e pur si muove

People getting riled up over that troll of an editorial may find it beneficial to meditate on the artistic merits of a coniglio dentellare gigante. « yjblog.

Repeat after me: Om bunny petme hum…

Yes, yj, it made my day too!

Or how about genuine Soviet-era space monkey pants from ebay?

Dear Mr. Skadian:

I wish to refute your point in your recent article in the Straits Times that

checking facts seems to be the last thing on bloggers’ minds unlike, say, mainstream publications which, for the most part, do their darnedest to make sure what they publish is accurate.

Since you seem to believe that it is possible to stereotype the many and varied individuals who choose to blog, I am optimistic that the actions of this one blogger, among others [1] [2], will convince you that not all bloggers are irresponsible and do no fact-checking.

With regard to your comment that “blogs are possibly the worst things about the Internet”, I would like to point out that blogs have served many useful purposes in various locales around the world. Being in the United States, I note that blogs here have been served as a useful counterweight to conventional media reports (affectionately termed the mainstream media, or MSM). Blogs as a community (sometimes known collectively as the blogosphere) have also proven to be remarkably effective in exposing and eliminating falsehoods, especially in the MSM. MSN’s Slate e-zine writes that mainstream journalists make routine errors, even on important stories, and such allegations have already been borne out in numerous instances. Even the BBC, an institution much revered for its emphasis on factual accuracy, published an apology in Feburary for being incorrect in its journalism. The factual inaccuracies in particular were first noticed and debated by bloggers.

As a student of the sciences and a practicising professional scientist, I would like to point you to several very prominent blogs written and read by professional scientists. Even more so than journalists, a scientist’s credibility is his/her greatest asset, and that each goes to great lengths in being precise about his/her knowledge and undercertainties. Blogs such as Pharyngula and Cosmic Variance, and meta-blogs such as The Tangled Bank, point to a rich and growing community of scientist-bloggers, many of which are tenured professors. Such blogs form nexuses of scientific discussion and are very valuable to scientists and students alike. The presence of such quality blogs are of course not limited to the scientific spheres, and many academics in all fields have found it fruitful to maintain their own blogs, if for nothing else to maintain their command of current affairs . The very notion that such bloggers would be foolish enough to destroy their reputations and careers by being wilfully negligent in their fact-checking is too ludicrous to warrant serious consideration.

In fact, journalists have admitted and acknowledged that blogs do fact-check, and in fact go as far as to rapidly converge toward a truthful picture by rooting out published falsehoods. A typical example of such error-checking can be seen in Microsoft employee Robert ’s blog where he initially criticized an online search engine specializing in blogs as being far less effective than its competition. Following the posting of his remarks, fellow bloggers took umbrage at the undeserved criticisms and convinced him to update his post to bring up what amounts to a complete retraction of said criticisms.

Perhaps the reason for your misconception that bloggers do not bother to check their facts may stem from the different mechanisms of fact-checking that occur in journalistic institutions and in the blogging community. Newspaper offices have their editorial review process; blogs rely on peer review. I will decline to pit one against the other to ask which is more “correct” in its approach, but rather leave it to this quotation from an interview with Glenn Reynolds (who maintains the Instapundit blog) best encapsulates the differences:

[I]f the infamous “Rathergate” documents about George W. Bush’s military record ended up in the hands of a blogger like him rather than CBS News, the approach likely would have been to publish them immediately. Rather than find an expert or two to review the documents, a blogger would recognize that among members of his audience would be people capable of doing credible analysis. Imagine the ensuing conversation as the story started in one blog, quickly spread to others, and people far and wide started discussing the credibility of the documents.

It’s not hard to imagine a different outcome than what actually happened: CBS News got dragged through the mud when it became obvious that the Bush documents were faked and CBS messed up.

Indeed, just earlier today, Instapundit linked to the Daily Pundit, who pointed out that the New York Times had incorrectly attributed U.S. Chief Justice nominee John Roberts as the author of an anonymous legal communiqué, which may be legally actionable as consituting libel.

You seem to portray the image that journalists and bloggers are at loggerheads with each other. This flies in the face of the published opinions of journalistic organizations suchs as Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) and the Committee For the Protection of Journalists, who have long acknowledged the efforts of blogs in promoting freedom of speech as a universal human right, especially in regimes such as Bahrain or Iran where the authorities regularly persecute those who choose to speak their mind. Ultimately, the vast majority of bloggers and journalists indend to pursue the same goals, that of disseminating information. However, the blatant hostility and ignorance exhorted in articles such as yours does neither side justice and is ultimately self-defeating, since it is only human to make mistakes.

Pointing an accusing finger can be easy to do, but one seldom remembers that there are three fingers pointing back at oneself. Hopefully your exhortation to “better start putting the brain before the mouse” can also be applied to journalists and bloggers alike. To this end I would like to remind you, of your recent Straits Times article written in early July entitled “Bringing up Father”. You had apparently overgeneralized Singapore children as being before, to the point that on July 13, one Meihan, on a MSN spaces blog, wrote an open letter to you and decried that she was “feeling rather indignant on behalf of all the kids out there you’re maligning”. It is disheartening, therefore, to see that such hasty jumping to conclusions have not changed since then.

(Ed: written hastily, just before homework discussion.)

Update 20051004 2032: e.sinchew-i.com appears to have the full text of the article in question. Also, the Chronicle of Higher Education has an article on this issue which has more comprehensive list of academic blogs, not all of which are science-related. The Chronicle, Oct. 7 (print date), The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas.

Only in NYC, but hey!

I have not fisked anyone in a very long time, but this open letter to PM Lee by Mr. See Leong Kit, as posted on the discuss-singapore Yahoo! Group, is just asking to be splayed and filleted in gory detail. « Ivan, Recent Runes

The title alone begins to hint of Something Amiss:

NEA DENGUE FIASCO: Open Letter to PM Lee

Erm, ok, “fiasco” is probably not the best word to put in a title, but whatever.

I owe much to my illiterate but wise mother who taught me this Cantonese saying at a very young age: “If what you SAY or DO are the RIGHT THINGS, you need not fear the LIGHTNING BOLT* striking you dead.” [*such as that depicted in the PAP logo!]

No disrepect intended to Mr. See’s mother, but I am sure such a saying was not designed to be applied blithely to achieve what can only be described as a gauche mix of symbolisms.

I next earned a Colombo Plan scholarship to study at a British university — where I learnt how to think/analyse logically.

Noted for context in the following comments.

2 (a) Over the past 30 years (more than half of my now 57 years), I have written extensively to newspaper forums as well as directly to politicians/bureaucrats — mostly on education/social issues and particularly issues of PUBLIC HEALTH and of PUBLIC SAFETY.

I may not be a Medical Doctor, but on the latter issues, I am well read, well researched and speak with a STRONG SOCIAL CONVICTION.

There is something to be said in the omission of irrelevant arithmetic, even if parenthetical. The intentions are laudable though. Well-read and well-researched? I am looking forward to citations of medical authorities, be it from written journals or personal communications, or even just information from public press releases.

Why should I bother to do so? — which is probably what former PAP MP Lau Ping Sum would have asked, until his own son tragically took his life at a British university.

If I were former PAP MP Lau Ping Sum I would be incredibly pissed as this personal stab in an irrelevant context. Personal taunts and jabs are so low-brow as to automatically discredit those who try to wield them. And he does this several more times in the letter too! Is this guy for real in genuinely wondering why nobody in the government appears to be taking him seriously? But for the sake of rhetorical argument, let’s go on:

Why should I speak up about public safety issues and persevered OVER 4 LONG YEARS to finally “corner” the laid-back, bird-brained bureaucratic buffoons at LTA to install the concrete safety bollards now seen at bus stops (to protect the daily countless adults/students who have to wait at such places)

Ooh, alliteration in prose, that’s sure to raise impressed eyebrows. And “corner” in quotes? Real heavy-duty literary devices at work here. But what is the message which is being emphasized? The grammar is sufficiently tortured to obfuscate without the help of literary bombasticity.

(h) So, this is my SIMPLE MESSAGE to our politicians/bureacrats (in particular) and fellow S’poreans (in general):

Viruses and Bacteria may be very tiny but can cause SERIOUS HEALTH PROBLEMS (and even DEATH) to ANYONE (whether young or old, whether you are a politician, bureaucrat or ordinary citizen).

Thus, ALL OF US had better wake up, sit up and join forces to tackle DISEASE THREATS ( with OUR POLITICIANS providing the EXPECTED LEADERSHIP !!! Otherwise, what the heck are they paid million-dollar salaries for ???).

Really??? Our personal health is our own concern??? Wow!!! I didn’t know very tiny things could be DANGEROUS!!! Aren’t I glad to have read this letter by a non-medical authority (who has yet to cite one too!!!) who loves triple punctuation and WORDS IN CAPS to tell us to get us all off our collected lazy asses and get our leaders to tell us what to do!!!

3 Our current dengue “crisis situation”:
As of 3 Sep 05 — 8 deaths (incl 10-year old schoolboy). 8,850 cases (with high percentage of 80% [ or 6,000 people] requiring hospitalisation). [Compared to 9,459 cases for the WHOLE of 2004, then considered a 10- year record high.]

Take home message: no complete sentences. Microsoft Word’s long green lines? What does my computer know about good grammar?

4 I have been closely monitoring the dengue situation here for the past 15 years (1992 spike at 3,000 cases, 1998 spike at 5,500 cases and 2004 ten-year record spike of some 9,500 cases — reflecting a worrying rising trend!)

Something is very wrong with this phrase “2004 ten-year record spike of some 9,500 cases”. Logically this would imply that 9,500 would be the highest level in the last ten years, but (by omission) not the highest in the last 11 years. (Otherwise it should be a 11-year record.) So we expect that in 1994 there were more than 9,500 cases, so that the subsequent slump and recent sharp increase would be describable as a “ten-year record spike”. But the data thus presented suggest otherwise, since in 1992 there was a spike at 3,000 and the next spike was in 1998. The conclusion to draw was that the number of dengue cases held steady between 1992 and 1998 at a level significantly below 3,000. And even by induction, the highlighted phrase cannot be held to be semantically coherent with the rest of the sentence. Either I am misinterpreting the data or I am looking at extremely woolly reasoning here.

I happened to know that the risk of contracting AIDS or other blood-borne diseases from blood transfusions may be low but can NEVER BE ZERO, as confirmed by our Health Ministry.

The logical fallacy here is rather subtle, so I will try to explain it by an analogy, and by intuitive appeal to a reductio ad absurdum. Statistical mechanics says that particles of a gas are moving about randomly, and that in thermal equilibrium, any given spatial arrangement of particles are all equally likely. Therefore the probability that all the air molecules in my living room would be all be found in the corner away from me, and therefore causing me to suffocate to death can NEVER BE ZERO. But should I be worried? The probability that I will spontaneously suffocate to death is so low that if I were to live a lifetime of several quadrillion times the age of the universe, I may be considered lucky (in a statistical sense) to ever observe such a freak incident.

What is the point of this ridiculous analogy? The judgement of whether or not something is risky has to be benchmarked relative to some accepted threshold of risk. I may have a one in ten-million chance in dying while riding a jet plane, but this does not stop me from paying a thousand dollars to sit in a tin can for close to thirty hours from Chicago to go home and eat my sambal stingray from Newton Hawker Centre. (BBQ stingray, mmm….) The risk of contracting such diseases, therefore, must be quantified (most likely by drawing from experiences and analyses in the medical literature) and compared with the risk of worser health by choosing to refuse the transfusion. Such risks may be hard to quantify, but even a very rough estimate is better than having no context in which to interpret anything.

The astute reader will by now have detected a pattern here.

Well Mr. See then goes on to make a list of valid points (if written in his, er, characteristic style as described above) until:

NEA’s Dengue public education programme SHOULD thus be:
(i) PRIMARY Objective — Make use of TELEVISION to EDUCATE as MANY people as possible (to QUICKLY “prepare” the people to handle a possible large-scale outbreak).
Show on TELEVISION a homeowner or maid carrying out ALL the various simple measures to prevent mosquito-breeding in homes eg covering up bamboo pole holders, overturning pails,etc,etc ["monkey see, monkey do"]

(ii) SECONDARY Objective [...]
>>> Question No 2 (for Minister Yaacob) — Are you going to direct
current NEA Public Health Commissioner Khoo Seow Poh to undertake
approach (i) RIGHTAWAY (no time to lose, as we had big spike in
dengue cases early this year)? If not, please explain fully WHY NOT?

The real nitpicky stuff first. Triple angles (>>>) are to the best of my knowledge not a standard punctuation mark. And I am sure the best way to educate the public is to brainwash them using intelligence-insulting programming on the boob tube, as well as employed veiled-insult rhetoric from Mr. “I am so smart and it is my civic duty to advise the general populace on medical matters despite having no medical qualifications, since doctors with such credentials may not actually be more intelligent than I am”.

How Pathetic And Pathetic (PAP) — so many OPPORTUNITIES and so much
LEAD TIME to educate/prepare the people for a large-scale epidemic
wasted i.e. “gone down the mosquito-infected drain” !!!

So the way to goad the PAP into action (after having exhorted the need to distinguish between the machinations of the PAP and those of the governmnet, no less!) is to taunt them using their favorite tactic of coming up with yet more lame puns. So clever.

( Since PAP ministers like to sue people so much, it would be a nice welcomed change for the people to sue them ! )

Implicit message: I am so brilliant that I don’t see the need to worry about things like spacing punctuations or concord!

The ROOT CAUSES of all these fiascos lie in the Basic Principles of
Political Governance & Public Service (as spelt out in Annex B
below) — which can be summed up as follows:

(a) control/manipulation of Press/TV media (people only hear “feel-
good” news and not “the good,the bad and the ugly” aspects of a
society) = yes-man journalists

(b) mollycoddling civil servants (through condoning their
shortcomings/mistakes in serving the people) = yes-man civil servants

(c) using the law as a political weapon through defamation suits to
deal with differing/dissenting views (i.e. Fear Factor,Singapore
Edition) = yes-man citizens

Simple mathematical equation:
yes-man journalists + yes-man civil servants + yes-man citizens
= perfect recipe for fiascos/cock-ups/screw-ups/cover-ups (with HUMAN
LIVES possibly at stake)
= SINGAPORE going “down the drain” (infested with dengue mosquitoes!)

This is one of the best mathematical equations I have seen in a long while. It almost compares with the Proof of the Existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Who can find fault with an equation which contains the term “soulsofthekittens”, cubed?) I shall leave the obvious unpontificated, for the unenlightened to delight in their revelation.

After this deadline, I will proceed to download over the Internet the
following to help fellow S’poreans judge/decide for themselves:
— this Open Letter
— Minister Yaacob’s email reply (if any)
— Your response to this Open Letter (if any)

I think he means to upload said letter.

[ Note: My feedback on SERIOUS ISSUES (Disease Threats) are the contributions of a SERIOUS-MINDED educated 57-year old S'porean who has "eaten more salt than 50-year old Minister Yaacob has eaten rice" (in Cantonese). So Minister Yaacob will do well to take me VERY SERIOUSLY! ]

A guy who likes to eat salt just has to wield more clout than medical authorities could ever aspire to. Just think of the medicine-defying purgative qualities of his kidneys!

I am not a member of any political party. I speak as an educated concerned citizen. And coming from the same alma mater Raffles Institution (as your Famous Father and SM Goh), I cannot be such a stupid Singaporean as to make unfounded statements.

I have to give credit where credit is due. I have never seen a passage loaded with more Implied statements, even when analyzed by the deconstructionist school of thought:

1. The Famous Father comes from RI: he cannot be wrong.
2. I come from RI: therefore I also cannot be wrong.
3. Ignorance is stupidity, and therefore cannot be cured by doing actual research before spouting off on embarassing tangents.
4. Educated, concerned citizens need not join political parties. The sheer force of truth in their Open Letters is sufficent for government officials to achieve Enlightenment and hence bring about the nirvana of a disease-free society.

Firstly, I have documented file records. Secondly, I am raising issues of public health (involving human health and human lives) and so am confident of the people’s backing.
Therefore, any clever attempt to cook up a defamation suit against a Public Health Whistle-Blower will result in a hugh backlash of justified public anger as seen in the NKF Disgraceful Debacle-cum-Shameless Scandal.

More Implicit Statements:

1. You can push paper around. So can I.
2. Because I can push paper, and I am not the government, you can’t sue me without massive public outcries.
3. It is important to address “hugh (sic) backlashes” by their Proper Names. Call them what they are.

In your planning for the coming General Elections, here are some
invaluable/honest feedback taken from Internet postings of younger,
better-educated, Internet-savvy S’poreans:

(i) Hi ALL, notice these glaring similarities in the NKF and PAP:
— a deplorable Lack of Transparency and disgraceful disrespect for donors/citizens.
— using defamation suits to threaten the people’s right to ask questions.
— officials paying themselves very handsome, so-called “peanut” salaries.

Wah lau, if such high salary is “Pea-Nut”, then the salaries of the majority of Singaporeans must be “Pee-Sai”, hor?

Take home messages:
It is not clear whether the last sentence is

1. part of the quotation, or his own invention. In either case, ministers have to recognize the utility of Sing-Lish as an appropriate medium of Dis-Course.
2. Internet postings contain invaluable/honest feedback, even if it is not actually addressed to the relevant authorities. This is because rants are also valid feedback.

After another similar paragraph, the letter ends abruptly here and proceeds on to Annex A.

My 15 Sep 2004 STREATS published letter “I,not LTA, wanted bus-stop
bollards”:
“…….In his letter “Bollards make me feel safer” (Streats, Sept 7), Mr Tan Kok Tim had mistakenly commended the Land Transport Authority (LTA). Allow me to set the record straight. [...] Were it not for for my dogged
persistence, the concrete bollards would never have been installed recently[...]

The quotation should be painfully self-evident.

Food for Thought — That is, even if the risk of contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion is so remotely low as one in three million [our citizen population], how would ANY S’porean like to be that ONE
unfortunate statistic ???

Mr. See’s command of statistics appears to be painfully and woefully appalling. That is, expectation values are not the same as observed values; just because the expected value is one doesn’t mean that one case will definitely occur. That if the risk was one in six million, there is no HALF S’porean who would like to be that HALF unfortunate statistic either !!!

[ Additional Note: Currently, Donated Blood are routinely screened for AIDS and Hepatitis B/C.
However, there also VARIOUS OTHER "blood-borne" diseases (incl Mad Cow Disease) that could be transmitted through a blood transfusion.]

Additional grammar lesson: blood is an uncountable noun. And Mr. See should be awarded a Nobel Prize for discovering the blood-borne transmission of Cruzfeldt-Jacobson (sp?) disease. Why do I think so? Because I know CJD is caused by prions (misfolded proteins); the only known mechanism for prions to occur in the human body is by ingestion of matter containing such proteins. Since such diseases are known to be a form of encephalitis (i.e. a brain infection), I would be extremely surprised to find them in the bloodstream. But then again, what do I know of biology and toxicology? Maybe prions really can diffuse through tight capillary walls and survive circulation through meters of antigen- and antibody-rich blood plasma without being detected and eliminated.(Ed: turns out that ignorance can be easily cured by looking online. Sources such as Wikipedia’s entry on Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease show that there have been reports in the medical literature on blood-borne transmission. Apparently, doctors still don’t really know how prion dieases can be blood-borned. Yet. See, for example, this case study in the British Medical Journal, and a review of evidence presented by the US Communicable Disease Center.

(ii) WHY WAIT until the death of a 2-year old toddler on Sep 10 to
annouce making it notifiable as from Oct 1, and not rightaway?[...]

(iii) WHY WAIT until the deaths of two siblings* on Sep 30 to HASTILY
announce the SUDDEN closure of childcare centres in a BELATED bid to
halt the growing epidemic?

Why bother about split infinitives? Better to “annouce making it notifiable”, whatever that is.

(i) We were DAMN LUCKY in that, THIS FIRST TIME, the disease was
largely confined to the healthcare setting — so most victims were
HCWs (healthcare workers ie nurses/doctors).

I see, so the confinement of SARS was not due to the diligence of hundred of doctors trying to cook up new ways to kill an unknown pathogen, thousands of nurses dutifully keeping patients away from potential sources of reinfection, and scores of disaster planners mobilizing some quarantine plan into place, but is entirely attributable to sheer damn luck. Uh-huh.

Singapore became the “laughing stock” of the international medical
community (first country in the whole world to have a SARS case
contracted in a laboratory!)[...]VERY BASIC laboratory
procedures (for a lab dealing in “live” viruses!) were ABSENT —
restricted access to the lab; proper records; wearing appropriate
protective gear; using properly-sterilised equipment. [ Even a
secondary school Chemistry teacher would be shocked!]

Eh, chemists usually don’t care for sterilized glassware. Gloves and clean, dry beakers will do nicely thank you. Biologists are the ones who will develop apoplexy.

In 2004, 69 Singapore schools did “community work” overseas. In Nov 2004, 6 teachers and 10 students from Choa Chu Kang Primary School spent a week helping out in an orphanage in Vietnam (around that time, Vietnam was having its major bird flu outbreak!)
Whatever the good intentions, the trip was “an incredibly stupid idea” !!!
The teachers/students were putting themselves at risk of contracting bird flu AND PASSING ON THE INFECTION to fellow citizens/teachers/students upon returning to Singapore.

Question: where were the known hotspots in Vietnam then, and where did the school teams go? Just because there was a mad cow scare in the state of Washington doesn’t mean that cows all across the United States have to be slaughtered in the interests of public safety. There is insufficient information to warrant the conclusions drawn.

1 A VERY IMPORTANT DISTINCTION:
SINGAPORE is a country with a 200-year history and belongs to ALL its 3 million citizens.
The PAP is just a 50-year old political party with only some 15,000 members.

I am very confused: how can a political party win democratic elections (at least once, for the political cynics) without the mandate of the citizenry? How can a political party forming the majority bloc in Parliament be not said to represent its citizens? (The issue of how well-represented its citizens’ interests is a separate, though not unrelated, story.)

From the Internet:
You can fool MOST people MOST of the time.
But you cannot fool ALL the people ALL the time.

Conclusion: If it was on the Internet, it has to be true. The Internet is an attribution wild-card which is sufficient to replace whoever it is was who came up with that quote in the first place.

So since this letter was found on the Internet, it must also be the gospel truth. So why are you reading this???