Archive for September, 2008
JBJ passed away at 82
September 30th, 2008 Obituaries
Time to screen the documentary says DPYadav.
On FB
Veteran Singapore opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam, who died Tuesday, waged a long and lonely campaign for greater political freedom in the tightly governed city-state.He was attempting a fresh political comeback when he succumbed to heart failure.
The grand old man of Singapore’s tiny political opposition, JB Jeyaretnam, died early Tuesday just days before a constitutional challenge …
Joshua B. Jeyaretnam, Singapore’s best known and most dogged opposition leader who fought a lone battle against the powerful ruling
e was the first to break a government monopoly on power in Singapore when he won a seat in parliament in 1981.
He had been forced into bankruptcy over defamation cases won by the government but was planning a new run for office.
Dubbed the Grand Old Man of opposition politics, analysts said Mr Jeyaretnam was a thorn in the side of Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan-yew.
ST had a very neutral reporting:
VETERAN opposition politician J. B. Jeyaretnam, 82, died of heart failure early on Tuesday at the hospital, with his family by his side.
Then in a tiny column at the side of its main report:
The government did not immediately respond to Mr Jeyaretnam’s death. [...]
A socialist at heart, Mr Jeyaretnam contended that the government’s economic policies created a wealthy upper class and an underbelly of poor citizens who have to work twice as hard to survive.He also often railed against what he called the ‘Lee dynasty’, a reference to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his prime minister son.
His views inevitably got him into trouble with the Lees and other government leaders who frequently sued him for defamation.
From the PM’s office, SM Goh was sent to say nice words:
SM Goh recalls his encounters with JBJ
I was taken aback when I learnt this morning that Mr J B Jeyaretnam had passed away. I did not expect it as I had recently read of his formation of a new political party and his interest in contesting in the next General Elections. I send my condolences to his two sons, Kenneth and Philip.
My first encounter with Mr Jeyaretnam was in the 1981 Anson by-election, which he won. I was then the PAP’s Organising Secretary. His victory showed that it was possible for opposition MPs to be elected into Parliament.
We had many more encounters later, in Parliament, during elections and in the Courts. Politically, we were on different sides of the fence. I did not believe his brand of politics was good for Singapore. PAP leaders and he had many heated exchanges. But despite this, we kept up our personal relationship.
As Prime Minister, I did not allow the PAP’s fight with Mr Jeyaretnam to affect his sons’ place in society. In reply to a letter from Kenneth, I assured him that we valued talent, regardless of his father’s stand in politics and determination to oppose us. I had invited Philip for lunch, to tell him the same thing.
What do I remember or respect most about Mr J B Jeyaretnam? Even though I did not agree with his political cause, I respect his fighting spirit to advance it and his willingness to pay a price for it.
WSJ says:
Singapore lost a man yesterday whose life reflected the best of the city-state. He suffered under the Japanese World War II occupation of the island; earned a place at the British bar; devoted himself to his work, family and faith; and forewent personal wealth to fight for democratic ideals in public office.
No, we’re not talking about the country’s founder and longtime Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, for whom much of the above is true. Yesterday Singapore lost its pre-eminent opposition leader, Joshua B. Jeyaretnam.
Cutting nose to spite face?
September 30th, 2008 atschool
Economist Views has all the reactions.
I’m stunned. I cannot believe that they are acting on what the constituents want. Nobody wants a full blown crisis. Nobody wants unemployment. Nobody wants another full scale recession with ripples across the entire globe. But it seems that Americans are quite happy to want it, to pay back those who had been greedy on Wall Street. Good grief! Someone needs to boil their heads – the ones who got axed because of putting other people’s money at risk this would still be rich.
Graphs on the death of Marxism, postmodernism, and other stupid academic fads
September 29th, 2008 Uncategorized
From here
It’s easy to fossilize your picture of the world from your formative years of 15 to 24, but things change. If you turned off the radio in the mid-late ’90s, you missed four years of great rock and rap music that came out from 2003 to 2006 (although now you can keep it off again). If you write off dating a 21 year-old grad student on the assumption that they’re mostly angry feminist hags, you’re missing out. And if you’d rather socialize with people your own age because younger people are too immature to have an intelligent discussion — ask yourself when the last time was that you didn’t have to dance around all kinds of topics with Gen-X or Baby Boomer peers because of the moronic beliefs they’ve been infected with since their young adult years? Try talking to a college student about human evolution — they’re pretty open-minded. My almost-30 housemate, by comparison, was eager to hear that what I’m studying would show that there’s no master race after all. What a loser.
Nanowrimo 2008 or the cycle of life
September 29th, 2008 Uncategorized
I created an account at nanowrimo, thinking, what fun!
Almost immediately after posting my profile picture (the head_space drawing), Future Eileen manifested with a bandaged wrist smelling of medicated oil. “You @\#~%&@|*?/&*#$#@! moron!”
Oh. Maybe this is how the whole post-grad thing started. I better write this down, so it won’t happen again next time.
Isn’t this gorgeous?
September 29th, 2008 Uncategorized
Ticket for one please
September 29th, 2008 Uncategorized
My aunt gave me a ticket for a movie she got as free gift. It’s only one ticket and, she said, I’m not crazy to watch a show alone. But you can’t interact with anyone when the movie is on, I protested, it’s only you and the screen. It’s a difficult perspective to sell, especially since movies are activities done by couples and I have no one to go with anyway. I don’t actually prefer going movies with other people. I feel lonely – a distracting yearning for connection. Sometimes the pop corn works as a device to connect: “Want some?”
The loneliest people I’ve ever seen are couples, actually, and always when they are feeding, reading papers, sending messages to other people, or even when they are talking to each other. They look so bored yet they are dying to connect, and they throw up everything in their attempts. The next most loneliest are those in a pub/club. The music seem to isolate them even when everyone is dancing together, in a group. Oddly, I’ve never found those who are eating, walking, being alone, lonely. They don’t look lonely – they seem actively engaged while alone. Thinking, watching or waiting.
New Taleb Article on Edge
September 25th, 2008 books
Click here
Are we using models of uncertainty to produce certainties?
This masquerade does not seem to come from statisticians – but from the commoditized, “me-too” users of the products. Professional statisticians can be remarkably introspective and self-critical. Recently, the American Statistical Association had a special panel session on the “black swan” concept at the annual Joint Statistical Meeting in Denver last August. They insistently made a distinction between the “statisticians” (those who deal with the subject itself and design the tools and methods) and those in other fields who pick up statistical tools from textbooks without really understanding them. For them it is a problem with statistical education and half-baked expertise. Alas, this category of blind users includes regulators and risk managers, whom I accuse of creating more risk than they reduce.
Hmph! Too busy at work to read through this.
Paul Theorux on Singapore
September 7th, 2008 books
From here
“Singapore,” he says, stressing the “pore” and raising visions of muggy, tropical discomfort. “Singapore is an example of a place where people are self-conscious in the presence of foreigners, because they feel that you’re going to criticize them for having accommodated themselves to their government and this way of living.
“It’s like a gated community. You go in definitely feeling (a) that you don’t belong there, (b) that they’re not particularly interested in your staying there, and (c) that they’re very, very defensive. They feel they have to explain why they’ve settled for Singapore. And do you know, the sex trade there is booming, but their boast is, ‘These aren’t Singapore girls . . . they’re Burmese, they’re Vietnamese, they’re Filipina . . . but not us!’
How Schooling is Like Garbage Collection
September 5th, 2008 atschool
Is this analogy ridiculous? Well, if you’ve always been a good student, it probably seems that way. If you’re an economist – or a blog reader – you probably liked school. I bet that many of you were formerly known as “teacher’s pet.”
My point is that you’re probably an outlier; your introspection about whether “people like school” is not to be trusted. When this happens, it’s very helpful to look at representative surveys. Here’s one I came across from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Fun fact: The most popular reason for dropping out is sheer boredom!
[...]
One big difference between schooling and garbage collection, admittedly, is that most drop-outs say they regret dropping out, but very few people regret not becoming garbage collectors. But I suspect that a lot of this is just social desirability bias: You’re supposed to say that you wish you finished school, but no one expects you to say that you wish you’d become a garbageman. Idly wishing you’d endured a extra year or two of excrutiating boredom is one thing; actually enduring it is another. For the tens of millions of people who really hate school, the extra money just isn’t worth it.
Saying that you were bored at school (even if the truth is that it was hard or the subject was not something you enjoy) is a popular untruth because a lot of bright students say that and it signals that you were bright enough to be bored by school.
Elsewhere
September 3rd, 2008 books
Confidence game
Trust is over-rated especially when a few visual cues will trick you into trusting the person yet to con someone is incredibly difficult because to do so, you’ve got to be self-aware all the time. First, nobody is that self-aware. Second, even if it is possible, it’s too tiring.
Love Me, Love My Books
I’m glad I’ve never met someone who mattered and who, after a look into the bookshelves, dismissed my books. I don’t know what I would do. I would be so upset.
In one recent test, psychologists asked 32 volunteers to sample strawberry yogurt. To make sure the testers made their judgments purely on the basis of taste, the researchers said, they needed to turn out the lights. Then they gave their subjects chocolate yogurt. Nineteen of the 32 praised the strawberry flavor. One said that strawberry was her favorite flavor and she planned to switch to this new brand.
My story: The less senses we have to work with, the less accurate we are about an impression. Lately, I have been eating food with nose clips on. (I’m weight watching and when I eat with noseclips, it makes rapid face stuffing quite impossible.) The taste of cake, bread, rice and fried chicken wings is horrid with noseclips on. However, ice-cream and chocolates tastes great.
