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Sunday, Jan 17, 2016 - 21:07 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Innovia Fragmenta

It's spreading:

"...political innovations such as the Group Representation Constituencies, which guarantee at least a minimum representation of minorities in Parliament, have worked well."

- President Tony Tan, 15 Jan

"...We will continue to support all those who want to embrace change and are committed towards greater progress, better innovation and higher productivity.."

- Minister of State for Manpower Teo Ser Luck, 15 Jan

"...Singapore must continue with structural reforms with an emphasis on agility, innovation and outward-orientation."

- Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, co-chair of Subcommittee for Future Capabilities and Innovation, 12 Jan

"...Deep specialisation makes a person creative and innovation to flourish.."

- Acting Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung, 30 Dec

"...students must... [be] value-creators, able to join disparate dots to form a larger picture and invent new, cutting-edge innovations that will change the game"

- Acting Minister for Education Ng Chee Meng, 29 Dec

[among many others]


Can anybody at all slow the tidal wave of innovation here... ah, the good old SBF at least is calling to freeze foreign worker levies, after their call to inject CPF money into the local stock market won few supporters. Meanwhile, a buay kia see NUS economist has innovatively called upon the government to peg CPF returns to the CPF-funded GIC, when it might be fairly reasoned that if they had any intention of doing so, they could have done it at any point in the past half-century.


Pennant Pens Deal

S.League struggling? Surely you jest, and the best way to refute that, it now appears, is to give a 33 year-old winger a hefty S$40000-a-month retirement package.

So, the S.League will have its ex-Arsenal player, a couple of years after the botched Francis Jeffers deal, and it is true that Jermaine Pennant will take a huge haircut on his last paycheque from Wigan (relegated again), reportedly some 200 grand per month. Still, my first thought was, huh?

To clarify, I have nothing against footballers making bank. One cannot help but superimpose the signing against a former local international's lament, however, coming as it did right before Tampines Rovers' bumper offer, though his main gripe was... the (younger) LionsXII guys being compulsorily absorbed into current S.League teams.

On that, the obvious solution was to just have the LionsXII join the league, but somehow that was not entertained, so here we are, with three unfortunates squeezed out of each of the - is it eight now? - remaining domestic professional clubs.

Which should, really, be a clue as to how dodgy football as a career choice remains here: with each of them maintaining a squad of about twenty, not including Prime leaguers, that's room for maybe 160 Singapore pros. Sure, a few manage to snag overseas - largely Malaysian and Indonesian - postings, but they are more than made up for by foreign players, so let's just work with a generous 160.

Making another assumption that a serious footballer's career is about ten years long, we can conclude that S.Leaguers are mostly among the top dozen of each yearly cohort. For that achievement, their reward is... an average salary of S$3500, maxing out at S$7000 for the very best, which they will keep for maybe a few years only, unless their name is Aleksandar Duric. And, if they manage all that, they're still out on their ass in their mid-thirties, with next to no relevant experience in most jobs outside of coaching, and tenuously at that.

Well, as adopted local football wise man Neil Humphreys has said to FourFourTwo, it's Pennant's S.League now. But, an observation: forty years after Pelé graced the New York Cosmos, the now-Major League Soccer remains disparaged as a cushy "retirement league". Perhaps Pennant will revitalize the S.League... or perhaps, Humphrey's fictional account might prove all too prophetic...


Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol Cures Cancer!


The Miracle Molecule
(Source: commons.wikimedia.org)


One of my favourite The State's Times columnists Dr. Lee has just weighed in on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), shortly after the initial artemisinin splash and our own take. As a scientifically trained doctor (exact words used - and earned), it was not unexpected that her stand was much as professed here: show me the proof, i.e. conduct proper research studies, and develop a consistent diagnostic method. Else, how would one tell between actual cures, and snake bites?

Many such research studies have indeed been conducted for tetrahydrocannabinol, and published in reputable medical journals - which at least strongly suggests its viability towards arresting, or at least relieving, a host of maladies. This has, however, not made an impression on our Health Promotion Board, who have chosen to ignore evidence they don't like, and promulgate a wholly biased overview.

Fine, fine, there could of course be adverse effects with overdosages, but then again, caffeine - another drug, mind, of which addictiveness is not in doubt - has them too, and you don't see warnings plastered outside Starbucks. But, the real point here is, it might not be advisable to be overly insistent with conclusions on matters that remain under active investigation, since those conclusions might turn out to be, well, not exactly true; and what would that do for one's authority and future credibility, then?

[N.B. On drugs and other harmful addictive substances, it seems strange to me that there does not seem to be much work on transferring the addiction to more benign proxies - i.e. instead of, say, nicotine replacement, why not find or create some other drug that has a similar addiction profile, but much smaller impact on health? Of course, this may be a "why no flying cars" situation, so make what of it you will.]


Don Trump Cruzing


Donald J. Trump of N.Y. of the U.S. of A!


It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. After eight years and counting of claims that Obama's presidency was illegitimate because he's black a Kenyan-born Muslin despite him being born in Hawaii, it turns out that conservative favourite Ted Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father, albeit also to an American mother, and only formally renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.

Now, this is not even a new revelation - it has been a sticking point for Cruz for some years, to the extent that he publicly released his birth certificate in 2013 to try and quell speculation. That was it, Cruz must have thought, and it was all going so swimmingly when DJ Trump whacked him with the Birtherhammer.

Anti-Trump Republicans couldn't even get too butthurt, given that they had silently nodded while Trump was laying it down on Obama some time back, and as it turns out, he might actually have a case on Cruz. Several reputable law professors have politely coughed and murmured that there is at least a valid question as to whether being born on U.S. soil is needed to be a "natural born citizen", which is in turn a requirement to be elected as President... a question which now looks likely to be settled in the Supreme Court.

This might have thrown über-debater Cruz off enough that he set himself up for a schoolboy counterpunch by Trump on New York and 9/11, and even with Carson going comatose and essentially yielding Cruz the evangelical vote (check out how nicely they sum together), Don Trump remains in line to take even Iowa, to Nate Silver's continuing discomfiture and Scott Adams' increasingly-cogent Master Persuader explanation... and the very un-PC suggestion that men may well leave "Mexican granny" Hillary standing at the voting booth.

Either way, it won't be long now.


Tales of 3000

As the Shanghai Composite sinks below 3000 despite the exertions of the National Team, Bitcoin has breached the 3000 CNY/US$450 level, before briefly crashing to the projected floor of US$350 on the acrimonious departure of a former developer, and a possible hard fork to a 2MB transaction limit. All within researched expectations, for now.

The key question remains whether Chinese officials actually understand the basics of capitalist markets. Oh, I do not doubt that they are capable of understanding it; their intelligence is not the issue here. It is more of whether they are willing to sincerely entertain the idea. Well, as various commentators have noted, one of their top three guys had studied economics, if at the avant-garde institution of higher learning that is the Kim Il-sung University, home of what must be the top department for Kim Jong-Il Revolutionary History and K-Pop Nuclear Options in the entire world.

Anyway, the relevant officials have labelled projections of continued yuan "depaluation" as ridiculous, which however might have had more heft behind it had it not weakened from 6.35 to near 6.60 after his Premier said the same thing in end-August 2015. The PBOC has stemmed the outflow for now by fiddling with interbank loan rates (in a way another play on banning selling), after burning half a trillion US dollars last year, and some US$100 billion in December alone, defending the CNY-USD exchange rate. The previously fantastic sum of three trillion suddenly doesn't seem that much now, in view of ill-fated experiences of the UK, Thailand and many others in going against the collective will of the sorta-free market.


Mein Generalsekretär

Mein Kampf has just been re-released in Germany, after the state of Bavaria's 70-year copyright ran out, and it has sold out instantly... and very slightly worryingly, alongside heightening tensions over the Cologne affair (not that it's much better elsewhere in Europe, with Odin battling Isis in a throwback to more pagan days, and with Turkey finally getting serious after a number of mostly-German tourists were killed in the recent suicide bombing in Istanbul. That was close.)

The pertinent point here being, however, that Germany did allow publication and dissemination to take place. Over in Hong Kong, in comparison, a saucy book on President Xi's alleged trysts - six of them - has led to the disappearance of several booksellers, despite freedom of press and speech being enshrined in the territory's Basic Law. This has unnerved one Singapore-based bookstore sufficiently that it has pulled titles on the CCP from its shelves, but it so turns out that they're available at Bras Basah anyway.

Taiwanese publishers have stepped in to pick up the slack on juicy Xi titles, and given that the people of Taiwan have just kicked out the pro-reunification-in-theory Kuomintang in favour of the more pro-self-determination DPP, I don't see many objections. Not only that, it was noted that Taiwan is a bloody obvious example - even if you disregard Japan and South Korea - that so-called Asian values definitely do not preclude proper multi-party democracy, but sadly I don't see innovation extending that far for the CCP.


Innovation Actualized

Coming full circle to the flagship topic, one cannot help but feel that all the talk of "innovation" is merely a means to an end - the overriding guiding principle remains "control", and it is debatable as to how much actual innovation can occur under such circumscription.

Taking the non-freedom of press example: what this plainly says is, "we are the guardians of right opinion" - and since it is presumed that everything put in print has to be true, or at least that citizens cannot, or are not supposed to be able to, tell the difference, you get a monolithic state-run propaganda department... and an intellectually-spayed populace.

This is, I wholeheartedly believe, fundamental and essential. It is disingenuous to remark, well, let's get creative... but your recommendations had better match mine. No need for checks and balances, leave that to part-time bloggers! It's a pity for The State's Times, since they probably do have some journalistic talent, however hobbled by, you know, maybe not being at liberty to delve into certain important topics.


Another quality thought-provoking critically-acclaimed production by MediaCorp (now with new and original logo!)
(Source: gssq.blogspot.sg)


Sure, one could gun for metrics like number of patents granted, or in classic Our Most Successful Investment Firm fashion, amount of money dispensed, but at the end, we either get true innovation, or we don't. Put another way, how many multinational tech giants - Creative included - were spawned from, get this, an "innovation hub" (it had to happen)? Okay, I'm not saying it's not appreciated, but it might ultimately be more effective, y'know, to just genuinely loosen up.


Eunoia

Count your blessings, it could have been D'Eunoia.


And Elsewhere...


Yes, innovation, blah blah, but will you evar be this cool?




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