R.I.P. Sony Walkman (Snr)

The Walkman kept 220 million users entertained en route to Mr Byrite (and other shops) Sony Walkman (Senior) has reached the end of side two. Its batteries have run out. The rewind button is broken.

Lovers of music overlaid with hissing have reacted with sadness to news that Sony has ceased production of its celebrated portable cassette-playing audio device. It is survived by its neater, slicker, more junior MP3 descendent.

But the Walkman will be fondly remembered as the contraption which transformed listening to music from an activity conducted principally in one's own living room, perhaps with glass of brandy in hand, to a means of irritating other people on public transport.

"Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk. Chk."

That was how it sounded when you sat next to a foam-headphoned user on the bus, overlaid with the faint but recognisable vocal inflections of Pat Benatar.

Friends of Sony Walkman may have predicted its demise when digital technology offered a more compact alternative, one which did not depend on carrying on one's person a supply of cassettes and a biro in order to conduct remedial tape-spooling.

But following its birth in 1979, an astonishing 220 million units were sold - testament to the device's status as a 1980s icon no less memorable than shoulder pads, Filofaxes and David Bowie starting to produce rubbish albums.

Tailor-made for that decade's widespread aspiration for conspicuous, miniaturised consumerism, the Walkman meant no user needed to get home to listen to that latest Johnny Hates Jazz long-player.

Joggers could motivate themselves with the assistance of the Rocky theme.

Bored teenagers could pretend they lived somewhere edgier than suburban Chichester by soundtracking their walk to school with The Guns of Brixton.

Alas, technological progress and the dawn of the CD meant the decade was barely complete before the general public started to recognise that audio cassettes were not, in fact, the medium of the future but a cumbersome, chewing-up-prone source of much annoyance.

CD and MP3 versions of the Walkman will remain in production, but it is via the ubiquity of the music played on Apple iPods leaking beyond their users' headphones into the earshot of other public transport users that its spirit truly lives on.

No flowers.

Call me a spoilsport but I'm glad my dad wasn't a lesbian

I’m not sure this is quite right because, so far as I can remember, a woman is not able to have a child after having sexual relations with another woman. Unless that woman is from an athletics squad.

In order for a lesbian couple to have had a child, either a turkey baster must have been involved — which is not how most people would like to imagine they came into the world.

I do not think that someone who objects to homosexual parents is a retarded homophobe. I believe they have an opinion. But, that said, I emphatically don’t agree that lesbians necessarily make better parents than me. It is impossible to say that someone will make a better parent because she fancies other girls. There will be some lesbians who’ll go out all night and take drugs and there will be some who’ll read a child a bedtime story and be excellent.

You can’t possibly draw any conclusions after testing 20 lesbians. Test 20 Italians and you could well end up concluding the whole nation was full of calm, incorruptible dullards with no interest in sex. Test temperatures over just 20 years and you’d end up concluding the world’s climate was changing.

I like lesbians, especially proper ones in stockings that you find on the internet. Certainly, I think more women should try lesbianism. It’d be great. But on a personal note, and please don’t call me a retarded homophobe, I’m not sure I’d have been very happy if my mum had been one.

All of us think that the way we bring up our children is correct and that the way everyone else brings up their children is completely wrong. They’re too strict. Too lax. Too open. Too closed. Too heterosexual. No one gets it as right as you do.

And that’s the thing. Bringing up a child is personal, and there is really no space in the nature and nurture debate for a bunch of frizzy-haired lunatics running around making political points at our expense about lesbians.

I don’t like the idea that lesbians, even the weird, big sort in dungarees, should be excluded from adopting a baby. They grew up with a predilection for members of the same genital group but that doesn’t stop them being good parents.

Banning a lesbian from parenting would be as cruel as banning someone because they had an interest in golf, which is what I’d do if I were in charge. Or because they had ginger hair. However, I’m afraid we must think about the children. Having two mums, whether you like it or not, is going to cause a spot of bother in the playground. But that’s just my view and I’m only a normal straight guy. What do I know?

Stars staying alive is really killing rock'n'roll

Of the 321 well known musicians how died prematurely in the glory days of rock’n’roll, 40 were taken by drugs, 36 by suicide and a whopping 22 by plane or helicopter crashes. 35 died in cars, 18 were murdered, 9 drowned in their own vomit and five in their own swimming pools. Pick up a guitar in London in 1972 were more lethal than picking up a rifle in Stalingrad in 1942.

Coming home from school back then and saying you were going to be a formula one racing driver would have prompt a sigh of relief from your mum: ‘well, thank god you’re not going to be in a band.’
Now, thought, things are different. With the notable and noble exception of Kurt Cobain who blew whatever it was he had inside his head all over the wall with a shotgun. So far as I am aware, nobody in Duran Duran is dead and, the last time I looked Pink is in it and even Oasis have manage to steer clear of their swimming pools.

Perhaps this is the problem with music today. Perhaps the declining for radio and dwindling album sales have something to do with a lack of danger. Back in 1990s I would have to rush to see a band, partly because I liked the energy of a live concert and partly, subliminally perhaps, because there was a sense that they would all be dead by the following week. Usually they were.

Economic Indicators

Economic indicators are regularly released governmental statistics that indicate the growth and health of a country especially its economy. Economic indicators mostly influence the value of a country's currency. These are key statistics that show the direction of the economy. The Trade Deficit, the Gross National Product (GNP), Industrial Production, the Unemployment Rate, Inflation Rate, Factory Utilization Rate and the Business Inventories are instances of economic indicators.

Economic indicators are used to analyze the economic behavior of a country and predict the manner in which economy will act in near future. On the basis of types of predictions economic indicators are of three kinds:

1.       Coincident economic indicator

2.       Leading economic indicator

3.       Lagging indicators

A coincident economic indicator happens in tandem with an economic event. This indicator occurs at approximately the same time as the conditions they signify. The paradigm instance of it is company payrolls. These payrolls are coincident indicators because they make payment and simultaneously increase the localized economy. Personal income is also a coincidental indicator for the economy. High personal income rates will coincide with a strong economy. The coincident indicators do not predict future events but change with a change in time and economy of the stock market.

A lagging indicator is one that follows an event. This indicator is an event, which happens after the corresponding economic cause occurs just like the amber light is a lagging indicator for the green light as amber trails green. The unemployment rate of a country is an example of a lagging indicator because as the economy is doing badly or companies are expecting a downturn in the economy, the unemployment rate increases accordingly. Media is also a lagging economic indicator for the news is always reported few hours before the actual economic fluctuation that they point to. A lagging indicator is immensely significant because of its ability to confirm that a pattern is happening or about to occur.

Leading indicators are events that take place right before an economic shift. The leading indicators are instrumental in forecasting future events. The leading indicators exhibit immense accuracy in the world of finance. An example of leading indicators is the bond yields. Bond yields are leading indicators of the stock market because on behalf of these bond traders anticipate and further course of the stock market and economy of the country.

However in economics the classification of several factors is subject to debate. For instance according to some people the Federal Reserve is a leading indicator while for others it is a lagging indicator. The trend of the market indicates either that the market reacts to the Federal Reserve changing interest rates or that the Federal Reserve changes interest rates only in response to the market. Seeing practically the Federal Reserve can be viewed as both a leading and lagging indicator.

Every week dozens of economic surveys are conducted and several economic indicators are released. In order to understand the current and future of the market and so enjoy a successful business, it is very important for all the investors to crack the economic indicators skillfully.

The bandwagon effect

The bandwagon effect, also known as the "cromo effect" and closely related to opportunism, is a phenomenon—observed primarily within the fields of microeconomics, political science, and behaviorism—that people often do and believe things merely because many other people do and believe the same things. The effect is often called herd instinct, though strictly speaking, this effect is not a result of herd instinct. The bandwagon effect is the reason for the bandwagon fallacy's success.

The bandwagon effect is well-documented in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so". As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence. The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments.

When individuals make rational choices based on the information they receive from others, economists have proposed that information cascades can quickly form in which people decide to ignore their personal information signals and follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain why behavior is fragile—people understand that they are based on very limited information. As a result, fads form easily but are also easily dislodged. Such informational effects have been used to explain political bandwagons.

Fear of fat can seriously damage your health

Scientist revealed recently that a child born in 2030 will live five years longer than a child born yesterday. So by the middle of this century there will be more people drawing a pension than people going to work.

This will have a catastrophic effect on the economy because simple arithmetic shows there won’t be enough money in the kitty to keep all these old people in hips and cat food.

So what on earth are we going to? Make people save money so they are self-sufficient in their old age? Get everyone to have more babies? Or ship in thousands of healthy young immigrants who can  run around actually doing some work? A tricky decision.

But came along a report saying we won’t be living so long after all. Thanks to the effort of McMeals and its over ready chips, we are going to explode by the time we are 62. Now you’d have expected the government to greet the news with a sigh of relief.

But not a bit of it. The health ministry said a big debate was needed to challenge the problem of obesity.  So what’s going on here? One minute we are told that we are all going to live to be 126 and that we’ll have to eat each other to survive. Then we are told that actually it’d be best if we eat nothing at all.

move along lad, or be a gay astronaut

I had an interesting conversation with one of my ex-colleague recently, she was quite a good looking girl. But from the day I knew her till today she remain single.

It puzzle me, was there a force field which if any man gets near her they will electrocuted? Or maybe she has a spell on her that makes man who get near her to turn into Borat with David Beckham’s voice.

So after drinking down 1.5l of cola light and burp my way from Tuas to Pasir Ris, I pop the question. “Arh…. why you still single har?” Her reply “oh I like to be dote by guys who go after me”. I was dumb folded, apparently the daily traffic jam which happen at PIE was not cause by increase number of vehicle owners but due to guys was queuing to be her chauffer.

Well the last time I check female population was twice the number of males in Singapore. So to those guys who is still queuing for his turn tomorrow, move along before they build a ERP gantry at her home and work place there are tons of pretty ones out there. If you find you had spend too much effort on her, and simply can’t let go…. I suggest you be a gay astronaut given the chance of success is higher and the rewards are better compare to the lost in you pocket.

Revolution Justification

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
 
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
 
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

creation–evolution controversy

Even before the publication of The Origin of Species, the idea that life had evolved was a source of debate and evolution is still a contentious concept. Debate has generally centered on the philosophical, social and religious implications of evolution, not on the science itself; the proposition that biological evolution occurs through the mechanism of natural selection is standard in the scientific literature.

As Darwin recognized early on, the most controversial aspect of evolutionary thought is its implications to humans. Specifically, some people believe that the origin of humans involved supernatural intervention, rather than natural processes. Although many religions and denominations have reconciled their beliefs with evolution through theistic evolution, several denominations contain creationists who object to evolution, as it contradicts their literal interpretation of origin beliefs. In some countries – notably the United States – these tensions between scientific and religious teachings have fueled the ongoing creation–evolution controversy, a religious conflict focusing on politics and public education. While other scientific fields such as cosmology and earth science also conflict with literal interpretations of many religious texts, evolutionary biology has strong oppositions from believers of religion.

Evolution has been used to support philosophical positions that promote discrimination and racism. For example, the eugenic ideas of Francis Galton were developed to argue that the human gene pool should be improved by selective breeding policies, including incentives for those considered "good stock" to reproduce, and the compulsory sterilization, prenatal testing, birth control, and even killing, of those considered bad stock. Another example of an extension of evolutionary theory that is now widely regarded as unwarranted is "Social Darwinism," a term given to the 19th century Whig Malthusian theory developed by Herbert Spencer into ideas about "survival of the fittest" in commerce and human societies as a whole, and by others into claims that social inequality, racism, and imperialism were justified. However, contemporary scientists and philosophers consider these ideas to have been neither mandated by evolutionary theory nor supported by data.

一个人永远不要去羡慕他人

在今天我们讨论企业文化现代管理，有一个很时髦的词叫做核心竞争力。其实我们每一个人问问自己的人生，我的核心竞争力是什么。所谓核心竞争力是不可仿效的，也就是说是唯一性的。在今天这个时代没有什么叫做最好的，只有什么叫做唯一的。一个葫芦如果长得小可以当瓢用它有用；一棵树长得小它可以去做桌子椅子它有用；但是一个葫芦长到最大不必把它破开当游泳圈，它还是有用；一棵树长到最大可以仅仅为人遮风避雨，它也是有用。

Law was not about truth

One of the first things you learned in law school was that the law was not about truth. It was about dispute resolution. In the course of resolving a dispute, the truth might or might not emerge. often it did not. Prosecutors might know a criminal was guilty, and still unable to convict him. It happened all the time.

什么最重要?

有一个国王每天都在思考三个最最终极的哲学问题：在这个世界上，什么人最重要？什么事最重要？什么时间做事最重要？就这三个问题，举朝大臣，没人能够回答得出来。他很苦闷。

后来有一天，出去微服私访，走到一个很偏远的地方，投宿到一个陌生的老汉家。半夜里，他被一阵喧闹声惊醒，发现一个浑身是血的人闯进老汉家。那个人说，后面有人追我。老汉说，那你就在我这儿避一避吧。就把他藏起来了。国王吓得不敢睡，一会儿看见追兵来了。追兵问老汉，有没有看到一个人跑过来？老头说，不知道，我家里没有别人。后来追兵走了，那个被追捕的人说了一些感激的话也走了。

老汉关上门继续睡觉。第二天国王问老汉说，你为什么敢收留那个人？你就不怕惹上杀身之祸？而且你就那么放他走了，你怎么不问他是谁呢？

老汉淡淡地跟他说，在这个世界上，最重要的人就是眼下需要你帮助的人，最重要的事就是马上去做，最重要的时间就是当下，一点不能拖延。那个国王恍然大悟，他那三个久思不解的哲学问题，一下都解决了。

Adam Smith Expenses of the Sovereign

"Under Smith's model, government involvement in any area would have a negative impact on economic growth.

This is because economic growth is determined by the needs of a free market and the entrepreneurial nature of private persons. If there is a shortage of a product its price will rise, and so stimulate producers to produce more, while at the same time attracting new persons into that line of production.  

If there is an excess supply of a product (more of the product than people are willing to buy), prices will fall and producers will focus their energy and money in other areas where there is a shortage or where there is a need which no one has yet satisfied (thereby creating a new market)."

The invisible hand

There are two important features of Adam Smith's concept of the "invisible hand". First, Smith was not advocating a social policy (that people should act in their own self interest), but rather was describing an observed economic reality (that people do act in their own interest).

 

Second, Smith was not claiming that all self-interest has beneficial effects on the community. He did not argue that self-interest is always good; he merely argued against the view that self-interest is necessarily bad.

 

The "invisible hand" refers to the ability of the market to correct for seemingly disastrous situations with no intervention on the part of government or other organizations.

 

If a product shortage were to occur, that product's price in the market would rise, creating incentive for its production and a reduction in its consumption, eventually curing the shortage. The increased competition among manufacturers and increased supply would also lower the price of the product to its production cost plus a small profit, the "natural price."

 

Human motives are ultimately out of self interest, the net effect in the free market would tend to benefit society as a whole.

 

Posed by free and open markets among nations. If markets were free and open, the question arose how would a nation keep its capitalists from moving their capital out of the nation and into other countries where labor could be bought for cheaper. The answer, Adam Smith says, is that they will act with a view toward their own particular nationalistic interests which happen to correspond with the "public interest" at home.

 

In this way, by "preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry," the capitalist will in a sense be "led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."