The Unsolvable Math Problem - "One day In 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class and found two problems written on the board. Not knowing they were examples of “unsolved” statistics problems, he mistook them for part of a homework assignment, jotted them down, and solved them. (The equations Dantzig tackled are more accurately described not as unsolvable problems, but rather as unproven statistical theorems for which he worked out proofs.)Six weeks later, Dantzig’s statistic professor notified him that he had prepared one of his two “homework” proofs for publication, and Dantzig was given co-author credit on another paper several years later when another mathematician independently worked out the same solution to the second problem"
Reader says ST edited his letter out of context to support Govt's call not to wear masks if one is well - "In 2011, notes written by US Embassy staff in Singapore were leaked online via Wikileak. In one of the documents, it recorded conversations between then ST US Bureau Chief Chua Chin Hon with the US Embassy staff.Chua lamented that the ST editors have all been groomed as pro-government supporters and are careful to ensure that reporting of local events adheres closely to the official line. He said that none of them has the courage to publish any stories critical of the government.Chua also revealed that the Singapore government has an established track record of using the press, the ST in particular, to shape public opinion. He noted how the government intends to push a certain policy is often foreshadowed by extensive media coverage (published before the official policy announcements).As an example, he pointed to the government’s decision to assist retirees who lost investments in “mini-bonds” following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. That official decision to help the retirees was announced after a spate of media coverage casting the retirees’ plight in sympathetic terms, before the government came to the “rescue”.Given Chua’s testimony, it’s not difficult to understand why Straits Times would want to edit a reader’s letter in support of government’s call not to wear masks if one is well, even though that was not the intention of the reader."
Kwang Po Kho - "Straits times forum has the bad habit of editing letters to reflect or confirm their own or govt's stance on various issues...like mask usage. They edited my letter to make it look like I supported the "no mask if not sick" advice of the govt. This is completely deplorable and irresponsible.*Those who do not wish to be infected should don N95 masks especially in crowded confined areas*was deleted to make it appear I agreed with the govt's disastrous no mask advice supported by dr leong hoe nam, prof dale fisher and MOH."
JayDee Lok - "sgnomster: "Lies after lies. Over and over again. You made me feel like I was never enough. When there was another girl all along""
"No idea who this girl is but I am so impressed that she took out an instagram ad to shame her cheating boyfriend?????? "
‘Hass’ avocado quality as influenced by temperature and ethylene prior to and during final ripening - "even a 24 h exposure to 25 °C and above was sufficient to inhibit subsequent ripening and enhance the occurrence of postharvest disorders such as stem end rot and body rot... Panelists found fruit ripened at 15 °C to have a different texture that those ripened at 20 °C but this had no influence on likeability. This study strongly indicated the importance of maintaining the ripening temperature of avocados at or near 20 °C both when the fruit is ripened soon after harvest or after storage to optimize postharvest quality."
Venezuelan Navy boat rams German cruise ship and sinks - "The smaller vessel then approached the starboard side at an angle of 135 degrees and collided with the cruise ship. It then repeatedly rammed the larger vessel, before beginning to take on water, local media reported.As the patrol boat sank, the 44-strong crew was quickly rescued by another vessel.The cruise ship, which flies the Portuguese flag, suffered minor damage as it has a reinforced hull for cruises off the icy Antarctic... Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro described the incident as "an act of terrorism and piracy" and ordered an investigation.Accusing the Resolute of behaving aggressively, Maduro was quoted in South American media as saying: "If it had been a tourist ship, it would not have appeared to want to attack.""
Damn US sanctions, forcing Venezuela to attack a German cruise ship!
Netflix’s ‘Extraction’ is being called out for its Bangladesh yellow filter - "There’s a phrase for this distinct color palette: It’s called yellow filter, and it’s almost always used in movies that take place in India, Mexico, or Southeast Asia. Oversaturated yellow tones are supposed to depict warm, tropical, dry climates. But it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy, adding an almost dirty or grimy sheen to the scene."
Making your gritty scenes look even more gritty is racist. The solution is to stop filming in developing countries so they can't be "stereotyped", and ignore how many third world jobs that will cost
Boy George Says People Now 'Get Upset About Anything' - "Boy George has blasted politically correct culture once again by suggesting that people “get upset about anything” nowadays.The Karma Chameleon singer also touched upon how the world has become more sensitive"
Poorer Protestant boys faring worst in Northern Ireland schools, says report - "working class Protestant boys still struggle the most with education."
You can't blame racism here. Or historical oppression from English 'colonialism'. Of course one liberal response is to say that if, even with privilege, they're doing worse, they deserve it
The illusion of certainty - "Standard cost-cutting ‘efficiencies’ can usually be ‘proven’ to work in advance; more interesting lines of enquiry come with career-threatening unknowability.One problem with this pretence of certainty is that cost-savings are more easily quantified than potential gains — so business and government are increasingly geared towards providing people with more, poorer things at an ever-lower price. Yet much evidence suggests that people like fewer, better things at a slightly higher price... Entities like procurement have been allowed to claim full credit for money–grabbing cost-savings without commensurate responsibility for delayed or hidden costs. The shadow of this is everywhere, from Grenfell Tower to PPE shortages. Bees seem to have spotted this trade-off between narrow and broad-scale efficiency 20 million years ago. Although most of them follow the waggle-dance (exploiting what is already known), a significant minority do not. These R&D bees explore at random, seeking nectar and pollen from sources as yet unknown. Most of these journeys are individually wasteful — but every now and then they pay off hugely in the form of a new find. Indeed there would be no bees without this ‘inefficiency’; hives would end up starving to death.Bees are still around because they are part deterministic and part probabilistic in their behaviour. They use their ‘evidence-based’ waggle-dance data-model up to a point, but correct for the fact that it is incomplete, temporary and weighted to the past. Institutionalised humans obtain a false sense of certainty by assuming that life is one big waggle-dance: that what is optimal in a one-off transaction in a certain present is also optimal at scale, in an uncertain, long-term future. Even insects have figured out this is dumb. Like Socrates, bees know how much they don’t know."
Cost savings are easier to measure than productivity losses
So much for you can't manage what you can't measure
The ‘Geno-Economists’ Say DNA Can Predict Our Chances of Success - The New York Times - "those in the top fifth of polygenic scores had a 57 percent chance of earning a four-year degree, while those in the bottom fifth had a 12 percent chance. And with that degree of correlation, the authors wrote, polygenic scores can improve the accuracy of other studies of education... He went into his program believing that our social environment is largely the cause of our outcomes, and that biology is usually the dependent variable. By the end of his time, he says, the causal arrow in his mind had pretty much flipped the other way: “I tried to show for a range of outcomes that the genetic models were overstating the impact of genetics because of their crazy assumptions.” He sighs. “But I ended up showing that they’re right.”... The study only draws on the DNA of white people — Europeans, Icelanders, Caucasians in North America, Australia and the United Kingdom. And that’s in part because only those groups, along with Chinese nationals, have given over their D.N.A. in large enough numbers to achieve the statistical power that geno-economics researchers need... But even if the same numbers of people from all races provided their data, one group would still have to be excluded from the study: people with recent genetic roots in Africa, which is to say both Africans, African-Americans and many Latinos. This racial exclusion has to do with the origins of modern humans. When a group of people on what is now the continent of Africa decided, some 50,000 to 70,000 years ago, to go see what the rest of the world was about, they formed what geneticists call a “population bottleneck.”"
Damn socialisation oppressing poor/minority kids!
The Nordic Way to Economic Rescue - The New York Times - "“You don’t have a comprehensive welfare state in the United States, because it implies a politically unacceptable level of redistribution,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “As long as you’re not willing to tax wealthy people and give some of the money to people who are not wealthy, these sorts of options are not on the menu.”In Denmark in 2018, the government collected tax revenue equal to 49 percent of the nation’s annual economic output, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In the Netherlands, that figure was 39 percent, and in Britain 34 percent.In the United States, tax revenues amounted to 24 percent of annual economic output. That was down from 28 percent in 2000, before huge tax cuts from the George W. Bush and Trump administrations, with most of the benefits flowing to the wealthiest households.The emergency threatening the global economy has reached such a magnitude that it demands a radical departure from the traditional policy playbook, assert many economists."
Singapore's tax burden lighter than most developed countries: Temasek's Ho Ching - "On average, the governments of most developed economies collect more than 30 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) in taxes, said Ms Ho.Scandinavian countries like Denmark have high tax burdens of almost 50 per cent, and even Norway with its sovereign wealth fund from oil and gas has a tax burden of over 40 per cent... US government expenditure is over 40 per cent of the country's GDP. Hong Kong, which does not spend any money on defence, has government expenditures of over 18 per cent of GDP.In comparison, the Singapore government collects about 15 per cent of the country's GDP in taxes.This percentage was higher - at about 20 per cent - before 2000, but has fallen since because the economy grew faster than government revenues and expenditures over the past 15 years"
They all retired before they hit 40. Then the coronavirus happened - "Last month, Mr Eric Richard was in Bali, Indonesia, enjoying the tropical weather and carefree life of a retiree. Last summer, at age 29, Mr Richard had quit his job as a corporate operations manager to become a "digital nomad".Now he is hunkered down at his parents' house in Michigan, having returned to the United States as concerns over the coronavirus outbreak grew and travel bans were put in place around the world. He is in self-isolation as a precaution. And in recent weeks, he said, he has seen his net worth drop by more than US$100,000 (S$144,000)... He is an adherent of the Fire movement, the personal finance strategy popular among millennials. It stands for "financial independence, retire early".The Fire movement was born during the US stock market's historic 11-year-long, wealth-creating run. Professionals in their 30s and 40s were saving up million-dollar nest eggs and quitting their jobs in the prime of life to live off investments. It was unheard-of in modern times, at least for anyone without a trust fund... In 2018, many people in the Fire movement believed they had the financial resources to enjoy retirements as long as six decades. If they whittled their living expenses to nothing and withdrew no more than 4 per cent each year from their portfolio (known as the 4 per cent rule), all would be fine... with the current travel restrictions, Mr Richard and others can't live in a cheap foreign country, a common Fire tactic known as "geographic arbitrage". In Bali, for instance, he and his girlfriend were staying in "a lovely guesthouse with a pool", minutes from the beach, he said, for less than US$800 a month. Who knows when he can get back?"
