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Saturday, Sep 27, 2008 - 20:04 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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On The Money

As the USA subprime mortgage crisis deepens, this may be a good time to attempt my own simple common-sense economical interpretation of it, with as few clunky terms as possible. Here goes nothing:
  1. Prices of homes seem to be increasing.
  2. People eager to buy homes, even if they can't really afford them, since they expect that they will be able to sell at a higher price in the future.
  3. Financial institutions eager to earn interest by lending to those people. They also assume that prices of homes will continue to increase indefinitely in general, so if worst comes to worst they can take the home back and sell it if the borrowers can't pay.
  4. Eager lenders meet eager borrowers, fuelling more home sales and artificially raising prices according to expectations... for a time.
  5. It turns out that way too many people spent way more than they could on better homes than they should have bought, and can't pay.
  6. Financial institutions discover that the homes were not worth the inflated values, and can't recoup their losses.
  7. Big sadness all around.
Obviously, this wasn't the first, and won't be the last financial bubble cum subprime scandal. The heady IT days of the late nineties aren't that far behind, and Milken's destruction of the Drexel Burnham Lambert investment bank in 1990 on junk bond trading (the man's still worth a cool US$2 billion though) are just recent examples. As long ago as the 17th century, the Dutch discovered to their cost that a single tulip wasn't really worth tens of thousands of today's dollars.

Now, some foundational economics. Let's say a guy wants to borrow money. If he doesn't want to bother friends and relatives, he will have to go to some commercial moneylender, such as a bank.

These moneylenders want to make money too, of course, and they will assess how likely he is to be able to pay them back - note that the very act of trying to get a loan is a sign that one is not exactly flush with cash! If the guy has a job with a steady income, has demonstrated financial discipline by managing a credit card or two well, has collateral to put up etc, these will be considered positive indicators, and he will be able to borrow more and have to pay less for the privilege of borrowing, in general.

Then what about people without those good attributes? Indeed, they may be even more likely to need money, but are also more likely to be rejected outright, thus the refrain "banks only want to lend you money when you don't really need it". Luckily (or unluckily) for them, there's another approach which uses the same concept as in insurance, which is risk pooling - Let's say 1000 high-risk characters want to borrow $1000 each, and experience tells a bank officer that only half of them will be able to pay it back. In this case, the officer can charge a borrowing fee of something over $1000, and still turn a profit. In short, it doesn't matter if individual borrowers default, if the return on all of them as a group is sufficient.

Obviously, the higher the borrowing fee, the less likely a borrower desperate enough to accept it, and with a poor enough reputation not to get better terms, will actually be able to repay his debt, so the risk/return evaluation probably can go only up to a certain rate in reality. Loansharks understand this, and that's why their repayment rates are that outrageous - they expect a lot of their clients to run road to JB, and the spray paint and pigs' heads aren't going to pay for themselves.

This is not to say lending money to supposedly high-risk entities is always bad - microfinancing small projects in developing countries has brought a lot of good, and the initial rationale behind "junk" bonds of providing credit to promising but unknown companies was good too. The key point is that the risk involved has to be well managed. In microfinance, community pressure to repay reduces risk. For "junk" bonds, the companies should be investigated to ensure that they have a sound business plan and actually have a decent shot at making it. The problem comes when the lender doesn't much care about the risk, or just tries to make it up by insisting on a higher return. Again drawing on the loanshark parallel, doubling the interest weekly is meaningless if the debtor is completely penniless.

To some extent, this was what happened in the USA. Lenders got too greedy in accepting loans, since they would earn commissions doing so, or earn in other ways by "repackaging" these loans in complicated ways, and while the housing market was doing well nobody wanted to ask too many questions - why not just profit instead (Stick figure illustration)? Financial institutions ended up granting worse loans than they should have, and unsurprisingly the returns were lower than they should be. Same as in most bubbles.

This became a big problem since just about every major institution was involved in this colossal miscalculation. But wait! Since some of these institutions (e.g. the mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) were considered "too big to fail", as their bankruptcy would likely lead to a chain reaction as other institutions with close links would also fall and so on and so on, the USA government had to bail them out by subsidizing them (i.e. pumping money into them).


(Source: Cartoonist Group)

However, just bailing financial institutions out in essence says, "Go on and take risks with the money. If you get lucky, you are a hero and keep all the profits. If the worst happens, everybody including the common taxpayer who had nothing to do with your institution, will pay the costs for you." Or as former American president Andrew Jackson put it so eloquently in the early 19th century:

"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves."

Though of course in the end the government had to swallow principles, and "reward" incompetence and greed, which could be understood as a non-credible threat in game theory:

Government to Big Institution: Don't take funny risks, or we won't help save you.
Big Institution: Yeah right, both of us know that you have to, or we all go belly up.
Government: Darn, you're right.
*Big Institution takes funny risks*

Where's the accountability now?


(Source: Cartoonist Group)

I gather that the root of much sadness in this world is the desire to consume more than one deserves (i.e. worked for). It must be acknowledged though that "what one deserves" is difficult to quantify in an increasingly knowledge-based economy. A fisherman in the past could for example haul in a basketful of fish in a day, and exchange it for a stool that the carpenter next door made that day. While obviously this does not address whether ability should be factored in (i.e. if the carpenter improved his skill such that he made two stools in a day, should he then give both for the same basketful of fish?), at least the products were tangible, and all parties could understand what they are haggling over.

This does not hold up as well in the symbolic world of today, though. What's the real value of a programmer, a research scientist, or an accountant? Whatever they can get in a free market is of course one answer, and often the only one available. The troubling thing is when obtaining value from short-term speculation, essentially trying to get something from nothing, becomes more popular than actual productivity, and people struggle mightily over a few microscopic bits on a bank's harddisk drive instead of doing stuff that actually helps other people. Financial intelligence needs to be backed up by some basic foundations, but this is unlikely to come into widespread effect spontaneously due to "selfish" individual motivations.

The good news is that this won't be the end of the world, and once again it will ironically be time for those who kept clear of the initial bubble to buy into newly-undervalued properties at bargain prices, and sell sometime into the next bubble. And the system continues...

A slightly more in-depth summary can be found on Investopedia. Having said that, the effects are already being felt locally, as the DBS High Notes 5 meltdown reflects. Predictably, many investors are claiming that the product was misrepresented, and that they didn't understand the risks involved, which could well be the case given that bank relationship managers will likely be eager to push these risky products if they can earn higher commissions on them. Therefore, without knowing in detail what the recommendations were, nobody can comment properly on this issue. (It may be that the featured investor's complaint that "...we were told this was a low-risk investment" actually referred to a "low ten percent risk only of losing everything!", who knows?). To be sure, bank instruments aren't simple to digest - try to understand what this (random) fund actually does, and the risks involved, from its "factsheet". I doubt the average retiree has a good idea what half the numbers mean.

It seems common sense for soon-to-be retirees who want to plunge the majority of their savings into a single investment to be sure that their capital is protected. One (modified) piece of advice from Get Rich Slow by Tama McAleese sticks in my mind: The first thing that one should ask when buying a bank instrument is, how much will I be guaranteed to get if I invest in it, and what are the chances that I will lose my investment (McAleese also recommends getting a signed statement from the bank manager, but I doubt this applies as much in Singapore unless one has a ton of money)? Any chance above zero percent is probably too much for a lot of people, but if, knowing that, they still plunk all their savings into it... really it must be their own fault - for if all goes well and they earn higher returns than normal, would they distribute those profits to the public? Personal accountability FTW!


Rule Number One: If it's too good to be true, it probably is
(Source: Cartoonist Group)

At the very least, those who would try their hand at investments could do a dry run and see how good they are at it - one thing's for sure, I won't be diving into football punting in real life. $361.25/$500 and falling...

$100 on Man Utd to beat Bolton (at 1.17) - It's about time.



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Friday, Sep 26, 2008 - 02:19 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Timely Recess

Errata

In Mega Bonus Post (12 Sep 2008), it was incorrectly stated that Google Chrome had no character set encoding selector. In fact, it's under the "Control the current page" button at the top right. bert's blog apologizes for the error.


Schoolwork Update

Recess Week's half gone, and I've done slightly less than I'd hoped to, especially for the FYP (wiki) - still too new to the Torque Game Engine. Completed one of the two lab assignments (in OGRE) for CS4213 weeks in advance though.

Ironically I doubt the hierarchical A* pathfinding approach the lab explored will be used much in future, what with the sheer speed of processors nowadays, but coding a custom A*-to-navigation-table algo was a bit interesting, if the "silent" file I/O bugs weren't. C++ STL Vectors were very useful, as was the Priority Queue construct, though it could really have done with a native function to update existing priorities.

Here's a (crappy) video where the robot moves from flagged point to flagged point. Probably should have used a better compression ratio than 8 with Xvid:




SSSS™ II

Missed out on the S-League title on the last day yet again, just like last season, thanks in no small part to my Brazilian star goalkeeper getting knocked out before 20 minutes. To add insult to injury, he's out for a month. Gah.

But it's no use crying over spilt (or spoilt, as is the fashion these days) milk, and to take my mind off this rather hard to swallow piece of suayness, I compiled my gaming CV (i.e. Curriculum Venatus), just in case any organization may have need of it. Had to cut it down somewhat to fit it onto the standard two pages.

On the subject of games, the next Magic: The Gathering set has been announced as Conflux, a couple of years after I created a fan-set with the same name. Only sorta-unique ability that was predicted beforehand so far seems to be Demigod of Revenge's (which was created in much teenier form as Risen Fallen). It's a start.


United! United!

The Red Devils have had me tearing my hair out recently. Against Liverpool, Tevez gave them a deserved early lead, but what could easily have been 0-3 or 0-4 ended up as a 2-1 defeat, which would have been easier to take had the goals been top drawer; Unfortunately, neither van der Sar slapping the ball off a bemused Wes Brown and into his own net under minimal pressure, nor Giggs dallying on the ball on the byline and getting robbed, qualify.

Then it was off to Stamford Bridge, and it looked as if Chelsea's proud home record would finally be shattered after everyone's favourite Korean followed up on a Berbatov grounder. But noooo... Rooney had to stick his foot into a challenge he had no hope of winning, and from the free-kick the defence stood off, PIG (shorthand for "Polish In Goal" Tomas Kuszczak, since few can remember how to spell his last name) stood still, and you know what happened.

Well, at least those were probably the two hardest games (excluding maybe Arsenal away) that United have in the league all season. Even given that, my armchair-critic ratings for them so far aren't great, by their own high standards:

Edwin van der Sar (GK) - 6. This is a guy that's just won United a Champions League (and a couple of Community Shields), but he hasn't been steady lately. Then again, he's 37, which is getting on even for a goalie, and has saw fit to declare this his last season with United.

Tomas Kuszczak (GK) - 6. Some good stops, but could do with better decision making. Not in a very good career position, since it appears that few feel he's up to being the main goalkeeper after VDS leaves, with the seemingly always-injured Foster figuring higher. This probably won't be helping his confidence.

Gary Neville (RB) - 5. Captain and passionate about it, but his days as a first-teamer are probably ending. There comes a time when a defender has to pack it in after seeing any half-quick opposition forward just push the ball past him and run. Will probably still be useful against defensive/European sides.

Wes Brown (RB) - 7. Good whenever he appeared, should be making the step up to first choice right-back soon.

Rio Ferdinand (CB) - 8. Can't ask much more from perhaps the most indispensable player for the team right now. Most of the goals conceded can't be attributed to him.

Nemanja Vidic (CB) - 7. Generally been as solid as his frame suggests, rather silly challenge towards the end against Liverpool though.

Jonny Evans (CB) - 7. Twenty years old, and looking every bit the part. I didn't notice the absence of Vidic against Chelsea, which says it all.

Patrice Evra (LB) - 7.5. One heck of an attacking wingback. Would easily be a top EPL winger for another club.

John O'Shea (U) - 5.5. Not been very convincing. What's happened to the man who nutmegged Figo?

Cristano Ronaldo (RW) - 7.5. Looking sharp straight back from injury, bringing an undeniable thrust to United's game, as exemplified by the way he left Obi Mikel for dead cutting in from the touchline. Already back on the scoresheet (in the Carling Cup).

Park Ji-Sung (RW) - 6. Resident three-lunged harrier. Perhaps should be a 6.5 for that goal, but overall there's still a bit of quality lacking when put side by side with United's other forwards. Very likely underappreciated.

Michael Carrick (CM) - 7. Class the few times he played, before his injury. Too bad.

Paul Scholes (CM) - 6.5. The midfield just isn't the same without him, but he's been mixing in too many lousy tackles in with his fine distribution. The loss of probably his best midfield partner in Carrick will hurt too.

Darren Fletcher (CM) - 7. The new Ronaldo? Started off with two goals in the first two league games, with energetic performances throughout. Overachieved, but long may it continue.

Owen Hargreaves (CM) - 6.5. Slightly ho-hum, but it's tough to make an impression when you're pegged as the water-carrier. Good work-rate.

Ryan Giggs (LW) - 6. Dribbling still up there with the best, but as often said his loss of pace will affect him more than his contemporary, Scholes. Every inch a legend, though.

Nani (LW) - 6.5. Apart from the Michael Jackson-lookalike jokes, he's getting better, and is a definite threat on the wing. A way to go before he catches up with Ronaldo.

Carlos Tevez (FW) - 7. Fights for every ball, and protects it superbly when he gets it. Sweetly taken goal against Liverpool. Just needs to stop collecting yellow cards.

Wayne Rooney (FW) - 6. Short, squat fighter number two. White Pele Wazza seems to be in a bad patch though, and on current form Tevez deserves to be picked ahead of him. Some simply sublime moves, but no goals. Getting placed in funny positions doesn't help.

Dimitar Berbatov (FW) - 6. United's only major signing, he's everything he was touted to be - combining a wonderful silky touch with unbelievable laziness. Or maybe he just looks that way next to Tevez and Rooney. Should perhaps be more willing to pull the trigger instead of contesting for the overstaffed withdrawn striker role.

(Can't recall too much about the rest of the squad to give a fair hearing)

One thing to shout about - my "other club", good ole Brighton, knocked The Biggest Club In The World Manchester City out of the Carling Cup.


Case Closed

A few final words on the kidney transplant case: An explanation for the seemingly different treatments of Mr Tang and Mr Heng was supplied on 14 September by Khushwant Singh ("Why not everyone deserves mercy") in the Straits Times. The key reasons for the disparity were:

  1. Mr Tang committed his offence because he was dying, but not Mr Heng.
  2. Mr Heng was diagnosed for terminal lung cancer only after he was remanded, and his offence was not related to his illness.
  3. This was Mr Tang's first brush with the law, while Mr Heng had robbery/illegal lottery convictions.

Fair enough, I suppose. The question on prison care was also answered by (senior lawyer) Mr (Amolat) Singh: "...Mr Heng will still be cared for medically. In prison, he can continue his treatment at the National Cancer Centre Singapore". Prof Walter Woon's partially-published detailed dissertation is also worth a look. (N.B. the penalties for lying in a statutory declaration are stated in the declaration itself, so that's one mitigating factor out of the window)

But let's play doctor's advocate here - All in all, what with all the crimes defined in this world, I would be surprised if someone had not at one time or another fallen foul of some obscure ruling. Take for instance jaywalking - though it carries up to three months in jail, it technically occurs regularly at most roads within housing estates, and I have yet to see anyone arrested for it. Come to think of it, I haven't seen a uniformed police officer patrolling on foot/bicycle in public for a while.

Despite appearances, people do get caught for jaywalking (an average of about ten a day). So, isn't this selective enforcement? Here, it is a matter of the near-impossibility of the police doing the "right" thing for everyone, but to prevent the law from being completely meaningless they do the "unfair" thing and catch a tiny fraction of the offenders. There's no black and white after all.



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Saturday, Sep 20, 2008 - 21:54 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Blind Faith Programming

changelog v1.08f
---------------
* Firefox (and related browser engines) bug with comments fixed, thanks to anonymous chong.

And there I was, wondering what precipitated the dearth of comments after my OpenID incorporation in late June. It turns out that the form autosubmission wasn't working in Firefox, which was a simple one-line correction, but remained unknown for months. Blind faith is dangerous.

Been keeping up with homework in general, but lagging a little for my FYP. I should really cut back on the 武神 comics...

The world seems to be in a slightly precarious economic situation, with respected institutions tumbling like ninepins - I confess that, as an Economics major, I never really got the hang of macroeconomics; It's one thing drawing arrows and shifting neat curves around on a graph, and another thing to remember the analogy of guiding the economy being like driving a car with a blackened windscreen, and with both the accelerator and brakes having a random delay. One wonders whether anybody at all (with the possible exception of Buffett?) has the full picture of what exactly the heck is going on.

This week's EPL challenge ($361.25/$400 so far) is easy enough - while Liverpool have not been fully dependant on luck, I suspect that at this moment they could skew a free kick and have a passing bird deflect it into goal. Not that they should need any of that at home against the mighty Stoke City.

$100 on Liverpool to beat Stoke City (at 1.15)



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Tuesday, Sep 16, 2008 - 23:56 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Facts Of Uni Life

" ...of course it doesn't cost $1 to print
...(but later) you have no change, I have no change
...so charge $1. "

 - LSM1301 professor (rightly) using economic incentives to get people to print their lab sheets beforehand (It's $2 for the disposable lab coat)

This is, by the way, the same module with a very strict approach towards plagiarism:

"Just a reminder that you should ENSURE that your answers (or even portions of your answers) are not similar to other students' answers."

 Come to think of it, this is pretty hard when students are working on the same (reasonably straightforward) lab and should get really similar numerical answers, and probably entails checking up on everyone else's papers.

Well, at least the Department of Biochemistry has pipes to vent all that sadness away (photo taken on second floor of MD7):





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Saturday, Sep 13, 2008 - 19:23 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Point and Counterpoint

One of the Matches of the Season is almost here, and how can I resist trying to rebuild my virtual Challenge ($230/$300) from it?

$25 on one goal in Liverpool vs. Man Utd (at 3.90) - as has happened so many times before
$75 on Chelsea to beat Man City (1.75) - Robinho won't be the difference between them yet

Meanwhile, the hamsters have also begun to show their claws on social issues. Responses to their maiden effort appreciated.



Mr Ham "Gay" Bacon		 Sirs, I present an excerpt from a letter (in response to "Stop making A mockery of rule of law: Let's accept gays") posted to the Today paper on September 9, entitled "What's next? Same sex marriages?":



"...is wrong to propose the acceptance of gays into Singapore society because accepting a gay lifestyle would have a tremendous impact on society as a whole in terms of religious beliefs, social well-being and families.

As a Christian, I oppose legalising a gay lifestyle in Singapore because it's against my beliefs. As a father of three teenagers, I care because I don't want my children to be affected by such a lifestyle.

Imagine if we allow the acceptance of such a lifestyle in Singapore. What next? Legalise same sex marriages? Legalise adoption of children for gays? Where are we as a socially-conservative society heading towards?

Soon gays will claim the right for social acceptance in all areas including education, welfare et cetera. What effect will this have on the next generation of children and parents who wish that their children will grow up normally and produce children in the normal course of their being?"
I rest my case.


Mr Fish "F" Chips		 I submit that this is an inaccurate depiction, and that the parallel between discrimination against gays and mistreatment/discrimination against other races is inappropriately drawn. Whereas (American) history tells us that certain sections of Christianity did hold that distinctions drawn on skin colour and the institution of slavery were at least not against the moral teachings of their religion, there too existed men (and women) of great faith and courage, ahead of their time, who were for abolition.

Today, I believe that no mainstream branch of any major religion would support race-based discrimination, let alone slavery, in any form or deed. For are we not all the children of God (at least if we follow His dictates)?

But as for homosexuals, their current predicament is completely different from that faced by people of colour, as brought up in the original letter. Why? Well, for a start, gayness is now and forever forbidden by our inerrant holy books, just as said holy books could be interpreted in the past (see the Curse of Ham for instance) to forsake racial equality by significant percentages of adherents.

Furthermore, being against or indifferent in practice to the plight of gays seems to be the de facto standard of many mainstream houses of worship and religious leaders today, exactly as it was pertaining to race a couple of centuries ago! Our beliefs, in accordance with the holy word, are right and applicable for all eternity.

Could you imagine the abomination that is gay marriage? Marriage is only meant to be between one man and one woman, just as two hundred years ago it was obviously clear that it was only meant to be between one man and one woman of the same race.

I rest my case.


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Friday, Sep 12, 2008 - 22:56 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

- - -
Mega Bonus Post

changelog v1.08e
---------------
* Added individual entry viewcount display (not sure why it wasn't done before), which may have fixed a rare view counter bug.

* Tags display sorted chronologically.


No EPL (even as Manchester City become the biggest club in the world) thus no "mandatory" post last weekend, but there's no shortage of action in these parts:

Browser Warz

To begin with, Google Chrome (BETA) was released on Wednesday, with accompanying explanatory comic. Not having been won over by Firefox, I was drawn over to Chrome by its perceived speed, which is the most important measure. Near-instant loading of Gmail? Tabs hang and crash individually if ever? Pulling tabs out and pushing them into new windows? Incredible screen real estate from a minimalist design? Chrome's all that, and open source, and free.

There are some glaring omissions which were swiftly pointed out, such as a lack of plug-in support, and some little details that I personally missed. Chief among them is the inability to refresh within a particular frame, and also the lack of a warning prompt when closing a window with multiple tabs. No apparent way to choose character set encoding either, and the one-box-fits-all Omnibox isn't perfect yet, though its autocomplete feature seems reasonably intelligent. Some advanced features also don't seem to have been fully implemented (e.g. Facebook interactivity)

Possible bad news for Microsoft-dislikers out there is that Chrome may well end up gaining its market share by eating into Firefox and Safari, among others, while having less impact on Internet Explorer. It makes some sense, since this would be the adventurous or informed part of the userbase that tries out new stuff, as compared to the "I canz watch Youtube? Cool!" or "Who cares..." masses (over 70% at last count) who would never bother to question their pre-installed browser.

To give Microsoft some credit, Chrome's performance was achieved on their operating platform. It's kind of like how those television ads for brand-new sets boasting crystal-clear image quality show those pictures off on existing "lousy" TVs.


Kidneys And Bicycles For All

In what is held as Singapore's first organ-trading case, the ill retail magnate who started the whole business was sentenced to a day's jail (which would up being a couple of hours) and fined about 3% of a peanut (S$17000), while the middleman broker got 14 months and the two Indonesian (would-be) donors were locked up for three weeks and three-and-a-half months respectively.

Some would naturally see this as (yet another) case of the rich enjoying "preferential treatment" from the penalties meted out, though the magnate's poor state of health appears to be a reasonable excuse. The exchanges in the national papers between our PM's sister, Dr Lee Wei Ling, and the Attorney-General, Prof Walter Woon, should serve as a good vantage point from which to consider this issue.

Dr Lee fired the first salvo with an article on September 5 entitled "Why mete out even a 'token sentence'?", which does not seem to be freely available on the subscription-based Straits Times website, but which I managed to dig up with Factiva. The main points in her argument were:
  1. If Mr Tang (the magnate) had went overseas for his (paid) kidney transplant, "no one would have considered him guilty of any offence". But he was so sick that he had little choice but to take the risk and bring the donor to Singapore instead
  2. One day's token sentence does not make sense due to his health, in the same way that a person medically unfit for caning, though his crime might ordinarily merit it, is exempted totally and not given a "token caning"
  3. He had already suffered anguish from "waiting a full week to know whether or not he would be spending considerable time in jail"
  4. The big meanie who asked the Deputy Public Prosecutor for a jail sentence is "probably someone with little empathy and cannot imagine himself in Mr Tang's position". "No doubt" that this meanie would do the same thing and get a kidney by hook or by crook, if he were in Mr Tang's shoes. "Any one of us would have acted as Mr Tang did if we had been placed in the same predicament. He paid a price for doing what all of us might have done"
Each of these arguments has several possible counters, but before I present my own thoughts, let's see what the esteemed Prof Woon has to say:
  1. First off, Mr Tang was fined $7000 for the attempted kidney purchase, so in effect Dr Lee's first sentence in her original article, that he "...was sentenced in court this week to a day in jail for trying to buy a kidney" was factually wrong to start with
  2. The one day (two hours) was due to Mr Tang "making a false statement in a statutory declaration under the Oaths and Declarations Act" (i.e. lying under oath) which has a mandatory minimum one day sentence.
  3. (In reference to main argument 4 of Dr Lee's above) "It is presumptuous of her to assume that she knows how other people would act, or worse, that they would act the same way as she would.", since all are equal before the Law and are obliged to comply, and if Dr Lee disagrees that's just too bad, it remains the law until she gets Parliament to amend it
Before continuing to Dr Lee's response to that, let us take a look at her original arguments 1 to 3, which Prof Woon did not appear to specifically rebut:

Argument one that Mr Tang would not have broken the law for his "offence" if done overseas anyway, so he presumably should be forgiven to some extent for committing it here, does not hold water in my opinion. In many countries, spitting or littering may not be punishable under law - and indeed in quite a few places, no one would consider these offenses a real crime. Therefore, should I have the right to spit and litter here, and the fines/corrective work order be waived? Does marijuana being de facto allowed in Holland make it permissible in Holland Village? True, perhaps some would not fault Mr Tang for trying to save his own neck, but the form of the argument is problematic. Still, in the end, the penalty for this crime turned out to be a $7000 pittance anyway, and if that were the only punishment I doubt that Dr Lee would have bothered to pen her criticism on grounds of principle.

Going to the second argument on health grounds - this is more reasonable, but is also troublesome. To judge its validity appropriately, one has to consider the standard operating procedure for very sick inmates - do they continue to serve their sentence in the prison hospital, get sent to an external hospital while technically still doing time, or get their sentence cut on compassionate grounds? I have to say I am not clear on this, so if anyone could enlighten me here it would be greatly appreciated.

Furthermore, what is the cutoff point for "very sick"? Another writer has pointed out that Mr Tang was well and fit enough to adequately and officially "discharge his duties as executive chairman of a public listed company" towards his shareholders, earning over half a million bucks in the process over the past year, but somehow was presented as "helpless and terminally ill" to the court and only resigned his post after being sentenced on August 27. From this, it appears a case of "fit to sit in a boardroom, not fit to sit in a cell".

Argument three is the raw appeal to our "humanity", which should have been the main thrust of the article to begin with. The problem is that such "mental anguish" is hardly quantifiable. Most criminals have to wait before sentencing - do we then say, the crime merited a year, but since the waiting created great pain, it should then be reduced? Since this anguish is presumably quite common but hardly ever taken into account, it would be quite unfair to apply it selectively.

Also, in the same week, the court sentenced a 58 year-old man with terminal lung cancer to seven months for running massage parlours without a licence, and hiring a worker without a permit. Maybe Dr Lee indeed feels that this is an inappropriate sentence too, but in the end the fact remains that one terminally ill man got two hours in the clink and another got seven months, both for relatively minor crimes which many people probably do not feel strongly towards. One happens to be very rich, the other presumably far less so, but this may have nothing to do with anything, of course.

But back to Dr Lee. Indeed, when confronted with the point that all are equal before the law, she acknowledges it but brings up Mr Tang's health condition again, reiterating her argument that it is the only factor that differentiates Mr Tang from the would-be donor Mr Sulaiman, who went to jail for a few weeks. This by itself does not provide any new angle, of course.

Next, she brings up an interesting point:

"... The prosecution had the discretion to decide what charges Mr Tang should face. Neither the principle of equality before the law nor any other principle required the prosecution to abdicate its duty to exercise its discretion..."

Ah, discretion. A good thing to have, but a potential minefield. The whole point of having a code of law is to have a set of rules which all are supposed to follow, is it not? Otherwise, why bother to bind a judge's discretion at all, and just rest each case upon its own merits, on his collected wisdom, to arrive at the best possible sentence? There is already a range of punishments available for most offenses for discretion to be applied upon. Admittedly a balance has to be struck, but being seen to be too free in applying discretion is a dangerous thing for an authority's moral standing, especially when those who enjoy said benefits of discretion are seen to more often than not be of a certain monetary class.

But it is Dr Lee's closing paragraphs which I find the most intriguing (comments in bold are mine):

"Justice, compassion and common sense suggest the following factors should have been considered:
  • Tang is desperately sick with one or two years to live. (see above for case of a person with terminal lung cancer who got seven months)
  • He is unlikely to survive a few days in prison. (granted Dr Lee is a renowned medical doctor, but I am still not certain how justified this statement is, or how the Prison Service will take this estimation of their medical care standards. Also by this reasoning would not the sentence of judicial caning, possibly with permanent health repercussions, be excessive for non-violent crimes towards property as in the Michael Fay vandalism case?)
  • Society would not have been harmed if Mr Tang had not been jailed. (in much the same way that society would be unlikely to have been harmed had the abovementioned unlicensed massage parlour operator not been jailed; Insightful readers will likely be able to come up with more examples of "reasonably victimless" crimes. Consider for instance the case of two gay men who commit their crime of passion in their home, but were chanced upon by a police officer upon official business, who I believe would then be duty bound to report the offence, which carries up to two years. Also, Dr Lee again "presumes" to know what will or will not hurt society - would not the erosion of the principle of equality be hurtful?)
  • The Government has indicated it might legalise organ trading. There was therefore no public policy to be upheld by sending Mr Tang to jail. (Erm, so in the period when the government indicated it "might" legalise casinos, one could start a small gambling house since there was no public policy to be upheld? Then if the Government decides in the end not to legalise organ trading, should the policy then be retroactively upheld? If a girl coyly says she "might" be open to offers, is it right for a guy to force himself on her then? With all due respect, this is a particularly weak point to me, even in a collection of less than stellar points.)
  • There was no requirement in law for Mr Tang to have sworn the statutory declaration. (he could have then refused to have sworn it, no? Unless Mr Tang comes out and says he was coerced into doing it, or didn't know its significance [no legal counsel?] otherwise the fact is that he deliberately lied on oath [since he must have known well that he was not remotely related to Mr Sulaiman], plain and simple. And once the system lets people get away cheaply with lying on oath, likely few would take it seriously and it would cease to retain its value in the pursuit of justice)
The AG uses high-sounding phrases about equality before the law, but says little about compassion or prosecutorial discretion. The law must be blind as to who is before the courts. But the law does not require law officers or the courts to be blind to justice and compassion.

Fortunately, in this case, the court was compassionate."

Actually, the kicker is that on a gut level, I do rather concur with Dr Lee's high-sounding phrases about compassion before the law. I obviously do not have anything against Mr Tang, and in fact would wish him a speedy recovery if it would make any material difference. Indeed, as of now I would support a tightly regulated and anonymous organ market for kidneys, such that those in need of health would enjoy the gift of life, and those in need of cash would enjoy the gift of prosperity at the cost of a mostly redundant organ; It is one thing to talk about the dignity of the body, and another to impose it upon those who may have difficulty feeding it and those of their family in reality. I accept the can of worms this may open (why not an eye or an arm for a million dollars then?), but my estimation is that, if implemented with discretion, a kidney market would have a net societal benefit.

Indeed, if a law were specifically passed that all terminally ill people who have committed certain relatively minor classes of crimes would be automatically spared a jail sentence on equal and compassionate grounds, I would have nothing to say. Unfortunately as pointed out above, this does not appear to be the case. Granted Mr Heng's (illegal massage parlour) offence is not a direct mirror of Mr Tang's, but since it is astronomically unlikely that a case where all other variables remain constant save for the status of the offender will ever appear, this is as good a comparism to take as anything. It might be a worthwhile exercise for a wannabe Freakonomist to compare aggregate sentencing data of that of the relatively poor against the relatively rich.

Then again, being rich has other benefits before the courts, even if the judges were completely impartial - money hires good legal teams, and it would be surprising if any judge stated a belief that the quality of the lawyers engaged has totally no bearing on the outcome of a case. "Jail time in lieu of fines" sentences effectively say, you get imprisoned if you are poor, but if you are rich just cough up the dosh and walk away. The deep pocketed can afford to engage in a dollar-burning exercise with poorer opponents in the courts if they have half a legal leg to stand on, secure in the probability that the opponent would eventually have to drop their suit or face financial ruin even if they win.

This is true in almost all countries following American/British law though, and the alternatives can be worse. So how? Old question, old answer - get rich, lor!

Oh, and opposition parties in Singapore, please do your bit for society too, instead of sitting on your asses and moaning about unfairness. As a bonus, once you have an affiliated apolitical charity foundation, you can help improve the health of the general populace by being permitted to hold mass cycling events too.


Prestige Or Mill

The Straits Times ran an exposé on degree mills on 29 August, which might have blown over pretty quickly had the Chancellor of one of the accused parties, Preston University, not taken out large ads (paid by former graduates) in several local papers (including the Straits Times, letter reproduced here), and one of their graduates not pressed his case in the ST Forum.

Predictably, the Straits Times stuck to their guns and insisted that their description of Preston was justified, thus inviting more negative publicity onto the school, which I suspect would have gained some unhappy students from this affair. So, are they a degree mill?

One can sympathise with their students, since they appear to have put in some time and effort, unlike the clear-cut degree-in-the-mail-by-next-week sort of mill. It is also true that they are licensed to "award all levels of post-secondary academic degrees" by the State of Alabama ("which has the worst degree-programme oversight in the United States", says the director of Oregon state's office of degree authorisation), so technically the certifications given out are legal to the best of my understanding. Unfortunately, the value of the certifications are more suspect, not only due to a lack of accreditation, but also to rather shady past behaviour such as claiming professors to be part of their faculty when they had not even heard of the school.

While it is strictly true that unaccredited institutions may be of quality, the onus then falls very heavily on them to prove themselves, since most "good enough" institutions would presumably get accredited since it is in their interest to do so. But should we really care if such institutions give out degrees for substandard work, or sell them outright?

One could say no, let the employer beware - if an employer hires someone with such a degree and finds out that he cannot perform the job, the free market should ensure that the employer would be more wary next time (and if that someone performs satisfactorily, good on him. Also, someone with a degree from a respected university is not an absolutely sure bet too). Unfortunately, in practice employers may have a reasonable expectation that a degree confers a certain level of expertise, and be in that way misled. The opportunity cost for trying one's luck with a fake degree is also not large - for a few hundred dollars, one can pad dozens of resumes.

On the flip side, the students who honestly invested time and effort in unaccredited programmes also lose out, if they discover that it offers far less value than they thought. It would be disheartening to discover that government agencies and respected companies take a dim view of a qualification that took a year or two and many thousands of dollars to get.

And then there are the businessmen who want a Ph.D for professional reasons, or simply the prestige. Since they have shown their abilities to some extent by getting wealthy enough to buy expensive pieces of paper, this is somewhat less of a problem, though it does somewhat cheapen the effort made by those in more rigorous programmes, since to the layman one Ph.D carries much the same weight as another.

The topic of universities has also come up in another form, with a Mr Calvin Ng saying that a "varsity place (is) not an entitlement". This raised the ire of a Mr Chen, who countered that "education is a right and not a privilege", to which Mr Ng had the final word.

Mr Chen revealed that he had been rejected by all local universities, but managed to get a honours degree from Britain, which gained him admission to an NTU Masters degree programme. Thus, the (rather popular) insinuation is that there are students which are in fact qualified for a local degree course, but were not let in due to insufficient places. These students would then either have to go foreign or put their education on hold. There are similar stories in the forum, telling of local students who did well enough to get accepted by an Ivy League university, but not for the course of their choice here (which may bolster NUS/NTU/SMU's claims to be among the top in the world?)

Well, first of all, there are tradeoffs for every solution. Currently, the percentage of graduates for each cohort is 20+%, targeted to hit about 30%. If we assume that people have different levels of academic inclination, then in general the higher percentage of the cohort is admitted, the lower the overall standard. Nobody pretends that 90+% of each cohort should attend university - some simply have talents that are better utilized in other fields. If one is a great football player, chef, musician, artist, entrepreneur etc, why should he waste his time?

The standards issue can be handled in two ways - diluting all local universities equally, or creating new universities that are meant to cater to local education, and not gunning to become "top twenty in the world". The latter seems easy enough - upgrade some polytechnics and JCs to university status (expanding the curriculum appropriately), and we are done. This is not without precedent, as Britain has a bunch of New Universities, or "Universities formerly designated Polytechnics". Ta-da, fifty percent or more of the cohort are university graduates! Take that now, snobbish NUS elitists!

One question then, if this solution were implemented, would be if the new universities would then remain seen as second-class. There is a school of thought (elucidated in the comments here) that "...a degree is primarily a signal of ability and competence. If too many possess the same signal, it loses its discriminatory value". The justification is that "...for most of us, the degree we take is of minimal relevance to our future working life (except for doctors, lawyers, engineers, and even then much of the knowledge is earned on the job).", i.e. what seems to matter more is the "exclusivity" of receiving (winning) a degree under a competitive system, and not so much what is learnt in the process.

Therefore "...if the govt expands higher education, employers will find it a lot more difficult to discriminate between job candidates. They will start using other less reliable rules - where you studied, who you know, and possible social clues - accent, language, dress, address etc. Obviously all of these tilt the scales to the already wealthy and well connected, which perpetuates any social inequalities (which we don't want of any good education policy)".

In fact, I suppose that there may be a general qualifications inflation going on - today's Bachelors degree seems on the way to becoming yesterday's high school diploma. The commenter follows up by saying that "...a degree by itself is not (much of) a signal of intrinsic value, only your value relative to others ...If you expand the number of graduates, you will find that employers will be calling for 80,000 master's degrees holders instead (of 80,000 bachelor's degrees) ...The UK converted their polytechnics to universities and didn't fool employers, who continued to discriminate against graduates of former polys."

Is this view accurate? I bet there are many who would take umbrage, but it appears a fact that quite often people will be judged relative to other people - by transcripts listing one's class rank, for instance. Should it be this way? Another commentator lauds the example of "Scandinavian societies... (which) tends to view education as a measure of competence rather than a measure relative achievement ...The analogy is like a driving test where you either pass or fail a driving test. You don't have people getting first class honours or US equivalent for being the best driver of a batch. You meet a minimum requirement you pass that's it." Sounds good, but in theory the government can just set a high objective university admissions criteria (a.k.a Degree test) calculated to only let twenty percent of the cohort pass, another Diploma test calculated to let say forty percent pass, a Masters test letting ten percent pass... and we are back to the relativity of square one.

What happened to Mr Chen, from this train of thought, would be that he got bumped out of this "signalling competition" due to being a late bloomer, and therefore had no choice but to spend more to earn that "signal". It is true that poorer students may not have the means to pursue education overseas (~S$200k?) if they do not make it into the heavily-subsidized local system. This seems, in effect, to be a bet by the authorities that the positive externalities generated by an extra level of education, would not cover the costs incurred (indeed the greatest gains to productivity of an individual come from primary and secondary schooling as a rule). Whether they are correct, remains to be seen.

So in the end it boils down to the attitude of a society - it is my impression that many countries are less degree-oriented, and one can make a very decent living as say a plumber or electrician. Remember also that no matter where the cut-off point is set, there will still be those at the margin who may feel aggrieved at having just missed out.

I end this topic with a response to Mr Chen's parting lines: "The question is, if local universities do not provide a chance for Singaporeans who qualify to study at home, how will we retain our talent when other prestigious foreign universities are ever obliging in admitting Singapore students?" The answer seems quite obvious - fight fire with fire and have the local universities be ever obliging in admitting foreign talent, lor! Here it must be added that there is some unhappiness at some 20% of university places being taken up by foreigners, but the argument of having an infusion of overseas quality, against more local attendees, could fill many pages and has to be reserved for a later date.


Chapalang

Endured an inconvenient few days midweek when I woke up with a pain in my right heel. Googled "heel pain", and got a description for plantar fasciitis. Pain on the bottom of the heel? Check. Pain that is usually worse upon arising? Check? Pain that increases over a period of months?

...Uh oh.

Luckily enough, it went away by the weekend. Don't have a clue on what caused it.

Also helped a friend set up his online store, using the Zen Cart e-commerce platform. With so many quality open-source solutions for most Internet services that one might conceivably want to implement, it's getting all too easy to be lazy and hold off writing anything from scratch. Then again, it is the nature of the web that once a single all-encompassing free super-solution is unveiled in any niche, there's not much sense in reinventing the wheel, axle, bolt and nut. Just one more system-building project left in the pipeline then.

Oh, and the diligent CompClub candidate featured in the previous post? He didn't win. Guess there just wasn't a compelling enough case for people like me to spend an evening voting (too bad it wasn't an online poll), but it was an admirable and creative attempt nonetheless.



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Wednesday, Sep 03, 2008 - 01:31 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Industry



When you have a candidate who cares enough to plaster his face on the inside of a toilet cubicle, you know you've got yourself a winner.

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