Author: Grievous

Commentary – Stephen Hawking’s & Scary Aliens

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This came out on Yahoo news on Monday (Apr 26, 2010).

Aliens may exist but mankind should avoid contact with them as the consequences could be devastating, British scientist Stephen Hawking has warned.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” said the astrophysicist in a new television series, according to British media reports.

The programmes depict an imagined universe featuring alien life forms in huge spaceships on the hunt for resources after draining their own planet dry.

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach,” warned Hawking.

These days, Stephen Hawkings has said nothing novel except the usual ‘garden variety’ ideas from fiction paperbacks anyone can pick from Amazon.com. Has he been watching District 9 or re-runs of Independence Day recently? Or perhaps it was the recent remake of ‘V’, where in the original series, reptilian aliens came to our world to pump the Earth dry and packed us into cryogenic tubes to send back to their home world as *gasp* food! A friend of mine said this makes even the most scary horror movies looks like documentaries. Indeed, this is almost laughable and it would not have been big news had this been someone else.

Seriously, at the rate we are going I am more concerned with extinction over extermination by an alien race. Either way, a long time ago I told some of my friends something similar: “If there are aliens who can cross interstellar distances requiring several hundred years at the speed of light in a few days or less, I would be wary and concerned. After all, we have nothing capable of returning a visit to their home planet and that simply means they could strike at us while our options of retaliation would be rather limited.”

To understand why I am in that opinion, consider the war in Iraq and Afghanistan where the technologically sophisticated Americans plummets their less sophisticated opponents endlessly. Had the Iraqis militants or the Taliban the capabilities to send their own forces across the planet to the U.S., the fight would never be so one sided. Basically, incapable of reaching the alien home world on our own means our options of retaliation will at least be as limited as those of the Iraqi militants or the Taliban. We can see a similar situation with the Koreans and Chinese against the Japanese invaders or the Vietcong against the Americans during the Vietnam War.

I am in the opinion that the ability to bring the war to the enemy’s doorstep is important. That came to my mind when I was reading Wing Commander: End Run at least more than five years ago. It isn’t a fantastic read. I read it because at that point in time I was crazy about everything related to the game “Wing Commander”. (In fact, I have never quite forgiven Electronic Arts for killing this wonderful game series not long after it acquired Origin Systems.)

Back to the book, some of the reviews of the book mentioned that is the sci-fi version of the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo – the American’s first answer to the audacious and atrocious Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. While that air raid has debatable, and perhaps even negligible effect on the Pacific War, it was a necessary act to remind the Japanese militarists that they have picked an enemy they should never have trifled with. Therefore, our inability to strike back at the aliens’ home planet would not only be an insurmountable weakness, but also a rather scary prospect.

Anyway, opinion on whether aliens will be malevolent often differs between my friends. Some are in the opinion that an alien race which is capable of such an undertaking will consider war and aggression to be an absolute last option in interstellar relationships. These friends believed that alien races capable of interstellar travel will have either attained a level of technological achievement (or even spiritual enlightenment) that puts material wants and cravings beneath them. That said, I am in the opinion that technological advancements will not necessarily lead to a better quality of life, and in some cases may even bring more misery. We just have to look at some of the damage our technological civilisation has done to our world.

There are also those who believe that we have nothing to fear from sentient life in other parts of the universe. They might be facing more technological barriers to not only leave their planet but also to survive. In fact, some believe that alien life may also exist in a form that is unrecognisable as life to humans, or in the worse case completely unsuitable for living in our environment.

Only a very small group shared my opinion that there is a possibility that an alien race maybe hostile. Even so, we believe that how they would treat encounter with an alien civilisation would depend on how their planetary unification is achieved and / or their initial objective in space exploration and expansion.

It is my opinion that if we run into an aggressive race of aliens, the Native American scenario may not be the only we might experience. We might also experience unequal treatment and humiliation, such as what happened to China after the Opium Wars in the mid 1800s.

In short, it really does not require the genius of Stephen Hawkings for us to imagine how it will be if aliens showed up at our doorsteps. You can even just look at the impact to the Japanese when U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry and his “Black Ships” sailed into the Bay of Tokyo and make a whole point out of it.

Fortunately for the Japanese, the end result from that may still be considered rather positive. It initiated reforms which saw to the rapid modernisation of Japan. All we could hope for would be that our species as a whole would be as fortunate, and also that we have the resilience and flexibility of the Japanese people.

Commentary – Priority to JC Students for University?

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I have given up reading theStraits Stooge Times Forum for quite some time, because of the immense idiocy displayed by some of the writers, not to mention the perception that certain writers are favored and their letters are always posted. This piece first came from a friend on Plurk, which blogger deadpris has already commented on.

Apr 15, 2010

University Admission – JC students deserve priority

Polytechnics lure students with glossy brochures and spiels about their fabulous courses, but fail to tell them how difficult it is for them to enter local universities via the poly route.

How many 16-year-olds will forgo sexy-sounding courses like communications and finance over subjects like physics, chemistry or mathematics?

Ironically, these polytechnic brochures often boast of how many of their graduates enter university. But they are silent on the reality that employers value degrees more than diplomas.

Polytechnic graduates cannot have it both ways. They must know the government spends more to train a polytechnic graduate than a junior college (JC) student.

So they cannot expect a second bite of the cherry with the same priority in university admission as JC students who complete two years of school and hold only an A-level certificate.

Polytechnics pride themselves on hands-on training while JCs arm a student with more in-depth grounding in core subjects to prepare them for university.

To JC students, university is and has always been their final destination. To poly students, their end point, in Singapore at least, should be their diploma.

If they want to go beyond that in Singapore, they should choose the JC route. If they do not qualify, it is not the government’s fault.

Nothing should stop them from pursuing their dream overseas, but they cannot expect greater access to local universities just because it is costlier to study abroad.

A place in a good local university is a limited resource and should go to the most deserving; in this case, those who qualify for JC and have consciously decided to take the JC path to prepare themselves for a university education and not a diploma.

In the past, a JC education was called ‘pre-university’ education, and it is precisely that.

So it is time polytechnic graduates accepted the implications of their decision to choose between polytechnics and JCs, and not gripe that the system is unfair.

Lee Beng Tat

I am a mere polytechnic graduate who has never gone to university, and I strongly disagree with Lee Beng Tat’s discrimination against polytechnic graduates. A semi-Beng like myself calls this piece: talking cock [讲鸟话]. Lee Beng Tat can call me crude, lowly educated or lacking in culture for all I cared. I simply refuse to ‘cum all over him with an exercise of vocabulary masturbation’.

First of all, it is utterly ludicrous to compare a degree and a diploma to justify that JC students deserved priority. It is my considered opinion that the qualifications obtained by a JC student and their polytechnic counterparts should be the standard used to determine whether a candidate is qualified for a place in the university. Yet, Lee Beng Tat is not comparing the merits between a JC student’s ‘A’ Level certification with that of a diploma. Instead, he compared the ‘perceived value’ between a degree holder and a diploma holder to an employer to lay the foundation of his argument.

He suggest that because a degree holder will be paid better, polytechnic graduates thus suffer some kind of penis degree envy and covet it. He even goes so far to suggest they should not regret a ‘bad choice’ – i.e. taking the polytechnic path instead of the JC one – they made earlier in their lives. Are we forgetting that it is a secondary school leaver (typically a 16 year-old) who will be making the decision on which academic path to take, and this decision is is also affected by a person’s academic performance at that time?

On top of which, his views also fly in the face of the government gahmen’s call for people to retrain, raise their qualifications or stay relevant to the workforce. In fact, Lee Beng Tat’s ’employer perceived value’ argument ironically reminds me that a polytechnic graduate probably still enjoyed better employment opportunities compared to a JC students only ‘A’ level qualifications just like a decade and a half ago when I joined the workforce. In fact, it is even debatable whether someone with just ‘A’ level qualifications would be better off competing with a person with an ITC cert for a better paying job.

Anyway, I apply a very simple principle on all arguments – i.e. when you used it to argue against something, you shouldn’t be arguing against it when the same argument is used against you. It is a good principle to apply because a harebrained argument is usually a great counter on its own when applied on the person who made it. Take for e.g. there is this argument that since homosexuality is observed in some animals, it is thus ‘natural and normal’. By that same argument, why are we against polygamy, or the killing of another man and his kids to take his wife?

Since Lee Beng Tat has argued against polytechnic graduates using the ’employer perceived value’ of an academic certification, in the absence of the merits of why a JC student’s qualification should be given priority I would apply the same argument. Based on that very argument, it is not hard to notice that ‘A’ level qualifications is worth even less! Lee Beng Tat had a lot of gall to he argue that JC students deserve priority! If ‘living with the consequences of one’s decision’ is what Lee Beng Tat preaches, he should be preaching it more to JC students.

Perhaps due to the realisation of the shortcoming of his argument, Lee Beng Tat thus made the audacious comment that because ‘the gahmen spends more to train a polytechnic graduate than a junior college (JC) student’, a polytechnic graduate should thus not ask for more to gain entry to university. That reminds me of a discussion a long time ago, when I mentioned that bursaries should only be given to those bright sparks whose parents have some difficulties providing for their studies. To simplify, it is called the ‘if your parents are rich, then even if you do well, you shouldn’t get a bursary since your parents can afford to send you to school anyway’ argument. I also argued that because resources are limited, it should be reserved for the poor but bright students who are thus ‘more deserving’.

Everyone I shared this idea with either politely declined to comment or disagreed. Many reminded me that the only requirement for one to qualify for bursary would be one’s grades. No one is any less ‘deserving’ because he is better off. In Lee Beng Tat’s case, why should polytechnic graduates be less that JC students simply because more money has been spent to train him?

Argue against Polytechnic graduates that their curriculum might not adequately prepare them for university compared to that of a JC, and I might just keep my mouth shut. But putting them down as lesser people or presenting them in a bad light only show everyone just how myopic and narrow-minded Lee Boon Tat is.

Either way, I really cannot expect more from a letter to the Stooge Times Forum. There is no lower level it can sink to.

A Gecko that ruined my Easter Weekend

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I came on from work on Good Friday (Apr 2) to discover from my parents that the circuit breaker has tripped after a loud bang of thunder. They tried to reset it to restore power to the flat but failed. It was fortunate that it was still the afternoon and I could go around every switch in the house and toggle every switch off. I know for sure something has shorted and there is no way to reset the circuit break until the appliance causing the fault is disconnected. Had it been at night it might have been a rather tedious affair since I might not have notice some of the power sockets which switches are in the ‘On’ position.

After some time, I managed to identify that whenever I tried to turn on the water heater in the shower room, it would trip the circuit breaker. The water heater was only replaced a year ago and I was rather annoyed that it broke down so quickly. I left the circuit break in the off position and dismantled the cover to the water heater and disconnected the mains from it. I did so to confirm that the fault is with the heater so I can call in the service as it is still under warranty.

I went over to the circuit breaker and it refused to be reset even when the water heater is disconnected from the mains. That simply means the short is elsewhere and I was a little relieved that the fault may not be with the heater. So, I unscrewed the switch from its mountings as it doesn’t take a genius to know that there will be 2 sets of wires going into it, one coming from the mains and the other going to the heater. The only problem is, the wires are laid inside the wall which means I have no way of telling where which set goes to. The only way to test was removing one set from the switch and turn on the power. The good news is there’s an indicator light on the switch which means that if the set of the wires going to the heater were disconnected, it will still light up when connected to the mains.

Still no luck when I just connect only the supply end to the switch. Without the water heater connected, everything was fine when I toggle the switch on. It is only when I connect the heater that it trips again. Since I ain’t an electrician, I dumbly decide that the fault lies with the switch and bought rather a cool looking new one from a DIY store. As it was getting dark, I decided that I would do the change the next day. It was a night without warm water for a shower… but as it was rather warm, it really didn’t matter.

I woke up early the next day to replace the switch, since I would like to get the water heater working again for my morning shower. Changing the switch was a piece of cake, as electrical connections are rather straight forward. The sad part is, it still trips the moment I tried to turn the heater on!!

I decided that this was beyond me and a professional electrician should be called in. As it was Saturday it would not be possible to get an electrician. Fortunately I had 2 shower rooms in the flat so I had no choice but to use the other one for both Saturday and Sunday.

I woke up early again on Monday. For some reasons unknown to me, I suddenly remember that I missed out an important fact when I was troubleshooting. That is – one of the wires coming out of the switch is brown, and none of the ones going into the water heater is. There is a red one however, and that means somewhere between the switch to the water heater, there is some kind of connector which links the two cables. I noticed that the part where the power cable enters the ceiling and it was covered with a little plastic cover. After cutting off power to the entire unit from the circuit breaker, I took the ladder and a screw driver and promptly removed it to take a look what is inside.

Other than the ants that came scrambling out because their nests was disturbed, there were no surprises here. There was indeed a connector inside but the problem is, it’s a little dark and I couldn’t really see how it’s connected and what’s in it with my head tilted in a rather discomforting angle. I went for a torchlight but the batteries in it has gone flat. Fed up, I took my Blackberry Storm mobile to take a photo with flash on so I can examine the connection in a more comfortable position.

I was a little shocked to notice the head of a gecko sticking out somewhere in between. How it got inside there was anyone’s guess and I don’t really care. Suspected that I caught it on photo while it was fleeing, I took another shot and it is still there. Annoyed, I decided that 170cm of male human being has nothing to fear from a small gecko that’s at most 10cm long. I jammed my screw driver into the area where I estimated it to be.

Something rather disgusting dropped out – It was just the head of the gecko and some black stuff which I believe is carbon. There was no blood anywhere and on closer examination it appeared to be rather dry. It suddenly dawned upon me that I didn’t catch it sticking its head out for a look when I took the photo. In fact, it is probably dead since the day the thunder was heard. My guess is, lightning struck somewhere nearby and leakage from the ‘Earth’ wire surged through and caught the poor creature while it was scrambling through the wires and charred it to death. That certainly gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘smitten by God’.

Unfortunately for me, whatever remains of the thrice damned gecko which the surge didn’t turn into carbon remained caught between the ‘Live’ and ‘Earth’ wires. That caused a perpetual short in the circuit. After confirming that the remains are now cleared, I went on to restore power to the flat and turned on the switch to the heater.

The circuit breaker didn’t trip, because I could hear the radio which I left on. I turned the knob on the heater to make the water warmer and sprayed it on my feet. Still no trip, and the indicator on the heater showed that it is powered up and I could feel warm water spraying on my feet.

Success, at last! I finally get hot water for my shower before I go to work.

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Short Takes

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Sometime ago, I was having a chat with Nicole about filing tax returns. Even though my tax returns are automatically filed, I decided to log into ‘myTaxPortal’ on the IRAS site to confirm that. As I did so, I noticed the tax calculator – an online tool which allows me to calculate the amount of income tax I need to pay for 2010.

Out of curiosity, I transferred the figures from my IR8A onto the tax calculator. I was a little surprised to see that the total amount of taxes I need to pay for the year comes was a mere 2.5% of what I earn in 2009. I also found out that the 20% mandated CPF savings actually serves as a tax relief as well, though some might consider CPF to be as good as money ‘given’ to the government gahmen. I realized that all these years I have never bothered with the details of my tax returns, and I had merely just fill in the figures blindly.

Still, 2.5% of this year’s income is a surprising low tax rate, and that probably explains why there is this relative lack of of welfare in Singapore. It was rather sobering to realize that I lived in one of the countries with the lowest tax rates. Christopher aka Modeus pointed out that this is a fact that few Singaporeans appreciate while many complain endlessly about COE, Road Tax, ERP and GST. In my opinion the first three is more or less self inflicted with a car purchase, though I wouldn’t deny that adds on to the costs of businesses which require transports. That’s not mentioning I am a big fan of the ERP.

As for GST, the fact remains that even if you spend every single cent of your disposable income (i.e. 80% of your income), the total amount taxed will only be 5.6% of that year’s income. Even when I add the 2.5% I paid as Income Tax, that’s just about 8.1% of my total income for the year. That’s not mentioning that since I won’t be spending every cent I earn, the real effective tax rate would be far lower than that! And that’s something I can be happy about.

~~~ * ~~~

I read this on the New York Times recently: Members of Congress from both parties sought to put more pressure on China to allow an increase in the value of its currency, saying Beijing’s policy of holding the value down to give China an edge in export markets was holding back job creation in the United States.

In short, the Americans are accusing the Chinese of currency manipulation. I’ll admit I know nuts about finance and economics, so I am totally confused as to how that came about. After all my understanding about economics and finance is as good as Mahathir who thinks currency trading involved traders trading physical bags of different currency.

I suppose that when the Chinese pegs the Renminbi (or Chinese Yuan – CNY) to the US dollar (USD), that means that as the Obama Administration prints more money (which it did, since it’s broke and has no money to bail the banks out), Chinese currency would have necessary appreciate against the USD. For China to maintain the current exchange rate, China will simply print more money as well because I don’t know any better way than this. In short, China has definitely printed more money since it had pumped a lot of money into its own economy last year to mitigate the impact of the crisis that originates from… well… the US. Where is all the money going to come from when China is spending money on infrastructure, while also buying US Treasury bonds?

Based on my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the state of affairs here, I think the real currency manipulator is the US. US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says that the US would like to maintain a strong USD policy. That simply means the US expects everyone to start printing more money – except well, China. If China is going to do that it’s the equivalent of slamming the brakes on its economy and we all know what disastrous consequences would result from that! Now, I call that evil.

Next, China is the second largest buyer of US Treasury bonds – i.e. China is the second largest creditor (after Japan) of the US gahmen’s debts. I take it that the reason developing (aka poorer) China is lending money to developed (richer) US is to preserve value of its own currency.

Since these loans are denominated in USD, that means when the US gahmen pays the Chinese gahmen it would be in USD. If China has appreciated its currency, it would suddenly discovered that it might have gotten the short end of the deal because after making the exchange back to CNY, the Chinese maybe left with less money than it paid for the bond. Just who lends people money, and get back less than its principal sum even after interest? Maybe to friends and when you lend friends money you generally can forget about getting it back anyway. Not to mention that it would be hard for China to consider the US a friend in the first place!

In short, the freaking Americans are telling China: ‘I am expecting you to forgo the interest you are going to make from the loans you gave to me so I can create jobs for my people. Yep, I am saying that you should be paying to create jobs in the US for Americans. If you aren’t gonna do that, I am gonna punish you.’

The Americans probably forgot that as Russell Peters once said the Chinese is the one race that is best at making money out of someone else. I am glad China stayed put and told the Americans to fxxk off.

~~~ * ~~~

I recently made the comment that ‘Apple is a piece of shit company that’s only good at packaging its low tech stuff as being more superior… and has always resort to legal action to harm competitors who simply think they could do the same with their own products.’

I am basically saying Apple makes no technical innovation but the way I worded it made it sound like Apple does not innovation at all. When read that way, obviously such a comment pushes the limits of patience in everyone and it isn’t going to earn me any friends other than those who already hate Apple as much as I already do. In no time someone disagreed that Apple is not doing any innovation. He pointed out that Apple was ‘the first’ to put GUI (Graphical User Interface for the uninitiated) and the mouse in its own computers, and also ‘the first’ to bring in the power of linux/unix into the the hands of everyone.

It is a fair view from someone I have always know to be fair in his opinions. On retrospect, he was right to point out that Apple innovated personal computing or the way we use personal computers. Unfortunately we are disagreeing on different perspectives. As far as I am concerned, I was simply pointing out that Apple made no technological innovation and I quickly went into defensive since none of these – GUI, the mouse and even Linux / Unix – were invented by Apple.

It is a fact that Xerox beat Apple to in both the mouse and GUI as far as application of these technologies are concerned. Unfortunately for Xerox, its focus was more for research and business application, and not for the mass consumer market. And as for Linux in specific, my perception of it is that it was something like Unix, but created for use on personal computers because someone had enough of Microsoft’s buggy products.

From my point of view, if Apple or any of the iFreak faithful of Steve Jobs Stiff Drop was to claim Apple as a technology innovator, it will be as good as Nazi Germany claiming credit for the rocket when all it did was find application for it in warfare, while it was the Chinese who invented it and the Americans who put several men on the moon with it.

I’ll still stand by my comment.

Rant – Of wusses and douchebags

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Not too long ago, I was accused by someone of finding every little opportunity to bash the gahmen or criticise its policies because of what he called my ‘intense hatred of the government gahmen’. It doesn’t matter that I have been quite a big fan of the ERP, and at times I have presented the viewpoint of the gahmen after I receive a better understanding of the policies. While I do not deny I can be rather vehement in my anti-gahmen stand, that doesn’t mean I allow that to cloud my decision all the time.

Ironically, the accusation was thrown in my face after I had in fact agreed with this person and put up my own opinion in support. I could only speculate why my comment upset him. He probably thinks only he had the proper justifications or he had better reasons to do so. If not, he must have thought that his way of bashing the gahmen was the only acceptable way. Another friend suggested that the person was upset because he had considered his comment to be perfect, and my ‘greatest sin’ was for adding on and ‘marring his perfect comment’. Whatever the case is, I took this as a grave insult, as it suggests that I am insane and incapable of reasoning as far as the gahmen is concerned. That’s not mentioning that when I started to defend myself, this person waved it off with a comment of ‘whatever’.

What a wussy!

~~~ * ~~~

Next, it amuses me that a 40-over year-old someone was denouncing another person as ‘self-righteous, antagonistic, extreme and hypocritical’ on his blog after he ‘visited his blog and the forum he was running’

Since I am the only person who runs both a blog and a forum, and we once disagreed strongly on how to run my forum, I take this accusation personally. As far as I am concerned, he is apparently still bitter over the fact he was not allowed a free reign on my forum almost four years ago. The fact is he repeatedly threatened me with leaving the forum if not allowed to do things his way. Though I did not object to him creating more than one account, he ultimately created a fake account with a fake email address that caused some concern with the business owner of the hosting server. After she advised me to delete the fake account, I announced publicly on the forum and asked to be informed if anyone wants to create such accounts in the future. He then confronted me on MSN Messenger and again threatened to leave. I decided I had enough of his childish tantrums and simply reply with these two words: Go ahead.

It probably never occurred to this self-centered sorry excuse of a man that there’s only so much emo shit I can take from a bachelor in his late 30s (then!) like him. I suspected he was shocked and angered because I did absolutely nothing to try and pacify him. I simply left him with no choice but to make good his threat. As far as I am concerned, whether he stayed or not would be a great loss of face to him.

Left he did, and the actions he took thereafter simply convinced me that I have no reasons to remain acquainted with such a person. I have been on the receiving end of his tantrums more than once whenever I disagreed with him. That’s when I wasn’t even rude or being an ass to begin with! I simply wasn’t even allow to express a different opinion or to stand firm on my disagreement. His sudden mood swings in a cordial conversation shocks me, as it is even more intense than those I have seen among my female friends or colleagues under pressure. Perhaps a serious hormonal imbalance has caused this oddly feminine behavior… and might probably even hint why my recent posts upset him.

He apparently still behaved just like I first knew him almost two decades ago. I am convince I made the right choice to cease all communications with this douchebag and blocked him on Facebook right after I joined. He has the honor or being the first to be blocked on Facebook and the only person blocked for the longest time compared to the rest in that ‘roll of (dis)honor’

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