The Island of the Lovers of Life

Once during my travels, I came across an island which was little known to civilization. This island was populated by a small tribe of natives, who were all, by some queer coincidence, capable of conversing in English.

The natives were all exceedingly friendly, and from their behavior and actions, I could tell that these people led a life unfettered by the tainted moralities of the allegedly civilized world. They lived with simplicity, communing with the wonders of nature. According to the head tribesman, the tribe lived by the philosophy of "Loving all life, and harming not a single plant, animal or living thing".

Of course, their lifestyle was considerably harsher than that of a modern civilized person, as evidenced by the thinness of the tribe members and the various oddly shaped scars that each member bore on their bodies.

They invited me to a meal, and I gladly accepted. At that point of time, I could not have anticipated the horrors that awaited me.

The first dish was a brown, hard lump of a strange item which I assumed to be some native vegetable. It was malodorous, and I lost all my appetite. It reminded me of some highly fermented dishes I had previously encountered during my travels.

I declined the first dish, and instead drunk the clear, syrupy beverage that each tribe member seemed to be taking in. It was an extremely sweet drink, almost as if it were made entirely of sugar and water. It was difficult to consume, but I downed it nonetheless.

The next dish was slightly more appetizing, consisting of a slab of some meat, which the tribespeople described as being "meat of dead animal". The dish was seasoned only with a light pinch of salt, and lacked all other seasonings. The dish was fine, but the taste could have been greatly improved by the addition of other seasonings. However, at the time, I dismissed it by assuming that such spices did not grow on the island.

The last dish was one where I realized the utter horror that I had been staring at and had not previously recognized. Three tribe members carried out the corpse of an old man, and presented it on the eating spot. The corpse showed signs of being cooked, and in fact clear cuts were made on the corpse to cleanly divide the flesh into neat slices, presumably for easy consumption.

I did not know whether fear or disgust overtook me then, but I vomited on the spot.

As the tribe members began consuming the meat, I froze in fear. Was I to be the next meal? Then, I suddenly made a fearful realization.

The thinness of the tribe members, as well as the strangely shaped scars on their bodies, could only have been due to one grim fact. This tribe practiced cannibalism, and the scars were caused by the periodic removal of flesh for consumption!

I must have fainted then, for when I awoke I was on a vessel out at sea. Some contrivance of fate must have occurred to whisk me out of the unspeakable danger that I had been exposed to.

A people who loved all life! In hindsight, it was clearly a deceptive title conjured to obtain my false confidences, although I sometimes wonder why the tribespeople resorted to such a ruse when brute force would have sufficed. Still, this was a question that I had no intent of finding the answer to firsthand.

Seatbelts and Personal Choice

An urban legend tells a story of an anti-seat belt law advocate ironically dying in an automobile accident. Some might find this funny or amusing. I would not.

I believe that there is a legitimate case against making seat belts compulsory. However, my argument is not from grounds of efficacy (which I am ill qualified to argue from), but rather, from grounds of personal liberty.

Indeed, seat belts save lives, and this is difficult to refute. However, this fact has no bearing over the issue of personal liberty. Ultimately, wearing a seat belt should be a choice left to the individual. The individual has to weigh the benefits and costs of wearing a seat belt against the benefits and costs of not wearing a seat belt, according to his own priorities. This final statement is of utmost importance, and is the key to my arguments.

Fundamentally, each person is different, and no two people will see eye to eye over every matter. Similarly, the weights each person assigns to different things will be different.

If someone, based upon his priorities, truly believes that the inconvenience of wearing a seat belt far outweighs the chance of death or disability, then he should not be forcefully compelled to wear a seat belt.

We might shout, "But a life is by far more important than convenience!". Indeed, most people would prefer life over convenience. But then, should the preferences of the majority dictate one's personal matters?

Indeed, the key concept of freedom is that each person is free to run his personal matters according to his personal preferences, no matter how queer and abnormal the preferences seem. We should not seek to make choices for others based on our own non-universal preferences.

In fact, I believe that the last statement is one which is extremely important. One of the major problems with humans is that we tend to believe that we know more than the next person. In our arrogance, we believe our non-universal preferences to be universal and seek to impose it on others. This ought to be corrected. Others should be left to their own devices, even if such devices are clearly idiotic.

Before I end, I would like to clarify a few items. Firstly, the paragraphs above are meant only to introduce the point of personal choice and liberty, and do not represent the entire case regarding seat belts. Secondly, the issue of seat belts is not entirely a personal matter, and does in fact involve other people (although, to a minor degree), hence the arguments from choice cannot be fully applied to the issue. Lastly, I would like to state that I personally do choose to wear seat belts.

The issue of seat belts is of considerable personal interest to me, and I might revisit the issue at a later time to more fully express my views over the matter.

The Problem with Online Shaming

Quite some time ago, I wrote a post on online shaming, where photographs of people behaving uncivilly in public were posted online. I then wrote that online shaming was a flawed tool, and could be symptomatic of an immature society.

After thinking about the issue intermittently for about a year and a half, I believe I am able to elaborate further on my ideas.

My basic assumption was that the photographers of such pictures, aside from taking photographs of uncivil acts and the corresponding culprits, had not done anything to stop the uncivil acts. If this assumption were true, I would believe that the photographers are in no moral position to shame the culprits behind the uncivil acts.

If one indeed feels that a certain behavior is unjustifiable, it is one's duty to stop the behavior. Conversely, if one does not stop a certain behavior, one is either being inconsistent (by not acting in line with his beliefs), or one does indeed believe that an act is justifiable. In the latter case, there is clearly no moral position to post the photographs, since nothing wrong was committed. In the former case, one would be a form of hypocrite if he were to post the photographs, for by not acting to stop the uncivil behavior, he could be said to be knowingly condoning the same uncivil behavior. Hence, in both cases, one cannot post the photographs without also posting his own photograph for abetting the uncivil act.

To a lesser degree, I also feel that even if the photographer was to participate in stopping the uncivil offender, online shaming is still undesirable. As I mentioned previously, such an act is more retributive than restitutive. It also feels a bit sensationalist, although technically this is not a logical argument but an emotive one.

One final consideration I would like to raise is of 'Asian Mind-your-own-business-ism', or non-confrontationalism. While I can certainly appreciate not having anyone poking their nose into my business, it should be noted that selfish and uncivil people should not benefit from this. Perhaps we should all grow some balls and stop the bad behavior on-site, rather than online.

The Road Not Taken

Any system which promotes only one mode of advancement, is a system in which people are either successes or failures.

Any person who believes that there is only one mode of advancement, is submitting to such a duality, and is walking on a tightrope.

I ask, why ? Why should we all trod on the same path, to be judged by the same criteria ?

A flawed understanding of evolution is that it is the survival of the fittest, whereas it is not. While it is indeed true that climbing upwards enables survival, moving sideways, and seeking new niches, is also an equally valid alternative.

Admittedly, taking the path less travelled is difficult. But I am convinced that it is a better path.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

NUS Matriculation Number Checkdigit

Out of interest (or perhaps, boredom), I decided to reverse-engineer the scheme by which the checkdigit of the NUS matriculation number is generated. After spending a couple of hours intensely studying some matriculation numbers, I finally reversed the scheme.

For the benefit of those who have less knowledge, a checkdigit is (usually) a number or letter appended to a longer number. Like a checksum, the checkdigit allows people who know the algorithm to very quickly discover whether the number is valid (since a randomly generated checkdigit is more likely to be wrong than correct).

In the case of the NUS matriculation number, the checkdigit is the final letter of the matriculation number, for example W in the case of the number u012345W.

Armed with some knowledge of hashing (since most checkdigits are calcuated by basic hash functions), expertise with modulus mathematics, and finally a list of matriculation numbers and their checkdigits, I was able to uncover the scheme, which follows.

Assume the numerical digits of the matriculation number are 0,C1,C2,C3,C4,C5. From this, calculate the checksum value by the formula:

((C1,C2,C3,C4,C5)*(12,10,12,11,6))+12) % 13

where % is the modulus operator. Compare the checksum with the following table:

B	A	E	H	J	L	M	N	R	U	W	X	Y
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12

The above algorithm should be accurate for all matriculation numbers beginning with "u0". Due to a lack of matriculation numbers beginning with other headers, I was unable to determine the offset for those numbers.

The methods for determining the NUS matriculation number checkdigit algorithm can be applied to find, among other things, the checkdigits of any NRIC number. By the way, that problem has already been solved (just wiki NRIC).

*P.S.* I have since updated the scheme to account for new matriculation numbers prefixed with A**.

Battleship Solitaire

Recently, I've been playing a type of puzzle called Battleship Solitaire. Basically, this type of puzzle involves a battleship grid, and numbers along the sides of the grid. Based on these numbers, you are supposed to work out the locations of the ships.

In principle, the game works out to be similar in some areas as Paint By Numbers, and hence some strategies which I discovered earlier were viable for this game too. However, this game is probably (at my present skill level) partially dependent on luck, since some puzzles I played were ill-posed, having 2 possible solutions. Of course, this is almost certainly due to the puzzle generator, which does not check for the uniqueness of the solution.

Some sample shots of a new game and a solved puzzle follow.

A puzzle with 9 starting hints.

A solved puzzle.

The rules of the game (copied from this website), for reference, are :

The computer hides the ships in the grid and a few 'shots' will be fired into the grid to get you started (Hints). The ships will be hidden in the grid with the following rules.

• The ships will be orientated in either the horizontal or vertical direction only.
• No two ships will be adjacent in any direction including diagonally
• There is one battleship (4 squares in length)
• There are three cruisers (3 squares in length)
• There are three destroyers (2 squares in length)
• There are four subs (1 square only)
• The numbers in the right column indicates the number of grid squares occupied by ships in the horizontal direction for each row.
• The numbers in the bottom row indicate the number of grid squares occupied by ships in the vertical direction for each column.
  

Quick Question : Alarm Clocks

Just a quick question :

For most analogue alarm clocks, the time and alarm time are adjusted by dials located on the back of the clock. The question is, why can the time of the clock be adjusted by turning the time dial either clockwise or anticlockwise, while the alarm time dial can only be adjusted anticlockwise ?