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.

O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing*

I have just come back from a choir rehearsal and my throat's feeling a bit strained, which is to be expected since I don't have formal training and the only singing I do is in church once a week.

It's all my pastor's fault, really. Last Sunday his sermon was on BeholdMePeople (yes he insisted it was one word) and he challenged each parishioner to be a BeholdMePerson. A BeholdMePerson is one who answers God's call for people to do His work. It's kind of like those people who jump up and down and wave their hands and shout "Me! Me!" when someone asks for volunteers (my interpretation). Of course I didn't stand up and jump up and down and shout "Me! Me! I wanna be a BeholdMePerson!". But I did remember an urgent appeal by The Celebration Chorus for male voices sent to me just a couple of days before. So I went back and looked at it, and it seemed that the yoke was easy and the burden was light, and I saw that it was good.

So I will be lending my unpolished and comparatively mediocre voice (the tenor next to me tonight was far better) to the effort for the next 6 weeks, and by God's grace it will turn out well. The only disappointment tonight was discovering that we were going to sing the English translation of F. B. Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise. I was so looking forward to the German. :P

*Wesley wrote this hymn to commemorate the first anniversary of his conversion to Christ. This origin is reflected in the lyrics, “On this glad day the glorious Sun of Righteousness arose.” The stanza that begins “O for a thousand tongues to sing” is verse seven of Wesley’s original poem. This work first appeared in Hymns and Sacred Poems in 1740.

The Raveler

It used to unnerve me that the Universe is made up of mostly nothing.

I remember a feeling of incredulity when I first realised the implications of what my physics teacher taught me - that everything is made up of atoms, and that there's a lot of empty space between atoms. If you haven't figured out what that means, basically, we're all made up of little bits of matter with lots of empty space in between. What we think of as solid is really as fluffy as the cotton wool we use to simulate gunsmoke in battlefield dioramas.

What brought this on? I was feeling bored invigilating as usual, so I turned to the familiarly reassuring act of taking apart cotton thread - the kind used to tie answer scripts together.

If you haven't taken thread apart before, then you should know that that kind of thread is made up of 3 interwoven thinner threads. In turn, each thinner string can be separated (with great care) into 2 more even thinner threads. After that, any attempt to take it apart yields the most beautiful wisps of fibre which, if properly spread, can form an enchanting veil over one spectacle lens (though I am sure a skilled craftsman could make it cover two lenses).

So I spent my time ravelling, which means
To separate the fibers or threads of (cloth, for example)
according to Webster (the dictionary, though I'm sure it's someone's online nick, amongst other things).

I first came across that wonderful word in The Scottish Play by Shakespeare, when M talks about "Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care," and since then have seldom come across it in similar contexts (the sleeve of a CD doesn't count, and I'm not that much into Ravel's music anyway). It originates from an Old Dutch word meaning "loose thread".

So here I am in the Age of Computers and Gadgets Too Advanced To Be Named, ravelling thread, and through the ravelling of thread rediscovering an old truth - that we are actually made up of very little physical matter, but ah! the wonders we have done with so little!

And still there is so much left to do. And so much more thread to ravel.

Back from the Land South of the Clouds

I just came back from Yunnan, China, on Wednesday night, and can only say one thing:

I love mountains.

There's something about being 3000 ft. above sea level that really clears the sinuses and the brains (which lends credence to the old superstition of sneezing your brains out and letting the Devil in, hence the custom of saying "bless you", but I digress) (second digression: be prepared for more digressions)(note to self: cut down on digressions).

But really, it was most refreshing to see vast tracts of land, and vast opportunities to do just about anything with your life. I sometimes forget what a big and wonderful world it is, especially when caught in the daily shuttle between work and home.

I'm such a visual person, just seeing things does wonders for me. To see buildings within 100 metres everywhere I turn cuts off the supply of something indescribable that is essential to my soul. To see a city stretching out before me, with its mix of old and new, its history unfolding and evolving in its architectural landscape, lifts me halfway to rapture. It is at those times when I feel in communion with a greater cosmos.

I could sit all day and night and watch a city wake, live, and sleep.

Looks like I need to find a really tall building to live in.

First post

What can I say? I've succumbed to peer pressure and started a blog.
Like TYM I've got, well, too many thoughts to say out loud (and I really don't like talking too much) so this is my dumping ground, or will be. Sort of like a thought clearinghouse.
Ok that's enough for a first post.