my hero dr.khoo kay kim?

I really miss this great controversy that got every chinese malaysians all emotionally charged in the last two weeks. I didn’t see the news until today.  I like to watch all these fascinating reactions from everywhere. There are people cursing him, asking him to apologise, redicule his lack of understanding for chinese culture, etc. All sorts of things.  I also like join in to offer a few opinions of mine regarding this.

Firstly, I really do agree that chinese education is “copycat”. But I don’t really like the translation that much. We don’t copy, but we ‘memorise’. I think we forget the fact that chinese education even during confusious time was all about memorising. Even today, I’m sure students from china still can dictate the whole content of the sishuwujing，(the famous 4 books and 5 scriptures) word by word. I’m not sure about the chinese educated students here though. Anyway, the ability to memorise is a great thing that chinese education has invented(well not sure on that). Chinese education used to force young students to memorise every literary text available. Why? because that is the best time (as we believe ) for memorising information. It is from this memorised knowledge that students can utilise to be creative. Being creative is not just about playing around and see who can talk the loudest. Creativity is based on knowledge and experience we already know. Try and go visit malacca without knowing the history. what can you get from it? And just consider how much information you need to remember to become a medical doctor for example. Memorising is good. it is the foundation to be creative. We should be proud of it. The chinese community should thank dr.khoo for pointing it out. whether this system will limit the student’s creativity, well, that we can’t really tell.

I think many people who criticise dr.khoo have never read any of his published papers. He is still a great historian even if everyone else disagree with his opinion. I think we lack people like him in Malaysia. somebody who is willing to face criticism to say something unpopular. that’s of course the downside of our own culture. we avoid confrontation. where as creative people always prefer confrontation. because that is the best time to voice their own opinions. unless we don’t have one. I must admit that I’m afraid to criticise sensitive issue as well. people are just too emotional and defensive when being critisised. see how chinese people always run back to the 2000 year-old confucious for reference everytime we are being attacked? when will we ever have an opinion of our own?

common ground

I was looking for a space where there is no burden of tradition and culture, a secular space. And there it was: A children’s playground. We have such an obsession with our heritage, ancestral lineage, ethnic identity and culture. We are taught to see differences, to categories, to separate, to tolerate, and most important of all, to never become one of them. We fear homogenization. In my opinion, it is important to maintain a set of  common ideals, common political institutions, common language, and common culture that can bond everyone together. As I see it, this playground transcends ethnicity, culture and religion. At this place, there is only humanity.

not all billboard message is junk

This picture is taken from <<http://i528.photobucket.com/albums/dd330/TotoKatt/Billboard4_edited.jpg>> from the blog of http://jewishatheist.blogspot.com/2008/11/atheist-advertising-coming-to.html. “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone”. Will this advert ever appear in Malaysia landscape? The parliament will have to vote to take out the first line in our rukun negara first.

strange missing packets

Finally back online. It has been a strange past two weeks I couldn’t access my blog using my home’s ISP, time dotnet. Browsing other wordpress blogs were perfectly fine. I just cannot load my blog at home. I wasn’t too occupy with it since I’m not in the mood to write anything. Anyway, a simple traceroute found my ip packets to my blog were swallowed up by one of the time dotnet router, unable to pass through it. How strange. A call to the customer service fixed the problem. Still waiting to see what is their explanation.

15Malaysia short films

This is perhaps the hottest thing going on right now. If you have not heard of this, spare some time to go have a look. I don’t plan to give any intro here. The website will explain itself. They aren’t exactly great short films. There are only five available right now. They are like mediocre photographs with excellently written captions. The messages are there, they do provoke and stimulate some thinking. But they have not touched me to the point that I would consider them as good films. The films aside, I find myself more interested in reading people’s comments on the site. It is difficult to assess how people would understand the film or whether there is even a possible scenario of not reading the film correctly. I think what the filmmakers’ aim is to encourage viewers to question rather than providing an answer or to expect some predictable emotional response.

There is a problem with making films in malaysia. We have to put the three major races equal opportunity in the film. Otherwise, it may seem like a very racist film. It sometimes becomes like a politically correct formula for a stereotypical movies like those of hollywood movie to have a african american and white american or even a latino and asian to complete the picture. Franz Boaz, the great anthropologist in his doctoral dissertation in physic, studied the human perception of the color of sea water, which led partly to his realisation that our perception of colors are culturally different. Colour vision is the norm in our society. Colour blindness is a disability. Our history, politics, mass media have been helping us keeping our colour vision correct, making sure that we can see the colours, all the differences, reminding us all the time that we are all different. In the process, some of us become myopic, but never colour blind. I never notice any racial differences as a child. I think the first time I ever felt being different was when someone told me that there are certain universities that I cannot go because I’m not of certain race, and that there are certain limitation to my university application because I’m defined as certain race. I cannot understand why then because there is no one rational way to understand it. There is still no rational way to understand this now. I wish I’m colour blind but I’m not. We have never learned to see this country as a free and equal country for all, we have never see this country without the religious and racial filters. That’s what I see from the comments of the viewers.

No matter how passionately we want to chant the mantra one malaysia, we cannot see past the racial differences in the films. Can we not see Yasmin chocolate as a girl (of unknown race) going to a buy something from a shopkeeper(of an unknown race)? No. we can’t. Our visions are filled with racial tension between malay and chinese and all the burden of Malaysian history. Can we talk morality without invoking religion? No, we can’t. Because morality and all the good virtues belong to religion in Malaysia, whichever it may be. Why should anyone pay respect to religion that infringes on one’s public freedom. Shouldn’t religion, with all the good virtues, be paying respect to non-believers to enjoy their freedom? The very fact that freedom to practice religion does not entail restricting others and telling other people how to live. Unless my understanding of religious freedom in Malaysia is wrong? Perhaps I am. We still like to take things at face value. We like to let people tell us what to do. It is easier than to think for ourselves.

Is emphasising differences the best way to approach multiculturalism? No, I don’t think so. Just look at the comments. The majority wrote in english. Some, sadly to see, in mandarin. There is hardly any bahasa malaysia. What happened? Have we all forgotten all the Bahasa we learnt in school? Is Bahasa not sufficient to express our ideas? Do Malaysians really need so many subtitles? Sadly, even myself prefers to use english. (update: great, I think really sounded like Rais Yatim.)

This is definitely a good project. But it takes a critical viewer to make it work. Hopefully the project leader saves the best for last.

free medical advice

have you ever notice that when you’re sick, everyone that come to visit you or know about your illness suddenly become some kind of free medical advice dispensing machine? Anecdotal miracles, alternative medicines, new medical breakthrough even your doctor doesn’t know (of wouldn’t tell you because it is too good), wonder drugs, miracle diet, etc. And the most amazingly funny of all is that everyone loves to play doctor. They asked about symptoms, and every single details about the pain and itches that I must admit, more thorough than the hospital doctors that I’ve met. One must not leave out a single clue! For that might be the thing that the soulless western doctors may have missed to diagnose. And so, every visit will end with a proper ‘medical’ conclusion and solution. Why should anyone want to trying out these solutions offered? If there are hundreds of other reasons why you should not try out any of these pseudoscientific mambo jumbo, it is difficult to refuse the saying, “what harm can it do and it may work afterall, who knows?” And so, it is always easier to be apologetic to such anecdotal medical advice than having a debate on science and critical thinking. The greatest weapon of all is that no sons and daughters would want to bear the bad name of not fulfilling their duty of filial piety. How can you deny a medicine that “might” work for your parent? That again, is how these alternative medicine men prayed on to make a quick buck. When you’re sick, all your rationality went out the window and you’re as gullible as a 3-year-old.

We have taken for granted the contribution of the medical practice that is based on proper scientific method. When i pickup a bottle of pills for my father, I can know everysingle thing about the content, the side effect, the effectiveness of the drug on that little paper that come with the box. If that is not enough, medical journal website let me read in even more detail how the drug was tested. On the contrary, when I look at the chinese pills, all I know is the chinese traditional medicine doctor’s words: “it’s for his overall wellness, what I give will surely make him better”. I read on a news article that 70% of the chinese still seek traditional medical treatment. Is this a sign that traditional medicine is effective? Or is it the sign that we really need to promote some critical thinking culture in our society.

Media and sugar

I found this interesting podcast from www.skeptoid.com. This article basically answers the question that sugar does not really make a child hyperactive. And that there is a scientific explanation to it. Although I do wish that the link between sugar and hyperactivity in children is true because I have always believed that to be true and there has been so many examples in popular media. But I was wrong. And I would probably wrongly confirm the fact in any casual conversation I have without any doubt. That, I think is a big problem not only for me but for everyone. Much of the knowledge we learn today come from the mass media. There is no alternative to this. And much of these information we internalise to become facts. Internalising popular messages as facts can be dangerous. There is no one sure and quick way to overcome this problem. We can only keep our minds open and read as much as we can. Of course, even this podcast can be a suspect. The cited research could be non-existence. Or the research may not be peer-reviewed and published and so on. I would love to trace the source of the journal article for the research cited in there but it would not be practical for everyone to start spending time to dig up journal articles just for the sake of proving it. The idea here is to be able to distinguish between an anecdote and a properly conducted experiments. There are many arguments that are put forward supported by many anecdotes but with only very few inconclusive research. It is a troubling world. Who can we trust next?

Hi, my name is Andrew and I want to know if certain food additives can affect children’s behavior. Do certain food additives cause children to act in a more disruptive fashion, and can removing them from their diets help them behave in a more placid fashion? Thanks.

Certain additives like caffeine and alcohol certainly affect children’s behavior in the same way they do adults, in fact to a greater degree because the children have such smaller body mass. But I think you’re talking about more common ingredients like sugar or corn syrup. Nearly everyone has always accepted the belief that sugar makes kids hyperactive; in fact it’s so deeply ingrained that even some researchers have had trouble accepting their own results. In one study, 35 children reported by their mothers to be “behaviorally sugar sensitive” were separated into two groups. Half were told they were given a sugary drink, half were told it was a sugar-free drink. Then the mothers played with the children and were individually interviewed. Overwhelmingly, mothers who were told their child was given sugar rated their behavior as hyperactive. In fact, all children received the same sugar-free drink. In this case, the perceived affect was confirmation bias by the mothers — where they picked up only on cues that supported their pre-existing conviction.

Another similar study found that 50 children whose mothers “knew” that their children’s behavior was worsened by sugar were given a blinded test where the children were given either sugary or a sugar-free drink, and then observed — but this time the mothers didn’t know which was which. No differences between the groups could be ascertained over three separate trials. And the lack of an effect extends to classroom performance, too. 16 hyperactive boys were given controlled diets of either sugar drinks or sugar-free drinks at measured intervals throughout two school days and were regularly given behavioral and cognitive tests. Again, there was no difference in performance between the groups.

Biochemically, the claim doesn’t make sense for normal healthy children. The amount of sugar in the blood is carefully regulated by insulin. Whether you eat a lot of sugar or none at all should make no difference to your blood sugar level.

So Andrew, the evidence is pretty clear that sugary foods will not affect children’s behavior, despite the widespread belief. The observed effect that all mothers can swear to is that they often see their children eating cake and juice at parties or other such gatherings, where the social environment does indeed contribute to mass insanity; and mothers quite naturally mistake correlation for causation.

The case where print is faster than the web

Malaysia’s national art gallery is nothing new. We have it right after our independence and it has been ‘the’ only government institution promoting arts in Malaysia. At least the form of ‘arts’ inherited from the western world. May be that is the reason it does not seem to present itself as an important catalyst for visual art in Malaysia. The NAG is sort of just ‘being there’. Private galleries, collectors, corporations and independent artists seem to be the people pushing hard for the art culture to establish itself in Malaysia (for economic reasons I suppose). I personally have only vague memory of it before 2006. Mentioning this place will normally get a blank stare from my friends. While most people probably know about the Louvre in Paris (especially after the Dan Brown’s hullabaloo), I can pretty much bet that very few people on the street know that we even have such a thing. Well, I do hope that I’m wrong about this since that is just my intuitive guess. And why the weird title? I was trying to call the gallery using the number from the website and couldn’t get anybody to answer. I had similar experience where I would call for hours before anybody answers. Anyway, I gave up trying and just go there instead. Later I found out that the number on the website is no longer valid. The new telephone number(603-40267000) is printed in the new brochure in the attachment. I have no idea when they change it but that’s a good strategy not to get any calls from the public. And the amazing thing is that you will see anouncements and articles being written in newspaper about exhibitions and activities held in NAG which were never reported in the website at all. So, that’s what I meant in the title. The NAG website was just redesigned last year after the old one was stagnant for I don’t know how long. Now, it looks like it is probably going down the same road as the old one. Malaysian government likes to do new things but never know how to maintain anything. We’ll always wait for the thing to deteriorate until we can put in something new again. That’s the sad truth. Perhaps I should call that our culture.

Journalism of convenience

There is something wrong with our local journalism in Malaysia. Here, I will piece together a peculiar event that happened on early morning on 9 nov. I first read about this news in The Sun on Monday 10 Nov. I read an update of the news today in Sin Chew Daily. A search on the internet also see some reports in The Star online and Malay Mail online. Now, here comes the interesting part. Depending on which newspaper you read, you probably will get totally different impression of what did happen.

First is The Star. Apart from a small report entitled “Man beaten by mob lodges report”, there were no other report online regarding that incident. Here is how the incident was described by The Star:

“The driver who was beaten up by more than 30 people in Jalan Loke Yew on Sunday..”, and

“On Sunday, minutes after police cleared road debris from the scene of another accident, four men and a woman were beaten unconscious by an angry mob over a misunderstanding.

There were no names, no details at all of what really took place. Judging by the tone of the writing, the reporter was obviously indifferent about the incident. Although pretty obvious, but there were no indication of who is at fault in this incident. For some reason, this incident does not seem to be news worthy for The Star’s editor.

The Malay Mail has a better report on the incident. The headline reads “Loke Yew mob madness”. One particular paragraph caught my attention. “In the accident, a motorist allegedly made an illegal U-turn in Jalan Loke Yew, leading to Syed Mohd Shahrizal’s death and serious injury to five others.” We shall see what is the update on that below. In Malay Mail’s report, the reporter seems to have more details of the several injured motorists in an earlier accidents where the beating took place. Names and ages were clearly reported.

Now we move on to NST. The headline reads “Chaos after m-cyclist dies in crash “. The first sentence clearly stated: “An off-duty policeman allegedly made an illegal U-turn in Jalan Loke Yew early yesterday, leading to the death of a motorcyclist and serious injury to five others.” The information about the “off-duty policeman who made an illegal U-turn” was omitted in The Malay Mail. The NST reporters managed to get an interview from the injured motorists, which is a good thing. However, the incident where the 5 were beaten up was only mentioned in passing in the last two paragraphs. The last statement read “The angry mob then assaulted all the male passengers.” which was totally wrong because the female passengers were beaten badly as well. The reporter obviously heard this from someone but not able to verify this but yet did not clarify how he get that claim. NST did have an update to mention the possible Mat Rempit involvment. Seriously, where can you find so many motorcyclists at 3am on the road that would beat people up. And i don’t even want to mention the race of those in the picture beating people.

Shin Chew Daily made a better coverage of the incidents including interviewing the police. The Shin Chew reporter even had a very detailed accounts of the event from the 5 victims involved. The problem with Shin Chew is that they totally missed out the report on the accident involving the off-duty policeman the 4 injured and 1 dead motorists.

The worst I leave it the last. The Sun headline on Nov 10 was “Mob attacks impatient driver”. That was the worst headline I have ever read. It not only did not explain the real incidents that took place but was almost sounded like applauding the idea that the ‘impatient driver’ deserved to be beaten up. There were not much details in the reporting as there were no interviews with the victims nor the police.

So now that I have read so many versions of the story, what should I think about the incident? Obviously one conclusion is that you sure will miss a lot of news reading The Star. NST and Malay Mail obviously only interview Malays and Shin Chew only interviews chinese. So what’s wrong with journalism in Malaysia? Yes precisely, jounalism of convenience.

So are you a creative person?

Here is a list of findings from research done by Frank Barron, Professor of Psychology, Santa Cruz.

“..creatvie subjects approved of the modern, experiential, primitive, and sensual, while they disliked the aristocratic, traditional, and emotionally controlled.”

“.. creative persons tended to reject suppression as a mechanism for the control of impulse.”

“..highly creative writers were more frequently in trouble psychologically than people in general, but they had greater ego strenght and more resources for coping with their problems.”

“..Creative people are accurate, sharp observers, have high sexual drive, and are more vigorous and nervous than others; they bind high levels of tension, receive pleasure from discharging their tensions, and can temporarily avoid distinction between self and object.”