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Sunday, Jan 13, 2013 - 20:29 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Beep Beep

The subject I contemplated the most deeply this week:

In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why?

[N.B. Obama doesn't figure that high, likely rightly]
[N.N.B. Not all hypothetical matchups stand the test of time]




The Circus Has Come To Town

The AIM debacle [see contrarian view] has been smothered for now, with the PM ordering the Ministry of National Development to probe the deal. The review being expected in a couple of months, the Workers' Party has sensibly deferred its discussion on the issue until such time as it is completed.

Herr Ahm: *snickers*

Me: You were sitting here all along? My political analysis hiring budget is shot for the week.

Herr Ahm: It's alright, I'm chilling anyway, and you really don't need me for this - what do you expect to come out of this?

Me: Erm... a completely wild guess - no fundamental concerns, everything above board, residents' interests foremost, best-faith effort, a couple of minor mistakes made, we're open to suggestions, case closed, let's move on?

Herr Ahm: And it may take a hundred pages to say that. I've sent one such report to them with attached request for payment - hey, I'm sure you'll agree that SMCs should be given a chance over MNCs sometimes. By the way, want to bet on the outcome again?

Me: Nola nola. Then again, if you look at it from the incumbents' perspective, one can easily imagine how they can earnestly believe that it's okay. People's Association lidat oso can, like this chinchai why cannot ah? Wrong meh? At least don't use the same address if you want to play like that lah.

And it seems like the Master Political Analyst isn't infallible. While you got the timeframe for the calling of the by-election spot-on - it came three days to the month - it'll be held on January 26, earlier than expected but probably the most interesting birthday gift I could have hoped for. Not only that, it's winding up to be a multi-cornered fight.

Herr Ahm: I thought I had covered this already? And I never claimed to be always right, just mostly, and probably more importantly, I can tell about how likely I am to be right. But let's not come to conclusions too quickly - there may well be fewer candidates than you think come Polling Day.

*puffs on cigar*

Let us work through this rationally, skipping the attention-seekers who won't even manage to get a seconder. Fine, the SDA hopefuls will probably join in, they're that type, but I don't see them bettering the 4.5% they got under any circumstances. But at least they have been around, so one can understand if they are reluctant to sit out.

The case for the other two major parties known to be possibly in the running - the RP and SDP - is much more curious. What are they trying to achieve? True, it's just one seat and makes little difference in the bigger picture whether the PAP or WP wins, but they should still have some motivation, no?

Me: "Whether the PAP or WP wins"?

Herr Ahm: You seriously think any of the others have the slightest hope, on a par with Singapore winning the next World Cup? Fine, politicians having politician-sized egos, I can't completely count out them having a delusion that they can win it with both the PAP and WP in the ring.

Leaving that aside, let's assume they know they won't win. What's left? Maybe they think that they can at least upstage the WP by getting more votes than the WP candidate, but sorry, I honestly don't see that happening either - I would see about 20% as the most either can expect in a three-cornered battle, against some 30% for the WP, and losing their deposit with less than 12.5% is not far-fetched either, particularly if they get tagged as spoilers. Of course, it only gets worse with four or more competitors.

So it's down to keeping their names in the news, and getting their message out. Fine, I understand that. In fact, the two parties do have some salient points that probably are worth raising in Parliament, and their top candidates might be more eloquent and pressing than the WP's remaining options, who I feel have drawn undeserved flak for being reserved.

Me: But there's a problem.

Herr Ahm: Indeed. There is both a local and a national dimension to the game. While the incumbents might be accused of laying it on in local matters to deflect attention from national ones, with no less than a DPM getting involved in shopping center upgrading, the RP and SDP might then be seen as going the opposite way. Basically, they're just turning up upon hearing that the seat is available, and saying, "We wouldn't be here otherwise, but vote me in!". That is usually known as being opportunistic.

Okay, so maybe they have to be bold. That's good. I like bold people. Then the SDP announced that it had invited the WP for talks, but had been rebuffed. Well, one can see it from both sides - it is not unreasonable for the SDP to want some communication, all the more as it shows they understand what a multi-cornered fight entails, but it is also understandable if the WP is wary of a party having previously put in next to no effort in the constituency trying to elbow in. Even if the SDP was indeed attempting to pressure the WP into a response by making their overtures public, this is still fair game to me.

But then the SDP dropped a bombshell.

In a statement posted 11 January on their official website, they declared: "(blah blah blah) ... In the spirit of compromise and cooperation, we would like to propose that our two parties run a joint campaign and field one candidate from the SDP. If victorious, the SDP candidate will enter Parliament and the WP will run the Punggol East Town Council [!] ... (blah blah blah)"


Seldom has a meme been more appropriate
(Original Source: knowyourmeme.com)


Me: You know, I like the SDP. I admire their commitment to rights causes, and of all the major parties here, my personal leanings probably lie closest to them. In a straight duel between WP and SDP tickets, I would probably go SDP. And whatever people might paint him as, it cannot be denied that Dr. Chee pursues what he believes in, even if his methods in the past were probably more suited to "activist" than "politician". I've read his books too, they made some sense.

So why do this?

I know I'm bad in social situations, but even I know better than to walk up to another guy and say, buddy, let's make a deal - you leverage all the groundwork you did and continue doing all the grunt work, all that to pay for my glamorous presentations. Don't mind that the effort put in was 95-5, now I'm here, let's unite and be fair and cooperative - 50-50 it is! Win-win-win! What a deal!

Herr Ahm: Heh heh. One doesn't need a doctorate to realise that this is a crap idea, and furthermore, will be seen by almost everyone to be a crap idea. You know it's beyond facepalm when the average reader's immediate reaction is "what is he smoking?"

Heck, I wouldn't mind some of that weed either.

The thing about bargaining, is that you have to have something to bargain with. What chips do the SDP, or for the matter the RP, have in Punggol East? In the latter case, Mr. Jeyeratnam can at least make the point that his dad once contested there, but somehow I don't see his offering to run under the WP banner (which does also have parental precedent) doing a lot for his own party members' morale. Why didn't he just join the WP, if he can accept this arrangement? Then again, as if it matters.

And what other chips do they have elsewhere? Running in strong WP areas can only be seen as plain sabotage, not to mention likely loss of deposit, while the WP has shown little interest in expanding into their territory. Just a gentle suggestion - they could, like, focus on their own fiefs and convince the residents that they are in it for the long haul. From another perspective, if the vacated SMC were Yuhua or Bukit Panjang, I frankly don't see the WP trying to butt in.


I'm tired of waiting, ALL IN!
(Original Source: flickr.com)


Well, it seems that the SDP has finally wised up to how dumb they sounded, with Dr. Chee now insisting that they had been "misinterpreted" by the public, and that it could be the other way round - they run the town council - too. Sorry, man, it ain't flying - the "vice versa" was not "not put out prominently enough", it was simply not put out at all. In short, you lot screwed up. Good day, sir. As one commentator put it, "there is a very fine line between a genius and a savant".

Me: Enough of that, you got the PAP's candidate wrong too, which as it turned out was guaranteed since the stand-in had his own posts.

Herr Ahm: I was careless, fine, not that it makes a significant difference either. Or do you have an affinity for your kind, since you're also aspiring to become an asshole doctor?

Me: Let us hope you never get explosive diarrhea.


Dunno If I'm Qualified To Tutor Primary School

These kids are expected to be scary smart (or at least damn good at memorizing words) nowadays. I had to look up osseous (connection with ossuary didn't come till later)

And does it matter in the end?


The Idealists

Crossing over to ideas that might actually work, a couple caught my eye this past week. There was a piece about backpacks being a relatively recent innovation, with students resigned to tying belts around their books before the 1970s. I had always thought satchels were timeless, but this shows that even obvious ideas may not be that obvious.

Over here, there's been a coin-operated tray return suggestion, which looks like an extension that solves multiple problems in one swoop. Don't want tables to be choped? No tabletop to reserve (though a seat-booking system might be promising - lest one thinks this is futuristic, see the automats of the 1900s)! But better find another job for the cleaning aunties then...

And M:TG got around to the evolve keyword. Not exactly what I envisaged, but close enough.

Others have however run their course, like Windows Messenger, which come to think of it I haven't opened in years, despite once being a staple. Figuring out how it overhauled ICQ, or Facebook (which is trialing charging for messages - a toss-up between showing that stamps made sense, and making a grab for revenue) Myspace etc in detail might be a topic for the future. [N.B. It seems that ICQ is still kicking despite being "out" for a decade]

Meanwhile, tech columnist Manjoo has declared the death of the netbook, but it appears a case of consumers accepting that tablets weren't meant for work to begin with, and also that of why not have both designs if possible?


It was the obvious hybrid design
- well, Dell's may be sturdier in the long run
(Source: wired.com)


Have no fear that computers are going to take over the world, though - they can't even swear properly yet.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking, if also most technical, of all is an advance in computing on encrypted databases by MIT researchers. As usual, it's perhaps been slightly oversold, being limited to certain types of queries, but still pretty incredible; let's say that "123" has been encrypted as "70D83A3", and "456" as "2F69180" - how could one possibly add "70D83A3" and "2F69180" together to get say "834BC05" corresponding to "579", without ever knowing how to decrypt any of the three encrypted values?

Building up from a few simple examples may be helpful. First of, it is clear that one can easily compare whether two values are the same even after encryption without knowing anything about the actual values, since they should map to the same output (which should be what is minimally attempted when storing passwords, and seems to correspond to SEARCH functionality in the paper)

One might next consider a slightly more non-trivial if still very conceptually simple example - say we want all the factors of some very large number A, but for some reason do not want anyone else to know exactly what A is. We could then multiply A by some smaller B, pass the product to some guy with a supercomputer, and remove the factorization of B when we get the result back. A more practical illustration might be anonymous salary averaging.

I won't pretend to know how they handle more complex operations, which is its own entire field of study, but for now it seems mostly to be integrating existing algorithms in a useful way (like PGP?) - and very relevant, particularly if the cloud paradigm wins out. And perhaps town councils would then not feel a need to protect their systems and data so badly...


The Escapist

For the best refrain I've heard in a while:


A nightingale in a golden cage/
That's me locked inside reality's maze/
Come someone make my heavy heart light/
Come undone bring me back to life

[Full Lyrics - Loop It]
[Full Movie (Set in a time before/after vampires sold out
to Acme Sparklers Ltd. and got cheated on)]

(Is he bump firing a bow at 0:42?!)


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