Sacred shibboleths.

Sat, 1 Oct 2011
1 min read
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Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo

Elyot: (seriously) You mustn’t be serious, my dear one; it’s just what they want.

Amanda: Who’s they?

Elyot: All the futile moralists who try to make life unbearable. Laugh at them. Be flippant. Laugh at everything, all their sacred shibboleths. Flippancy brings out the acid in their damned sweetness and light.

Amanda: If I laugh at everything, I must laugh at us too.

Elyot: Certainly you must. We’re figures of fun all right.

— Noel Coward, Private Lives.

Also relevant:

…we have to…be able to laugh at ourselves – because if we can’t laugh at ourselves when you (sic) are standing on a pedestal (sic), somebody is going to knock you (sic) down.

POSKOD.SG: Ten Steps to Effective Online Commentary.

Tue, 20 Sep 2011
2 min read
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POSKOD.SG Graphic

"People talking without speaking/People hearing without listening"

My latest article on POSKOD.SG.

Ten Steps to Effective Online Commentary.
A guide to online criticism and debate. (Mostly criticism.)

So, you’ve got an Internet connection, an opinion and some spare time on your hands.

Congratulations! Like everyone else and their blogs, you are now a media hub.

Before you commence e-hurling your iNtellectualism @ the rest of the world, here are ten steps to effective online commentary, the cyber-Singaporean way.

  1. Increase your Internet presence.Set up a website on socio-political issues in Singapore and give it a cerebral, subtle and unique moniker, something like Socially Political SG: Thinking About Socially Political in Singapore.What you have to say is, after all, very ‘niche’, and no one thinks about critical issues affecting our nation in as classy or as astute a manner as you do.
  2. Read widely.Turn to Google and Wikipedia for all your edificatory needs.Besides being the only scholarly sources that can be found on the face of the earth, they are also the most reliable, according to teenage students who take a great deal of pride in referencing “en.wikipedia.org” and “ehow.com” in their homework submissions.
  3. Participate in community discussions on a consistent basis.Trawl other websites and forums every hour and leave comments on other posts, regardless of whether or not your advice is sound and/or logical.Bear in mind that we are a democracy, and democracy, as translated from the Greek, means ‘many people shouting loudly at each other in a self-important fashion’.

    Moreover, your counsel serves to affirm and validate the existence of ‘netizens’.

    Never underestimate the value of this, even if netizens do not seem to mention their appreciation of your beneficence, or worse, if they seem to respond negatively to what you say.

(continued…)

This… is… DEMOCRACY!

Sun, 28 Aug 2011
2 min read
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CAUTION: This is Sparta!

So after the first round of the Singapore Presidential Election 2011 (PE2011) results came out last night, I posted this status update on Twitter and Facebook:

If there’s gonna be a recount, can I also recast my vote?

Subsequently, I received comments/@replies to do with breast-beating and vote-splitting.

I also had the pleasure of reading similar-sounding status updates around the same time.

To clarify, when I posted that update, I meant it as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the decision to proceed with the recount.

I was fully aware that a recasting of the vote was and is impossible (although I think a run-off vote might be a good idea in the future so that the candidate that is elected goes into office with the support of a clear and distinct majority).

What I meant was: look, if the difference was 100 votes, I’d wholeheartedly say yes to the recount. But if the difference was 7000 votes, how far off could the vote-counters have been?

Was it not a waste of the vote-counters’ and the electorate’s time with a decision that was logical in theory but not in practice?

Many people were complaining about how the vote had been split, and if Tan Jee Say and Tan Kin Lian hadn’t contested, Tan Cheng Bock wouldn’t’ve have had his vote share eroded, and he would’ve become the elected President instead.

I agree that the vote was split in that there were four candidates, so each candidate garnered a share of the vote, however large (or small) it might’ve been.

But to quote a friend on Facebook:

Democracy means I suck thumb and accept this Tan.

There were four candidates; we voted; the Tan of our choice didn’t get in – deal with it.

P.S. To preempt any criticism regarding the picture at the top of my post: yes, I’m also aware that Sparta used to be an oligarchy…

P.P.S. Yawning Bread and Yee Jenn Jong have quite interesting takes on PE2011.