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Wednesday, Oct 10, 2012 - 22:22 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Lots Of Postlets

Heart skipped a beat when my lab PC refused to boot after a restart yesterday, until I ran a battery of diagnostic tests, after which it tired of the charade. [N.B. Android apps not updating? Hold Volume Down and Power to boot into recovery mode, then wipe the cache partition] Ongoing experiments does mean a blogging opportunity, so off I go:


What Research Is Getting Like


(Original source: kangdm.com)


It may be new, but if it doesn't really work better than some possibly trivial combination of existing techniques in the end, what's the point?

Encouragement: related developments did get featured. Also, some empirical support from Hong Kong that a minimum wage does help - "...some anecdotes recounted about smaller companies forced to shut down, but these were minimal... In fact, the net number of businesses registered has risen by 100,000.". Contrast today's main headline in The State's Times: SMEs facing labour crunch (hint: got to keep wages down, so have to import more workers!)

The newspaper did then redeem itself somewhat with its report on FAILRAIL.sg, which used official data to prove that MRT reliability has not improved, despite official assertions.


Seen From Bus On (Last) Tuesday


Should be the car from here


As noted by smk, Hamilton's moving to Mercedes, while Schumacher's retiring again. Another Mr. Ham happened to be caught buffing some new wheels of his own:


I can explain everything!


Mr. Ham passionately assured me that his new acquisition had nothing to do with the temporary loss of my debit card. It did take me back to my primary school days, where I had a thing for Tamiya racers and amassed a fair-sized collection of which my favourites were probably the Big Bang Ghost, Horizon and Super Shooting Star, which has since been whittled down to a few survivors.

They seem to be making something of a comeback, which had me recalling fondly of simpler days when fun was tinkering with Mini 4WD accessories (the tall stabilizer poles are there to help keep the car on the track on turns, which is easier said than done with some of the modded motors; staying grounded on ramps is another challenge...)

It was a good excuse to clean Mr. Ham at the same time, though sadly not like this:




Keeping In Contacts

Took the plunge and got myself fitted with contact lenses, which I had actually considered immediately after the LASIK disqualification. It was plain sailing till the part where I realised that I had to touch my own eyeballs (indirectly)

Of course, a bit of thinking would reveal that eyeballs are not that delicate - I have no problems with pressing on them through my eyelids, for one. Still, the concern that a stray fingernail could scratch the cornea is probably slightly justified, and I spent long minutes attempting to stifle my reflexes to get the darn things on, which was eventually achieved with some slice of luck.

[N.B. One is reminded of the story of the Chinese general who trained himself to not flinch by repeatedly having an arrow thrust close to his eyeball by a mechanism (an oft-repeated modern variation uses a bowling ball; but then, people avoid flying arrows for good reason), as well as the primitive method of temporarily treating myopia by placing small weighted bags on the eyelids during sleep to "squash" them]

I can't say that I was disappointed with the results. For the first time in decades, I was able to see fairly well without glasses... and then I had to get them off, which despite the opinion of my optometrist and cheery instructional videos that make it look ridiculously simple (though this seems like it might work), took about as long with a stage in the middle where I seriously doubted that I would be able to get them off (oh, they could be slid across the eye easily enough); it was no fun struggling with one lens off.


M Cup's Back


No longer as complimentary as before


The fair-weather fan in me hotfooted it to Jalan Besar for the LionsXII Malaysia Cup semi-final, though I ended up arriving only for the second half due to the contact lens collection described above, as well as the lure of a Samurai Burger (delicious - should try to spy for the secret). Hadn't missed much, going from the scoreline.


Certainly cosy. Awaiting the World's Largest Dome though.


I was soon reminded of the difference between live football and watching it on the telly - obvious improvement in atmosphere aside, the players are more... human. One can see the details in how they move, feel the contact they make, and most of all, experience their decisions and doubts, of which there were quite a few, most glaringly in the lead-up to the first goal by ATM FC.

I'm afraid that I haven't been keeping up with the players' names, but a bit of searching reveals that it was Safuwan Baharudin who eventually equalised - and a pretty good header it was too.

On this note, the Philippines have found some success utilizing foreign-born players in football - but as with the British example, there is solid justification here. Trivia: Former Arsenal and Barcelona defender Giovanni van Bronckhorst is of Indonesian heritage. Now for the first Singaporean in the big European leagues...

And breaking news: Forget Messi, forget Ronaldo, forget El Clasico - a player has brought football to new heights by figuring out how to dive while diving. When he works a third one in, he'll be invincible.


Chaos in the Old World

This should be familiar to followers of the Warhamster... sorry, Warhammer mythos, which tends to revolve around the machinations of the four major Chaos Gods - Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh, each representing a particular aspect of Chaos (mostly equivalent to evil). As might be imagined, they are not exactly nice fellows (though this may depend on individual perspective - Grandfather Nurgle, for one, does truly adore his followers while corrupting them with pestilence; but such is the way of Cult Leaders)

In summary, there are two ways to win the game - by advancing a dial, or by obtaining Victory Points (fifty or more for an outright win). Both are achieved by positioning units on one of nine regions on a world map, with Cultists spreading corruption (tokens), while Warriors and Greater Daemons (only one each per Chaos God) seek to destroy opposing Cultists (and each other), but do not themselves cause corruption.

The significance of corruption is that when a region has twelve or more corruption tokens at the end of a turn, it is Ruined, which provides plenty of Victory Points to the players who contributed the most corruption, as well as a few to those who simply participated on that last turn; the game ends if five or more regions are Ruined, and in the unlikely event that no player has somehow reached fifty Victory Points then, the one with the most wins. It is possible for all players to lose, which happens if nobody has won by the end of the seventh turn.

The other standard method of amassing Victory Points is to Dominate a region by placing some combination of units and Chaos card values (more on this later) that is higher than the Resistance of the region, in which case the player gets a number of Victory Points equal to the Conquest Value of the region (which is generally the same as the Resistance, but can be modified by tokens); as we found out, however, this is a rather inefficient way of getting points, especially in low-value regions (but stack Noble tokens in The Empire and ooh-la-la!)


THEY ARE MY SPACE MARINES... oops, sorry, wrong continuity
(Source: comicvine.com)


So now on to the Chaos cards. They represent powers specific to each Chaos Gods, two are drawn at the beginning of each turn (with the exception of Tzeentch, who draws till he has five) and each region can hold up to two of them.

And how do they, and for that matter units, get placed? Well, each unit and card has a summoning cost (which may be zero, for cards). Each turn, players alternate placing a unit (but only to regions already with one's units, or regions adjacent to those regions - so location is important) or card in fixed order, as long as they have enough power points to do so (power points are replenished each turn). Unsurprisingly, more powerful units and cards are generally more expensive power point wise, and not spending too many at the beginning, to be able to react to opponent moves, is often wise.

For the expansion, a fifth Chaos God, the Horned Rat (which Mr. Ham says is a nod to the might of rodents), is introduced. Unique among the Chaos Gods, the Horned Rat does not spread corruption, having its own point-scoring conditions. For the full rules and other details, one can refer to online PDFs, kindly supplied by one of our players.

The other Chaos Gods do have their peculiarities too. Khorne, for one, can do well to be blithely direct, since he gets dial advancement tokens for simply killing enemy units, and especially with newer playgroups can easily hack his way to ultimate victory (as it happened with us)

Nurgle, in contrast, has the longest dial advancement track, and thus generally has to win by Victory points. Fortunately, he does have cheap Warriors to help hold ground. Tzeentch has the most Cultists (eight) who actually spread corruption, and some nifty tricks too (teleport to other end of map, anyone?). Slaanesh, whom I played, doesn't have too many units, but can sort of make it up with a card ability to temporarily convert opponent Cultists (if he draws the right cards, that is), as well as an upgrade doubling his Cultists' defence, making them rather irritating to remove.

All in all, a deceptively carefree game especially considering the theme, as the loss of units often doesn't matter that much (just re-summon them next turn, and they're bad guys anyway). Distinguishing tokens on the board may, however, be a pain, due to the colour scheme.


Political Kombat



Obama was widely acknowledged to have been beaten in the first US Presidential debate (see video/full transcript, or even better, the NMATv take), perhaps partly due to Romney's subliminal love of Big Birds. While I do not expect that much to change whoever wins, it does teach a lesson, which is:

Real-time verbal debates are far less about facts and positions, than the ability to cook them up, and to sound and look the part (one popular observation was that Obama "seemed tired") - which makes sense given how many voters even read, let alone critically analyse, policies even when they are printed? It follows that not committing to any firm positions helps tremendously in being a hard target to hit.


Three-panel summary



Rome Sweet Home (Out Of Nowhere)

The Eternal City's a fine city too, sweetness is power, and 56% of Singaporeans don't even want to be here any more, according to a large anonymous survey (more than 2000 respondents). The zombie threat I've been prepping for should be less pronounced in that case.


Creating A Fuss

The most exciting print discussion these couple of weeks to me (other than another film banning [explained]) was overwhelmingly the one that ran in Today, which kicked off in earnest with Creationism still part of the evolution debate, a response to Theory of evolution in crisis - and it's a good thing (where the crisis refers to the details, and not the general idea). Among other things, the proponent of creationism states:

  • A doctor from Harvard Medical School remarked that almost all of biology over the last 100 years has proceeded independent of evolution
  • Historical science should not have the same authority as experimental science
  • Natural selection and mutation do not equate to evolution, a Mr Potato Head cannot become a GI Joe
  • Evolution does not explain how life originated


The rebuttals came mercifully quickly, from a group of biological science professors from NTU, as well as the head of the local humanist society, along with a more pacifist stance that echoed Gould's non-overlapping magisteria.

First off, it was noted that misleading quote-mining had (again) taken place on the creationist side - the Harvard doctor's quote, in context, was part of a lament that evolution had not played as large a role in biology as it should have.

On the second point, the attack seems to be on techniques such as radiocarbon dating being inherently unreliable, though while they are of course not perfectly precise, any reasonable estimates of the age of the Earth are still wildly incompatible with a roughly 6000 year-old history, as insisted upon by certain religious groups (and moreover, a really big flood might have changed everything! Um, yeah...)

The third point has been covered in some depth here previously, and on the final complaint that evolution does not explain the origin of life, while it is true that that is still the subject of some speculation, it has little bearing on whether the mechanism of evolution applies after that.

Even more entertaining than the letters themselves were the public responses on the website, with the usual assortment of creationism defenders, ranging from the simply extremely open-minded (e.g. the commentator with initials A.T.) to the unshakably devout (e.g. B.C. and T.T.) and the quite fantastic (e.g. T.K.T.), up against sometimes-snarky and often-resigned rationals.

A.T. for one is generally an agreeable fellow, prone to statements like "there are many possibilities in this universe", "Evolution cannot answer some of our questions, same as Creationism" and "...God could have made (the universe to be) at the stage where we humans measure it to be a billion years old". The appropriate consideration here should be Russell's teapot - true, neither is 100% guaranteed; but there's a big difference between 99.99% and less than 1% (and I'm probably being generous).

B.C. is probably the most active supporter of creationism in the discussions, where, aided by frequent links to creationist websites, he attempts to single-handedly demolish an entire branch of science. Representative quote: "...Yes, I don't know enough about homologous recombinationy, prophase, anaphase, telophase, mitosis etc. But so what? It is not as if everyone here knows enough of these things. But I do know of some people who do, people like John Sanford and Robert Carter." (unsurprisingly, science sites are not too hot on them)

If I may be so bold, his basic thesis appears to be that extrapolation of existing physical laws to the past is unreliable, or "it must be repeatable to be believed" - which somehow does not seem necessary for his deity, however. There is also an elegant reply relating to how the night sky is actually looking back in time (since the light from distant stars would take millenia to arrive)

My favourite would however be T.K.T.:

"It is a great insult to 'Divine Science' [not 'man-made science'] that creation of apes, and then for apes to evolve into man, and for man to build Eden, a heaven on earth, while the apes still leave [sic] on trees. It is a joke by by some people, who do not understand what is 'Divine Science' and the difference with 'man-made science', which starts from the extremely physically big and now researching into the extremely invisible small."

"...Man is the highest form of creation, not by evolution from another specie, not evolution from the ancestry lines of apes... Apes do not have to cut the umbilical cord, not need to cut hair or nail, no need to brush teeth... Man does all these. Have we made much progress from ape or have we slipped further into darkness and degeneration even though man has conscience but not apes?"

[N.B. Here, it could be noted that some apes, at least, likely have more conscience and social awareness than some men]


A human came by. He wouldn't scratch my back after I scratched his.
(Source: zhuclear.com)


And finally (epic comment broken up here for better readability):

"Has anyone really search into the beginning of mankind deep enough? Do they know how many ancestors do we have, each one of us? I hope all scientists will ask how many ancestors each and everyone of them, in fact each and everyone of us, you and me, has. Is it a few only? I hope they can add up just 50 generations of their grandpa and grandma in the combination of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc. etc. It is a staggering figure. It is probably more than the apes that have come to pass.

How long is 50 generations in number of years? 50 x average of 30 per generation [each offspring is born] equals to only 1500 years. Christ is 2000 years. Buddha some 3500 years. Recorded history of China some 5000 years. In only 1500 years [around 500 AD], the number of each one of us alive on earth today, our ancestors go into the trillions. This is a fact for any scientist, who is doing research into the beginning of man, never to overlook or ignore. To ignore it is like not even reaching into the kindergarten science of man.

By the way the stacking of 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 6d4, etc. is in the binary code of all our computers, mobile phones, tvs, electronic gadgets and cameras, etc. This basic building block has been there from the beginning of time not that a super-brainy scientist has created it for today's Bill Gate, the late Steve Job, etc. to make their billions. Nothing is made by man. It is Given."


Well, I may not be a particularly good scientist, or even one at all, but this is an opportunity to more fully and directly explain this supposed fatal dilemma (previously covered from a Young Earth argument) - if the Earth were really billions of years old, why is the human population so relatively small?

The common-sense realisation I had tried to motivate was that the assumption of perpetual population doubling is simply bunk. Humans, or any creatures for that matter, will reproduce and survive only to the extent that the environment can support them. A sustained explosion in population for large creatures is very rare, and has in our case only been made possible by technology (agriculture, fertilizer, etc)

But what of the seemingly-incredible number of ancestors we would have needed to have, according to T.K.T.? Surely it is true that each of us have two parents, as do our parents before us - then would not even a hundred generations mean that we have had more ancestors than the number of particles in the universe?

To answer this, consider a case study - a starting population of a million individuals. Assume that after one generation of twenty years, the population remains at one million, which surely is possible (one could think of an immigration-less Singapore). Now repeat for 99 more generations.

What has happened? Any individual from the hundredth generation has, by T.K.T.'s reasoning, about two to the power of 100 ancestors, certainly staggering even before multiplication by the million people in that generation; but it is also true that in this case study, there were only ever a total of 100 million individuals who ever existed - less than two to the power of 27. How did this happen?

The simple answer is that almost all individuals eventually share almost all their ancestors, which should make a lot of sense on hindsight (cue the wise Chinese saying that for people with the same surname, they were family five hundred years ago [五百年前是一家]), and there additionally is a ton of double-double-counting going on (an ancestor of fifty generations ago probably fills many spots on one's ancestry tree). Or, in other words: family trees tend to overlap and fold on themselves extremely heavily to form a column of life. Good enough for kindergarten science, I hope.


A Root And Questions

After all this, it was not too surprising to discover that Singapore is one of the countries targeted by a creationist group (Creation Ministries International, aptly acronym-ed to CMI). Their movement has thus far encouraged the donning of "Question Evolution!" T-shirts (AUD$23.90 each, which should go well with the "Teach the Controversy" set), and posing of "Fifteen Questions Evolutionists Cannot Adequately Answer" (except that they, like, have, but who cares)

The CMI site refers to "the anti-Christian dogma of evolution" - but is it really? One is reminded of all the sixteenth-century hoo-hah when it was proposed that the Earth moves about the Sun and not the other way round, in impious contradiction to the Holy Book that proclaims "The world also shall be stable, that it be not moved", "Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever" and "The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose", among other seemingly authoritative quotes.


(Source: wearscience.com)


A popular creationist response to this is that the scriptures did not support geocentrism in the first place, and any past mistakes rest on their predecessors' mistaken interpretations, despite the plain English used (at least after translation). One then reasonably muses at their strength of conviction in their own exalted interpretational abilities. I gather that, if need be, the teaching that man was formed from the dust of the ground could be as easily held up as proof of evolution. Allow me to demonstrate a possible argument for a future "scripture-based science" movement:

"Many critics attempt to malign us by suggesting that what we teach is akin to disbelief in evolution. This attack is easy to refute, because the scriptures have actually always said that Man was procedurally created from dust, or tiny molecules, which is exactly what evolution maintains. Basically, creationists then were deficient in their understanding of the scriptures, not like us, who this time really, really know what the scriptures mean. There is no contradiction. Really."

The kicker is that not that many even cared. The church(es) didn't collapse after geocentrism was overthrown, and I seriously doubt that evolution getting overwhelmingly accepted would affect membership all that much, as the Catholics have evidently conceded with a position that the mechanism of evolution is sound, but possibly intelligently guided. Like gravity, then.

It must be said though that religion and science do not have to be enemies. In fact, the Good Book supports in many places the practice of empirical science (except where it does not) - see, in the olden days, their people were willing to make incredible claims, which they then carried out as incontrovertible evidence of divine favour. This was very reasonable. Why should one run the risk of angering the true gods by foolishly paying obeisance to quick-talking swindlers? Anybody could say that their belief was right - so show me!

Unfortunately, this most basic courtesy has not survived well into the present day, with only a few honest groups trying to do as was promised (it sometimes doesn't work out, but one can hardly fault them for effort, and when they fail it's because they tempted the Big Guy, despite it being very clearly what he said, anyway). The even more honest would probably admit that following it all is impossible anyway, so live, let live, and recognize when interpretations might be imperfect lah. It's ok, we love you too.



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