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Sunday, Jan 18, 2015 - 19:44 SGT
Posted By: Ham H. Let

A Deserved Break

Mr. Ham: *peeks into cubicle again* Mr. Robo?

Mr. Robo: Hi boss! Still toiling away on the human's thesis here, sir! He's got me running some experiments, nothing cute about that, for sure. Unfortunately.

Mr. Ham: Sad. Hmm, feels like a good time for a break, doncha think?

Mr. Robo: *suspiciously* You aren't out to withhold yet more of my salary for infringements, are you?

Mr. Ham: No, no, not at all.


And a little while later...


Mr. Robo: Hey, this isn't too bad.

Mr. Ham: Yeah, you gotta try the weed someday.

Mr. Robo: *fearfully* Isn't that very illegal?

Mr. Ham: No, not the human stuff, you dumbass. Actual weed. Hamnip, if you please. Just enjoy your smoke, it won't be around much longer, for some reason or another. So how's life going for you?

Mr. Robo: Poorly, after all the garnishing of wages.

Mr. Ham: I mean, other than that.

Mr. Robo: Erm, they just opened a neighbourhood multistorey carpark, I suppose. Human's complaining that it clutters up the view. And, uh, 3D printing is continuing to mature - perhaps you could replace my quadcopter someday.

Mr. Ham: Lalala.

Mr. Robo: ...or not. And you?

Mr. Ham: Well, if you haven't noticed, the Euro/CHF forex pair just went down in flames, taking plenty of firms with it.

Short of the story is, the Swiss central bank had been artificially maintaining their exchange rate at 1.20 francs to the Euro - despite the weakening Eurozone - by committing to buy up Euros whenever that floor was threatened.

This rate pledge was attractive to many, from currency speculators who happily bet - often with huge leverage - that the Swiss would defend the peg to the bitter end. Others were simple homeowners who had taken out their mortgages in Swiss francs due to lower interest rates, and the implied peg. Well, they all wound up getting steamrolled, penny in hand.

Mr. Robo: By the way, Taleb's dropped by not long ago, and said his bit about failure and antifragility.

Mr. Ham: Yes, and that reminds me.


Gong Jiao Wei


Same old crap again.
(Source: Somewhere on the Internet)


The latest questionable move from the incumbents consists of a minister - some even say, the next PM - penning a letter to the Huffington Post... because they had the temerity to publish two - count 'em, two - short articles by an opposition politician, one of which was quite ironically on (the lack of) freedom in the local mainstream media.

From this alone, the whole affair has already begun to take on a veneer of ludicrousness. With all due respect to the Post, it's not exactly the Times, nor has it pretended to be. It's basically a left-leaning blog-cum-news aggregator, which does happen to have a fairly large readership - about two orders of magnitude greater than our reliable The State's Times. And probably not undeservingly, given they actually report things.

Okay, fine, let's continue with the minister's effort. First line:

"Your website has given Dr. Chee considerable but undeserved attention and space. You perhaps believe that he is a weighty political figure in Singapore. He is nothing of the kind."

Cue facepalm. Firstly, it appears that two articles now constitutes "considerable attention", when Huffington Post cranks out over a thousand pieces a day. Secondly, the Post was never exactly a bastion of credentialism to begin with. They boast "over 50000 bloggers, including politicians, students, academics, parents and policy experts" - really, the honourable minister seems to regard getting published by the Post as an endorsement the level of getting a weekly column in the NYT, when it is nothing like that at all.

The point here is, basically anybody could have penned the same content, and possibly gotten on the Post - one suspects that if a British expat graduate student in political science named John McCreason had written the pieces (sans the personal bits), there would have been no issue at all.

But back to the content. The first article was mostly on income inequality, and how free trade might exacerbate it. I mean, as a position, it's about as vanilla an argument as one can get. The second is more pointed, with the first half being his tale of woe (some of it perhaps self-inflicted), before transitioning into a call for fewer media restrictions.

And quite amusingly, in response to Dr. Chee's complaints of character assassination, the minister's answer was a near-100% ad hominem attack, beginning with how he has lost three elections; one can almost savour the relish with which the dear minister points out that he has been sued for defamation (gasp!) and declared a bankrupt (double gasp!)

Problem is, as not a few have pointed out, this particular minister has garnered a grand total of zero votes, due to having being plonked in the safest constituency in the land - and if he's branding others as "a failure" for losing with 35% of the vote, what does this make our incumbent President, who was elected with no more than that?

Mr. Robo: Wow. Gee, I dunno - I'd always had the impression that he was a cool fella. I may have to reconsider.

Mr. Ham: Well, this was just begging for a stylish rebuttal, which was duly delivered. Song and dance beginning?






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