Because PRCs are the New Jews right?

The Real Singapore posted a picture with a commentary about Mainland Chinese eating fetuses.

It looks real, with pictures and a dramatic story to go with it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a reliable source for the information. Worse, I see 83 comments (as of writing) and not one of them critical of the source, almost all of them accusing the Chinese of being idiots, inhumane, barbarians.

It is in fact, from an art exhibit by Zhu Yu. It was apparently republished by a Malaysian newspaper without caption. If you look carefully at the head, it looks like a dolls head.

Melektaus and Emery from About.com, discuss this further and rightfully note that this looks like a variation of the Blood Libel, where Anti-Semites accused the Jews of sacrificing children in their ritual. It was also used to justify European persecution of the Jewish minority. 

It is one thing to be unhappy at government policy, it is another to demonise an entire country. The Real Singapore should know better than to publish patent falsehoods. It is feeding into the already rampant xenophobia. I also worry that the real Singapore isn’t thinking for itself.

Edit. After I finished writing, I notice a handful of comments, out of 150, actually pointing out the nature of the picture. Kudos!

My brilliant plan to occupy NUS

Yes, so the train has been breaking down badly the last couple of days and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change soon. Many of the university students are going to have their exams soon and the Registrar seems to be making it clear that a train delay is not going to be an acceptable reason for missing part of, or an entire exam. So here’s my brilliant idea …

Photo by Sylvgee

NUS, unlike the other university in the middle of the city has the benefit of large, green grassy spaces. I suggest we have an occupyNUS. Not to protest anything, it’s just an overnight social gathering on the NUS fields where the post NS boys can help pitch tents (and silly girls won’t go “Singaporeans so weak. LOL”), we can dapao food from the 24 hour food joints and sit down together with a campfire and revise. Everyone will realise how much Arts students need to study. The medical student’s however, might not show up, we err, don’t have our exams, yet. Kind of, but we can drop by and make sure everyone’s doing alright, and listen to people’s hearts and lungs and joints and err. Damn, I dream alot.

Troll level : Homeopathy

I found this via Pharyngula.

I thought I was being funny by putting up the picture below on Facebook and captioning it as a “Homeopathic Inhaler”. Clearly, I have been outdone.

If you still don’t get the joke, here’s Randi explaining it, at least you’ll laugh next time.

Afraid to write…

Solid advice from Let's Start a Belgian Revolution (although I think they post a bit of junk too)

I have been very reluctant to write because, among other things, I was afraid people would disagree. My inner thoughts are far from mainstream, it will offend people and someone might even go crying to the Government and get me into trouble. My parents are worried about my reputation, and they never fail emphasise it. I think one of the biggest obstacles to writing is the feeling that  I do not know enough. On the flipside, we can never ever know enough. All knowledge is inherently imperfect. If I am wrong, someone will correct me, it’s part of the deal when you express yourself online. If I’m wrong, and I know it, I’ll change my views. It’s that simple.

It’s ironic that these are the precise qualities a doctor would ideally have because that’s what it takes to deal with the epistemic uncertainty when it comes to the science and also because you have a responsibility to give the best to your patient. Yet old habits die hard. Although I really hope for constructive discussions, I’ll have to be prepared for the flak. Let the flame wars begin.

What’s happening this weekend

This weekend is going to be interesting. Two of my inspirations in magic and in spirituality are going to be in town and are having events in the same weekend.

First off, magic on Saturday. There’s a long story about how I started doing magic and how it’s influenced my thinking. I had the honour of performing for a landmark series featuring local magicians and I blogged about them as the episodes were released on youtube (I,II,III,IV,V). The rest of the write ups are hidden away in the form of drafts somewhere on my hard disk.

JC Sum and Ning who directed the series are back in action to screw with our heads again. This time it’s a mind reading act that involves the entire audience. I believe there might still be slots and you can check out the event page at JC’s Blog. Being a magician, I can attest that the art that they present manages to be both fresh and deep at the same time. If you are in town, you should be there on Saturday.

Secondly, sprituality. It was early in High school and I was just getting interested in spirituality. Rather than just being a passive process of indoctrination, I had the chance to participate in a play, Yatra – A Journey into the Unknown. It was a thought provoking play by Sharanya Rao and little did I know that she would go on to write a movie script. In 2011, she wrote Sarathi : The Charioteer, which she produced with Sushma Parmar at Cutting Chai Productions. It won various awards in the US and made it to the Cannes Short Film Catalogue. She’s in town this weekend with some of her co-producers and will be having a film screening and Q&A on Sunday. Feel free to come down and pick her brains.

If you do see me around, come up and say hi 🙂

Earworm of the Week #3 – Basto : Live Tonight (Gregory’s Theme)

Need more … blood

Find out if you are eligible to donate blood and head down to the nearest location. You don’t need to go to medical school to save three lives.  Why three? After donation, your blood is separated into three components Red Blood Cells, Platelets and Plasma. They are used differently depending on what the patient needs. Which brings me to my second point….

Someone figured out a way to pluck out some of your bone marrow, drown the cells in a cocktail of signalling proteins to make them proliferate and voila you have a puddle of your own blood grown outside of your body! In this instance, however, the research was restricted to red blood cells and these cells were cloned enough to produce 2 mls of blood. This was then injected back into the subject and the cells were found to survive normally. It’s really cool research if you ask me but I was amused by how one of the researchers seemed to promise too much. “The results show promise that an unlimited blood reserve is within reach”. Yeah right. A lot of innovation has the knack of not scaling up to be useful outside of the lab, but we’re hopeful!

Read the Abstract and you can get the original paper if you have one of those library subscriptions.

October Ear Worm

Follow The White Rabbit

Knock knock Neo.

He turns to look at the door. In that moment, those words disappear, along with any evidence that the computer might have even been turned on. I initially did not pay much attention to that scene and continued with the movie on my long flight. After that, I think I watched half of Tron before it was time to land.

I was rather amused when I saw this sign at the Brussels Airport just after I landed. I have no idea what their intentions were behind this ad, but it was cute. I tried hard to recall where the original idea came from, prior to the Matrix. I remembered a scene from Alice in Wonderland, so I took a picture of it and proceeded to my next flight.

I had a very “Follow the White Rabbit” kind of moment when I met a bunch of Belgian students in school later this year and that inspired me to actually put this down into writing. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, you should definitely watch it, but here’s what happens in the relevant scene.

Alice is basically being coerced into an arranged marriage with the son of her fathers colleague. Her Mother-in-law to be takes her for a walk to have a little chat. I don’t think Alice would have noticed the Rabbit if she was actually taking that conversation seriously. She first saw him from the corner of her eyes, and even then she wasn’t sure. It was clearly a non-event to the other lady, who tried to bring Alice back into the conversation, she also threatened to send her dogs behind the rabbit. That is precisely what other people (and sometimes we) do to our rabbit. A lot of times we simply ignore it and focus on “more important” things.

Yet she persists. Later on in the scene, the rabbit’s near a bush, just out of everyone else’s sight but clearly visible to her. He’s frantically pointing to his watch. Time is running out and she needs to make a decision. It’s not an easy decision, there’s a garden full of people pressuring her into accepting a wedding proposal, there’s a chump on his knees with an expectant expression on his face.

It’s an uncomfortable situation. It’s not a clear cut decision, but Alice decides to take a plunge, and she runs after the rabbit like she’s never run before. And the Rabbit takes her to a world beyond her wildest dreams. In the Matrix, Neo follows the girl with the Rabbit tattoo and his meeting with Trinity changes the course of his life. I know people paint a grandiose picture of some “Will Of God” that’s behind this. I’m pretty sure “The Secret” tries to sell this as some sort of great metaphysical insight but I feel there’s some simple facts of human nature, society and a bit of nifty neuroscience behind it. That’ll be for another post 😛

I just rewatched that scene from the movie and, keeping in mind all those little nuances, it’s a powerful message. In every aspect of our lives, our careers, relationships, hobbies, there’s a little, mischevious rabbit lurking just outside our field of view. Everything conspires to distract us, make us ignore him, our “priorities” stop us from trying to follow him. It’s sometimes uncomfortable because it means getting off the beaten track. Sometimes, we also have to compromise on something else, or someone is going to disagree (or worse, shout) at us. We do not have forever to make a decision. Yet, he dangles in front of us, a possibility of taking us to another dimension. When you follow the White Rabbit, be prepared for an adventure.

Panic!

I was on holiday over the weekend.

At some point, I ran into this.

What is the lesion and what do you think is the diagnosis?

I’ll tell you more in the next post.

 

What do you see here?