a bit of hand-holding. They were given precise instructions before they started (along the lines of, “Arm 1: take the side piece. Arm 2: grab a dowel. Arm 1: rotate side piece so that hole is pointing up. Arm 2: insert dowel into top-left hole.” And so on.). Before the nine minutes of assembly began, the robots spent a further 11 minutes scanning their environments and planning the movements needed to carry out these instructions, before they tried to execute them. Moreover, though the larger components of the chair were scattered around at random, meaning the robots had to use the camera to identify them by comparing them with electronic representations loaded into a database, the dowels were gathered together and placed upright in a container.

The result is, nevertheless, sufficiently impressive, says Dr Pham, for his research group to have received considerable interest from industry. In future he and his colleagues hope, gradually, to remove the robots’ training wheels. One idea is to get the machines to learn what to do for themselves by watching a human being assemble the chair. Given the difficulties that many people apparently have with IKEA’s products, that may, however, also teach them how to toss the whole thing aside in frustration.

https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21740733-cower-your-silicon-overlords-puny-humans-robots-can-assemble-ikea

But a human could do it a lot faster, leading the Economist to say this

highlights a deep truth about the limitations of automation. Machines excel at the sorts of abstract, cognitive tasks that, to people, signify intelligence—complex board games, say, or differential calculus. But they struggle with physical jobs, such as navigating a cluttered room, which are so simple that they hardly seem to count as intelligence at all. The IKEAbots are a case in point. It took a pair of them, pre-programmed by humans, more than 20 minutes to assemble a chair that a person could knock together in a fraction of the time (see article).

Facebook has money to clean up its act

But will it? I doubt it.

Peter Eavis’s take: If Facebook wants to spend more on protecting its community, it can: Its operating earnings are equivalent to 46 percent of its revenue. But its expense numbers haven’t provided clear evidence that the company is going the extra mile yet.

More from NYT’s Dealbook

Facebook can afford to clean up its act

The tech giant has promised to spend a lot of money on improving its operations after the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It’s not yet clear quite how much — Mark Zuckerberg told analysts yesterday that the company was still working on making its products “good for people and good for society.” And his chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, told U.K. lawmakers this morning that Facebook would vet British political ads next year.

What’s now apparent: These controversies are yet to hurt the bottom line.

Facebook’s first-quarter earnings featured a 63 percent jump in profit and a 49 percent rise in revenue. And roughly 70 million new monthly active users.

Peter Eavis’s take: If Facebook wants to spend more on protecting its community, it can: Its operating earnings are equivalent to 46 percent of its revenue. But its expense numbers haven’t provided clear evidence that the company is going the extra mile yet.

The key assessment, from the Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser:

“All the data privacy issues, the congressional hearings, none of that will get as much scrutiny from investors as the bottom line.”

Our new PM/ Trumpets pls for me

Whoever he turns out to be, it will “Continuity with change.” the slogan of the fictional President Selina Meyer in the television satire Veep.

That was actually stolen from the secret slogan of Goh Chok Tong’s and Jnr Lee’s (still continuing) tenures.

Btw, trumpets pls for me. Nice to see that academic and anti-PAP nuts have finally realised that Ong Ye Kung is not PM material https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2018/04/26/ntu-prof-next-pm-between-chan-and-heng-ong-is-out/. But only after PM said so.

Lest anyone forgets, I wrote in late March

I never was impressed by Ong Ye Kung (See Ong Ye Kung: A study in failure) and nothing since he became minister and a contender to be PM has changed my mind.

I went on to say

I doubt he’s as good as Prof Tommy Koh makes him out to be: “I have the highest respect for Minister Ong and regard him as credible and the leading candidate to be our next prime minister.”

He was the CEO of the Workforce Development Agency and labour productivity never did improve. His NTUC and SMRT failings I’ve listed in Ong Ye Kung: A study in failure.

Granted he has good communication skills, but so did JBJ, M Ravi and this serial promise breaker: Where’s yr defamation video and jobs rally Lim Tean?.

Ong Ye Kung: “Is he the 4G leader with the killer instinct?”

Chris K, when u next meet the people who claim they are in the know, pls ask them why did they get Ong’s prospects so wrong? Are they really in the know or only pretend they are in the know.

As I used to advise people overseas: the real decision makers here don’t talk a lot to their inner circles, even in private.

OK, OK I was wrong to think that Bayee would not become the Sec-Gen of the Wankers’ Party. I underestimated Bayee’s stupidity and Low’s inner SunTzu and despair at WP’s prospects at the GE. More on this next week.

 

Wall St’s feverish blues

In New York on Thursday, the S&P 500 rose 1% to 2,667, helped by FB’s results. Intel’s great results should help on Friday.

Earlier in the week, market was in the dumps because as NYT’s Dealbook put it

— Alphabet investors appear worried about its spending on new businesses. Could that drag down other tech giants?

— 3M met expectations, but lowered the high end of its earnings guidance. Its stock tumbled 8.5 percent.

— Caterpillar beat expectations — but its stock sank after it too issued a gloomy earnings forecast.

— The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note broke through 3 percent, raising concern about how reliant the U.S. economy is on low interest rates.

— Trade war jitters haven’t gone away.

Rallies are being sold, while dips no longer attract buying.

(Last line added at 5.40am.)

Meritocracy? What meritocracy?

Double confirm: Paper general made Temasek and other NOL shareholders poorer too.

Not that Ho Ho Ho or other S’porean decision makers seem to care. Good luck SPH shareholders.

More evidence that NOL was sold when the cycle was about to turn &Sale completed in mid 2016).

Deutsche Bank is turning positive on Asia Pacific’s shipping sector with the strongest preference for the container sub-segment, followed by tanker and dry bulk.

This comes on the belief that industry conditions have now fundamentally turned, with the peak in deliveries of mega vessels and the recent acceleration of industry consolidation in recent years, which in turn means operators have the potential to achieve stronger price discipline.

https://www.theedgesingapore.com/tide-turning-favour-regions-shipping-sector-says-deutsche

Meritocracy? What meritocracy?

— Why PAP doesn’t do accountability, meritocracy

— Meritocratic hubris/ Who defines “meritocracy”

 

Further adventures of the Russkie who “fixed” FB

On behalf of Putin and the KGB? After all Facebook, together with Google, showed that hegemony of US of A’s soft power. But Facebook’s numbers juz grow and grow. More mud in Putin’s eye. He got Trump elected but his billionaire pals are getting hurt by the US of A and his nercenaries get killed with impunity by the US military.

Sorry back to the Russkie that was based here.

Last week, Aleksandr Kogan, the academic who passed FB user data to Cambridge Analytica said he was considering suing Facebook for suggesting that he had acted unethically.

Then Mr Kogan on Tuesday criticised the social network for relying on an “honour system” to protect user information that he said was “mined left and right” by developers on Tuesday at a hearing conducted by British MPs.

He also told the British lawmakers

that the social network had singled him out for the leak but knew that user data gathered by developers could be passed to third parties. He stressed that Facebook had not done enough to check the data gathered by his app had been deleted. “They know the platform has been mined left and right,” he said, “They’re trying to point the finger at one entity and paint the picture that it is a rogue agency.”

If Coldstore detainees had gained power (Cont’d)

We’d have free HDB flats and a dead property market if the Coldstore detainess had won power I wrote in If Coldstore detainees had gained power.

Here’s more about what would happen if they had gained power.

We’d have Socialism, going by what they said at the time then and since.

But the trouble with Socialism, Margaret Thatcher once said, is you eventually run out of other people’s money.

Don’t believe me?

— Ghana that at independence was richer than Malaya but now https://www.graphic.com.gh/features/features/why-malaysians-equal-ghanaians-but-their-economy-is-10-times-better-than-ghana-s.html.

— And see Cuba: Now that Venezuela can’t afford to subsidise Cuba, Cuba suffering. Happened before when the USSR collapsed and there wasn’t money from the USSR coming in to allow Cuba to have free everything: healthcare, education etc. Our Coldstore detainees would have asked China to pay for these freebies in return for turning S’pore into a red dot.

I lived in London juz before Thatcher came into power. And it left me in no doubt that socialism wasn’t working in the UK. Taxes were high but the govt was struggling to provide basic services (though the health system was really great).

In particular one reason the govt was failing to provide basic services was because public sector unions were forever striking for money pay.

And private sector unions were just as bad. There was a strike by baking staff in London which deprived us Londoners, of freshly baked bread for weeks.

Another major problem with socialism is that it panders to the unions,

We had a foretaste of the power of unions here: always on strike (May Day 1961).

Be happy that Harry, Dr Goh and friends gave up very early their infatuation with socialism.

Capitalism kicks trade unions (think Thatcher and the US) in the balls while Communism and Fascism castrate them (think NTUC and the PRC unions) into being part of the constructive, nation-building system.

Airnnb: More arrogant than Uber

This

the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) has proposed in a regulatory framework for using private homes as short-term accommodation (STA).
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/airbnb-accommodation-proposal-ura-rental-cap-consent-rule-10141664

reminded me that Airnnb thinks ang moh tua kee

Home-booking company Airbnb is willing to make some concessions on short-term rentals in Singapore in an attempt to appease concerns of the government, a top executive said on Monday (Mar 5).

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/airbnb-willing-to-make-concessions-in-singapore-policy-chief-10015636

This show of arrogance came after two Singaporean Airbnb hosts pleaded guilty to unauthorised short-term letting in the first such cases under new rules introduced in Singapore last year on short-term property letting. They were fined a total of S$60,000 each.

Well going by URA’s tots, Airbnb’s ang moh tua kee attitude is not helping them because

— Private apartment and condominium owners who want to rent out their homes for short-term accommodation will be able to do so for 90 days a year provided they fulfil several requirements, including obtaining 80% consent from owners within a development and registering their guests’ details.

— URA has already stated that it is unlikely to approve landed properties

Never mind I’m sure Kirsyen Han and other S’porean ang moh tua kees can be counted on to champion Airbnb’s continued flouting of our laws.

A New Zealand family of four who turned up at Caribbean at Keppel Bay expecting to pick up apartment keys for a four-night stay booked on Airbnb were devastated when they were told such short-term rents were outlawed.

“We proactively encourage all hosts to consult local laws and regulations before listing their property on Airbnb,” said its head of public policy for South-east Asia, Ms Mich Goh.

Err Ms Goh why doesn’t Airbnb juz not list accomodation here? Instead of putting the blame on the govt

On the Haynes family’s case, Ms Goh said: “This is further evidence of the need for a regulatory framework that reflects how people increasingly want to travel.

“We are optimistic that our community of hosts and guests will get the clarification it needs within the next two weeks when the Government publicly shares its proposed short-term rental rules and begins its public consultation on the matter.”

Maybe the govt should throw Ms Goh into prison and let Kisten Han KPKB.

Because maybe Airnbnb is a friend of those who want to see an end what they see as illiberal democracy or worse here: S’pore: An illiberal democracy?.

ISD should call in Ms Goh for an interrogation.

Good point by TRE poster that Oppo needs all sorts

When TRE republished TRE poster asks “Why save when struggling?”/ Corporate raiders and change there were the usually cybernut ranters saying I was part of PAP IB because I lamented the lack of enough Oppo “good men” when compared to nuts like Mad Dog, Meng Seng and M Ravi.

But there was the following post which made a good point: horses for courses

you need all:

//Too bad we got the likes of the Wankers’ Party, Mad Dog, Uncle Leong, Phillip Ang, Goh Meng Seng, s/o JBJ, TKL, Martyn See, Seelan Palay,Kirsten Han, M Ravi and TJS. They are the faces that the swing voters (those who voted for Dr Tan Cheng Bock) usually associate with change.

We need more people like Dr Paul, Terry Xu, Sonny Liew, Chris K, Tay Kheng Soon, Yeoh Lam Keong, Cherian George, Donald Low, Alex Au, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, Tan Tarn How and Remy Choo.//

aiyoh. you need all lar.

one group will have to be in the front line pushing the boundaries and incur plenty of casualties lar.

so that another group behind the front line will be able to move forward to claim victory lar.

just like 4-to-20 stars generals in air-con room need daft soldiers (mad dogs ?) to fight the actual war in order to claim victory unharmed lar.

Now I don’t accept his point that all generals are useless (though “paper” generals who as corporate CEOs can’t get trains to run on time or sell the biz when the biz cycle is turning are useless). Just look at the battles where a good general made a grat difference: the battle for France in 1940, Tet 1968, Napoleon’s victories etc etc.

But I accept his point that while we need good men like

Dr Paul, Terry Xu, Sonny Liew, Chris K, Tay Kheng Soon, Yeoh Lam Keong, Cherian George, Donald Low, Alex Au, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, Tan Tarn How and Remy Choo,

we also cannon fodder like newly promoted Wanker-in-Chief Pritam Singh, M Ravi, Roy Ngerng and Seelan Palay. What we do not need is a Mad Dog who is also the leader of an Oppo party. And we certainly do not need opportunist sabo kings like Meng Seng, TKL and TJS. 

Allah also against Uber?/ Our “religion”

In Indonesia Uber “has been outmanoeuvred by Go-Jek’s Go-Car, launched in 2016” says the FT.  It’s also ahead of Grab, co-founded by a cross-wearing M’sian Christian, now living in S’pore: Real reason why Uber lost to Grab.

Indonesia is impt because it’s 2/3 of the regional market according to the FT. But can Allah help out in other SE Asian countries?

Excluding Vietnam (Jesus and Buddha), M’sia (Allah got competition with Jesus, Buddha, Guan Ying, our Harry and the Hindoo gods), the Philippines (Jesus and Durterte), Singapore (Hard Truths) and Thailand (Buddha) have varying prohibitions on motorbike ride-hailing, Go-Jerk’s strength (Allah likes motorbikes?), FT points out.

 

SMRT: Desmond was economical with the truth isit?/ New job?

In January, Kuek said publicly that rumours of his resignation were speculative: neither denying nor confirming it.

But last week

The Straits Times understands that the search for a new chief executive (of SMRT) was initiated when Mr Kuek, 55, offered to resign soon after last October’s tunnel-flooding incident.

Constructive, nation-building ST

Because SMRT decided to look for a new CEO last October, this means that when Kuek said in January rumours of his resignation were speculative, that that comment was a lot of bull. He had offered to resign and SMRT was looking for a new CEO. He was on his way out. Nothing speculative that he was on his way out.

Whatever, the tunnel-flooding was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Coming back to Desmond. Given his skill in being economical with the truth he should replace s/o Devan Nair as the PAP administration’s chief of communications. S/o Devan Nair has been doing a lousy job in spinning the “right” narratives.

U.S.-China trade war’s time line/ EU is US ally

 

Remember a trade war will hurt property prices badly: Why en-blocers could be in for a nasty surprise. From NYT’s Dealbook The timeline for a potential U.S.-China trade war As the U.S. and China continue to posture over trade — alarming U.S. farmers, many of whom are in key electoral districts in the Midwest — it’s worth noting three upcoming dates, Peter Eavis writes.

On May 1, exemptions to the tariffs on imported steel and aluminum expire.

On May 22, the public comment period ends for another $50 billion worth of tariffs, and the Trump administration can announce a final list of targets.

And Aug. 18 is potentially the deadline for the administration to act on an investigation into Chinese trade practices. But there’s a provision for a 180-day delay after that.

Key caveats: President Trump has the power to pursue trade policy almost at whim. And a W.T.O. proceeding against China could take years. Is the E.U. bending to Trump on trade? With its $16 trillion economy and reputation for tough negotiating, the E.U. could have been the immovable object in President Trump’s trade fight. But that is looking less likely, Peter Eavis writes. Why? The WSJ reports that the E.U. is prepared to offer concessions to avoid Mr. Trump’s threatened tariffs on imported steel and aluminum that Mr. Trump has threatened — perhaps reducing tariffs on American cars and industrial parts, and joining the U.S. in pressuring China on trade and investment rules. Among the lessons if the E.U. concedes: The U.S.’s large trade deficits can give it leverage. Beijing appears keenly aware of the risks here and is sure to press its case at a China-E.U. summit in July.

 

SMRT: Driven to drink?

The constructive nation-building ST reported that an SMRT executive, a Mr Kek, was arrested for drink driving. A former Chief Engineer Officer with the SAF, Mr Alvin Kek, is SMRT Trains chief operations officer (rail). Alvin Kek was previously SMRT’s senior vice president for rail operations (North South East West Lines).

New boss coming, so afraid for job isit? But a poster on FB said his father died recently. Well if that’s an IB excuse, then sure got a lot of S’poreans can use this excuse.

Or maybe the job is so tough that it got him arrested for drink driving?

What do you think drove him to get arrested for a drink driving?

Zuckerberg caught with pants down again

After what Zuckerberg said to Congress, Facebook then spun that it could be adopting the new European laws on privacy and everything else as its default protection standard for the rest of the world including the US.

In his answers to Congress over Facebook’s involvement in the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg said that GDPR [new European laws on privacy and everything else]        was “going to be a very positive step for the internet”.

When asked whether the regulations should be applied in the US, he replied: “I think everyone in the world deserves good privacy protection.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43822184

Well, we now know that that’s a lot of bull because the BBC report says

Facebook has changed its terms of service, meaning 1.5 billion members will not be protected under tough new privacy protections coming to Europe.

The move comes as the firm faces a series of questions from lawmakers and regulators around the world over its handling of personal data.

The change revolves around which users will be regulated via its European headquarters in Ireland.

Facebook said it planned clearer privacy rules worldwide.

The move, reported by Reuters, will see Facebook users outside the EU governed by Facebook Inc in the US rather than Facebook Ireland.

It is widely seen as a way of the social network avoiding having to apply the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to countries outside the EU.

The change will affect more than 70% of its more than two billion members. As of December, Facebook had 239 million users in the US and Canada and 370 million in Europe.

It also had 1.5 billion members in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America, and they are the ones affected by the change.

Users in the US and Canada have never been subject to European rules.

In 2008, Facebook set up its international headquarters in Ireland to take advantage of the country’s low corporate tax rates but it also meant all users outside the US and Canada were protected by European regulations.

…

The change will mean users outside Europe will no longer be able to file complaints with the Irish data protection commissioner or in the Irish courts.

GDPR, due to come into force next month, offers EU consumers far greater control over their data. It also promises to fine firms found to have breached data rules up to 4% of their annual global revenue.

 

TRE poster asks “Why save when struggling?”/ Corporate raiders and change

When TRE used PAP is losing the war to keep S’poreans in ignorance there was this comment

SUNNY:

why must we save for future generation when we are struggling to survive in the most expensive city today.

in fact every generation can barely only support it self.
actually we are now the future generation ,what benefits are we enjoying??
may be the leaders should have their 90% salary/bonus cut for future 20 years generation,so we can witness before we die.
why save when it is raining heavily today.we won’t be around tomorrow.
who knows if the world will end tomorrow.

Here’s another thing to think about

What is the point of having a very good balance-sheet if the S’pore economy is underperforming its full potential?

In the 50s, 60s and 70s, US CEOs boasted of their companies strong balance sheets while spentdingcorporate funds on private jets, hunting lodges for themselves, co directors and senior executives, and their cronies. Shareholders got “peanuts” but wewre grateful. Then came the corporate raiders with the doctrine of “shareholder value”. CEOs  etc are still well renumerated but they have to keep the shareholders happy.

Recognise what should happen here next?

Too bad we got the likes of the Wankers’ Party, Mad Dog, Uncle Leong, Phillip Ang, Goh Meng Seng, s/o JBJ, TKL, Martyn See, Seelan Palay,Kirsten Han, M Ravi and TJS. They are the faces that the swing voters (those who voted for Dr Tan Cheng Bock) usually associate with change.

We need more people like Dr Paul, Terry Xu, Sonny Liew, Chris K, Tay Kheng Soon, Yeoh Lam Keong, Cherian George, Donald Low, Alex Au, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, Tan Tarn How and Remy Choo.

 

FB: Cambridge strikes back

Cambridge University’s  Psychometrics Centre has responded to Seth Lord Zuckerberg’s slime balling of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre (Think Shanmugam’s attack on PJ Thum)

The Centre, which is located in the Judge Business School, was drawn into the controversy when Facebook banned Cubeyou, another firm that had developed a personality quiz in collaboration with the university’s academics.

Business development director Vesselin Popov insisted it was opt-in only and was in line with Facebook’s policies at the time, so was not at all like the app developed for Cambridge Analytica by Dr Kogan.

He told me that Dr Kogan’s work had raised issues for the university: “Even if an academic does something – quote unquote in their ‘spare time’, with their own company – they still ought to be held to professional standards as a psychologist.”

Dr Kogan and the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre are in dispute over whether a row over his personality app – and the involvement of the centre’s academics – was about ethics or money. I wrote another article about that issue on Friday.

But the two sides agree that Facebook needs to focus on what commercial businesses do with user data, rather than academics.

“It’s very clear that Cambridge Analytica and these kinds of companies are the product of an environment to which Facebook has contributed greatly,” says Mr Popov. “Although they might be making some changes today in response to public and regulatory pressure, this needs to be seen as an outcome of very permissive attitudes towards those companies.”

With an audit of thousands of Facebook apps under way, we may hear more in the coming weeks about just how cavalier some companies have been with our personal data.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43758850

S’pore could host “Stable Genius” and “Little Rocket Man”

The u/m graphic from the BBC shows that experts think that S’pore is a possible venue for the summit between “Stable Genius” and “Little Rocket Man”. If this happens, mud in the eye for the siblings of PM and their anti-PAP allies. Lots of face for PM and S’pore.

Zuckerberg is real life Two-Face Harvey

Remember Batman’s enemy Two-Face Harvey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Face)?

Well reading the u/m extract from the by the BBC’s media editor, I couldn’t help think that we need Batman to fight Zuckerberg, the incarnate of Two-Face Harvey :

There’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Ultimate Millennial. He wears t-shirt and jeans, is a Harvard dropout, happiest in New York and San Francisco, who talks a good game about connecting the world. He’s an engineer and geek who built perhaps the most remarkable network in human history, innovating his way to astronomical wealth. This guy is shy, but has a public persona that accommodates it.

Then there’s a chap I call Mark Sorryberg – the Big Tech Villain. He wears an ill-fitting suit, squirms when in Washington, is blamed for damaging all we hold dear – from rigging elections (“He’s killing democracy”!) to promoting extremism (“He’s unweaving society”!) and not paying enough tax (“He’s screwing the poor”!). This guy is so shy he comes across as awkward and uncomfortable when he should be projecting authority.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43740113

Let’s be serious Two-Face Zuckerberg seems to have a

Split personality: Multiple personality disorder, a neurosis in which the personality becomes dissociated into two or more distinct parts each of which becomes dominant and controls behavior from time to time to the exclusion of the other parts. A modern name for this condition is dissociative identity disorder.

https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11257

 

If Coldstore detainees had gained power

This would have happened when HDB overbuilt

To reduce the property overhang, local governments bought millions of unsold homes from developers and gave them to poorer citizens.

Economist talking about local Chinese govt

Actually, not exactly because as HDB is a govt agency, the flats would have just been given away.

Thankfully for property investors, Coldstore was successful in preventing the whackos from gaining power.

Trump madder than Mad Dog

James Matiss, the US Defence Secretary, had the nick-name “Mad Dog”. But as the BBC reports

The Daily Telegraph reports that President Trump considered a strike three times bigger than was launched on Syria last week – but was dissuaded by his defence secretary, James Matiss.

It highlights claims in the US media that the proposed attack could potentially have included targeting Russian air defence systems – as well as Iranian targets.

The reports say Mr Trump and his UN ambassador, Nikki Hayley, were both pushing for a more robust strike, but that Mr Mattis urged caution, warning of an escalation by Russia or Iran.

Btw, Obama fired Mattis as Commander Central Command (which covers the Middle East) because Obama tot that Mattis was provoking the Iranians into attacking US forces so that he could hit back. But then Obama was Wimp in Chief.

And given that Trump loves chaos (Trump is channelling Sun Tzu) he should adopt as Airforce One’s call sign “Chaos”: that was Mattis’s call sign.

Man that should be running SMRT

As Desmond Kwek’s successor, instead of another scholar and general as reported by  ST, the PAP administration should try to recruit Andy Byford who has worked in some tough MRT systems (London, Sydney and Toronto) and has a record of success in the MRT field. So much so that New York turned to him to do something about its system.

He is a MRT man to his bones: all his jobs involve trains.

Better still he personally checks the system daily: he takes the MRT to and from work. When was the last time Desmond or any other CEO or presumptive CEO took the MRT to work?

And finally, he personally apologises for delays. A Ferrari driving FT MD of SMRT said commuters had a choice not to use her trains if they were unhappy. Even the PAPpies found this too much to stomach.

But he’s no Oxbridge or Ivy League man, so our system discounts him immediately.

He made a name for himself running transport systems in London, Sydney and Toronto. Now Briton Andy Byford is in charge of turning around New York’s ageing, failing subway system. What did he get himself into?

About 400,000 people pass through the Bloor-Yonge subway station every day in Toronto, Canada’s largest city.

And on a summer’s day in 2013, the city’s transport chief Andy Byford tried to apologise to every one of them.

Earlier in the day, water damage had caused a signal failure, delaying trains from rush hour that morning until early afternoon.

Walking up and down the platform, Byford tried to apologise in person to harried commuters while a recording of him formally apologising played on a loop on the station’s loudspeaker.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43561378

 

 

GIC invests US$1.3 bn in Vietnam

Vingroup’s Vinhomes has got GIC to invest US$1.3bn from GIC as Vinhomes prepares for Vietnam’s biggest ever share sale or IPO.

Vinhomes is the property arm oif Vingroup, a conglomerate. Property in hot in Vietnam especially in Ho Chi Minh City where Vinhomes is a big player.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” & the PAP

Milos Forman, the director of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, died recently died. It was only the second film in history to win Oscars for best picture, director, actor, actress and screenplay.

The film starred Back Nicholson as a man battling the system in a psychiatric establishment and was based on Ken Kesey’s novel.

Milos Forman said:

“To me it was not just literature but real life, the life I lived in Czechoslovakia from my birth in 1932 until 1968,” …

“The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43767278

Here’s an extract from the book on which it was based.  The speaker is Nurse Ratched, the lady really running the equivalent of our Mental Health Institute:

“Please understand: We do not impose certain rules and restrictions on you without a great deal of thought about their therapeutic value. A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside World, because you refused to face up to them, because you tried to circumvent them and avoid them. At some time—perhaps in your childhood—you may have been allowed to get away with flouting the rules of society. When you broke a rule you knew it. You wanted to be dealt with, needed it, but the punishment did not come. That foolish lenience on the part of your parents may have been the germ that grew into your present illness. I tell you this hoping you will understand that it is entirely for your own good that we enforce discipline and order.”

She let her head twist around the room. Regret for the job she has to do was worked into her face. It was quiet except for that high fevered, delirious ringing in my head.

“It’s difficult to enforce discipline in these surroundings. You must be able to see that. What can we do to you? You can’t be arrested. You can’t be put on bread and water. You must see that the staff has a problem; what can we do?”

… The face moved with a ticking noise till the features achieved a different look. She finally answered her own question.

“We must take away a privilege. And after careful consideration of the circumstances of this rebellion, we’ve decided that there would be a certain justice in taking away the privilege of the tub room that you men have been using for your card games during the day. Does this seem unfair?”

Doesn’t what she say sound familiar if you

— lived in Potong Pasir when the Chiams ruled the place; or

— are living in Aljunied or Hougang

and have to wait forever and a day for yr HDB upgrading?

Or if you are a singleton below age 35, ineligible to get a BTO flat?

Or are a singleton age 35, eligible to only get a two room BTO flat in a non-mature estate?

 

 

What Mark Zuckerberg didn’t say

From NYT Dealbook

Despite two days of congressional testimony, the Facebook chief didn’t address some issues, including the tech giant’s role in violence worldwide. Shira Ovide of Gadfly thinks that his evasiveness about how the company works shows that it’s embarrassed. (Oh, and the European Parliament wants Mr. Zuckerberg to testify, too.)

U.S. lawmakers seem to agree regulation is needed, but doubt that it’s coming. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, told the NYT, “I think we need to be careful.” Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New York, said, “I don’t believe the Republicans will end up doing anything.”

The latest Facebook scandal has finally put a spotlight on data privacy, experts say. One, Doc Searls, told the NYT, “They’re saying, ‘O.K., it’s barn-raising time.’ ” (Facebook still isn’t expecting a hit to sales.)

Estate agents so stupid and selfish meh?

Mr and Mrs Ow should lose their licences because they are so stupid that they didn’t know that the shorter time left on any lease, the value of flat goes down. (HDB flats: 35 is a dangerous age and Why 30-year old HDB flats difficult to sell/ Why PAP rule will end in 2029)

I am very concerned if property agents who are suppose to be advising their clients personally had such an unrealistic idea that prices of HDB flats would rise forever that they thought it prudent to pay $580k for a 5-rm HDB flat that was already 35 years old at the time of their purchase.

ST also highlighted another case of HDB owner trapped in buying old HDB flats.

It featured a property agent, Janet Ow, who bought her 5-room flat with her husband, also a property agent, in the old estate of Telok Blangah. They bought the flat at $580,000 some 8 years ago in 2010. Currently, their old flat has just got 56 years left on its lease.

In 2016, they started marketing their flat at $680,000 to $690,000 hoping to make at least a $100K. Bids came in at $620,000 and $630,000 but now offers have also dried up. For more than a year now, they couldn’t sell their flat.

“Those who called asked about the balance of my lease first,” Ms Ow said. “The flat’s age has now become a main concern after National Development Minister Lawrence Wong’s reminder in March last year.”

“Upon knowing the age, sometimes they won’t even proceed with viewings. In 2016, when we put up an ad, we would get around 10 calls. Now, we don’t even get a single call for one to two weeks,” she added.

“If I don’t sell now and prices keep dropping, I will be making losses on my flat eventually.”

Ms Ow and her husband are hoping to sell their flat quickly so that they could get a condo with a fresh lease.

“At least we know we have a long lease ahead of us and can cash out,” she said. “We don’t want another HDB resale flat because the ageing lease problem will crop up again.”

…

In any case, at the moment, Ms Ow said she feels “insecure about the future”.

https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2018/04/15/owner-sells-3-room-hdb-for-15-less-after-wongs-comment-about-zero-value-of-expired-flats/

Another reason they should lose their licences is that to help her and her hubbie out of their stupidity, they want the govt to screw other S’poreans

Ms Ow said, “Perhaps HDB could look into allowing buyers of flats with less than 60 years left on the lease to utilise their CPF fully (ie, 100%) instead of partially.”

“That will help to alleviate the worry of having to pay cash for part of the purchase. This will help buyers who need to buy flats in an oder estate to be near their parents who may be there,” she added.

Err that means those who use 100% of his or her CPF savings to buy such older flats will not have enough to retire on later because of the near-zero value of the flat.

Robbing blur Peter to pay stupid, s3elfish Pauline isit?

 

When India’s Muslims and Hindus fought alongside

When the East India Company ruled India, Muslims joined the Co’s Hindu regiments, and Muslims and Hindus fought fellow indians so that the British could enslave India and Indians.

The Bengal Regiment was raised in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) in today’s Uttar Pradesh state, and it is likely that Bheg hailed from the region. Muslims made up around 20% of the largely Hindu regiments.

BBC report

And then they both fought the British in the Great Mutiny.

The Brits learnt their lesson and Hindus and Muslims were put into separate regiments. And Muslim soldiers were trusted more.

Facebook’s Catch 22

The following day, he was asked by Congressman Ben Lujan about the data collected on people who had never even signed up to Facebook. Again, Mr Zuckerberg appeared uncomfortable. He had never heard of the widely used term “shadow profiles” to describe this kind of data collection.

Then the congressman took us down an Alice in Wonderland-style rabbit hole, where people who do not use Facebook are told to log in to their Facebook accounts to find out what data Facebook holds on them. “We’ve got to fix that,” he said.

Frederike Kaltheuner from Privacy International tells Tech Tent that this kind of data collection, with users unaware of what is happening, is all too common – and Facebook is far from the only culprit.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43758850

Trump’s u turn on TPP shows Churchill’s wisdom

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

Winston Churchill

Well a modern day variant would be

You can always count on Trump to do the right thing – after he’s tweeted about everything else.

From NYT Dealbook

Has Trump changed his mind about the TPP?

He once denounced the trade pact as “a rape of our country.” But his decision yesterday to reconsider joining — which surprised his own advisers — could hearten U.S. businesses and Republican lawmakers who supported it as one of the best ways to box in China.

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, told Politico, “If you want to send a message to China, the best way to do that is to start doing business with their competitors.”

Free-trade backers may point to this reversal, as well as attempts to revise Nafta, as a change of heart by a protectionist president. Then again:

And Japan’s chief cabinet secretary cautioned this morning that it’d be hard to rewrite a “well-balanced pact” that already met the needs of 11 signatories.

The president’s decisions on economic matters are now the purview of Larry Kudlow, who’s casting himself as a “happy warrior” even as he described the TPP decision as coming “out of the dark, navy blue.”

Meanwhile, China is not-so-subtly threatening to scale back its purchases of U.S. debt, though that would be a risky maneuver.

Had to be TLC to be criticised racist job ad

Think Oz like in S’pore where biz feel free to advertise that post only for FTs, not locals isit?

Optus, owned by SingTel

has apologised for posting a job advert that stated a preference for “Anglo-Saxon” candidates.

Optus, the nation’s second-biggest provider, had included the description in a posting about a vacant position in a Sydney store.

The advert was shared on social media, where it was criticised as racist.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-43749676

Fighting fake news while raising revenue

Funny our Pay and Pay scholar-filled govt didn’t think of this idea first. Uganda in darkest, dysfunctional Africa first tot of taxing users of social media to curb “gossip” (ie fake news) and raise revenue.

Taxing social media should the additional benefit, from the PAP’s point of view of curbing free speech, and so is something that the PAPpies should have tot up before the men from darkest, dysfunctional Africa.

From the BBC

Uganda plans to impose a daily tax on social media users from July in a bid to raise revenue, Finance Minister Matia Kasaija has told Reuters news agency.

The move has been criticised by rights activist Rosebell Kagumire who said: “It’s part of a wider attempt to curtail freedoms of expression.”

Earlier this month, President Yoweri Museveni – who has been in power for more than 30 years – was quoted by Uganda’s privately owned Daily Monitor newspaper as saying in a letter to Mr Kasaija and other officilas that a tax should be introduced on people who use social media for “gossip”.

“I am not going to propose a tax on internet use for educational, research or reference purposes… these must remain free,” he was quoted as saying.

The proposed tax will see each mobile phone subscriber who uses platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter being charged, Reuters reports.

The amount is unclear – Reuters reports that Mr Kasaija said it will be 200 Ugandan shillings ($0.027) a day, while State Minister for Planning David Bahati is quoted by the Daily Monitor as saying it will be 100 shillings.

“We’re looking for money to maintain the security of the country and extend electricity so that you people can enjoy more of social media, more often, more frequently,” Mr Kasaija told Reuters.

True Uganda’s proposed charges are “peanuts” to S’poreans but a dollar a day will make talk cock, sing song, cheap skate anti-PAP cybernuts like Aloysius Foo and Lauschke Amythink twice about using social media.

Interesting takes on FB

Brian Chen’s reaction to what data Facebook had collected about him: “Yikes.” How the company targets you for advertising. Craig Newman argues in Another View that companies should be graded on their data security.

NYT Dealbook

MPs: Ours compared to Taiwanese/ No real change in Wankers’ Party?

The Taiwanese parliament has a really bad reputation here because our constructive, nation-building media are forever highlighting the rows, fights that goes on there. To be fair to our media and their masters, the Taiwanese parliament is world class in its level of rowdiness and the willingness of its members to use their fists.

So when TRE used CNA report shows public tpt Hard Truths are BS there was this interesting response

Taiwan MP vs SG MP:

Taiwan MPs:

Inside parliament, they fight against each other.
Outside parliament, they fight for their people.

SG MPs:
Inside parliament, they fight for each other.
Outside parliament, they fight against their people.

It got this response

 MarBowling:

Nowadays, we hardly find MPs like Dr Tan CB and Dr Lily Neo who have concern and heart for the common folks. MPs like Cheng Li Hui and the rest of the PAPigs are more concern for the pockets and perks than the welfare of the common folks. So voters of Tampines GRC should do the Needful in the next GE:show your middle finger to filthy rich MP Cheng Li Hui who CLEARLY shows that she cares more for the coffers of transport operators than the pockets of the common folks commuters!

Juz wondering, why both writers make no mention the WP MPs? Because they are MPs from the Worthless Wankers’ Party?

Couldn’t help but think that Bayee was saying “We remain the Worthless Wankers’ Party” when I read

Workers’ Party (WP) new chief Pritam Singh said on Sunday (Apr 8) the opposition party will build on the work of his predecessor, Mr Low Thia Khiang, and continue to be “rational, responsible and respectable”, as it seeks to work with all Singaporeans to “take on the form and the shape of a loyal Opposition”.

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/pritam-singh-takes-over-low-thia-khiang-new-wp-secretary-general

Btw, Secret Squirrel and Morroco Mole tell me that MP Cheng Li Hui has never ever used public transport. In her school and uni days, she had a chaffeur-driven German luxury car to ferry her around.

Words that could haunt Zuckerberg

He said on Tuesday “I agree we are responsible for the content.”

NYT Dealbook explains the importance of these words:

These were the most important words from Mark Zuckerberg’s five-hour testimony: “I agree we are responsible for the content.” They may come back to haunt him, given his previous rejection of calling Facebook a publisher. He later backtracked and called his business a tech company, but his acknowledgment may fundamentally shift the conversation — and how the company operates. (All in all, Mr. Zuckerberg did better than anyone had expected.)

Zuckerberg doesn’t know how FB tracks users

Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, kicked his balls with this

“During the course of this hearing, these last four hours, you have been asked several critical questions for which you do not have answers,” she said. “Those questions have included whether Facebook can track users’ browsing activity even after the user has logged off of Facebook, whether Facebook can track your activity across devices even when you are not logged into Facebook.”

He promised to provide answers when asked these questions.

What is “work”?

Komlosy identifies three very different historical attitudes towards work. The first, common in ancient Greece, was that work was a burden that had to be overcome so that we could lead a contemplative life. The second, espoused later by the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths, was that work was not a cursed punishment but a blessing from God. The third view, championed by the labour and women’s movements in the 19th century, was that work could be transformational, turning toilsome effort into creativity and social alienation into self-actualisation. The advocates of a basic income sometimes argue that we need to reacquaint ourselves with the contemplative life of ancient Greece — only this time including more than just a small male elite. We have the wealth, knowledge and means to fix the future. But, first, we will need to redefine what we mean by human work in our robot world.

The Last 1,000 Years, by Andrea Komlosy, Verso, RRP£16.99/$26.95, 272 pages

FT review

Me? I agree with the ancient Greeks that work was a burden that had to be overcome so that we could lead a contemplative life.

My Bumi boss once said I never did an honest day’s work. He said hard to believe I was Chinese.

What is “news”?/ “Fake news” is not “fake” says Harvard expert

There’s a lot of chatter (Local academics propogate fake news?) and some thought both here and abroad on what is “fake” in “fake news”.

But very little thought it seems is given to “news” because there seems to be a belief implication that “news” is good: a idea that is shared here by the PAP and sheep, the talk cock, sing song, tell lies anti-PAP cybernuts, and anti-PAP activists (Chinese helicopters like Terry Xu, the ang moh tua kees etc)

But what if news is really nothing but BS to sell ads?

“News,” Crouch said, “is that which makes its consumer self-important, angry, or sufficiently whatever the hell to turn to page twelve, and, turning, encounter the ad for the carpet sale.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-43645567 where the BBC Arts editor, Will Gompertz, reviews David Mamet’s latest novel, a thriller: Chicago.

The bit just before this is as enlightening

What do you think they’re paying us for?” Crouch [the news editor] had said.

“Man bites dog,” Mike had said.

“Bullshit.” Crouch said. “Man bites dog is too interesting to be news.”

“Then what is news?” Mike said.

David Mamet’s latest novel, a thriller: Chicago

But let’s get serious and consider the views of Harvard’s Claire Wardle who says that “much of the debated content is not fake, but used out of context or manipulated, while polluted information also extends beyond news”.

She says

Calling the term “fake news” woefully inadequate in capturing the complexity of the
scourge currently afflicting the world, Harvard expert Claire Wardle suggested that this “information disorder” should be grouped into seven categories that range from satire, manipulated content, to fabricated content.

Such information disorder, while not defined as “black and white”, can also be categorised according to its level of truthfulness and intention to cause harm, said Dr Wardle, an expert in user-generated content, in her written representation to the Select Committee studying deliberate online falsehoods here.

Her submission was part of the 167 written representations accepted and published on the committee’s website on Monday (Apr 09).

(First few paras of an article from an article from the constructive, nation-building digital free sheet of MediaCorp entitled

‘Fake news’ is far more complex; problem of information disorder goes beyond US and social media: Expert

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/fake-news-far-more-complex-problem-information-disorder-goes-beyond-us-and-social-media)

Here’s more from her from said article (Pls read it, it’s good)

Dr Wardle, an executive director of First Draft – a non-profit organisation that is focused on experimental projects to fight disinformation – is also a research fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center for Media,Politics and Public Policy. She had previously testified at a United Kingdom committee hearing on fake news and misinformation in February.

In her written representation to Singapore’s Select Committee, Dr Wardle said much of the debated content is not fake, but used out of context or manipulated, while polluted information also extends beyond news.

Elaborating on the seven types of information disorder, she said that the least problematic of them is satire or parody, when people often fail to realise the content they are reading is satire.

The next one is a false connection, such as when headlines, visuals or captions do not support the article’s content. This is followed by misleading content and false context, where genuine content is taken out of its original context and circulated. The others are: imposter content and manipulated content, where genuine information is manipulated to deceive others. The last category is fabricated content.

These types of information disorder can also be categorised into misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, said Dr Wardle. Content that is false but not intended to cause harm will fall under misinformation, while the same type of content which is intended to cause harm will be considered disinformation. Truthful information that is aimed at causing harm is malinformation.

The authorities can consider the different elements that make up the information disorder, she said. For instance, they can consider who are the agents and their motivations for creating misleading or inaccurate information, as well as the type of messages being distributed. They should also take into account how the messages can be interpreted differently, depending on the source of the message, and how it ties in with the readers’ existing beliefs, among other things.

Another suggestion was also to provide additional investment and training opopportunities to strengthen “non-partisan media”. This comes as newsroom resources shrink, which results in fewer editors catching honest mistakes, or fewer journalists being trained to verify content sources on social media, for instance.

Funding and coordination of an international research agenda for monitoring the scale and impact of disinformation was another idea put forward by the researcher, a prominent expert on online falsehoods whose views are often sought after by international media.

Dr Wardle noted that current debates on this issue have been “focused disproportionately” on the United States, political disinformation, Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter bots.

“In fact, this problem of information disorder is global, and includes powerful disinformation related to science, health, religion and ethnicity. In certain places it is leading to protests and violence, and people are losing their lives because of decisions based on inaccurate information.”

 

Applied Learning BS

I can’t stop laughing

Imagine this scenario – a teacher gives the following math problem sum to his students: “There are 15 crows on a tree. One is shot. How many are left?”

Student A responds that the answer is 14. Student B responds zero. Who is correct?

In a traditional system, Student A would have gotten the full mark and Student B zero. But Student B’s reasoning that in a real-life situation, all the (remaining) crows would have flown away right after and that there would be zero remaining on the tree, is not wrong.

Call it being street-smart versus exam-smart. Does our current education system encourage and accept such lateral thinking?

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/applied-learning-dna-education-not-rote-learning-10049832

The writer of : “Call it being street-smart versus exam-smart. Does our current education system encourage and accept such lateral thinking?” this is stupid.

There is no “correct” answer. A “good” i.e. “appropriate” answer depends on the context of the questuin.

As it’s a maths class, Student B is the idiot. He should know that as it’s maths class, the answer  is 1.

Now if he and Student A were being interviewd for a scholarship (say Overseas Merit), his answer of zero is the kind that is expected. Then Student A is the stupid one for giving the mathematical answer

The “correct” answer depends on the context within which the question is asked.

Does our current education system encourage and accept such lateral thinking?

It does if you attend RI or other real elite school.

 

S’pore: An illiberal democracy?

I’ve said repeatedly that S’pore is not a democracy but a one-party state like China (Keeping power in a one-party state) albeit a de-facto one where the voters every few yrs approve in overwhelming numbers in a de-facto referendum (never less than 60% of the popular vote) its continuance.

But could it be a democracy albeit an illiberal one?

Yascha Mounk who teaches at Harvard

argues that there are two sides to liberal democracy. One focuses on the first half of the equation: protecting individuals from the tyranny of the majority through checks and balances and enumerated rights. The second focuses on the other half: handing power to the people. For most of the post-war period these two versions of liberal democracy went together like apple and pie.

Today, though, the popular will is increasingly coming into conflict with individual rights. Liberal elites are willing to exclude the people from important decisions, most notably about immigration in the case of the European Union, in the name of “rights”; meanwhile populists are willing to dispense with constitutional niceties in the name of “the people”. Politics is defined by a growing battle between illiberal democracy, or democracy without rights, on the one hand, and undemocratic liberalism, or rights without democracy, on the other.

https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21738862-yascha-mounks-diagnosis-more-convincing-his-cure-how-liberal-democracy-fell-apart

But somehow I don’t see S’pore as an illiberal democracy because the PAP doesn’t believe in giving power to the people i.e. the masses.

Three quotes from LKY make my point about their contempt for the views of the masses

“I have never been overconcerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. If you are concerned with whether your rating will go up or down, then you are not a leader. You are just catching the wind … you will go where the wind is blowing. And that’s not what I am in this for.”

“Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

“You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/23/lee-kuan-yew-the-best-quotes-from-singapores-founding-father

Misleading, deceptive use of pix of vanilla pod or flower

Careful when u see pix of vanilla pod or flower on the packaging of a vanilla flavoured ice cream or other food product.

Using spent beans allows foodmakers to list vanilla beans as an ingredient and put a picture of a vanilla pod or flower on the packaging, although the actual flavour may come from a non-vanilla bean source.

FT

The difference US$150 versus US$600 (if real beans are used). Price of vanilla beans has risen and risen while synthetic vanilla flavouring costs “peanuts”.

Me? I add synthetic vanilla flavouring to my daily cuppa of tea alongside evaporated milk that could contain soya (slightly cheaper than real evaporated milk but there’s no difference in taste).

Real reason why Uber lost to Grab

God was on the side of the cross-wearing, humble Grab co-founder.

The first thing you notice about Anthony Tan is that he wears a big silver cross around his neck …

He credits his strong belief system for much of his success, and even in his language, the word “serve” comes up numerous times.

“If there’s any one thing I would love that people remembered me for would be hey, Anthony… was a true servant leader,” he told me in his offices in downtown Singapore.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43667202

God actually didn’t have much of a choice in deciding to help Grab. After all, on the other side was Uber, a  company that seemed to want parody and mock Google’s “Do no evil” moto by deliberately “Doing evil”.

It

— employed a felon to monitor a driverless car that killed a pedestrian,

— used illegal software to secretly “fix” its competitors, regulators and its drivers,

— used thuggish tactics to intidimate its competitors, regulators and its drivers,

— illegally obtained the medsical reports of a lady who alleged a Uber driver raped here with the intention of using the info to discredit her,

— tried to outspend its rivals hoping to bankrupt them (Didn’t work in US of A, and it lost in Russia, China and SE Asia, and

— treated female staff as playthings.

Meanwhile Grab’s co-founder prayed to God.

FB’s massive data: the S’pore connection

Kogan was here in S’pore from 2013-16 before moving on to Berkeley, California, a regular reader of, and commenter on this blog, yuenchungkwong, (a retired professor of computer science, NUS) informs.

Funny the constructive, nation-building ST  and other local media don’t trumpet the achievements of this Foreign Talent while here. I mean the guy’s a FT where the “T” doesn’t stand for “Trash” but for “Talent”. Usually FTs end up in the news for beating taxi drivers and S’poreans, not for being geniuses.  

After all, it was in 2014 that his infamous app appeared on FB.  

———————————————–

Backgrounder for visiting Martians and other extraterrestrials)

In 2014 a quiz on Facebook invited users to find out their personality type.

It was developed by University of Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan (the university has no connections with Cambridge Analytica).

As was common with apps and games at that time, it was designed to harvest not only the user data of the person taking part in the quiz, but also the data of their friends.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43465968

The allegation is that because 270,000 people took the quiz, the data of some 50 million users, mainly in the US, was harvested without their explicit consent via their friend networks. FB now says the data of 87m users was harvested

———————————————–

He was even a guest speaker on 2 December 2014 at NUS:(http://blog.nus.edu.sg/psychology/2014/11/24/brown-bag-guest-speaker-dr-alex-kogan-on-2-december/)

I will discuss how big data can be collected, stored, and analyzed, and the types of new insights it can provide to social scientists.

And he was very open on his access to FB data

I focus specifically on Facebook data and two datasets my lab is currently work with: (a) a sample of 50+ million individuals for whom we have the capacity to predict virtually any trait, and (b) a macro-dataset of every friendship made in the world on Facebook from 2006-2012 by all Facebook users at the national-aggregate level.

While here, he married a S’porean, Crystal Ying Chia, and here’s a story about them and their zany sense of humour: https://www.asianmoneyguide.com/crystal-ying-spectre. They adopted a homeless dogs. My mongrels say, “Power to them”.

The latest according to the regular reader is that she has filed for divorce in California. My mongrels want to know what happened to their dog?

My thanks again to yuenchungkwong, a retired professor of computer science, NUS. And prof, if u got any project that utilising yr skills can make money, let me know. Can raise $ for u.

 

 

 

PAP FT policy trying to avoid this mistake?

In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon wrote: “The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honourable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.”

Well we now have an FT jnr minister Dr. Janil Puthucheary who comes from M’sia and FTs by the cattle truck load.

Why some say FB should not do more

but first, as far as I’m concerned the howls of coming from progressives is as Steve Bannon, Trump’s evil genius, OK OK former chief strategist said

liberals and “the opposition media” were looking for excuses to explain Hillary Clinton’s election loss.

If Hilary had won, and it’s clear that she too was using the same type of profiling (as was Obama) but no so effective: I kept getting FB posts dissing Trump from a lesbian, other human rights activists, and ang moh tua kees based here. They must have been targets of Hilary’s ineffective profiling. The Republicans did not target me with videos of Hilary and her lesbians. Sigh.

Btw, Steve has dismissed the idea that Cambridge Analytica’s work for the Trump campaign swayed the 2016 US election.

Coming back the title, some

analysts were pleased that the Facebook boss did not go further. Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie, said Mr Zuckerberg allayed most of his fears that Facebook would “propose radical changes that would impact the business model”. “Our worry was that Facebook, at Zuckerberg’s direction, could take more radical actions than it has in the past to limit the use of audience segmenting, ad targeting, data sharing, and other privacy-related issues that could lower the monetisation of Facebook data,” he said.

FT report

As an Economist columnist said

When a scandal first breaks, executives at the top of a firm and securities analysts outside it are often myopic, viewing it as a public-relations blip that will not alter a firm’s operations or its competitive position. In the case of Facebook, 44 of the 48 Wall Street analysts who cover it still rate it a “buy”, according to Bloomberg. Many have downplayed the scandal, even though Facebook’s shares have dropped by 18% since the news broke on March 17th.

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21739695-corporate-crises-drive-media-and-politicians-wild-do-they-damage-shareholder

Easy way for FB to solve problems

But advertisters wouldn’t like it. And As Money, talks BS walks, it wouldn’t be adopted.

NYT Dealbook

How a ‘Why Me?’ button could help fix Facebook

In his latest column, Andrew suggests a way the company could make its practices more transparent — one that Google and Amazon could consider, while we’re at it: a button next to every ad and piece of content that would explain why a user is seeing it.

More from Andrew:

The “Why Me?” button might create all sorts of problems for Facebook, and its advertisers, too. It would allow users — and rivals — to reverse engineer much of the way the system works. And advertisers would probably object to the idea of making their targeting plans public. But that would be the cost of using such large public platforms with such exact targeting.

 

Local academics propogate fake news?

Our brown-nosing constructive nation-building academics presented at the recent Select Committee hearings on Deliberate Online Falsehoods,

an alarming scenario of disinformation campaigns launched by foreign actors bent on attacking the island state, of cyber armies in neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore working as proxies for other countries in undermining national security.

Did they produce any evidence?

But the actual examples of fake news which have come up during this national debate have mostly been prosaic; a hoax photo showing a collapsed roof at a housing complex, which sent officials rushing unnecessarily to the scene; and an erroneous report of a collision between two trains on the light rail transit line.

As the BBC reporter wrote

Irritating and worrying for some, for a while, but hardly likely to bring Singapore society to its knees. In any case both Singapore and Malaysia already have plenty of laws capable of penalising false, inflammatory or defamatory comment.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43637744

So, as far as I’m concerned the row on Coldstore between PJ Thum and our brown-nosing constructive nation-building academics is “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!” (Re Oscar Wilde)

Or  “A plague o’ both your houses!” (Shakespeare)

Btw, have to tell u that the reporter also said

It also gave Singapore academics and officials an opportunity to snipe at the US belief in free expression, the “marketplace of ideas”, which had allowed the abuse of personal data on Facebook to take place, in contrast to Singapore’s “better safe than sorry” belief in a more tightly regulated society.

Why en-blocers could be in for a nasty surprise

As could all other property speculators and developers and their banks financing them.

They shouldn’t be counting their chickens before they hatch.

If the phoney war between China and the US becomes a real trade war, we’ll be caught in the middle. We are part of China’s great export machine that Trump wants to destroy: see how much as % of GDP do our exports add value to China’s exports to the US.

 

If u missed going long on Vix volatility

Try this trade courtesy of FT?

Sticking with Japan, its government bond market has been astonishingly calm in recent years. Reflecting the Bank of Japan’s “yield curve control” policy, coupled with negative interest rates has kept 30-day average volatility of the JGB futures contract at just 0.88 per cent. That is the lowest since at least 1985 and compares to the US Treasury contract’s 3.88 per cent volatility.

Daniel Stone, co-founder of hedge fund Ionic Capital Management, reckons that one of the best trades in markets today is betting on this calm being shattered. He points out that it is “extremely” cheap to buy derivatives that give investors exposure to Japanese bond turbulence over the next five years, and estimates that just a 40 basis point move in the market’s implied volatility would more than double an investor’s money. A bigger 150 bps move would net investors a sevenfold return.

F9: Education Minister Ng Chee Meng

Ong Ye Kung minister of Education (Higher Education and Skills) talks the talk reflecting the latest ang moh thinking, example

Singapore’s education system should, as far as possible, reflect the real world that our children are going to grow up and live in. That is why the Government is making changes to take the emphasis away from just academic grades, said … Ong Ye Kung.

But the other education minister (Ng Chee Meng is responsible for schools) doesn’t seem to have a clue about the latest trends in education.

From the PAP’s bible (PAP’s bible challenges “market-based solution”):

EVERY year in Singapore 1% of pupils in the third year of primary school bring home an envelope headed “On government service”. Inside is an invitation to the city-state’s Gifted Education Programme. To receive the overture, pupils must ace tests in maths, English and “general ability”. If their parents accept the offer, the children are taught using a special curriculum.

Singapore’s approach is emblematic of the traditional form of “gifted” education, one that uses intelligence tests with strict thresholds to identify children with seemingly innate ability. Yet in many countries it is being overhauled in two main ways. The first is that educationists are using a broader range of methods to identify highly intelligent children, especially those from poor households. The second is an increasing focus on fostering the attitudes and personality traits found in successful people in an array of disciplines—including those who did not ace intelligence tests.

New research lies behind these shifts … The research also suggests that the nature-or-nurture debate is a false dichotomy. Intelligence is highly heritable and perhaps the best predictor of success. But it is far from the only characteristic that matters for future eminence.

https://www.economist.com/news/international/21739144-new-research-suggests-new-ways-nurture-gifted-children-how-and-why-search-young

It’s impt to kick Ng’s ass because according to the Economist”new research”

shows that countries which do not get the most from their best and brightest face big economic costs.

Ong should show that he can be PM by telling off Ng for sticking to outdated practices and theories (like PSLE). He should remember that Harry became PM by showing S’poreans that Lim Chin Siong was “wrong”.

Now this is volatility

On Wednesday, the S&P 500 swung from 1.6% fall to 1.2% gain in the course of the day’s trading.

What’s behind the market slump?

NYT Dealbook (Tuesday morning) explains

S.&P. 500 futures are up this morning, suggesting yesterday’s market rout may not continue. And European and Asian marketsdidn’t fall as sharply as did the U.S.’s. But what’s behind the markets dropping 4 percent so far this year? A couple of ideas:

• Washington (and Beijing), again: China’s tougher-than-expected retaliatory tariffs gave investors more reason to fear a trade war.American pork and fruit producers are among those sweating. “The Trump administration’s unorthodox and unpredictable decision-making is likely to keep markets on edge,” Mike Ryan of UBS Wealth Management told the FT.

• Tech, again: The FAANG stocks are still weighing down the S.&P. 500 and the Nasdaq, as the likes of Facebook and Google face the prospect of greater regulation and President Trump repeats his attacks on Amazon. (Tesla was down, too, but that’s more understandable.)

• Technical issues: Traders could be trimming bull market bets.

Peter Eavis’s take: Before investors began fretting about tech and trade, the underpinnings of the stock market’s ascent were perhaps not as robust as they looked. Analysts expect S.&P. 500 companies’ earnings to grow 25 percent this year. But rising interest rates worldwide could affect revenue growth. And if wages and other costs come in higher than expected, profit margins could get squeezed.

The bottom line: Uncertainty has descended upon the markets, and it will be hard to shake off. Coming back to S’pore, I wouldn’t count on the next en-bloc sale being completed given the uncertainity of a global trade war. More soon on why if the fight between China and the US becomes more than wayang will hurt us.

FT jnr minister disagrees that “Pa” was a justly detained commie?

Yesterday, I ended Coldstore: Why Harry’s narrative or the highway promising to explain why I thought an FT jnr minister

disagrees with the the official narrative of  “Bunch of commie subversives who had to be locked up because they wanted to make S’pore Great for Communism” when it comes to his Pa ans uncle.

Here’s my reasoning.

In his parly maiden speech,

Dr Janil Puthucheary said while he felt it inappropriate to detain a citizen without trial, he is convinced by the hard logic that the safety and security of Singapore must be paramount. That’s because there are threats that Singapore faces and which must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

But he wants to know what safeguards are in place to prevent the ISA from being abused.

Dr Janil said: “I believe I share this view with many Singaporeans; we understand the need to ensure our security despite our misgivings, we recognise the cold hard facts despite the uncomfortable feeling they generate. However, we lack confidence and assurance that the extraordinary power of a State to detain its own citizens without trial will not be abused.

“The process of the safeguards around the ISA needs to be discussed in a more transparent manner, even as the facts associated with a given detainee need to be kept secret. We need to know that the review process works and operates independently of Cabinet. We need to see that the President exercises his authority on this issue.”

Dr Janil asked if the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) will be introducing further measures to enhance these safeguards and to what extent can the decisions of Cabinet be challenged.

CNA

Did he by saying

— “we lack confidence and assurance that the extraordinary power of a State to detain its own citizens without trial will not be abused”

— “The process of the safeguards around the ISA needs to be discussed in a more transparent manner”

imply that the use of ISA against his Pa and his uncle were an abuse of power? And that they were innocent of the allegations made against them.

To me, it sounds reasonable to say it sounded like he was trying to imply that

— the use of ISA against his Pa and his uncle were an abuse of power, and

— they were innocent of the allegations made against them.

Anyone knows whether in in the public records* there is anything about what jnr minister’s Pa and uncle (also detained in Coldstore) tot about their detentions. I can’t find anything where they KPKBed about being wrongly detained*. They were released and sent  back to M’sia. And they became distinguished (and filthy rich) lawyers there.

Related post: Were the Coldstore detainees communists, progressives or leftists?

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*I can’t remember if they were interviewed in Men in White: don’t have a copy at hand. Should get it as reference book because

The Straits Times backed by four researchers conducted some 300 interviews in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and China.

Why so many ex-ST jurnos working in HK’s SCMP

The South China Morning Post has long been Hong Kong’s English-language paper of record. Alibaba has made it part of Beijing’s efforts to project soft power abroad. (NYT)

NYT Dealbook on Monday

This reminded me that SCMP’s newsroom is swarming with ex-ST newsroom staff. Wonder if they got employed because they have the experience doing for the PAP what Jack Ma wants SCMP to do for China: propaganda.

After all ST journalists are noted more for producing high quality propaganda for the PAP, then high high quality journalism. Sad.

Coldstore: Why Harry’s narrative or the highway

(Or “Why Harry’s Coldstore narrative must be the truth”)

The roughing up of someone who dares to publicly talk about a Coldstore narrative that is different from that of one Harry Lee has cyberspace talking cock and upset*.

Amidst the noise and fury, one important issue in both what constitutes “fake news”, generally,and, in particular, in the ongoing dialogue of the deaf about different Coldstore narratives has been forgotten.

The son of one of the Coldstore detainees recently said:

For some of the matters around national security, race, religion, economic and financial issues, public health issues, by definition that source of truth must be government-backed or state-backed. The most egregious issues, the issues with significant impact, significant impact on our social fabric, on our national security, on our public health, the issues of peace, stability, the facts behind those, if you’re going to have a source of truth, it needs to be state-backed.

Dr. Janil Puthucheary, a Jnr Minister, at the Select Committee hearings on Deliberate Online Falsehoods, 23 March 2018

As S’pore is a de facto one-party state (because the voters regularly agree to it), Harry’s version of ColdStore (Bunch of commie subversives who had to be locked up because they wanted to make S’pore Great for Communism) is the official version. 

And because it is “government-backed or state-backed” it must be the truth going by what the jnr minister said. (And don’t forget that the greatest of the Hard Truths is that “Harry is always right. Harry is never wrong”.)

Related post: Were the Coldstore detainees communists, progressives or leftists?

Coming back to the jnr minister’s comments, looks like he agrees with what a M’sian minister said is “fake news”:

“Any information related to 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) that has not been verified by the Government is considered fake news.

Datuk Jailani Johari (pic), the Deputy Communications and Multimedia Minister, explained that fake news is information that is confirmed to be untrue, especially by the authorities or parties related to the news.”

What “fake” news will be allowed

What else does the jnr minister says about “fake news”? Fake news traffickers will be hanged.

But does the jnr minister disagree with the allegations made against his Pa and uncle who were Coldstore detainees, thereby contradicting the official narrative of “Bunch of commie subversives who had to be locked up because they wanted to make S’pore Great for Communism”?

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*The grand inquisitor explains why he did what he did

I have been asked why I spent some time asking PJ Thum questions.

PJ’s main point, in his written submission to the Select Committee, was that Mr Lee Kuan Yew was the biggest creator of fake news in Singapore, a liar, and Operation Coldstore was based on falsehoods.

These are serious allegations made in Parliament about our founding PM.

Either they have to be accepted, or shown to be untrue. Keeping quiet about them was not an option.

Thus I told PJ I will ask him questions, on what he had said.

PJ refused to answer many of the questions directly – if a person believes in what he says, and has gone through the documents carefully, then what is the difficulty in answering questions?

It took 5 hours plus to go through the documents and records carefully.

In the end, PJ said that he had not read some of the material published by ex-Communists on what happened in Singapore; that he disregarded the statements made by Chin Peng, the CPM leader; that the way he set out the most important documents (of December 1962) was not accurate; the key meetings of Barisan Socialis showed that they were prepared to use armed struggle to overthrow a Government of Singapore, if necessary; and the British had a honest view, in December 1962, that security action (which was Operation Coldstore), was necessary.

People know me – I am direct, I deal with the facts, and say it as I think it is.

I can see that Sonny Liew is not happy with what happened with PJ. It is quite understandable. Based on what he says, he and PJ are quite close; they work together in a venture. His award winning cartoon, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, is also based on PJ’s version of history.

I have not met Sonny, but I have to say he is a good cartoonist. He is a talent.

K Shanmugam Sc‘s post

Btw, I agree with the points he makes about Sonny Liew being a good cartoonist and about why he asked the questions he asked. He had every right to beat up PJ Thum. I make no comment on

PJ refused to answer many of the questions directly – if a person believes in what he says, and has gone through the documents carefully, then what is the difficulty in answering questions?

Btw, seems PJ gave as good as he got, so his whining seems strange. But that’s grist for yet another post soon.

Wild West for insider trading

Head for Texas and cross the Rio Grande.

No need to go to jail even if convicted for insider trading, which is unlikely. Only fined “peanuts”.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/insider-trading-paradise-where-no-one-worries-about-jail-time

How PAP responds to criticism

Cyberspace is KPKBing about the attacks by PAP MPs on PJ Thum*, Terry Xu etc before parly’s select committee on falsehoods.

---

Reliable evidence?

This is what my FB avatar posted when Kirsten KPKBed about the attack on PJ Thum

Go read about the paper he submitted. They had every right to ask him the questions they asked him about Coldstore. Anyway based on newspaper report, I now know why he never referenced the views of certain known Communists when he analysed Coldstore. (I read his stuff). He thinks they are unreliable. So an issue when analysing his views is whether he’s right or reasonable to dismiss the views of said Communists.

This is what Chris K says about using what Communists said

Whatever the commies said or wrote, especially b4 the fall of the Berlin Wall, should never be taken as evidence. Marxist ideology was essentially based on historical dialectics, corrupted into their own version, Dialectic Materialism which brought “material” into the theory that history proceeds from conflicts and resolution of social forces. Therefore the commies had regarded that their ideology was “scientific” and therefore inevitable. The trouble was when history proceeded contrary to the way they read the tea leaves, they edited or erased history. The result was lies upon lies.

—————————————————————————————————

And then there is this attack on the PAPpies

Well. This is blistering. Can you sieve the facts from fiction, the specifics from the generalisations? What is true is that it is difficult to navigate the thicket of laws we have. The PAP group would have done better to give a point-by-point reply rather than casting everything as deliberate online falsehoods. That’s the way to win an argument, rather than have it shut down. And nobody should consider it a waste of time and inconvenient, because there will also be people who are willing to hear all points of view and decide for themselves.

Wannabe ST editor attacking PAP’s attack on Human Rights Watch report on S’pore

She of all people should know the PAP way: after all once upon a time she, as an ambitious senior editor in ST, helped facilitate such attacks. It’s alleged she resigned from ST when she didn’t become ST’s editor. Whatever, she walked away from the Dark Side only after she left ST and SPH group. Then she showed her Jedi sight?

Sorry back to the PAP.

PAP calls its opponents’ names. It also makes ad hominem attacks on the opponent. It KPKBs about the opponent’s tone. It contradicts without facts. And its IB changes Wilipedia articles (Example IB changes to PJ Thum’s Wikipedia entry).

Update at 4.34 pm In response to “Anyone can attribute this exhibit?”, Amelia says

The diagram is based on Paul Graham’s work. http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/how-to-disagree-well-7-of-the-best-and-worst-ways-to-argue

 

Trump is channelling Sun Tzu

Sounds ridiculous that Trump follows Sun Tzu’s precepts? After all he doesn’t read.

But remember “quickness is the essence of war”, and Sun Tzu talked about behaving “without ascertainable shape” to confuse the enemy.

Well Trump acts quickly and uses chaos to confuse friend and foe. He loves chaos.

And he has a point. According to an FT columnist US military strategist John Boyd  talked four decades ago about the use chaos

Create enough chaos and you could completely paralyse your foe. If the chaos made life uncomfortable for your own side, no matter.

Btw, Mad Dog Mattis, Trump’s defence secretary used the call sign “Chaos” when he was a general. Obama sacked him from Central Command (responsible for US military involvement in the Middle East) because Obama had no balls. Mattis believed in responding to Iran’s provocations. Obama preferred to swallow mullah’s sperm.

PAP proves point made by Buffett

Warren Buffett said that if you put good managers into a bad business, the business will win. His message was that investors should back good businesses that control their markets and can be run by idiots, because one day the idiots will be in charge.

FT columnist

Re “investors should back good businesses … and can be run by idiots, because one day the idiots will be in charge” applies now to S’pore today and the foreeeable future because it seems the idiots are in charge.

Think of the fiascos around SMRT, GST, and economic strategies that don’t work (Economic restructuring: This time, it’s really different)

Don’t believe me? Why do we keep getting mediocre ministers?

More on Thaipusam issues

Further to Anti-PAP Hindus never satisfied

The ban on playing of musical instruments during Thaipusam dated back to 1973, due to fights between competing groups, but was relaxed in late-2015.

Since 2016, live music was allowed at the festival, via three live music points along the procession route.

Good to know that Indians didn’t use their special position to pak other races but to fight among themselves. If Chinese or Malays sure to pak and burn property of other races

Constructive suggestion

Stressing the importance of live music, one dialogue participant suggested getting musicians and music groups to be registered and accredited, who could then work on a single booklet of songs to be played for the procession.

Calling it a good suggestion, Mr Shanmugam said he was prepared to consider it, if the community is able to carry it out.

Piped music

He added that as long as “there is no serious disamenities”, he is prepared “to allow more live music points”. In fact, he said: “I am prepared to allow piped-in music all the way.”

Wonder if anyone had suggested piped music before this remark by the Minister for Pets.