The Miracle Strain (review - book)

Recently finished reading The Miracle Strain by Michael Cordy. If I had to rate it I'd give it a 1.5/5. His writing is unimpressive, with cliched pulp-fiction descriptions - for example, he went very great lengths to paint a "detailed" picture of the female protagonist that left me more nauseated than aroused. The plot is mildly interesting. He means it to be a controversial one - a geneticist (an atheist) tries to track down the DNA of Christ in order to heal his terminally ill daughter with divine genes. Unfortunately the science behind the story is wildly exaggerated. There are machines that can display a complete hologram of any human based on his DNA (to setup the "shock" scene where he gets a hologram of what Christ looked like). A small team of scientists have managed to decrypt the ENTIRE genetic sequence and rendered the Human Genome Project redundant which sets up most of the story. There are really to how far one's imagination can be suspended... Stories revolving around the origins of Christianity seem to be the rage, which put me off The Miracle Strain. The Da Vinci Code was a much better story anyway. The novel overlooks the most important reason why Christ is remembered - not merely as a healer, but also a teacher and a miracle-worker. One comment in the book did strike me though: A cancerous cell ironically destroys its body because the cell tries to achieve immortality. By ignoring the signals from its body to stop dividing, the cell eventually kills its body - and itself.

The Issue of Faith and Folly

I define faith with the Christian definition from Hebrews 11:

"Now faith is the assurance (or the substance) of things hoped for, the conviction (or the evidence) of things not seen."

Basically faith is a belief in something you cannot see. Faith is a concept which is heavily romanticized in religious culture. All religions profess faith, and without it a religion cannot stand under scrutiny. Scientists have faith too - they call them theories. I have faith that gravity exists although gravity is an invisible force because I accept the Theory of Gravity. But like theories, all faith must be based on some premise or observation. Otherwise it is a blind faith. If I state 2 + 2 = 4 and you merely memorize it and believe it, your faith is blind. If you take the effort to check out the concept by putting 2 apples and 2 apples together, your faith is justified, you have reason to believe that 2 +2 always makes 4. Everything is bound by logic. You cannot accept two contrasting beliefs. If the Catholic says speaking in tongues is heresy but the Pentecostal says speaking in tongues is a spiritual gift, one of them is wrong. They cannot both profess faith to justify their belief against one another. A belief in something which has an incorrect premise is not faith, but folly.

The Birthdays

Still haven't been updating regularly...still on break. My 22nd birthday was last Sunday. Had birthday pizza with some uni friends (Carlos, Fiona, Sangeetha) before I came back here. Yesterday night was Uncle Keat Chong (koo-koo)'s birthday, there was a small family and friends gathering at Casablanca.

The 153th Article

Not really a lot of time to write since I'm back for the holidays. But it's interesting that Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia was featured on Wikipedia today (I don't have to describe what the article is about, do I?). Wikipedia highlights a "particularly well-written and complete Wikipedia article" each day out of its 925,000 entries. It's interesting that even discussing Article 153 is technically illegal in Malaysia..

The Biggest Cabinet

I'm surprised there's no Malaysia Book of Records entry for the biggest Cabinet. After all our Cabinet is bigger than that of India or Australia, and is probably the biggest in the world factoring population size. When PM Abdullah Badawi was being packaged by the MCAPeople's Paper as the person who was going to shake up the country and give us a clean, trustworthy government (funny they never reported anything amiss when Mahathir was in office), a lot of hype centered around the Cabinet reshuffle he was expected to make. His first Cabinet formed in March 2004 was a disappointment even to the most die-hard fan: most of the old guard stayed on, and the Cabinet was actually expanded. I thought a 90% majority in Parliament would mean less red tape, not more. The reasoning at the time was that he needed to win over UMNO in its general elections before making any major changes. That came and went too. Then his wife's illness and subsequent passing was offered as an excuse... Recently the online grapevines and media were abuzz with rumours that Abdullah was (finally) preparing to make his big shuffle. But yesterday the Star reported a quote from the PM on the Cabinet:

“I have no inspiration yet”

Well there you have it - he's still waiting for inspiration. I remember someone commenting on a blog about the saying that went "99% perspiration, 1% inspiration"... It's been two years without anything concrete from our PM in reforming the government. Lim Kit Siang observes that Malaysia has actually fallen from 37th to 39th place in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index. We have seen a year of AP drama, numerous police vs human rights scandals, persecution of the press, dubious elections. But perhaps the absence of action is more worrying. When Abdullah Badawi first took power there were a few high-profile corruption cases that got all our hopes up that something was finally going to get done. Funnily enough I can't recall anything this year - was no one corrupt in 2005? Trying to get information from the Anti-Corruption Agency's website was humorous, the page has not been updated since 2003. Remember the much-lauded Royal Police Commission Report and its 125 recommendations, followed by a rebranding of the police complete with new motto and everything? And yet we still have Squatgate and many many other reports of police abuse. Naturally the PM's solution to Squatgate was to recommend yet another commission. One begins to detect a pattern here. And it has been pointed out that before his ascension to PM, Abdullah Badawi was Home Affairs Minister and hence in charge of the police. Malaysians are becoming increasingly cynical and disillusioned with the Government. Everyday we are drowned with rhetoric from the ministers and rosy pictures from the media, but somehow nothing seems to change.

The Ydorap

Mood: Sleepy Listening to: Something Stupid by Robbie Williams Today I had rice for dinner....mmm. My fingernails are too long, so I cut them, yay :))). I got a paper cut while reading the newspaper, ouch... :(. I sneezed twice today. I think I'm going down with a cold. I'm studying now. My exams are coming soon...sigh :(.

The Time-Traveller

Greetings. I am a time traveler from the year 2036. I am on my way home after getting an IBM 5100 computer system from the year 1975. My "time" machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.

Sounds like the start of a science fiction novel or movie, doesn't it? It's not. The above is a post made on an Internet message board by "John Titor" on January 27, 2001. Over the next few months he talked online with skeptics and believers before stating that he was returning to his own time on March 24, 2001. He was never heard from again. People claiming to be time-travellers are not unheard of, especially with the anonymity of the Internet. What made John stand out was his ability to describe the theories and physics behind time-travel that fit into existing concepts of spacetime, and black holes. He even posted pictures of his device, and technical manuals accompanying it. He stated that time paradoxes like the grandfather paradox did not exist, but that the Everett-Wheeler model (Many-Worlds Interpretation) - of a multiverse in which all possible actions are carried out - is correct.

Most people were of course very skeptical about Titor's claims. He in turn would often state he was not concerned whether people would believe him, and rather assumed people wouldn't - "What would it take for you to believe in a time traveller?" Skepticism, he said, was what made discussions interesting, rather than people accepting every word he said. He stated his purpose was to gauge the reaction of people to him. Some critics observed he would often parry the most direct questions posed to him, and reflect them on the questioner. But to his credit he did answer many questions about time and time travel, and the future.

Titor made a number of predictions about the future. Some, set in the near future, appeared on surface to bolster his claims as they came to pass. He mentioned that CJD (mad cow disease) would become more widespread but be played down, that Iraq would be accused of possessing nukes, and that the US government would begin to sacrifice civil rights for security (bear in mind his posts predated 9/11). He also knew obscure details, like certain UNIX systems having a year 2038 bug, and the IBM 5100 having hidden functions. He even hinted that the anticipated y2k bug problems did not come to pass because of future invervention.

He often described the philosophies and cultures of his time:

The war had very profound affects on people and how they relate to each other. As individuals, almost everyone in 2036 is very familiar with death. We all have stories of loved ones that have died from disease, war or acts of inhumanity. Most of us have even taken part in dishing the same thing out to the other side. As a result, we have become far more compassionate to the ones we love but mush less forgiving to those who don’t pull their weight. We are more accepting of other’s differences in our community because we depend on them to survive. We are also more conservative with our resources and closer to God because for a period, life on Earth was Hell.

The other major difference is in the concept of good and evil. With multiple worlds come multiple decisions and outcomes. For every good act, there is an equal and possible bad act on another worldline. Taken to the extreme, this must mean that in God’s eyes, there is no total good and total bad in the superverse. It balances itself out to infinity. I believe we are judged on the decisions we make as individuals and the good/evil I see on my worldline is an illusion that has no worth to God. My reaction to it is what’s important to God. Although this may seem rather heartless, it does allow me to see past the evil that people do and acknowledge the core of potential goodness inside them.

He also made apocalyptic statements about the future: Civil war in the US starting 2004-2005, and a third World War in 2015 which would see the US barraged by nukes. At the same time he stated that because worldines diverged (he estimated a divergence of 2% between our world and his), nothing was set in stone and we still could avoid the bleak future he knew. Skeptics observed that this made most of his claims impossible to verify, others said he was bringing a message of hope.

Was John Titor a hoax? Probably. His depiction of the future suspiciously mirrored popular science fiction themes, 2005 has passed with no signs of an American civil war, and his explanations of how his time machine worked was mercilessly shot down by science experts. But his story still entertains, and sparks thought about the direction that the human race is taking, sort of like what War of the Worlds did on radio in 1938. Time-traveller or storyteller, the tale of John Titor remains a memorable Internet legend.

The Year 2005 - Looking Back

Today our planet completes another revolution around the Sun. What have we humans done in the meantime? Six billion beings on the planet, all living their lives, all interacting with one another. That's gotta make for some pretty interesting incidents. Here are some events that caught my eye in the past year: January The world still reels from the Asian tsunami of December 2004. Malaysian deaths number about 70; Thailand, 5,000; Sri Lanka, 30,000; Indonesia reported that it stopped counting bodies. Losses are incalculable, but countries all around the world unite to provide aid. 1st - Freedom of Information Act comes into effect in Britain. It makes public bodies accountable to citizens. "The public will gain a legally enforceable right to know if a public body holds information - and the right to ask for it... replies must be made in 20 working days or less." 12th - US intelligence officially gives up the search for WMD in Iraq. 20th - George W. Bush sworn in for his second term as US President. 30th - Iraq holds first free election for the first time in 50 years. February 13th Shi'ite United Iraqi Alliance wins the first Iraqi elections, capturing half of the vote. Voter turnout was 58%. 16th - The Kyoto Protocol, an environmental resolution aimed at reducing air pollution, takes effect. Notable detractors are the US and Australia. 16th - China replacing US as world's biggest consumer entity. 27th - Million Dollar Baby, the story of an aspiring female boxer, wins Academy Award for Best Picture. March 1st - Malaysia launches effort to deport illegal immigrants following the expiration of its amnesty policy. 2nd - Bill Gates receives honourary knighthood for his business skills and work fighting poverty. 8th - The United Nations passes declaration prohibiting human cloning, with a vote of 84-34 and 37 absentees, ".. as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life" 24th - Soft tissue apparently extracted from remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. 31st - Terry Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman at the center of euthanasia controversy, dies. 31st - Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi speaks on Islam Hadhari at Victoria University, New Zealand. April 2nd - Pope John Paul II passes away at the age of 84. The first non-Italian pope since the 16th century, he covered more of the world than any of his predecessors and is credited as a riving force behind the failure of Soviet communism. 8th - Jeremy Jaynes sentenced to 9 years of prison for illegal email spamming. 9th - Prince Charles marries Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor. 19th - Jospeh Ratzinger becomes Benedict XVI, the 265th Pope. May 4th - Petrol and diesel prices in Malaysia increase for the third time in a year as part of a move to wean consumers off Government subsidies. 8th - Disneyland marks 50th anniversary in Disneyland, Anaheim. 16th - Release of the Report of the Royal Commission to Enhance the Operation and Management of the Royal Malaysia Police. 125 recommendations are made to improve the police force. 17th - Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith debuts at the Cannes Festival, ending the Star Wars sexlogy. June 14th - Michael Jackson acquitted of child molestation charges 23rd - Nobel Prize winner Jack Kilby, inventor of the integrated circuit (and the handheld calculator), dies at 81. His work pioneered microchips and personal computers. 24th - UMNO vice-president and Minister for Federal Territory Mohd. Isa Abdul Samad is suspended from UMNO after being found guilty of money politics. July 7th - London wins right to host 2012 Olympics. 7th - London hit by series of terrorist bomb attacks, leaving about 40 dead and 700 injured. 7th - International Trade and Industry Minister Rafidah Aziz told to answer Tun Mahathir's queries over the Approved Permits (AP) issue. 8th - The G8 summit is held in Gleneagles. The countries involved pledges an increase of 48 billion USD in international aid, and cancellelation of the debt of 18 nations to the IMF and the World Bank. However the summit is criticized for not paying enough attention to trade and environment needs. 9th - Hidden sex scene in controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sparks outrage. 16th - The sixth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is launched worldwide. 17th - Former Iraq President Saddam Hussein formally charged with genocide. August 4th - South Korean scientists successfully clone a dog. Snuppy, an Afghan hound, was cloned from DNA extracted from the ear of his "parent". 11th - State of emergency declared in Port Klang and Kuala Selangor after haze-induced air pollution exceeded 500 on the Air Pollution Index. 23rd - 31st - Category 5 storm Hurricane Katrina ravages America, the most destructive natural disaster there in recent history. The city of New Orleans is completely devastated. Economic losses are estimated at 100-200 billion USD, deaths at more than 1,000. Its social impact is large, with thousands of families displaced and many reports of anarchy in its aftermath. The US Government is widely criticized for being slow to respond to the crisis. September 11th - Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi receives overwhelming mandate to privatise Japan's postal system with a landslide victory in Japan's general elections. 24th - Daniel Lee Chee Hun is crowned Malaysian Idol 2005, garnering 68% of the popular vote, beating Norhanita Bt. Hamzah (Nita). 25th - Full IRA weapons decommissioning confirmed, following its July declaration that it was ending armed conflict in Ireland. October 14th - Daniel Craig replaces Pierce Brosnan as British spy James Bond, the first blond actor in the role. 15th - Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika appeals for food aid, saying all 28 districts of Malawi are suffering food shortages, calling it a "national disaster". 17th - The Human Security Centre, supported by five governments, says armed conflict worldwide has dropped 40% since 1992 with the exception of terrorist attacks. This is attributed to the rise of international activism for peace. 20th - Endon Mahmood, wife of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, passes away. November 4th - New bird flu crisis reported in Asia following outbreaks in China and Vietnam. 4th - The Vatican endorses Darwinian evolution, citing the church's denunciation of Galileo as a "permanent lesson". 5th - The release of THES' World University Rankings sparks debate about the perceived decline of Malaysian public universities. 22nd - Xbox 360 is released in North America. 24th - Seputeh MP Teresa Kok highlights alleged police abuse of a woman in custody in Parliament, sparking a "Squatgate" scandal that raised human rights issues and possibly strained relations with China. December 1st - First face transplant performed on French woman. 2nd - Convicted Australian drug trafficker Van Nguyen executed in Singapore despite repeated diplomatic appeals from Australian government. 4th - Nicol Ann David defeats Australian Rachael Grinham to become the new world number one in squash. 14th - George W. Bush takes responsibility for faulty intelligence in the Iraq War. He insists removing Saddam Hussein had still been necessary. 14th - Science journal Nature reports that the freely editable online encyclopedia Wikipedia is close to the traditional printed Britannica in the accuracy of its science entries. 15th - Iraq successfully holds its first parliamentary elections. 20th - A US federal judge rules that "intelligent design" should not be taught in Pennsylvania public schools alongside evolution theory, criticizing its proponents for disguising religion as science. 29th - Kofi Annan reports to the UN that armed attacks, rape, and pillage continue in Darfur, Sudan after three years despite international efforts to resolve the ethnic conflict. Who knows what the next year holds for us?

The Image of God

I came across a post someone made in an Internet forum this morning. It was a simple one, the sort of thing you initially dimiss as rhetoric, but when you go over it again you realize how profound it is.

"...they say God made Man to look like him, but in truth, Man may have created God to look like him."

The New Burger King!

Burger King will finally be opening a Penang franchise in 2006. What took them so long, I wonder?. Even Malacca got an outlet in the middle of 2005. I've always maintained that it's easy to conquer the fast-food landscape - open an outlet serving:

1. burgers from Burger King,
2. side dishes from Kenny Rogers,
3. chicken from Nando's,
4. french fries and ice-cream cones from McDonald's.
5. [edit - how could I forget] and of course, A&W root beer.

Yum yum.

The Lord of the Rings... by someone else?

"What if LotR had been written by someone else?", a great read from the Straight Dope messageboards. Excerpts:

Dr. Suess's FOTR:. "Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring! I am too small to carry this thing!" "I can not, will not hold the One. You have a slim chance, but I have none. I will not take it on a boat, I will not take it across a moat. I cannot take it under Moria, that's one thing I can't do for ya. I would not bring it into Mordor, I would not make it to the border."

LotR by George Orwell: "I cannot read the fiery writing," said Frodo. "There are few who can," replied Gandalf. "It is the language of Mordor, which I will not speak here. Translated into the common tongue, it reads: 'All rings of power are equal, But some rings of power are more equal than others.'"

Merry Poppins, P.L. Travers & Walt Disney: o/` Wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraith-eree, A Nazgul's as nasty as nasty can be. Wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraith-eroo, your luck will run out when I'm looking for you. So give me the Ring, or you're Nazgul, too! o/` o/` Just a spoonful of lembas helps the athelas go down, the athelas go down, the athelas go down. Just a spoonful of lembas helps the athelas go down in a most delightful way. o/` o/` Feed the orcs, tuppence a bag, tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag. o/` o/` Oooh...taurelilomeatumbalemornatumbaletaurealomeanor, if you say it too slow then you won't make it to dinner. Unless you've got some time on hand don't say I didn't warn ya. taurelilomeatumbalemornatumbaletaurealomeanor. o/`

The Christmas War?

It was with bemusement that I followed the brief but intense controversy over the so-called "Christmas War". While this is not the first time secularists and Christians have gone at each other over how they should celebrate Christmas things seem to have been brought to a head with some parties replacing the words "Christmas" with "Holiday". That's right - "Holiday tree", "Holiday season", "Holiday spirit". God forbid this politically-correct paranoia spreads to give us clumsy phrases like "I'm dreaming of a White Holiday", or "My Grown-up Holiday Wish"! The point is that Christmas isn't just any other holiday, even if you aren't a Christian. I'll digress to explain the origins of Christmas. Christ's exact birth date has been long lost in obscurity. "Christ-mass" resulted from a tendency of the Catholic Church to absorb pagan traditions, in this case the celebration of the winter solstice (Yule), which was held on - yes, 25th December. Yule commemorated the birth of Mithra, the Persian god of light. As Roman domination spread, they absorbed Mithra into their culture. After the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity, Pope Julius I decreed that the birth of Christ would be celebrated on the same date, to make it easier for pagans to embrace Christianity. Many familiar Christmas symbols have their roots in paganism: kissing under the mistletoe was part of a fertility ritual; burning Yule logs a tribute to Mithra; Holly and ivy represent the male and female form. The ubiquitous Christmas tree is a hybrid of medieval legend and evergreen trees, symbolizing the rebirth of life. For many years Christmas was a blur of pagan festivity and religious ritual. The "modern" version of Christmas we all know today was born in 1843, with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The short novel centered on the redemption of the cynical Scrooge, and emphasized charity, family, and hope. The heartwarming story changed the perception of Christmas in England and America. Carols, cards, pudding, and the family dinner are all elements from Dicken's story that became tradition. Today critics point out that Christmas has become too commercialized. Secularists complain of the Christian elements being forced on them, while Christian fundamentalists say the meaning of Christmas has been lost. I just hope they don't waste too much time arguing about it. I believe that Christmas is for everyone. I find it a wonder that in a world filled with cynicism and suspicion, people can still universally celebrate a day where they take time to be together, to hope for the future. David Foster and Linda Jenner put the sentiments of Christmas into beautiful words in their song, My Grown-up Christmas List:

No more lives torn apart, and wars would never start, and time would heal all hearts. Ev'ry one would have a friend, that right would always win, and love would never end: This is my grown-up christmas list.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Ping-pong Conversations

Conversations are like a game of ping-pong. You can't play a good game unless you know your partner well. Otherwise you could try to throw a screwball, or a fast ball, or a slow one, and you never know how they'd react. They could return it perfectly - they could also whiff it, or think you're showing off, or just not like the way you play. Sure, you could just simply bounce the ball back and forth like you did when you just started playing. That way the game keeps going because the balls are easy to return. But it gets boring after some time, and you'll never improve. You'll also doubt whether there's any point playing in the first place, since your games aren't challenging. You get the feeling you're both holding back, that in other games with other people you both play much better. Maybe your partner's just waiting for you to vacate the table so he can play with someone else. Take the effort to find someone who suits your playing style, and is willing to accommodate you. Develop your skills together, and you'll have fine, memorable games.

The MMU Rocks

Comparing Multimedia University (MMU, right) to a generic campus (left), wouldn't you say MMU could use a new landscape designer?

The Talk on Pre-marital Sex

Yesterday the CF invited a Reverend Doctor to speak on pre-marital sex. He showed us a 57-minute film, Pamela's Prayer (1998). It was an exciting dramatization of a girl's triumph over pre-marital sex. The first 10-15 minutes was footage of Pamela's loving father raised her after her mother died. Then the story began of how 16-year old Pamela wanted to date, but her father wouldn't let her. All her friends were dating, she said, and if she never dated how would she find the right person? So Pamela went out to a basketball game with Jerry without her father's knowledge. After the game, he tried to kiss her. Horrified, she ran away. He later spread rumours of how he had made out with her in her own house. A few years later, he slept with her best friend and then dumped her. Meanwhile, her father, who ran a Christiam film studio, needed someone to help him run it part-time after his father (Pamela's grandad) died. He found a promising young man, Fred. Fred was very helpful and did his job well. He was Pamela's age. After their graduation, he found a calling to help out in the studio full-time. In an unexpected romantic twist, Fred fell in love with Pamela. He asked her father permission to marry her one Christmas eve. Pamela's father said yes. He told Pamela he had saved himself and had never even kissed another woman. When they were about to kiss at their wedding the camera panned out to focus on Pamela's father's smiling face instead. After this enlightening film, the Reverend Doctor lectured us about pre-maritial sex. He asked the girls "If you don't have your virginity to give to your husband on your wedding day, what else do you have to give?" He told us that Korea has big churches because they are sexually pure. Most marriage problems, he said, stemmed from pre-marital sex. He warned couples not to go out alone. It could lead to holding hands, which would lead to putting your arms on shoulders, then petting, then kissing, then lust-filled fornication. The talk certainly answered all the questions we had about pre-marital sex.

The Wikipedia and Google

What separates humans from animals is our ability to reason. Hence how we reason should be something we all reflect on. Information is the basis of all our reasoning. Our beliefs, our abilities - they all rely on the input of information, be it from a person, a book, a webpage, a TV show, etc. The information comes in, and is "filtered", and whatever makes it through this filter we take to be "knowledge". What's interesting is that this metaphysical "filter" is itself built on information. It separates us into those who are gullible and those who are discerning. Or should I say - into those who think they are gullible and those who think they are discerning. The printing press was the most important invention of the millenium. Scientists could publish their research, writers could pen their books, and churchgoers could read from Bibles. Information became cheaply available and no longer the domain of a select few. Fast forward into the present and we now have the Internet, where anyone can say their piece and anyone can read it. We hear "information age", "information explosion" -- "information overload". In 1997 two Ph.D. students registered the domain www.google.com. Their vision: to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". Today nearly everyone uses Google as their search engine. Search engines are powerful: they are the gateway into the Internet, the librarians that tell you what books to read, what suits your needs. Google uses a "democratic" model:

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote... pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

While Google works most of the time, its weaknesses are apparent. Like any democracy, popular opinion is always suspect. That everyone believes "A" is the best option doesn't make it so. The "right" option can truly be known only if all information pertaining to it is filtered - but again, what happens if someone controls the filter? Google may be objective, it's mission admirable, but it's far from infallible. Many website owners routinely try to "bump up" their Google ratings by creating sites linking each other.

Another popular information source is the Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Also founded on democratic principles, anyone can edit or start an article on Wikipedia. It relies on two assumptions: that its self-governing community will weed out pranksters and malicious writers, and that as an article is edited by more and more people it will gain objectivity and accuracy. Again a noble intention, but prone to the same fallacies. Robert McHenry, former editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, was scathingly critical of Wikipedia in an article written November, 2004: "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia". He asserts that the common user simply lacks the experience and knowledge to provide others with an accurate source of information. He likens it to a public toilet:

...it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him.

Another, more vociferous anti-Wikipedia site claims that Wikipedia's perceived objectivity is a false front. Behind the scenes, it claims, there are cliques of elitist "editors" who hold considerable clout, who have the final say over what edits make it to the final article - in effect, making it no less subjective than any other source. Maybe even less so, as being popular in cyberspace isn't an indicator of how accurate your writing/editing may be. To its credit, Wikipedia itself has articles documenting the controversy, even linking to sites like Uncyclopedia which parody it.

But still, whenever I find myself wanting to look something up I turn to Wikipedia almost every time. Same thing whenever I need to search for a webpage, I Google it. I suspect there are many others like me. It's only recently that I have begun to question my sources of information.

Ours is an age where information flows more freely than ever before. On one side it can give us immense knowledge. On the other it can also misle us. It's up to all of us to be careful in what we allow through our "filter". Knowledge is power - people who control the flow of knowledge are even more powerful.

The Flash Training

Today was the last day of a three-part weekly graphics "workshop" I was conducting for the MMUCF. They apparently realised they would need other people to do graphics for their annual plays after I leave. We covered Flash and Photoshop. Don't really know much about Flash beyond tweening, but that's actually the basis of anything flashy you need to do, pun intended. I hope I didn't go too fast in the Photoshop lessons, there was a lot I wanted to cover. Planned to bring along my camera to take picture we could edit together the week before but clever me forgot to bring along the USB cable. Good thing I didn't forget this week.

Ana, Ivy, Jeremy.

Hope we'll come up with something better than last year. I think we have the potential. Computer graphics is an exciting form of art to me, more vibrant than traditional painting. Endless possibilities, and everyone has a chance to learn it. Only have a comparatively ancient 2.0m/pixel Minolta digital cam I got in 2001. I swear the camera is colourblind. But after zipping it through Photoshop everything is fine...

In other news I wonder if The Star, our self-styled "people's paper", needs new proofreaders:

The Face Transplant

Frenchwoman undergoes the first successful (face) transplant. She had been mauled by a Labrador, and the donor was a brain dead woman. She was horribly disfigured and found it hard to eat, speak or drink. No pictures of her yet, but she's doing well. Choose a link. Wikipedia has a little history on the progress in facial transplants, this is interesting:

The transplant does not give the patient's face the appearance of the deceased donor's face because the underlying musculature and bones are different. Facial movements are due to the brain so the personality as expressed by the face remains that of the patient. Only the skin of the face is transferred from the donor, not the three dimensional shape nor the personality it expresses.

It's the latest in the medical discoveries that really make you think. Mostly because so far the parts that are transplanted are either hidden (heart, liver, bone marrow) or aren't really unique in appearance (skin grafts, hand transplants). But now an entire face. It makes you wonder how far transplanting techniques will advance. When heart transplants were pioneered by the late Christiaan Barnard in the late 60s there was naturally controversy. Don't we all still refer to the "heart" as the place where our baser emotions take place? Doctors were said to be playing God, choosing who could and could not live. But fast forward two decades and heart transplants are now standard, saving lives when there is no other recourse.

I really wonder if we will ever transplant a brain... maybe even clone a human. Or should I have said "when" instead of "if"? Read an interesting piece from the Genetic Science Learning Center in the University of Utah about some of the issues behind cloning, relevant to other advances in science as well.

Edit: coincidentially enough, it's been 38 years to the day of Christiaan Barnard's first heart transplant.

The Household Technician

I was playing some badminton with Chuah, a housemate, when another housemate, CW, decided it was time for him to make full use of his Intel® 64-bit 3.0 Ghz processor. He had been downloading this torrent of Windows XP 64-bit for the past few weeks and it had finally completed. As the de facto technician I was asked to install it for him. Which I brilliantly did with my 1337 IT skills I give university no credit for. Extract multi-part RAR files - Check. Burn the .cue file with Nero - Check. Change BIOS boot priority - Check. Convert C:\ partition to NTFS file system - Check. Install Windows - wait it's asking for the CD-key. Hey CW, what's the CD key? What do you mean you don't know? Didn't it come with the file? Dunno-lah... Bring out old 32-bit Windows CD to try its CD-key - Failed! Search online for CD keys - Failed, and nearly got my computer infected with a virus in the process, bless you Norton. Randomly key in letters and numbers - Failed! Thank goodness it struck me that converting to NTFS doesn't actually format the drive. I managed to boot up his computer with an old Windows 98 startup disk and painstakingly look through his files with the ancient MS-DOS Edit command. And there it was! The key! Install Windows - Check. Reboot computer - Check. Set up Internet - Failed! Windows couldn't detect his network card, updating the NIC driver didn't work. Apparently, when CW had switched from his defunct Pentium III to his new computer he hadn't actually bought a new network card, but used his old one. In short, new 64-bit Pentium 4, obsolete 32-bit network card. So do you want to buy a new network card? No need lah...install back the old one Oh well. Went back to badminton, promptly hitting two shuttles onto the roof and ending the session prematurely.

The Obligatory Introduction

Which I have decided to skip.