The World Today.. Through Newspapers

Computerlessness at work compels innovation, take my word for it. Today I read all the local newspapers- The Straits Times by sitting opposite a gentleman who was reading it and mypaper and Today from the free copies being handed out at various train stations I just happened to be at. Then of course I moved on to every major media outlet online that came to mind. It still was a far cry from 6pm. So I wrote about all the amusing, strange and outrageous things I'd read on a sheet of paper I grabbed from the printer tray using a good for nothing office pen :) When I looked it over my instant reaction was #WhatIsTheWorldComingTo.

The world's first nudist hiking trail opened in Germany. You'd think people would have a problem with that if anything. People actually didn't have so much of an issue with that as with the sign put up which said, "If you don't want to run into any naked people, stop right there!" The person who objected could always go and change the signboard!

Women in Saudi Arabia can be punished for driving since it's apparently not allowed. A woman in Singapore was fined for walking- $1,500 (and landed on the front page above the fold of The Straits Times so you can add in national humiliation). She did however contribute to the death of a cyclist. What did the women in Saudi Arabia do again?!

500 children in the US died between 1998-2010 from being left in cars. If that's not at least a little bit incredulous, then a researcher said that if you can forget your phone, you can forget your child in the car. Probably a good thing for children that people can't seem to live without their iPhones these days then?

Business cards are falling out of fashion as internet services now fill that gap. Moleskin notebooks apparently are all the rage however. Maybe Steve Jobs should consider a moleskin iMac (ok, kind of lame). Moleskin business cards anyone?

In the Iron Man movie there is this outrageous scene where Iron Man discovers a new element in under 15 minutes. Well we found two new ones - Element 114 and 116 - but it took us a few years. Unfortunately they're kind of useless to us at the moment and cannot be used as the power source for any fancy (or non-fancy) power suits. Pity.

Weiner is going to rehab. Apparently #TMITweeting + #VirtualPerversion + #SuggestiveName = #Addiction. And with that I've now used more hashtags off the twitterverse than on.

The Syrian gay girl blogger is a guy. 

It's a weird world isn't it? I haven't even mentioned Gaddafi running out of money while sitting on 155 tonnes of gold, Greek bonds having the lowest ratings among all rated countries (CCC by S&P's), research showing brain scans of teenagers can predict the songs that top charts or research showing that coffee can cause hallucinations. Is there something research cannot show?

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Click to Read:

German nudist hiking trail (Time)

Saudi Arabian women (Time)

Children dead from being left in cars (Time)

Business cards

Moleskin notebooks

Element 114 and 116 also anti-hydrogen contained for 15 minutes o.0 (Michio Kaku- bigthink)

Weiner Addiction? (Two Articles) 1 2 (Time)

Syrian fake gay girl blogger (CNN)

Gaddafi running out of money

Greek bonds credit rating downgraded (LA Times)

Teenager brain scans (LA Times)

Coffee causing hallucinations (Time)

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More Interesting Links:

San Francisco considering a ban on circumcision (Time)

The world's first virtual currency (The Economist)

An analysis of Sarah Palin's emails (Time)

Most popular iPhone unlock codes (Time)

Google, Apple, Microsoft and the Hilarious "Auto-complete Battle"

Autocomplete is hilarious.

For a fact.

I don't know whether anybody has tried this before, but I wanted to see what Google thinks about itself versus what it thinks about Apple and Microsoft. Of course technically rankings of search results are supposedly determined by actual search patterns among other things, but does anybody really think Google would allow itself to be ridiculed on its own search engine? Well, let's find out!

Apple is...

Microsoft is...

And now for the grand finale- Google is...

There you have it. Google is God and skynet. Everybody else is either doomed or the devil. I do wonder how a company can have a sexual orientation, unless of course the implication was that it was happy-gay. More than anything though, I have one burning question - Why, pray, is everything evil?!

*accurate as of 18th May 2011, 2320 (GMT+8)
**If you search for "Bing is " the second option is "not google". I find that very awesome in a lot of ways!
***Yes, I like inventing weird phrases like "auto-complete battle", so? :)

Amusing Incidents

Sunday 28th March, 2011
12 noon Singapore Time - The Singapore Immigration Counter

The officer looked at my passport and then at me. I don't look like the person pictured in the passport so there's always a reaction and I waited patiently for it. "You've lost weight, haven't you? How much? 10 (kgs)?" Now that was certainly a first, "16," I replied. He was satisfied; scanned, stamped and I was ready to go.

1800 hrs Singapore Time- Guangzhou International Transfers Counter

The officer again looked at my passport at then it me. And again. And once more. About ten more times. Then he mimed at me to pull back my hair. Still dissatisfied he told me to look at the screen and took a picture. I was beginning to think that that would be it but he kept looking back and forth and puzzling over the difference for another ten minutes. Finally came the stamp and I walked on to get lost in the apparent signlessness of transfers area.

Monday 29th March, 2011
0130 hrs UAE Time - Dubai International Arrivals Passport Control

This time he didn't look at me and the picture in the passport. Instead he spoke to me in Hindi, which was entirely unexpected yet made me like the place instantaneously for whatever reason. He scanned my eye, was relieved to get the image first shot, and stamped and signed so I could go see the place that I had already decided I liked.

I'm not much for blogging, tweeting, etcetera about personal experiences, but for some reason I HAD to write this and write it without my usual dose of opining.

The Crystal Balls of Journalism

The future of journalism is a topic which has generated a fair amount of journalistic material. It was getting to the point where I was beginning to think a large fraction of people in or related to the profession of journalism had become more interested in figuring out the future of journalism than actually working with the tools of the times and moving ahead (in which case the future of the profession could definitely be forecasting; tarot card tellers and mystics were getting old anyway). Then I read this amazing article called "Journalistic Nuclear Physics" on The Economist website.

Changing the meaning of the word "story", what an elegant and exciting thought! It's not really a prediction if you think about it. At this juncture with the juxtaposition of technology, the internet and social media, life has become persistent and continuous with fewer degrees of separation. What we do persists digitally, what we do next is linked to what we did before and the world has become a smaller place. Life is a succession of stories, and the stories are evolving in much the same way as the stuff they embody - life.

This was one article out of the seemingly endless ones on the "future" of journalism that actually made sense. I'd still maintain that the future is created by action, not speculation, so I guess I'm still not in favor of the obsession with figuring out the future instead of working on it. One article isn't quite enough to change my mind I suppose! 

Topics That Should Not Be Named

There are certain words that have inherently negative connotations in society. These words are best avoided in social conversations, and indeed everywhere else for they always bring with them a side of controversy. Incest is most certainly one of them. That is perhaps why although I learned of the existence of the documentary "Sleeping With My Sister" 4-5 months ago, I only got around to watching it tonight.

The documentary follows two couples who would both be pronounced guilty in the event of a societal judgement  on charges of incest. Both were half-siblings who grew up apart, met as adults and allegedly fell in "love". A disease called Genetic Sexual Attraction, or GSA for short, was introduced as the cause of both the relationships. GSA occurs when family members who have been separated for the entire duration of their lives meet and the overwhelming emotions that would occur at such a time take a sexual turn.

Frankly, I don't buy GSA. I also don't presume to judge the couples, on grounds moral or otherwise. I don't even pretend to understand where they are coming from. Watching the documentary made me wonder about the definitions of family and love prevalent in society. We are brought up to recognize the difference between family, friends and strangers. We are brought up to differentiate between the nature of familial love and romantic love. In fact the Greeks even defined love for ones children as a special kind of love and named it storge. I wonder, is there really a difference?

Of course pragmatically, incest is detrimental to societal due to its biological implications in case of couples who procreate. So it makes sense to shun the concept of incest of grounds of survival of species. But if one is not brought up with the notion that this other person is family and deserves one's familial love, then is that person family in any other way besides shared genes? Is the segregation of "love" and its nature just an imposed societal norm? Or are there really different types of love, types influenced by our DNA sequences?

I Know What You Did Last Semester.

Ok, No, I Only Know How Many Classes You Attended...

Digital attendance taking systems in colleges. Bunking classes and life as an undergraduate are synonymous for almost all college students. On the 31st of August, Newsweek published an article about the implementation of digital attendance taking systems in US universities. The crux of the article is that universities want to take action considering dwindling attendance and its impact on students' GPA. Therefore, the system wherein students tap their ID cards on scanners when entering class. The sole opinion expressed in the article criticizes this system for focusing on attendance rather than learning; I'm afraid I don't quite agree.

What really is the college management expected to do to better the quality of education experienced by a student? The onus of a students’ education lies ultimately with the students and the teachers that teach those students. So while, it is all good to point out that a better way to solve the problem of college dropouts is to focus on the active learning components, it doesn’t work out realistically. Firstly, the two approaches require action by distinct parties. And secondly, attendance is kind of a prerequisite if the intention is to encourage active learning in the classroom! So I think that the university administration should be given some support for trying to solve the problem as opposed to sitting there saying, "What can we do about student attendance?!"

(Dear College Admin, as someone with experience in tapping cards for attendance, a lot of people will only pass people their cards. So you might consider biometric attendance. I mean, nobody would give someone a finger just so that I can sleep in late and miss class, right?!)

Why a Debate on the "Rising Cost of Education" Brings the Word Misnomer to Mind

Colleges and universities and the term 'Education' are generally thought to be synonymous. To be honest, I have never really seen the direct correlation everybody else does, especially since i entered university myself. Education is about knowledge, learning, growing and broadening your horizons to whatever extent you wish to push yourself to. What is needed for that is a curious mind and a will to find answers to the questions devised by that curious mind by whatever means possible. Sitting in class and half-heartedly listening to a lecture or cramming for examinations does not necessarily imply getting an education in any sense of the word.

So why do we go to university and pay handsomely to do so? Because a university degree is societal recognition, albeit recognition of expertise you may or may not have acquired. The brand name of the university that awards the degree is the mark of the standard of expertise acquired by the degree-holder. Those societal recognitions are what we empty our pockets for, thinking otherwise is probably delusional. Until we find a better way to recognize expertise, the current university system will have to do.

The recent debate about the American Higher Education System, covered comprehensively in an essay by Christopher Shea entitled "The End of Tenure?", does not in my opinion cover any of the above. Professors are highly paid because we assign a high value to the recognition that comes along with a degree. We support research in universities because we want to expand our societal knowledge base. "Too much" specialization is just a by product that we can choose to accept or weed out, although weeding out will require the Congress to frame a bill - "Standards of Acceptable Specialization", which should be a hilarious affair all in all.

It is ironic that in an era supposedly characterized by freedom of information access, namely the Web 2.0 era, we are worrying about the increasing costs of education. Because education was always free for the taking, although admittedly less accessible than it is now. The cost that has risen - that of the societal contractual recognition of expertise and the brand name supporting that recognition.