Thinking - Page 110 of 141

The Polarity of the Internet

In today’s The Straits Times, Rachel Chang comments about “the power of the Net to polarise”.

She cites the examples of how vocal people on Facebook and their blogs, who have publicised their political views or displayed their political affiliations, have been slammed and harasssed online to the point that one such blogger stopped writing. The empowering voice of the Internet appears to work like a double-edged sword, threatening to slit the throat of the person wielding it in the face of the majority or the powerful.

It scares me sometimes how polarised views on the Internet can get. There does not seem to be room for compromise or discourse, it is very much an “us against them” game in terms of opinion rather than the moderated views across the spectrum. Chang quotes Cass Sunstein of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs for his view that people who “interact with others who share the same views… tend to become more extreme”. Of course, “the opposite is also true”, but at least looking at some of the incidents Chang has had to cover for The Straits Times, it appears as if the former applies more than the latter.

I can very much feel for myself this polarity when I visit The Temasek Review. It is considered a source that is less influenced by the government (as opposed to The Straits Times, which some may deem to be a government propagandist body) but I am seeing quite a lot of critical anti-government writing. Ever since I started visiting this website, my rosy views about the govenrment have been somewhat tainted, not in a bad way. At very least, I feel as if I am considering other non-governmental viewpoints that might reallly be the voice of the people and not just what the government feeds to us via the press. It is scary, however, how netizens slam each other for their views, be it pro-PAP or anti-PAP. It is rather heartening that there is much debate about Singapore’s future, and by and large discussion there is rather measured. It can get disturbing when emotions are flared up, as I notice in this write-up. I dare not express my views on this website for fear of being flamed to death by both pro-PAP and anti-PAP netizens.

Democracy… certainly brings about a cacophony that needs to be understood and tolerated, for all in the society to benefit. Hopefully with all the debate online and offline, people will come to a better understanding of what they want for their society. And it must mean dangerous times if arguments on the Internet spill over into real life and disrupt society.

So in essence… take heed online.

And just like Chang, I must add the disclaimer that I expect people to “shoot me nasty, unsigned email messages after reading this column”, if only just to pre-empt comments considering the nature of my writing.

The Truth About Procrastination

To all my friends at EPRZ, I am back!

I have been intending to write this article for months, ever since I published my first in June 09. But why didn’t I write it? Because I have to practise what I preach. I have to do the things that I advise my readers to do. Today’s article discusses the benefits of good procrastination and there is no better way to validate its credibility than to use myself as the test subject. Here are the facts of my research.

As children, we were told by our parents to stop procrastinating and start working on our household chores. As students, we were told by our teachers to stop procrastinating and start working on our school assignments. And they would always use this popular saying, “the early bird catches the worm”, to support their argument. Fair enough. But what happens to the early worm? Doesn’t it get eaten? The truth of the matter is that procrastination can be good or bad depending on how you use it. So the important issue is not how you should avoid procrastination but how you should use procrastination to your advantage.

There are many activities that you could be doing now. All these activities are competing for your time and attention. How do you decide which activity to begin and which to postpone? Through objective evaluation, you will have to rate each activity in importance. After that, you will have to practice the principles of good procrastination- to learn when to do the right things and to postpone the wrong things. It means choosing to avoid lesser activities in favour of greater goals. If you have just been struck by a brilliant inspiration, for example, then you should work on that new idea and postpone the thought of running an errand for your parents. Learning to prioritise is, thus, the key to good procrastination.

During my absence from ERPZ, I have completed my National Service, organised several grassroots events, and earned my driving license among many other completed tasks. I have been using procrastination to my advantage by avoiding the less important activities to do the real work. And even though I have sacrificed the cleanliness of my room, the well-being of my stomach, and of course the welfare of the readers at ERPZ, I have accomplished much by practising good procrastination.

Most people will tell you that procrastination is bad and that you should avoid it or cure it. Their ill advice is predicated on the false belief that procrastination means doing absolutely nothing. Author Paul Graham writes that “there are three types of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on a) nothing, b) something less important, c) something more important.” The last type, good procrastination, is what you should strive for.

China’s Green Revolution

China, as an emerging superpower, is also said to be emerging as one of the biggest polluters of the environment. The industrialisation and modernisation of China in particular is of great concern for climate change / global warming, as China looks scheduled to overtake the United States as “the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide”. Gary Dirks and David G Victor, in Newsweek’s Special Edition – Issues 2010, suggests that China is making attempts to go green, not just to allay global concerns but to allay domestic concerns as well.

China is concerned about its growth, not so much because it is bothered by how other countries (both developing and developed) perceive it. It is more because of the environmental problems that have plagued its growth that makes it realise the importance of being green. “Severe pollution and worries over dependence on fossil fuels” are just some problems of national security that concern the Chinese government, and it is doing what it can by enhancing energy-efficiency and attempting to move away from fossil fuels. It cannot probably move away entirely from coal because of its abundance and cheap price, but China is making efforts to make coal “less polluting”.

China is also investing in new technologies, such as clean renewable energy research, that could potentially open up a new market for such products as well as cement China’s position as an industrial leader in a new field that is yet untapped fully in most other countries. The Telegraph in an earlier article in May observes some changes to what China is doing in this new field. However, China would require the help of other developed countries in the West in managing its research and development.

All these will add up to “a massive impact on greenhouse-gas pollution”, and such efforts are certainly laudable and commendable. It is, however, important, for China to lead not just locally but globally. As a rising superpower, it is “ready to lead when it starts playing offense in climate talks as well as defense”, and China needs to prove that “it can cut emissions”, which will then assuage global concerns as well as debunk the West’s “excuse for doing nothing” because of “Chinese inaction”.

Other writers and newspapers have weighed it on China’s “Green Revolution”. The Guardian details some targets set by Chinese officials on adoption of renewable energy sources, while Thomas Friedman in The New York Times writes about how “red China” is becoming “green China”. There appears to be much regarding what China is doing for the environment, even if it might seem miniscule, so the United States should certainly do its part and contribute more than “business as usual”, given its current superpower status (which it might soon lose to China if it does nothing to stem the decline).

The return of tuberculosis?

Jeneen Interlandi writes in Newsweek’s Special Edition – Issues 2010 about the return of tuberculosis (TB), an infectious diseases that is thought to be well under control but is in fact returning with a vengeance to many countries around the world. While focus on infectious diseases has been placed heavily on HIV / AIDS and malaria, tuberculosis has been left “to fester” as it continues to kill on average 5000 people daily, much more than “swine flu has killed in the past year”.

Medication against tuberculosis has been present since 1944, but the tuberculosis bacterium continues to develop drug resistance to newer drugs over time. The development of MDR-TB (multi drug-resistant TB) and XDR-TB (extensively drug-resistant TB) has been a worrying trend, not just in poor continents like Africa where many infectious diseases continue to rage, but even in more developed regions like Eastern Europe. TB specialists argue that money for research into curing TB is insufficient, and most of the research focus on infectious diseases is on other “headline” diseases like HIV / AIDS. This old but still strong bacterium is “exposing all the cracks in our multi billion-dollar global health system”.

Solutions? One that is already being undertaken by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is to tackle TB together with HIV / AIDS, since the reduced immunity of these patients will make them especially susceptible to TB. This approach does seem to have its own problems, as manifested in Swaziland.

Hence a more comprehensive solution needs to be developed that prevents diseases from occurring in the first place: “clean water, nutritious food and functioning clinics”. Vaccine development and drug discovery needs to continue, but we should not forget the real basis that will bring about good health in the first place, especially in disease-ravaged continents such as Africa. We cannot afford to ignore XDR-TB, in particular, because while it has high mortality rates of 90%, patients “usually live for several months”, enough to spread this extremely virulent form of TB to more people and create more havoc on the health system.

America’s greatest risk: Terrorism or itself?

In Newsweek’s Special Edition – Issues 2010, Stephen Flynn writes about how America’s greatest risk is itself: the danger that the American government will overreact to the terror threat, and hence disrupt how America has been operating all this while.

Flynn argues that “the greatest peril today is not of an attack but the danger the country will overreact”. A terrorist attack might make huge headline news and cause much panic and trouble, but it seems like the government is in the meantime neglecting other disasters that could potentially claim as many, if not more, lives. For instance, hurricanes and earthquakes or even H1N1 and avian flu. The threat of terror certainly remains, but overreaction could cause huge trauma on top of the damage already done by the terrorists. The blockade of the US economy thanks to the grounding of all flights and closing of all borders post-911 would have accomplished exactly the economic damage that the terrorists aim to inflict upon America.

Flynn then proposes that the government should abandon the “muscular but unrealistic ‘protection at all costs’ approach”. Bush may have claimed that “terrorists need to get things right just once, the nation’s defenders have to be right 100% of the time”, but this is an “impossible standard” since no government in history has ever accomplished this. Singapore may be close to this, but only in recent history: one only needs to think back to the Konfrontasi period in the 1960s when the Indonesians struck the McDonald House to recall that Singapore has not been exactly immune to acts of terror (in particular, one inflicted by the government of an opposing force).

In essence, the government needs to get the citizens involved and not just be the big nanny and take charge if and when terror strikes. Flynn states that “terror works only if it convinces people they are vulnerable and powerless”, so if the government can give people ways to “address their vulnerabilities”, terrorism might not be as “terrifying” as perceived to be. The citizens should “share the responsibility for preparing the nation to cope with man-made and natural disasters”, so that people will become better able to “withstand, recover and adapt to catastrophic risks”.

Sanction no more?

In January 27’s The Straits Times, Susan Long writes in the Review column about why sanctions will not work in curbing Iran’s nuclear tendencies. Whether sanctions work or not has been a long debated issue, and simply googling the title of Long’s article “Why sanctions dont work now” will yield many articles that have been written on this subject, mostly arguing for the end of sanctions against “evil” countries like Iran and Cuba.

First, regarding Long’s write-up. She asserts that sanctions may not be as messy as outright fighting or war, but they harm the innocent civilians most and not the leaders and perpetrators. The poor suffer the most as they have limited access to food, medicine and daily necessities amongst other things, whereas the rich are not affected very much by economic sanctions since they already have the monetary ability to purchase high-end goods like “Swiss chocolate”. The elite will “thrive on the black market” while the poor suffer unnecessarily.

Sanctions can also backfire, such as when it unites a country against the perpetrators of the sanctions (often the United States of America together with the United Nations). Take the sanctions against Iran. Instead of isolating the Islamic regime led by Ayatollah Khamenei & President Ahmadinejad and causing displeasure towards the leaders by the populace, it could end up bringing together the forces that wanted to overthrow Khamenei & Ahmadinejad, led by the Green movement whose leader is Mir-Hossein Mousavi. This would make it even more difficult to “overthrow” the current Islamic regime should the incumbents unite with the opposition against the United States and the outside world.

Of course, sanctions are only sanctioned when the country that imposes the sanctions does not stand to lose much. And often countries that impose sanctions or threaten to do so end up revoking them out of other motivations, such as the United States’ threat to impose sanctions on Myanmar which in the end were not realised because such sanctions would have benefitted China and other rogue regimes that would increase their sphere of influence in the country.

Some other articles that disbelieve in sanctions can be found online as well. Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times has similar views to Long, published in the Global Policy Forum. David Henderson of Hoover Institution in Hoover Digest even goes as far as to propose that free trade with “rogue” nations would help to engineer collapses in these regimes when the people open their eyes to the world out there and what is on offer. Dursun Peksen in Foreign Policy names other plausible alternatives such as “engagement / dialogue” and even economic incentives like foreign aid.

In essence, the idea seems to be that should the stick fail, the carrot might be the only way out. In a globalized world such as ours, penalties like sanctions have a high chance of backfiring.

Bundles of Cables

James Surowiecki from New Yorker talks about the effects of the recent Fox vs Time-Warner Cable affair on public perception. His focus was that the event reminds viewers that much of the money they pay are for stuff they don’t use or don’t want – the idea of bundling, allowing consumer surpluses in one product/good spill over to others which are bundled together with it. This allows less mainstream stuff to be sold to the mass market or introduced to consumers since without bundling their proceeds wouldn’t pay for the cost.

The complexity of the modern economy supports bundling; it helps people make some of their choices. Imagine if you’ve to assemble exactly which channels you want each month based on what is going to be screened on them; or to decide every single module running in your computer during installation (the Linux style); or to decide which brand of sugar, type of coffee beans, water and cup to use for takeaway coffee at breakfast. And James show how customers like them:

The appeal of bundling is partly that it reduces transaction costs: instead of having to figure out how much each part of a package is worth to you, you can make a blanket judgment. Bundling eliminates the problem of fretting about small expenditures, which may be one reason that flat-rate pricing is very common in the vacation industry (cruise ships, all-inclusive travel packages, and so on). It also offers what economists call option value: you may never watch those sixty other channels, but the fact that you could if you wanted to is worth something. Many consumers also perceive bundles as bargains; getting a bunch of things for one price feels like a deal, even when it’s not.

Of course, like what James mentioned at the end of the article, when components of the bundle start fighting over the cost of each of them or the proportion of their share over the entire bundle’s proceeds, it will raise the appeal of à la carte. Imagine when the addition of a Sashimi palette into the buffet table results in the waiter going around to collect extra money from the patrons still in the restaurant and able to enjoy the Sashimi. Those who don’t want the Sashimi and just entered the restaurant would opt for à la carte while those leaving would protest.

End of Packages

The Reading Packages have been discontinued after 12 weeks. Thanks for all the reading of those links and watching the interesting videos featured. We might continue to do this now and then but no longer regularly and on Saturdays. Those interested in checking out the packs we have previously can click on the links here:

Past Reading Packages

Week 1 – 24 October 2009
Week 2 – 31 October 2009
Week 3 – 6 November 2009
Week 4 – 13 November 2009
Week 5 – 21 November 2009
Week 6 – 28 November 2009
Week 7 – 5 December 2009
Week 8 – 12 December 2009
Week 9 – 19 December 2009
Week 10 – 26 December 2009
Week 11 – 2 January 2010
Week 12 – 9 January 2010

All reading packs and future ones will still be filed under ‘Reading Packs‘, so check it out to view the archives. Get on reading and viewing!

The Tsunami’s Application to Haiti

An article in The Economist discusses the lessons learnt from the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 which can be applied to the recent devastating Haiti earthquake. Apparently, aid agencies concur that it is not the matter of the amount of aid being delivered to Haiti, but more of the local capabilities and responses to the earthquake that will make or break the relief efforts.

Post-tsunami, 9 months later, only 39% of money promised to be spent has been dispersed. It is not that more money is needed, but the types of aid being donated must correspond with the need. When “Viagra, ski jackets and Father Christmas costumes” can be donated to the tsunami victims, it does indicate that there is the lack of sensibilities in terms of what people donate and how they provide aid. We cant really fault the kind-hearted for wanting to do something, but to donate such unsensible and insensitive stuff to people who need more than those seems to smack of sheer stupidity. Or is it just a chance to clear one’s home of junk?

In addition, local administration has to be strong and in charge during a disaster. Malaysia’s response to the tsunami (Penang was affected) contrasts vastly with Aceh’s response. Malaysia’s effective governance made relief efforts useful while the political conflict in Aceh made it even more difficult for relief efforts, even if we ignore the fact that the epicentre of the disaster was in Aceh. Even the proliferation of too many NGOs can create headaches, as each NGO fights to distribute aid and contribute to relief efforts, which can make control and management very messy for the local administration. This was proven in Aceh with 180 NGOs operating there at one point, and may prove to be another problem in Haiti which had “more NGOs per capita than anywhere else in the Americas”.

Another article by the BBC on the differences between Haiti and Aceh points out other problems that Haiti faces that Aceh did not face, such as the lack of coordination and information on security forces operating in Haiti, which made Haiti appear to be like a “war zone” as portrayed on TV. And considering that Haiti at its best of times is already a nightmare, one can imagine how the earthquake would make things so much worse.

So the Haiti government as well as other governments and NGOs helping out in Haiti have to make sure they learn some lessons from the tsunami response efforts, or else even more will suffer.

Your oil comes from… Venezuela?

Following up from my write-up on why petrol is expensive in oil-producing Alaska, another article written by The Green Conservative Jim DiPeso in The Daily Green argues that pumps should feature where their oil comes from. And the reason for such features are not just for the geography student like me keen to know where my products come from.

“Country of origin labels on gas pumps” are being advocated in the USA, the land where federal regulations dictate that agricultural products be labeled for their country-of-origin and customers like to demand for the right to knowledge about the products they consume. It helps people choose which country’s oil they want to use, and hence avoid supporting “despots” like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or Vladimir Putin of Russia. But it will be too complicated, as much as it sounds like a really cool idea. As mentioned in my previous write-up, all that oil from different countries are pooled together then sold, so chances are the gas / petrol in your tank comes from all over the world literally. An alternative he suggests is the proportion of oil coming from which country, so consumers get to know.

And perhaps choose to boycott petrol stations that buy oil from “evil” countries to sell. (Venezuela, Iran & Russia for starters…) Not that they would have much of an option, considering that coincidentally many oil producing countries happen to be rather undesirable in aspects ranging from democracy and freedom of expression to living standards, so if you wish to make a statement you’d probably have to stop driving to stop using petrol.