Quick Notes from A Political Forum on Singapore's Future

I've just caught the political debate between the PAP and the various opposition parties on CNA. As a whole the program wasn't too bad, though I would have preferred more substantial material.

Below are the quick notes I took during the programme. I'll post my thoughts and opinions at a later date, probably tomorrow.

** On second thought, since the programme has been discussed extensively, I shall no longer be posting my own comments on this issue.

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A Political Forum on Singapore's Future

Opening Speech
PAP- global competition , income increase, best education, geriatric care
SDA- clean energy, innovation, education
SDP- those left behind
SPP- alternative voice, democracy, equality, safe place, financial hub, technologies
WP- wealth distribution, dignity, entrepreneurs, education (formative years, love for learning instead of drilling), affordable and quality healthcare, social safety net.
SDP- quality of leadership, whitely escape, ubs poor quality of living russia

Cost of Living
WP- hdb houses (pegged to median income), rentals (cost of business)
SPP- open door immigration policy forces increases cost of living
SDP- rising healthcare costs, waiting period (3mth subsidized, 3 mins unsubsidised) for medical care, 0 rate GST for basic services, hdb run as non-profit, assets locked into homes
SDA- housing (should not be a commercial issue, should be run as public good) healthcare, education, basic items
PAP- 23% servicing cost (cheaper relative to developing countries), medifund etc expanded (cities are expensive), poor get more than GST collected

Foreign Workers
SDA- harmful to jobs, level playing field, companies top up salaries of local worker
PAP- selectively recruit foreign workers (manufacturing 80% not sg, 80% managerial sg), not reduce, 2% unemployment, quota system (Singaporeans first),
SDA targeted industry
WP- rate of immigration not exceed capacity to absorb and integrate, no foreigners unless positions unable to fill, reduce reliance by increasing productivity (to fill with locals)
SDP- displaced due to cheap labour, Singaporeans first policy, demonstrate need first before hiring

Short and Long Term Challenges
SDA- wage does not match inflation, public interest ahead of commercial interest
SDP- shadow budget, public services (not private), cost of govt decrease (ministerial pay), 0 rate GST, Singaporeans first, minimum wage, build up SM enterprises
SPP- education build more universities, lifelong learning, political awareness in youth for platform for critical thinking, build more hospital beds (due to medical tourism), conductive environment for thinking, marginalized Singaporeans not normal (single mothers)
WP- lack of checks and balances in govt, need for parties to build strength to be alternatives
PAP- 85% utilization of beds, bulk of GST paid by rich and foreigners

A Personal Writing Challenge

In line with my recent belief that work-rate is almost everything, I've decided to challenge myself with a personal writing challenge. The goal is modest.

I'll write 100 words a day for 2011.

Therefore I'll end up with at least 36,500 words at the end of the year, if things work out. It doesn't matter if most of it is crap, as the goal is to increase the work-rate and sieve out the good stuff afterwards.

To keep track of my progress I'm including my current progress in my blog sidebar. This will be updated regularly, unless I fall seriously behind.

It'll be interesting to see how far this goes.

Trojans and Passwords

A few years ago my thumb-drive caught a Trojan from one of the computers in an undergraduate lab. It wasn't very sophisticated, and it's mechanism of action was quite simple to grasp; it simply copied itself to the thumb-drive and modified the autorun.inf such that the Trojan would run once inserted. Quite easy to remove, if you knew what to do.

Fast forward a few years, and now I'm teaching in the same lab. And my thumb-drive caught a Trojan again. It's quite probable that the source of infection is one (or more!) of the lab computers. Goes to show what happens to resources that are shared amongst many. I'm now thinking of getting a write-protected thumb-drive for special use.

The incident did make me more security conscious, though. I've changed all my online passwords. Pretty much time, anyway. The old one was left unchanged for too long. Wonder how long this one will last.

True Human

Maybe we're not even true humans anymore.

A definition for species (though often contested) is a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. No problems there, since we're all capable of interbreeding.

But this merely means that we're all the same species, not necessarily that we're human. Perhaps we've acquired so many minute mutations, so many incremental changes, that we're too different.

If there was a time machine, would we be able to successfully mate with an ancestor from many millennia ago?

Aphelion

"At a young age I realized an uncomfortable truth- that only I am important, that at the heart of it I care only for myself. I struggled with this fact for some time, trying to reason matters, trying to reconcile my thoughts and feelings.

I am indeed selfish, but what held me back, what made me feel that that was wrong? Surely not the popular notions of morality, which like all products of the masses must always be viewed with suspicion. No, instead it was an innate emotion, a raw feeling that by elevating myself to some loftier position I was inherently demeaning the value of friends, of family.

But after a while some things became apparent to my mind. Friends and family were indeed valuable, perhaps things to be cherished. But their value was not intrinsic, merely instrumental. A friend is valuable because he is my friend, not because he is a person. Anyone could be a person, but that fact is meaningless; they would be as unimportant to me as grains of sand on a distant beach."

"Madness. You are mad."

"Does it matter? I see and say things as there are. There is a massive hypocrisy being perpetuated, or perhaps Man does indeed believe in lies of their own construct. We are all egotists, are we not? There is no true altruism or charity. One gives because it grants one a fuzzy sense of warmth, of communion. Not that there is anything wrong with being an egotist, though, only that it is a meaningless charade to pretend otherwise."

"Sophistry. A person does something, therefore he fulfills his desire to do something, therefore he is an egotist. A tautology."

"Yes, it is indeed a tautology. But it is one that invokes stammering denials and outraged half-arguments. It is a statement that is such a threat to the common psyche, such a dissonant voice, that most people do all they can to oppose it. It is because very much of it is true, and they are trying not to contest its veracity, but to convince themselves that they are not egotists."

--- Denouement,
Aphelion, immortal, criminal, psychopath

Voices in an Empty Room

Do you have a voice that no one has ever heard, a voice that only sounds when you are alone, a voice that chatters to you when you're in an empty room, a voice that speaks and seems not of your own?

A person has a great number of voices, each for a certain audience, and each to never show to another crowd. And of these voices, perhaps one, or perhaps a few, perform for none other than the private self.

And it is not the prime voice that we use internally. It may be voiced as an ally, praising and propping the very views one holds; or it may serve as an antithesis, standing in opposition. And at other times it acts in both roles, in synthesis. But the key is, they sound different, foreign perhaps.

They do not reside in the crevices of one's mind; they must be spoken out loud, given form in pitch and timbre. Madness, maybe, appearances of a person speaking to himself. But perhaps there are some things, or a great many things, that cannot be granted any other audience or counsel.

And in such cases we can only invoke the voices in an empty room.

Buy Green

On some level, there is an irony with telling people to buy more green products. Buying green doesn't necessarily translate into saving the planet, because consumption is antithetical to greenness.

Displacement works, yes. If you're changing incandescents to fluorescents, then it helps, yes it is better than before. But it doesn't need to be said that if you insist on lighting your entire property, then it's not green regardless of what lights you use.

Rather than the type of product we use, perhaps more attention should be paid to how much we use, and how we use it. Our consumption and usage habits should be more important, though this requires much more effort that simply replacing the type of things we use.