Filed under: Incidents
I was walking along the void deck to my parents’ place when I saw a bird crouched in one of the shallow drains that lined the void deck. It was not like any kind of urban bird I’ve seen, so I went over to take a look. It looked like a chicken, but the head was wrong. The bird didn’t fly away, so I wondered if it was sick. I decided to pick it up and take it upstairs before a stray cat came along and had it for lunch.
There was something strange about the bird’s feathers. There was yellow stuff coming out between its feathers. Could it be some kind of birdly skin disease? Fungus? Parasites?
“Hey, I got a bird,” I told my parents, “I put it in a shoebox outside.”
“Birds spread diseases! It could be a sick bird,” my mother said. “what kind of bird is it? If it’s a baby bird we can keep it, but if it’s a sick bird we have to throw it away.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “it’s not a baby bird, but I don’t know what bird it is. Looks like a chicken.”
My mother went out to take a look.
“That’s a baby pigeon,” she said. The yellow stuff in its feathers was down.
What? Are you kidding me? The “baby pigeon” was larger than an adult pigeon! Look at that thing in the picture. Does that look like a pigeon to you? My mother grew up in rural areas and used to keep pigeons. She assured me that it was indeed a pigeon.
Baby pigeons, it turns out, are big fat eating and shitting machines. Since they eat and eat and do not exercise, they get really fat. This is when they are delicious and can be cooked up as “squabs”. We decided not to make the squab feed us but to feed it instead. It currently lives in a shoebox outside the flat.
Filed under: Admin
Hyperbole incoming. TiddlyWiki, is the best thing since sliced bread. Ok, it isn’t, but it’s a pretty amazing thing, and I’m going to use it to catalogue my reading. Accordingly, the books section has been deleted. Some posts from that section has been merged with movies into Recommended Media. I’m thinking of using it for journalling too, but I have to figure out how to database the tiddly files I make…
Filed under: Incidents
I wonder how that guy is doing. A bit strange considering that I don’t even know who he is. He asked for my handphone number but hasn’t SMS’d me like he said he would. But then, I can imagine he’s probably overworked and has a lot of things to occupy his mind.
That was last week. I was walking home from work that night, when I saw someone walking towards the same road intersection as I was. He seemed to be heading towards me, and indeed when he reached me he asked me how to get out of the maze of little roads and to a bus stop. He was looking for a certain bus to take him home. I wasn’t sure where that bus was but there was a bus-stop nearby and I showed him how to get there.
“Nearby” is probably not the type of nearby most people think of, so we had quite a bit of time to chat as we walked. It turned out that he was a security guard at the premises.
The interesting thing is, this guy was actually highly educated, and used to be lecturer at one of our educational institutions. So why is he a security guard? Because he needed money, and nobody would hire a person his age when one could hire someone younger with a lower salary. As a security guard, he works 12 hours a day and is paid $50 for it. That’s more than the janitor earns, but not by much.
Now, I ask you, do we aspire to be a developed nation, or do we want to be a 3rd world country? In a third world country, people have short life expectancies, so 60 is old. A third world economy runs on physically intensive labour, so you want fresh young bodies to run all those primary and secondary industries. 40-year-olds are behind the curve. 50-year-olds are due for retirement, and 60-year-olds are junk. In a first world country, life expectancy is high and health is better. People live longer, and are productive for longer. Service industries, management, innovation, expertise, experience are important aspects of a first world economy. This isn’t manual labour.
True transition to a developed country takes more than pumping up the GDP with more fresh young bodies (sacrifices) in the same old developing country modus operandi. Employers have to discard their third world mindset. Otherwise, they are simply throwing away their most valuable resource: expertise and work experience.
Filed under: Events
I was at a GPGPU programming workshop this week. I am impressed! A 15 times or greater speed-up in the serial code I run on my personal computer, can turn the one month computation into a 2 day computation. Or I can triple the domain size and still do it in one week.
So what is GPGPU programming? It is General Purpose Graphics Processor Programming, or performing non-graphics computations on graphical cards by disguising those computations as graphical operations.
When we think of supercomputers, we usually think of some kind of parallel architecture. Many nodes perform computations simultaneously. Within each node are mutiple CPUs — I hear they’ve gotten up to 6 these days — so you split up the computation between nodes which split them up between CPUs, and since many CPUs are working on the computation simultaneously in parallel, you can do the job in a shorter time.
It is actually a bit more complicated than this, because communication between nodes can be substantial (and costs to reduce internode connection can be substantial), so changing the way a job is split up can make huge differences in computation time. This is as much as I know about this subject, which is basically not much.
Our personal computers are akin to one of the nodes. (In Beowulf clusters, the nodes are personal computers.) They usually come with 2 or 4 CPUs. But what if…what if the supercomputer architecture is already present, in a cheap form? What if development of the technology is driven not but cranky scientists but by the masses who want it for their entertainment and are willing to burn money for it?
The what ifs are already present in the form of graphics cards.
When I first heard of GPGPU programming, the notion was still relatively new and it was not feasible to get into it. To do calculations of interest it was necessary to formulate one’s codes as graphic computations and trick the graphics card into doing it. A few years later, the libraries to do so have appeared and are spreading.
My boss was not impressed. Supercomputers still give better performance, he pointed out, and models are written for supercomputers. Sure, they are. But I think he misses the point. Large, highly specialised models will always run on “supercomputers”. But nobody said what kind of architecture “supercomputers” should have. A “Supercomputer” is a “super” computer. What GPGPU programming does, is that is brings computation power on a single personal computer dramatically closer to current supercomputer standards, for a fraction of the price and manpower. (I’ve worked in a supercomputer facility before, and it takes manpower to keep those things running. The older ones tend to get really finicky.) A super-version of this would be … super-super.
People have realised this, and are developing GPU-supercomputers. This technology is going to take time to mature. But the computation power available on a single personal computer at low price is already available. It’s true that you can write parallel code to run on supercomputers. I have done that before, once, in a class, and it was a horribly painful process and the knowledge was swiftly purged out of my brain as soon as I finished the class. I am only passably competent in programming, so anything that’s too complicated goes over my head. In the workshop, I found the code needed to use the GPGPU library (CUDA) easy to make sense of. The way I see it, if it’s not too hard to use, and even if one spends a week on it, and another week to compute, it’s faster than spending four weeks waiting for one’s results to turn in. Especially since one will inevitably be forced to do recalculations.
So imagine a this kind of semi-supercomputing power available for $500 to all scientists involved in computation — the end-users, not the ones running specialised models on supercomputers. Certainly, even the ones who have written parallel code to run on supercomputers, but are jostling for computation time with other equally cranky users. Then think about clusters of GPU-computer, with multiple times that powers. How can this not be something to get excited about?
Filed under: Events
The Quest for Immortality
Singapore National Museum until 4 April 2010
There were two burning questions I wanted to ask about Egyptian mummies. The first was the rather morbid one of brain extraction. Mummies, we are told, have their brains extracted through the nostrils. Since nostrils are small holes and the brain a rather big mass, they had to suck that mass (mess) out somehow. How? Stick a reed in and suck it out?
The answer to that, according to the curator, was that they used a hook to pull the brain out. I don’t understand that. The other method, according to him, was the back of the head was cut opened and the brain drawn out. Fine, I can accept that.
The second question, a just as puerile one I guess, is what are the things stuck on their chins. Are those things beards? They look like toilet rolls, not beards, or maybe that’s as good as the sculptors could do in those times? Doubt it. They made pretty realistic ibises (picture on the right), so they should be able to make beards.
I never got to ask the question, but some googling turned out the answer: most Egyptians are clean-shaven, but the pharaoh uniform included a beard, which was a symbol of kingly power. The beard requirement did not deter the godly pharaohs from shaving; they just wore a fake beard! Even the female pharaohs wore fake beards.
If you plan to go to the exhibition, try to go for one of the guided tours, preferably during a non-peak period. The guide/curator was very amusing and full of tidbits of information. Listening to him talk about the exhibits beat reading the placards.
One thing that amazed me more than anything else about the exhibits was how some of the pigments were so well-kept that even after thousands of years, the colours remained as vibrant as any modern water colour! This is something that has to be seen to be believed.
The other thing that was mind-boggling was the elaborate extent to which the (rich) egyptians went to ensure their life after death. Families still have to bring the dead food and there are even emergency rations in the tomb if the family forgot to bring food. We might be tempted to laugh, but think about this: What beliefs about Afterlife do modern people have?
Orang Botak recommends The Quest for Immortality.
Filed under: News
AsiaOne, Wed, Jan 13, 2010
Sexually transmitted infections on the rise in S’poreSexually transmitted infections (STIs), other than HIV, are on the rise in Singapore, with a 10.6% increase in recent three years.
Singapore citizens accounted for about 62% of the number of infections.
This was a written answer from the Minister of Health, Mr Khaw Boon Wan, in response to a question posed by MP for Sembawang GRC, Ms Ellen Lee Geck Hoon, as to how many cases of sexually transmitted diseases other than HIV (such as genital warts, herpes, venereal disease, gonorrhea etc) were seen in the clinics, public and private hospitals in past years.
The number of STIs increased from about 11,000 in 2006 to 12,300 in 2008. The three main STIs are gonorrhoea, non-gonococcal urethritis (NGU) and syphilis.
Based on statistics from STI Control Clinic, one-third of the attendances were new cases, with two-thirds as follow-up cases, but there was no breakdown of the cases seen at private clinics.
70% of the cases were young adults, in their 20s or 30s. For cases below 20, two-thirds were female. For those older than 20, two-thirds were male.
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are notifiable in Singapore. To protect patients’ confidentiality, STI notifications need not include personal particulars. A patient who consults several doctors will chalk up several notifications. Repeat visits to the same doctor for the same STI will however require only one notification by the doctor.
Those aged between 10 and 39 years accounted for the largest increases in STI notification rates. For those in their 20s and 30s, the rate per 100,000 population has increased by 67%, from 270 in 2000 to 451 in 2008.
But for those below 20, the rate is especially alarming, having more than doubled from 61 per 100,000 population in 2000 to 133 in 2008.
The overall rate of notifications per 100,000 population has remained quite stable, increasing only marginally from 250 in 2006 to 254 in 2008. However, while the rates have been relatively stable over the past 3 years, they are at a higher level than before. The overall rate of notifications per 100,000 population has increased about 1 1/2 times from 155 in 2000 to 254 in 2008.
The Ministry of Health has worked with several organisations to put in place several programmes to address the rising trend of STIs among youths.
The topic on STIs is included in the science syllabus and Ministry of Education has made it mandatory for schools to implement sexuality education. Health Promotion Board (HPB) conducts regular programmes for parents in work places, schools and community venues offering them information and tips on how to broach and discuss sexuality issues, including STIs, with their children. The safe sex messages in HPB?s educational campaigns for HIV also apply to the prevention of STIs in general.
The Singaporean government sells an image of itself as a practical-minded, no-nonsense government. In reality, it is a government ruled by faith and ideology, not by what works or not. People used to fundamentalism from a certain religion may not understand the “faith” and “ideology” that drives the Singaporean government, but the fundamentalism of the Singaporean government is not so different from fundamentalism of a single religion.
One of the holy cows of the Singaporean government is religion itself. Religion, not any religion, but the concept of religion. Religion is conflated with culture, with ethnic identity, with morality. They are binned together under the neat banner of “racial and religious harmony”. Respect for cultural and religious diversity becomes a gag order where culture and religion themselves cannot be criticised. Not unless you want to be charged with sedition (Sedition Act, chapter 290 of the Statutes of Singapore). There is no protection for inflammatory speech against secular humanists.
When culture and religion are protected by ideology, and protected from criticism, their influences on practical matters like sex education are likewise protected by ideology and criticism. Where a practical matter of sex education should be judged by its efficacy, it is judged by moral ideology. The simple evaluation criterion of “does our sex education reduce STI and teenage pregnancy” is abandoned and replaced with evaluation of how “moral” the sex education is. Is it any surprise that STIs and teenage pregnancy are on the rise?
Take for example, the United States under the Bush administration and it’s abstinence-based sex education. Compare it with the Netherlands. By the logic of those people arguing for even more moral and abstinence component in Singaporean sex education, Dutch sex education should be promoting endless sexual diseases, pregnancies, and general moral dissolution. The United States should see plunging infection and pregnancy rates. The opposite is true — the Netherlands has amazingly low infection and teenage pregnancy rates. This pattern repeats itself everywhere, over and over again. Telling people not to have sex does not work. Sex is a basic drive like hunger and thirst. What remains is telling people how to have sex safely.
Until the government takes the moralising component out of sex education and focus solely on facts and prevention efficacy, STI and pregnancy rates will continue to rise.
Filed under: Recommended Media
A pleasant surprise. I’ve been fighting the urge to watch this movie but finally gave in, believing it would be awful. The reviews haven’t been kind to it, reminding us that it’s violent and ambiguously gay.
Shall I say: What tosh!
This representation of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is more faithful to Arthur Conan Doyle than many of the popular intepretations out there. I suppose Sherlock Holmes had to be made palatable to the bourgeoisie housewives and children when he went on teevee. The real Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle was a maniac depressive, a drug-addict, and a fighter and overall messy and filthy.
What I’m really glad about is an interpretation that does Dr. Watson justice. I’m really fond of Dr. Watson. More fond of him than Sherlock Holmes, who is supposed to be the subject of the stories. Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes reminds me too much of all the ugly tendencies inherent in myself waiting to take over if I don’t consciously keep them in check. So I love Dr. Watson, and hate those portrayals of him as a bumbling buffoon. And Dr. Watson in this movie is just kickass, if a bit too active for a man with a bad leg.
As for the ambiguously gay accusations, I don’t know what’s up with that. It’s called the stiff upper lip. The thing British have. You have two men who are fond of each other, and have gone through dangerous and life-threatening situations together. One of them is about to get married, and the other feels their friendship is threatened. The two of them try to negotiate this separation with a stiff upper lip.
So? What’s so “gay” about this? I don’t read anything gay or uncomfortable in the whole movie. Quite touching when Sherlock Holmes blinks and uncomfortably said he was glad Dr. Watson was “still with them” when Dr. Watson was not killed by the villain’s explosives.
I wonder if all the people who complain about ambiguous gayness have some kind of sexuality hang-up. Men cannot express intimacy or caring about other men. Otherwise it’s eeeek gay. (Or even, men cannot express intimacy or caring towards anyone at all, unless it is a woman, who is his romantic interest. Blech.)
The movie isn’t perfect. There are various details that are wrong. There is, I admit, a tad too much violence, what with the kneecap busting and all of multiple victims. The appearance of Professor Moriarty, who would hardly deign to get his own hands dirty. The greatest misrepresentation was of Irene Adler, who was an opera singer rather than a thief, and was married. People desperately love to pin a romance on Holmes. Why can’t they just accept he wasn’t interested in romance and his admiration of Irene Adler stemmed not because she had “the face of the most beautiful of women”, but because she had “the mind of the most resolute of men”?
Filed under: Events
Vocal Recital by Zhao Yunhong
Piano accompaniment Li Bin
In the age of on-demand music on the internet, free clips on Youtube, and perfection preserved on music CDs, why go to a life performance?
Live performance still has its place in the world. Firstly, it is almost impossible to capture the actual sound quality of a live performance. There is something in the timbre of the sound passing through the air and hitting one’s eardrums, altered by the nature of the location itself, that is incomparable. Secondly, in a live performance, it is not perfection one seeks, but imperfection.
The fact that this recital took place in a small theatre and that I was less than 10 rows away from the performer made it doubly the treat. I could see every twitch on the singer’s face, and the movement of the pianist. (It’s amazing how he managed to flip the pages of the score while playing, by the way.)
I don’t think Zhao is that good. There were some parts which she sounded a bit off, especially when the performance wore on and she got tired. But that is the fun part. We have to keep in mind that this is not a once in a century soprano (as posted on youtube) or a machine generating sounds. Parts I enjoyed: “Rejoice Greatly” from Handel’s Messiah, “Je veux vivre” from Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, and “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” from Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman.
Filed under: Recommended Media
I’ve been waiting for this game for months. I thought it would come to Steam, and indeed it appeared on a holiday offer. It doesn’t disappoint.
It’s quite an unusual game. It’s an RPG in a sense, except that there are no dialogue choices. It’s surreal, a blend of both breathtaking beauty and grotesque horror. It has nudity in the spades, with female nipples and male scrotums depicted quite matter-of-factly. But I don’t feel that the nudity is for eye-candy or titillation. Some reviews complain about female nudity but I think the people who get worked up about it have some prudish problems. As I said, the nudity is a matter-of-fact thing — bodies have body parts, and to cover it up would be akin putting a fig leave over Michelangelo’s David. I say it’s less obscene to just show normal physical bits, than than put little shiny buttons over the nipples of otherwise nude women and pretend that’s decent. Barking up the wrong tree.
The premise of the game is resource management. Colour is health, ammo, money all in one package. It also slowly decays away so it’s a constant race to find more colour. You obtain colour from living things such as plants, and it goes into your “Memory”, the “Lympha”. You must fill your hearts (yes, plural) with colour from your memory to stay alive. If your hearts run out of colour while inside the Void, you will die. As time passes, your heart turns the colour into “Nerva”, where you can use it to draw glyphs (spells), shoot it a creatures in fights, start conversations, and advance your social standing by passing it to the “Sisters”, creatures living in the Void, and most importantly, donate it to trees so as to farm them for more colour. How do you balance the input, output, and regeneration of your colour?
And I’m not sure what’s going on at all.
