Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Improving the gene pool

Hooray for SMRT! They've decided not to put up barriers at the boarding platforms.

People need to learn to be responsible for themselves. That means if you see train tracks, you should know that a train is likely to run on them. Especially if you're going to board that train when it arrives. That also means you should stay away from them until the train arrives. If your children are high-energy and adventurous, it's up to you to make sure they live to have adventures that will take them places (like Mount Everest). Natural selection will take care of those people who can't figure that out.

I normally wouldn't hurt a fly (Terz and G will attest to that) but stupidity has to have consequences. If we protect stupid people from themselves all the time they'll never learn. And if there are enough of them around they might actually outvote the smart ones on things that really matter, like who's going to be the next POTUS.

Sometimes I think Education ought to be more about learning to make intelligent decisions and learning common sense than anything else. Of course it's good to know how the world works, but theory is still theory after all, and like Adam Smith's invisible hand, you never know when something that you've always taken for granted could just be a case of misplaced faith.

The rest of the time I think Education is about Moulding the Future of Our Nation.
Which includes nurturing and developing Innovans. Or are they Innovates? Do they speak Innovish? Will Innovese culture be significantly different from ours? Is Innovology going to be offered as a contrasting subject? Is Innova something that's in the midst of blowing up (kind of like a reverse Atlantis)? Or is it a reference to a reproductive cell in a place of lodging?
I'll find out from my soon-to-be-ex-colleagues soon enough.

On a side note, the Sony Ericsson website has the abbreviation "spg" for its Singapore link. Looks like they've had close encounters of the Boat Quay kind before.

6 comments:

Tym said...

*cackle* The 'spg' reference cracks me up. Even better is that Changi Airport in international three-letter airport lingo is 'SIN'. No abbreviation could be more wrong.

Terz said...

Well, at least somone finally grew some gonads and stopped the talk (or should that be 'consultation'?) about the barriers before it got really ridiculous.

My take is that the bloody thing has been in operation for the past 18 years. 18! And the recent 'accidents' (at all the B stations, incidentally) are no more than state-assisted (well, semi-state assisted) suicides.

So why are people making a mountain of this molehill now?

Packrat said...

O well. We were theorising that the recent spate of MRT deaths was a serial killer going around shoving people off the platforms. :) Or a spontaneous act of violence thing where people take turns shoving people off...much like the spontaneous demonstration thing that was so big a half a year ago.

Tym said...

Packrat, you mean flash mobs? That's so last month :)

Packrat said...

Flash Serial Killers...
I think it's the wave of the future.

said...

what worries me more is that common sense has to be taught.

and boko - we know where you've been and what kind of close encounters you've had at boat quay... haha. the ability to reverse engineer facts. (just kiddin' ;-))

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