Tolerant societies and immunity to data leaks

As much as we try to tighten data security, no one imagines that absolute safety is ever possible. The recent leak of records from the HIV registry will surely be followed by further breaches, some maybe even more extensive. Is laying on ever more layers of security the only possible response?

On 28 January 2019, the Health Ministry revealed that over 14,200 records of HIV-positive persons had been stolen and leaked online. They included details of 5,400 Singaporeans diagnosed with HIV up to January 2013 and 8,800 foreigners diagnosed up to December 2011.

CPF: Fact versus belief, but which will prevail?

The same day (15 Jan 2019) that Manpower Minister Josephine Teo reiterated to Parliament that the CPF payout eligibility age is 65, a Facebook post by Leslie Terh screamed

“Retirement Payout age moved to 70 years quietly…”

adding,

“…if we want to have payout to start at 65, we MUST OPT OUT.”

In trying to kill fake news, we lobotomise ourselves

Everything is fake until it is true. This sentence may sound glib but I think it is fundamental in epistemology. This is not to say that everything will eventually turn out to be true, but merely that everything we know as true was once easily dismissed as fake.

Truth does not emerge wholly formed. Truth is a consensus reached when empirical evidence and logical construction have attained a critical mass, enough to far outweigh any other plausible explanation. However, it can take a very long time for evidence to be found and the dots connected. Even then, ‘truth’ remains contingent on the evolving pattern of evidence.

Requiem for a mug

I accidentally knocked it against the edge of the kitchen sink and its handle broke. Instinctively, I gathered the pieces to throw them into the bin. And then I stopped. I wanted to take in, respectfully, the feeling of loss that surged over me. This mug had been given by my late brother-in-law, Blake. Throwing it away, which in the end I will of course, will have incalculably more meaning than most other acts of disposal. It will mean the loss of one more material connection to someone I once knew, but who has since departed.

Avoiding vengeance: Why teaching religion is the wrong thing to do

“Not if but when” says the poster. Indeed, an attack of some sort will happen in Singapore. But let’s not be ahistorical about it. Throughout history, highly aggrieved individuals have lashed out at society or authority with violence. Sometimes they act as loners, other times as part of an organised network. We’ve had bombs going off in Singapore within living memory — for example on 10 March 1965 at MacDonald House in which three persons died. We’ve had the Sepoy mutiny in 1915 in which over 100 people lost their lives, including 56 mutineers. 

There was once a buffalo here

Making small provisions to enable people to upskill through bite-sized training courses will not be enough to cope with a world in which lifelong continuous learning and career switching has become necessary — I argued this in my previous post Spreading a bit of money to “position Singapore for the future”. But in the interest of length, I left untouched an even bigger question: What if, for all the retraining, adjustments and preparations we make, there simply isn’t enough work to be had? It’s a question that’s not only for Singapore.

The loneliness of loving Berg

A common experience among gay people is that of an adolescence feeling all alone. You know you have certain feelings and interests, but nobody around you displays the same. Nobody you know ever mentions these. Instead, you quite quickly realise that the gossip you overhear, the visual and cinematic representations you encounter every direction you turn, even the well-intentioned questions you get from uncles and aunts, refer to some other romantic interests that you’re supposed to have but do not.

Within a young person’s limited world of school, family and extra-curricular activities, a sense of being alone and of being marginal become central to his identity.

Big bank, big government, but the similarity ends there

At my request, the teller brought the branch manager to see me. I began: “I have no intention to take ‘no’ for an answer.” Then I explained what I was here at the bank for. On behalf of the charity organisation I volunteer at, Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), I needed a letter from the bank confirming our bank account number and account name.

Signs of yes-men

It struck many people as mindless: the notice banning the playing of chess in common areas of public housing at Block 11 Haig Road. How could playing chess in public areas be such a nuisance that it merits a heavy-handed ban? In any case, isn’t the sight of retirees playing chess in void decks a common sight all over Singapore? If they have never posed any problem, why now?

White is a superior colour, all the rest is dirt

Most of the comments I see on blogs and social media about the sudden resignation of PAP member of parliament David Ong have a tinge of schadenfreude. “Karma’s a bitch” is a popular phrase. It points out how the People’s Action Party’s 2012 hounding of the Workers’ Party for its then-MP Yaw Shin Leong’s extra-marital affair has boomeranged on themselves, not once but twice. In 2013, the PAP’s Michael Palmer fell from grace for the same reason, and now it is the turn of their MP for Bukit Batok, David Ong.