"Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields." - Peter Borden

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I find it amusing how many people like to talk about THE WEST as if it were some monolithic entity, when they really are referring to a small swathe of Americans.

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Defend the right to be offended Salman Rushdie

"Offence and insult are part of everyday life for people in Britain. All you have to do is open a daily paper and there’s plenty to offend. Or you can walk into the religious books section of a bookshop and discover you’re damned to various kinds of eternal hellfire, which is certainly insulting, not to say overheated.

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions. (But they don’t shoot.)

At Cambridge University I was taught a laudable method of argument: you never personalise, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. That seems to me a crucial distinction: people must be protected from discrimination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible."

(Emphasis mine)

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Singapore’s Innovations to Due Process (Paper To Be Presented at the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law’s Conference on Human Rights and the Administration of Criminal Justice, Dec 2000, Johannesburg)

Michael Hor
Faculty of Law
National University of Singapore

"The legal institutions of Singapore, the law, the courts, the legal culture, and the police, were brought into being by the British colonial authority. Today, after more than 40 years of self government, the legal profession still regards itself as part of the “common law world”... Yet it is only too obvious to even the casual observer that there is much that is different, if a comparison were to be made with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and more so the United States. This is, in part, driven by a particular attitude towards criminal justice held by the most powerful decision-makers in Singapore. It has been officially attributed to “asian values”. It takes the form of novel legislation introduced after Independence, and of a certain approach to statutory interpretation. The remaining “differences” are not so much a creation of independent Singapore, but a result of a decision to retain laws and institutions which have since been abandoned elsewhere. Whether it is innovation or retention, the major thrust is clear – the progressive removal of “obstacles” to conviction, severe punishment of the convicted; and where conviction is not possible, executive detention as a fallback. It is not necessary to dwell at length on the serious human rights and due process problems such an approach harbours. What is significant is the attempt, in recent years, of key criminal justice officials in Singapore to articulate and justify such a stance. It needs to be carefully examined alongside the human rights critique: unspoken assumptions of both approaches have to be tested, underlying value decisions and priorities ought to be made clear... The purpose of this discussion is to try to create a meaningful discourse between those who feel that human rights in the context of criminal justice have been trampled upon unfairly, and those who think otherwise.

... A similar dynamic is at work in the imposition of caning. Traditionally, it was prescribed only for offences of violence to the person. There is a certain retributive logic to that. But eventually it was extended... the Vandalism Act (Cap 341) enacted in 1966 to deal with politically motivated graffiti in support of the communist insurgency. It was used a few years ago on the American teenager Michael Fay (Fay v PP [1994] 2 Singapore Law Reports 154) who was found guilty of spray-painting some motorcars, although he could hardly have been part of the insurgency (which had died out a few years before that). This is an example of a “drift net law” gone wrong.

... Perhaps a curious feature of Singapore’s brand of utilitarianism is its almost total distrust of social science data. One might have expected that if the death penalty is being imposed on drug offences to deter or incapacitate, the government would be keenly interested in statistical and other studies to find out if, in fact, the increased penalties are working. But such studies, if they exist, are seldom revealed. Statistical data are not provided in any consistent or meaningful way by the government. One can only speculate why.

... the people will treat the government and the State as they have been treated – in a calculating, selfish (“what is in it for me”) fashion. In the language of utilitarianism – there is a cost, and a potentially high one, for moral apathy.

The almost complete trust which the people of Singapore have in their government and its officials also comes with a cost. It is a dangerous symbol that the people accede to their government the right to do anything and everything for utilitarian ends. It becomes too easy to slip into a kind of “lesser included” argument: if we (the government) can detain you (the individual) without trial, cane you and even kill you, you should have no cause to complain if we do anything else to you. There is no need for a “bad” government to come to power for this to turn sour – officials are human beings who naturally believe in themselves and who will seek out easiest way to do something. The problem is that they can be quite wrong, and there will be nothing to stand between the government and the individual. The point is not that the
government of Singapore in particular or its officials should not be trusted, but that no government or official should be given such latitude. If something is to stand between the government and its people when the government goes too far, then the independent judiciary is it. That is its constitutional function. We have seen how the judiciary has receded into the background in many aspects of the criminal justice system in Singapore – perhaps the time has or will come that they regain their original role.

... It has often been observed that one of the unifying traits of being a Singaporean is the “kiasu syndrome” (literally, afraid to lose out or fail) – to ensure the death of a fly, one should not hesitate to use a cannon because lesser methods might fail. Ensuring the conviction of the guilty can become an unhealthy obsession, and without appropriate criminological studies and a moral sense to temper it, it can get out of hand. The fly will probably be killed, but much else that ought not have been harmed would be too."

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Hypothesis as thought-crime

"This episode reveals, in particular, that many scholars and students are committed to an egalitarian doctrine that is, in its way, as dogmatic and immune to contradictory evidence as the biblical literalism of fundamentalists.

The real disgrace is that Summers' assailants, particularly the scientists among them, feel no obligation to come up with a reasoned refutation of the tail-end hypothesis or to produce any substantive evidence relevant to the issue. They accept it as a Revealed Truth that innate statistical differences between the sexes simply cannot extend to the cognitive realm, no matter what the evidence seems to show. In their view, the contrary idea is not debatable; it must be ruthlessly squelched outright!

They rigidly reject the possibility that nature may have neglected to insure a strict 50-50 allocation of rare intellectual talents to the respective sexes. They thirst for impossibly perfect justice. That thirst cannot be slaked by the obvious and unexceptionable principle that each individual ought to be judged in accordance with that person's specific combination of talents, achievements, and potential."

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The Whale and the Antibody - "Our immune system is as awesome as a whale's body--in terms of the complexity of its parts and the way those parts work together so well. It keeps viruses, bacteria, tapeworms, and even cancer cells at bay, while generally sparing our own tissues from its withering attack. All animals share a rudimentary immune system, but Klein and Nikolaidis focused on a second system that is found only in vertebrates. Only we vertebrates have immune systems that can learn."

U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings - "More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds."

International Federation of Competitive Eating - IFOCE - "GRILLED CHEESE TO THOMAS - Sonya Thomas took the GoldenPalace.com World Grilled Cheese Eating Championship by consuming 25 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes."

Gay penguins won't go straight - "A German zoo's plans to tempt its gay penguins to go straight by importing more females has been declared a failure."

May You Live in Interesting Times? by Dr. Ho Yong - "Have you ever heard of the proverb, "May you live in interesting times"? Were you told it was a Chinese proverb? You may be surprised when you read Dr. Ho Yong's answer to this question... But what is most noteworthy about the expression is that it is not Chinese. There is no such expression, "May you live in interesting times," in Chinese. It is a non-Chinese creation, most probably American, that has been around for at least 30 or 40 years."
I shall thus credit it to its original utterers - the Shin'a'in!

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Hilarious stuff:

""Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)" is a popular single long associated with actress/singer Doris Day... Its unintentionally tragic lyrics pass through three generations of an obviously unsaved family, as a child reaches out to her mother for the meaning of life. This precious little girl is told to cast her fate to the wind, and whatever happens, happens. It is interesting to note that while The Doris Day Show enjoyed a six year run (1967-73) it lacked direction, frequently changed formats and characters, and never became a solid ratings winner. This show, like all of man's creations, has gone to a place where moth and rust doth corrupt.

God has asked us the following: For what is your life? Is it even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away? (James 2:14). Do not take your life for granted. If we give ourselves to Christ, we will become as new creatures, free of doubt and uncertainty, fully trusting God's will for our lives. To squander our brief time on earth is an abomination. Know these things to be true, submit yourselves to God, and find peace in Him."

I'm quite sure this is a spoof, but the scary thing is that there are fundies who'd actually write this.


Someone on the New Paper report on City Harvest's (aka Cash Harvest Cult to some) Pastor Kong's "luxury condominium on Orchard Road with a private lift, $5000 sofa set imported from US, posh dining table, luxury walk in wardrobe, expensive paintings and
sculpture [and whose] sofa alone can sustain a poor family for an entire year":

"Personally, I can't stand mega churches like CHC and New Creation Church. They're part of the charismatic "Health and Wealth" movement which promise that if you have faith in God (and tithe monthly, of course), you'll have health and wealth! As proof, the pastor drives a big car and stays in large houses!

The converse is, if your life is miserable and your house is about to be sold by the OA, it means you don't have enough faith in God lor.

Needless to say, a lot of people like this kind of doctrine! Who doesn't want to be rich and healthy!"