Illusions for the Weekend

I found this on the Herald Sun:

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic / detail oriented / facts rule / words and language / present and past / math and science / can comprehend /
knowing / acknowledges order / pattern perception / knows object name / reality based / forms strategies / practical / safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling / "big picture" oriented / imagination rules / symbols and images / present and future / philosophy & religion / can "get it" (i.e. meaning) / believes / appreciates / spatial perception / knows object function / fantasy based / presents possibilities / impetuous /risk taking.

I see the woman as turning clockwise, and I can't change her direction.

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A Flawed Survey

ST Oct 17, 2007
80% of readers say ST is important to their lives
By Oo Gin Lee

……. Addressing the Forum writers in the auditorium at Singapore Press Holdings' Toa Payoh premises, ST editor Han Fook Kwang noted that a readership survey in April found that nearly eight in 10 of the paper's readers polled in face-to-face interviews considered it an 'important' or 'must-read'.

Aha. Here we see something known as “survivorship bias” at work. The flaw in the survey is that its sample population comprises only people who currently still read the Straits Times. Thus the survey excludes all those people who had already stopped reading the Straits Times precisely because they considered the Straits Times to be “unimportant” or “unnecessary”.

Survivorship bias is a concept often mentioned in the financial world, in relation to the performance of unit trusts and mutual funds. For example, a fund manager may claim that more than 75% of its funds have outperformed the industry average. This sounds like an impressive statistic - until you find out how many funds the manager had already shut down, precisely because they performed below the industry average.

We say that there is a "survivorship bias", because the "more than 75%" statistic is based only on the funds that still survive. Those funds which had already died from their own poor performance are conveniently dropped from the survey.

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Race, Religion and Media

An article from AFP:

Lee Kuan Yew dismisses low press-freedom ranking for Singapore
SINGAPORE

(AFP) — Singaporeans are free to read whatever they want, the influential founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said of his country, which ranks near the bottom on a watchdog's index of press freedom.

Lee was referring to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) annual ranking for 2006, which placed the city-state at 146 out of 168 nations, and lower than Zimbabwe at 140.

RSF cited "new legal action by the government against foreign media" for Singapore's slipping six places in the rankings.

"There's nothing that you'd want to read which you cannot read in Singapore," said Lee, who holds the influential title of minister mentor in the cabinet of his son.

"You can buy our newspapers and see whether we read like Zimbabwe..." he said Sunday night in a keynote address to the International Bar Association annual conference, which has attracted thousands of lawyers and jurists from around the world.

Lee said Singaporeans have wide access to information.

"Everybody's on the Internet. Everybody's got broadband. They've got cable television, access to all the information. You can blog. You can do anything you like," he said in the speech which drew frequent applause.

"But we do not allow certain subjects to be made bones of contention."

Lee said issues of race, language and religion had to be handled sensitively. Singapore is majority ethnic Chinese but with significant Malay and Indian minorities.

"A multi-racial, multi-religious society is always prone to conflicts," Lee said.

The city-state has bitter memories of past racial incidents in its early years and clamps down hard on anyone inciting communal tensions.

Whenever you hear Lee Kuan Yew talk about race and religion, you may get the impression that the multi-religious, multi-racial society is a rather unusual, rare species in the world, and furthermore suffers from some wicked, magical curse that dooms it to endless riots, civil war or other conflicts.

Actually, Singapore’s multiracial, multi-religious nature is hardly unique among modern cities. Think, for example, of Kuala Lumpur … Bangkok …. Melbourne … Sydney …. New York … London …. San Francisco …. Vancouver …. among others.

Even China, which we often think of as relatively homogeneous, has as many as 20 million Muslims, and 40 to 100 million Christians (according to these estimates).

We have to lose our traditional Singaporean mentality that just because some of our HDB neighbours are of a different skin colour or pray to a different God, we are all on the perpetual verge of beating each other up and therefore Singapore is constantly in peril.

As for RSF's rankings, well, LKY can dismiss Singapore’s low ranking for press freedom, but others will not be so easily convinced. The link between state and press in Singapore is just simply much, much, muuuuch too strong, for most people to believe that our press is independent of the ruling party's influence.

"Hey, Tony. Is it true that before you became the
Chairman of the Singapore Press Holdings Board of Directors,
you were the Deputy Prime Minister; the Minister of Defence;
the Minister of Education; the Minister of Finance; the Minister of Health
AND the Minister of Trade and Industry of Singapore ...?"

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Singapore And Its Laws Against Gay People

If you believe that Singapore should get rid of its laws against gay people, do take a moment to sign the online petition here - Repeal Section 377A.

For more information and views on gay issues and the law in Singapore, you can revisit my old posts here (yes,they're all nicely presented on one page, just click the link and scroll down).

I still like this old cartoon, which sums up a lot with very few words:

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Learn, People, Learn.

The Straits Times has an article today about religious charities. It sounds like some churches have been busy trying to avoid being supervised by the Commissioner of Charities under the standard rules applicable to all charities.

ST Oct 5, 2007
No separate watchdog for religious charities
They'll come under office of Commissioner of Charities, but their 'special nature' will be taken into account
By Theresa Tan

SOME churches have urged the Charity Council to let them be governed separately from secular charities, but the council is standing firm.

It told The Straits Times there is 'no need' for a separate administrator to regulate religious charities.

Instead, churches and temples will still come under the Commissioner of Charities (COC) office, said the council, which advises the commissioner.

This is the strongest indication yet that all charities - secular and spiritual - will have to follow a new draft Code of Governance for charities to improve the way they are run.

While the code is not mandatory, charities which do not comply with its guidelines will have to explain why.

It is believed a number of churches expressed concern to the council when asked for feedback on the code. Some points raised were that:

* As spiritual leaders of the church, clergy cannot be excluded from the governing board. The code demands separation of the governing board and management staff, to ensure proper oversight of the charity.

* Rules on fund raising should not apply to churches. This is because church members give voluntarily as part of their religious beliefs and churches say they do not solicit from the public.

After the NKF scandal, I am suspicious of such arguments. The above article instantly reminded of past events such as this one:

Florida priests 'embezzled $8.6m from parishioners'
By Andrew Gumbel

Two Catholic priests in Florida stand accused of embezzling $8.6m (pounds 4.6m) from their parishioners over a 42-year period and spending the money on holiday houses, luxury travel, gambling in Las Vegas casinos and secret girlfriends.

The scandal, at St Vincent Ferrer Church, in Delray Beach, north of Miami, cast yet another embarrassing spotlight on a Catholic diocese that recently lost two bishops to child sex abuse scandals.

According to police who investigated the suspect finances at St Vincent Ferrer for more than a year, Fathers John Skehan and Francis Guinan acted as "professional money launderers" who took money from the collection plate and set up a network of slush-fund bank accounts to which only they had access.

Fr Skehan, 79, was a highly regarded priest whose congregation included many prominent politicians and public figures in southern Palm Beach County. According to the police, however, he also used laundered money to buy himself a condominium near Delray Beach, a cottage on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland and a pub in Kilkenny, where he was born. The police complaint says Fr Skehan spent $134,075 in church money on a woman described as his girlfriend, another $11,688 on family members, and more than a $250,000 on himself - for car payments, dental work, property taxes and housing fees, and credit card payments.

Fr Guinan, 63, a longtime friend of Fr Skehan who took over the parish in 2003, owns a string of properties in the area. The complaint said he was a gambler who spent lavishly in casinos in Las Vegas and the Bahamas. He was also alleged to have made cash payments to his secret lover, who once worked as a bookkeeper at his old parish of St Patrick's in Palm Beach Gardens, and to have contributed more than $7,000 to the cost of the woman's son's education. He, too, racked up impressive dental bills. The complaint said he spent $15,000 of illicit funds on his teeth.

Suppose Father John Skehan now said: "As a spiritual leader of the church, I cannot be excluded from the governing board. I must be on the governing board and also part of management staff. Screw any potential conflict of interest." How would you feel?

Suppose Father Guinan now said, "Rules on fund raising should not apply to me. This is because church members give voluntarily to my church as part of their religious beliefs and I do not solicit from the public". What would you say?

Learn, people. Learn.

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Why We Should Be Foreigners

ST Sep 28, 2007
Needless expenditure on English courses

I AM writing with regard to GeBIZ (http://www.gebiz.gov.sg/), which is the Singapore Government's one-stop e-procurement portal.

All the public sector's invitations for quotations and tenders are posted on GeBIZ. Suppliers can search for government procurement opportunities, download tender documents, and submit their bids online.

While surfing the website, I came upon a government school seeking private-sector companies to conduct English courses for its PRC scholars, paying at least $35,000 for 300 hours of instruction.

I was amazed at the huge expenditure. Aren't schools supposed to be educating our young? Aren't our teachers qualified to teach English?

If it were courses in leadership skills or public speaking, I would understand the need for external vendors to come into the picture as such courses require special knowledge and skill sets.

The Government should think twice before spending taxpayers' money unnecessarily.

Fok Kah Hon

This Fok Kah Hon person is not very clever. Doesn’t he know? This is Singapore. We must give foreigners more advantages than citizens.

Singaporeans can pay for their own private tuition lessons. And if they fail their O-level English exams, well, that is just too bad.

But as for the PRC students - ahh, we can't allow that to happen. We must make the taxpayers pay for their extra English lessons!

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On Beggars and Hawkers

ST Oct 2, 2007
Rid Orchard Road of beggars and hawkers

ONE cannot help but notice an increasing number of people begging for money and selling tissue paper along Orchard Road.

Also on the rise are illegal hawkers at places such as outside Orchard and Somerset MRT stations, selling anything from mobile-phone covers to roasted chestnuts.

I urge the authorities to take action against this group of people, as they are giving a bad image to spanking clean Orchard Road.

This is especially so as Orchard Road is a major tourist attraction and we wouldn't want tourists and foreigners alike to bring home an image of Orchard Road riddled with sidewalk beggars and illegal hawkers.

Nuryusman Mohamed Ibrahim

Actually the tourists probably find the roasted chestnuts quite interesting. The illegal hawkers add a little local flavour into our otherwise sterile cityscape. Think of the Suan Lum or Chatuchak night markets in Bangkok – they’re always crowded and messy. And always a big hit with tourists.

As for the tissue paper, it's usually sold by some poor blind woman or one-legged man. Mrs Wang is very kind. When she sees such people, she often gives them $5 or $10 for one packet of tissue. These people need our help. If you don't want to help, at least don't cause them to get arrested.

I don't know what this Nuryusman person is thinking. He notices an increasing number of poor people on Orchard Road, and his biggest concern is the bad impression that the tourists may have. For goodness sakes, Nuryusman. Your biggest concern should be for the poor people.

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