Global warming? Yes, but...

Recently watched a documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" that admits global warming as true, but disagree that it is man-made and/or CO2 caused. I think these few arguments, if correct, are significant:
1. CO2 produced by human is < 1%, while the main contributor is the ocean.
2. CO2 levels correlate with global temperature over millions of years, but lagging behind by few hundreds years, which implies that CO2 level is the affected by global temperature.
3. This is the most important but non-scientific reason: it has become politically correct not to go against the claim that Global warming is caused by man-made CO2.

[However, I should also point out that the producer may not be that trustworthy after checking him out on the wikipedia.]

In buddhism, there is this concept of wu-chang, meaning non-constant, or ever changing. To me, constant or without change is as if dead. Even our body temperature fluctuates. How would one expects global temperature to be constant? Thus, global warming is probably just as natural a phenomenon as the 4 seasons in a year, but not a problem to be prevented.

Another article I read suggested that as the river water level rises as the ice on top of high moutains melts, it will affect the communities residing in the vicinity, and cost them their land and homes. The time frame was reported as a "short" 40 years. It seems to me that human communities are assumed to be stupid to remain there for 40 years waiting to be drowned. It seems to say that human "owns" the land and therefore nature is wrong to take their "possessions" from them.

Nevertheless, I am not suggesting that we ignore all the good recommendation to reduce pollution, conserve resources, and etc. However, we should not go to the extreme to deny the poor africans and yet to developed regions to use electricity, and therefore cannot develop and remain having poor quality of life.

Legal vs moral.

Is legal >, =, or < moral?

I don't think legal can be greater than moral. Moral is based on conscience, which exists from the very begining of life, or awareness. Legal is a man-made system, which supposingly should be based on conscience, but other immoral factors can also mis-guide the legal system.

I think it will be naive to say the two are equal. There are differences in many aspects. Already mentioned, moral is natural, while legal is a man-made system. We live according to moral standards, while legal exists to serve by allowing disputes among people be handled. Moral system surely exists although not well defined, whereas legal system is well defined but may not exist.

Thus, I think legal is less than or sub-level when compared to moral. Thus, legal cannot be used to define, describe or imply moral.

This, I think is the issue in the argument on should immoral sexual acts between consenting adults be illegal? I hope these can remain illegal, but it seems more and more unlikely. Thus, lets make it clear that legal < moral and such acts will always be immoral regardless of its legal status.

How's your life?

This morning 7+ saw a lady sitting on a cement bench behind a busstop, sleeping while waiting for feeder bus.

Recent news about retirement age raising to 70 and how to get the aged to be employed.

Singapore ranked as the 14th most expensive city to live in.

And.... global village is inevitable.

So, if there isn't much sentimental issue of moving from estate to estate, then consider between countries.

Don't do it! However if ... then do it with precaution.

The traffic police knows it is dangerous for motorcyclists to ride in between vehicles rather than on the middle of the lane. They try to educate them to bring across this message. In nowhere did they suggest that, if motorcyclists really cannot abstain from riding dangerously, then please wear more protective gears, just in case.

This blog entry is not about traffic safety. I just find the above to be so common sense that nobody questions the traffic police for only asking motorcyclists to abstain from dangerous riding behaviors, without giving any advice for those who just refuse to the abstainence message.

Now, on the issue of extra-marrital sexual behaviors, historically it has been proper for sexual behaviors within marriage and between husband and wife. Yet, when only abstinence is being taught, many people think that safe sex should also be mentioned. In contrast to the traffic analogy above, this is RIDICULOUS!

Just ask the police or anyone what they think would happen if the motorcyclists were also told after all the talk on riding properly, that if they really cannot abstain, then please wear more protective gears.

Misleading name..

I have been wondering why it is called Action For AIDS. To me, AIDS isn't a nice or good thing, why "Action For" it? Oh, yesterday after reading the president's article in the TodayOnline, voices section (19 June 2007), I think I know why now.

It seems to me the main interest of this organisation is for the welfare of AIDS patients. However, its name gives me the idea that its interests are on AIDS.

I feel there are at least 2 areas of concern here. One is the more humanistic care and concern for people who have got the HIV, while the other is the outright fight against the virus and its spread. The former is more subjective as to how should HIV infected people be taken care of, while the latter is more obvious that everyone should like to have HIV disappear, regardless its possibility.

By the way, I think his article lacks substance and supporting evidence, and I seriously question what has "the urgent repeal of Sections 377 and 377A of the Penal Code that criminalise homosexual behaviour" gotten to do with the issue of his article?

The second-most widely translated book is..

I don't need to say which is the first. Today I found out from the New World Encyclopedia, the second-most translated text is the 道德经.

That's something I never thought of, but shouldn't surprise me too much.

Did a quick search but couldn't find the third-most translated text.

System analysts need systems

Today did some modifications on a database application, or rather just a computerized invoice printing application. Some thoughts:

Programmers explain a system to the computer.
System analysts explain a system to the programmers.
These people are trained to do their job.

The common problem is here:
Bosses, who usually may not be pro-system people and thus may not have a system in mind, are supposed to explain a system to the system analysts.

Hmmm.. wonder if MBA and similar courses teach people about system. Anyway, I haven't been in this area of the IT field.

Is this a cheating post?

The earlier N80 post and analytics result triggered me to post this :)

Attractive words: free, discount, cheap, low rate, offer, how to, define, N95, N73, voip, free call.

What's the point?

Waiting away from the door before the train arrives serve no purpose if the acts of boarding the train starts once the door opens or before the last alighting person steps out!

Is painting those yellow markings just to show that something is done about the problem, or an act in a process to resolve the problem? I doubt the latter as there seems to be no evaluation and assessment of the problem status and implementation of further improvements.

A simple suggestion. Don't paint the same pattern at every door. When the escalator/stairs/exit is on one side, discourage passengers to stand at that side to block the alighting passengers.

Everything follow laws

Without laws, total flexibility is chaos.

Everything follow laws could be ideal, but attaining and remaining at ideal is bad (see Ideal is not ideal).

Setting down laws and rules is to paint the picture of the ideal state. The idea is to move towards the ideal, sometimes over, sometimes fall short. Having an idea of what the ideal is allow us to know how to be on the right track.

Flexibility is necessary as no set of laws can cater to all possible scenario. However, the necessity of flexibility on occassions does not imply everything don't need to follow laws. If the set of laws is lacking, it might be improved. If the scenario can be avoided in the future, then lessons be learnt to avoid such scenario.

Systems

I prefer Traditional Chinese Medicine because it deals with the body system, rather than the individual problems/symptoms.

I think ecology is an advance study because it has learn that it is important to look at the whole system, rather than the individual species.

There are many systems in the universe. Still, many people choose not to deal with the system, but the individual parts. Human society is a system, human family is a system. Yet, this morning on the radio there was discussion on solving low reproducing rate by facilitating women who don't want marriage to give birth to children. This is RIDICULOUS!

Sudoku is a simple game that illustrate you can't just be concerned with a row, or a column, or the sub-square, but must consider all simultaneously.

Low reporduction rate isn't just about the number of births. There are many factors. Although it is tedious to deal with all of the factors, but dealing with just one and the most obvious factor is not the way too!

First impression

There has been talks recently on how much false information can be acceptable in resume. I think this is an area lacking guidelines. Potential employees try to give the best first impression. Good employers probably ignore all these gimicks. It is similar to guys trying to give good impression to girls, and the smart girls look at deeper contents, and vice-versa.

Personally, I prefer the old style of apprenticeship, with enhancement by the modern systematic evaluation methods.

suitable words

Purpose of communication is for the listener to understand the speaker. Thus, the language and words used should be selected with reference to the listener. However, I notice there are people whose purpose of communication is to express themselves. In this case, the media/language/words used were suitable to the speaker, and usually listeners do not understand.

When I am a listener in such situation, I won't be too anxious to know what's the message, because that's not the purpose of the speaker to speak in the first place.

They suffer, but so what?

Many of us must have experienced bad service somewhere. Sometime so angry to feel like wanna take some kind of revenge. May be spread poor comments about them. Usually the most we could do is to stop giving business to the company. Some good people spend time to send in feedback, which sadly taken as complains often.

May be eventually the poor or bad service company will not survive, but what's that to us customers?

I wish there valuable bad experiences could be collected and be used for the betterment of all.