Twice a victim

I'm all for fun and pranks of all kinds but bullying and ragging are not fun pranks.  Bullying and ragging are the same except that ragging (I won't use the American word which is getting increasingly popular but is still relatively unknown where I live and I mean to keep it that way) is just an organised form of bullying.  A group because of its size and strength or hierarchical position asserts control and dominion over an individual or group by humiliating, debasing or even hurting them.  Ragging usually takes place in schools, colleges and organised groups such as the army.

Someone recently sent me a video of ragging in the Thai military (see screen shot above).  It seemed more like harmless play as the recruits did a circle dance and sang (very badly) Loi Krathong.  But what annoyed me in the video were the senior officers in the Thai military.  They were busy filming the recruits.  It then occurred to me that the video that was sent to me must have come originally from one such officer.

Why would any sane man film a group of recruits doing a silly dance? There can only be one reason - to humiliate them.  After the dance, the recruits were only allowed a few seconds to wash themselves and it was time to leave the bathroom.  It was obvious that their bath time had been used up by the officers who ordered them to do the silly dance.

It is true that the recruits appeared to be in good spirits and the ragging was more amusing than abusive and there was a group of them so it was all quite harmless.

Here's a pic which I screen-saved from a video, the source of which I'm not at liberty to reveal because it was taken in a military facility and for this reason, I won't even state which country the video was taken in.

The pic is of course self-explanatory and it really is a perfectly harmless activity even if it's childish.  The target ("victim" would not be the correct word here) reacted with a string of Hokkien obscenities.  There is no abuse of military rank here, unlike in the Thai army ragging.  The target is a friend, totally accepted by the rest of the group and after this incident, I have no doubt their friendship remained intact.  Bullying or ragging is hardly the word for such an activity. 

Ragging in its more serious form happened in Singapore a few years ago in the Singapore Civil Defence Force or SCDF.  Here's what Asia One says:

(Source: http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20081107-98996.html)

 







What I find shocking and totally unacceptable is SCDF's decision to punish all parties including the victim.  SCDF concludes that the victim was a willing participant in the episode.


Here's what SCDF says:

(Source: http://news.asiaone.com/News/the%2BStraits%2BTimes/Story/A1Story20081124-102859.html)






Anyone who has seen the full uncensored video is sure to come to the conclusion that the victim was not a willing party in the affair.  It's true that the victim waved at the camera at one point but you don't have to be an expert in human behavioural science to understand what must have gone on in his mind.  He wanted to be good-natured despite the humiliation and he didn't want to appear weak.  But he was no willing participant.  His hands and feet were bound and his bullies were nasty and malicious.  They zoomed in on his face and his genitals to maximize his shame.  And they posted it on the internet and it even went on international sites that host videos of serious crimes such as the beheading videos by Muslim extremists.  The victim was thoroughly humiliated and debased.  The others may have urged him to say he consented to the whole thing so as to get them off the hook and he may have done that because of his good nature.  But SCDF should have known better.  Of course SCDF was dreadfully wrong.  By the disciplinary action they meted out to the victim as well, they have made the poor chap twice a victim.

Why Can't the Straits Times Get it Right?

This is what I read this morning from yahoo news:

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/chinese-embassy-expresses-regret-over-ferrari-accident.html

But since yahoo news is notorious for not keeping an archive of its news, the entire article is produced below from my screen-save function (you may ignore the first three images which I've included for the sake of completeness but you need only read the text in the two last images below):

I thought the error was the sort I would expect of the Chinese Embassy.  China is known for more egregious blunders in English than this and I'm always more ready to excuse it but these words jumped off the page and caught my attention: "...said the letter written in CHINESE".   Ah ha!  So, it's back to our embarrassing Singaporean journalists again!  I searched all over the article to see who in yahoo could have made this error.  The top of the article (this can be seen in the second image above) says the article was written by "Yahoo Newsroom".  Now, that's not good enough.  I need a person to pin the error to.

I then read the article again and the culprit was staring at me in the face - the letter from the Embassy was written to the Straits Times, my old friend.  The Straits Times is a newspaper that takes the cake when it comes to the number of grammatical mistakes a newspaper can possibly make.  What's really hilarious about this newspaper is it can publish an article on English usage and make outrageous errors within the article itself.  I have lost count of the number of times I have written to its editor about some grammatical error in his paper and I'm ALWAYS told that they would not publish my letter because it's "embarrassing" to their journalists.  But they've never failed to assure me that they would "alert the newsroom" which of course isn't satisfactory to me.  I am always tempted to post the exchange of letters I've had with the Straits Times but I don't want to be thought of as a petty pedant, which I certainly am not.

Now, it's clear yahoo got the news from the Straits Times and repeated its translation of the Embassy's letter from Mandarin to English.  But that was not the end of the matter for me.  I was curious to see who the journalist was who made the error.

The yahoo link led me to the article in the Straits Times:
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_799792.html

I have also screen-saved the Straits Times article and here it is:

Now, we have it.  The error that no average English user will make did not originate from the Chinese Embassy.  Even if did, it can't really be faulted since everyone knows English is as foreign a language in China as Urdu is in Singapore.

Neither did it originate from the Yahoo newsroom.  Yahoo had merely copied verbatim its source, the Straits Times.

The article was written by one Bryna Sim.  I have something to say about the name "Bryna" but before I do so, I have to know if she gave herself the name or it was given to her by her parents.  Those who are not familiar with this strange phenomenon of giving oneself a name (which is always either a Western name or a name that sounds Western) should spend some time in Singapore.  I have a lot to say about this but most of it has been said by Lee Wei Ling (Lee Kuan Yew's daughter) whom I absolutely adore simply because she's even more politically incorrect than I can ever be.

For a previous posting on the Straits Times and the English language, click here.

Women were better treated by Jesus and St Paul

Women were certainly far better treated by Jesus and St Paul than they were by the church.  I just went through the notes I made when I read Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus a few years ago.  I don't always make notes when I read but it's very useful when I do.  Since today is Mother's Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share (without any editing) the notes I made with respect to the treatment of women by our Lord and St Paul and compare it with the way the church subsequently behaved towards them.

Here are the notes.  They are a summary of Bart Ehrman's section on women in his book.  If there are errors or if you find bits and pieces incomprehensible, it's because I reduced the text to a highly summarised version purely for my own personal reference and I used my own words in many places for that purpose.  If you want to read more fully, please buy his book.  It was on the New York Times' Bestseller List for a long time.

To all women and it doesn't matter if they are mothers, grandmothers or even childless, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!



Women and the Texts of Scripture

WOMEN IN THE EARLY CHURCH

Jesus's closest followers were men as is to be expected of a Jewish teacher but he was accompanied by many women in his travels, some of whom provided for him and his disciples financially, serving as patrons for his itinerant preaching ministry.  See Mark 15:40-51; Luke 8:1-3.  Jesus engaged in public dialogue with women and ministered to them in public (Mark 7:24-30; John 4:1-42).  Women accompanied Jesus in his final trip to Jerusalem where they were present at his crucifixion and remained faithful to the end while the male disciples had fled (Matt 27:55; Mark 15:40-41).  It was Mary Magdalene alone or with other female companions who discovered his empty tomb and were the first to know about and testify to Jesus's resurrection (Matt 28:1-10; Mark 16:1-8; Luke 23:55- 24:10; John 20:1-2).

Why were women attracted to Jesus's message?  Many scholars are convinced that Jesus proclaimed a Kingdom of God which had no injustice and all people, rich, poor, slave, free, men and women would be on an equal footing.  This appealed to the poor, the sick, the outcast and the women.

Celsus levelled a charge against Christianity that largely children, slaves and women were attracted to the religion and Origen did not deny it.

Even earlier than that, in Paul's time, Paul mentions Phoebe who is a deacon or minister in the church of Cenchreae and Paul's own patron whom he entrusts with the task of carrying his letter to Rome (vv 1-2).
Prisca and her husband Aquila (missionary work among Gentiles and have a congregation in their home (vv 3-4; notice Prisca is mentioned first).
Mary, Paul's colleague (v 6)
Tryphaena, Tryphosa and Persis whom Paul calls his "co-workers" in the gospel (vv 6, 12)
Julia and the mother of Rufus and the sister of Nereus all had high profile in the community (vv 13, 15)
Most impressive: Junia whom Paul calls "foremost among the apostles" (v 7).  The apostolic band was evidently much larger than the 12 men we are familiar with.

All this is unusual in the Greco-Roman world.

Paul's message of equality is seen in Gal 3:27-28.

But women had to cover their heads, etc (1 Cor 11:3-16, esp v 10). Paul did not urge a social revolution in the relationship of men and women just as he did not urge the abolition of slavery even though in Christ there is "neither slave nor free". Instead, he insisted that since "the time is short" (until the coming of the Kingdom), everyone should be content with their roles - whether slave, free, married, single, male or female (1 Cor 7:17-24).

Ambivalent attitude of the role of women (Paul acknowledges their important roles but he still says they needed an authority over their heads) led to differences of views after his day -equality in Christ emphasized or the need for women's subservience to men.  Documents after Paul's death shows dispute as to the role of women in his churches.  Eventually, there was an effort to suppress the role of women in the church altogether.

Scholars today are by and large convinced that 1 Timothy was not written by Paul but one of his later second-generation followers. (See Ehrman, The New Testament, Chap 23).  1 Tim 2:11-15 seems a long way from Paul's view that "in Christ there is ... not male and female".  As we move into the second century, the battle lines appear clearly drawn.

The scribes were clearly embroiled in these debates.  In every instance when a text is changed,  it is done to limit the role of women and to minimise their importance.  We will consider just a few examples.

TEXTUAL ALTERATIONS INVOLVING WOMEN

1 Cor 14:34-35.  Most scholars are convinced that 1 Tim is not written by Paul. No one doubts that Paul wrote 1 Cor.  But there are doubts about vv 34-35 which are shuffled around in some of our important textual witnesses.  In 3 Greek manuscripts and a couple of Latin witnesses, they are found not here but after verse 40.  Some scribe could have written the verses in the margin, influenced by 1 Tim and they later got copied into the text.

Good reasons why these verses were not written by Paul.
They do not fit well into their immediate context. Paul is dealing with the issue of prophecy in church and giving instructions on how to behave during worship.  This is the theme of verses 26 to 33 and 36 to 40.  Without the disputed verses, the passage would have flowed smoothly.

Next, these verses are anomalous with what Paul says elsewhere in 1 Cor.  In chap 11, he says that when women pray or prophesy (activities that were always done aloud in Christian worship), they are to wear veils on their heads (11:2-16).   Paul would not have contradicted himself within the space of 3 chapters.

Rom 16:7 Junia who was called a foremost apostle by Paul was changed to Junias, a male name.  But Junia is a common female name, there is no evidence in the ancient world for Junias as a man's name.

Some scribes changed the verse to read "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and also greet my fellow prisoners who are foremost among the apostles."

Acts 17:4 "large number of prominent women" was changed by some scribes to "large number of wives of prominent men".

Some scribes even changed the order of appearance of the names to read "Aquila and Priscilla" as in Acts and also in Rom 16:3.

Indian cum.... Yuck!!!!!

No, I'm not being racist.  You can replace "Indian" with "Chinese" or any other races or even any of the species in the animal kingdom and I will still say "YUCK!!!"  The Japanese eat the whale variety but they eat many other things too and I'm certainly not Japanese!

Here's the pic.  What do you think the two women are being served?

For those who can't really see the pic and refuse to click on it for the larger photo, here's a zoomed-in pic:

It all started last night (yes, it's as recent as that) when I saw on a friend's Facebook wall a photograph of this signboard.  Readers of my blog must know that I love collecting photographs of funny signage.  Most of them are in other countries, particularly China.  Photographs of funny signs in China are a dime a dozen.  When I heard from my friend that this signboard was in Singapore, I decided I had to act fast before the owner wised up and removed it.

It did not surprise me in the least this sign was found in a food court in some God-forsaken part of Singapore.  It was not easy to get to this place.  I set off early this morning with the help of google maps (what can one do without google in this day and age?) and had to negotiate a road full of lorries and large construction vehicles because I was on my way to the Boondocks of Singapore.  The food court is deep within a large building that looks more like a gigantic warehouse in Pasir Gudang in Johor than any building in Singapore.

I felt I had to order something from the stall since I was going to take pics of the signboard.  But I wanted to eat mee goreng from a Malay stall at the same food court.  So I got myself just one thosai from Indian Cum:

I must confess I didn't eat the white chutney.  I then ate my mee goreng from the Malay stall before leaving the place.

From the brief moment it took for me to place an order with the stall owner, I could instantly tell that the proprietor of Indian Cum was not comfortable with the English language and hence, the name.  I think he's not a Singaporean but a native Indian.  But I have no doubt that it's only a matter of time when the mistake will be brought to his attention and the sign removed.  But that's ok.  I have the photos and that's all that matters.

Why the Defence of God Infuriates Me

When I first discovered how insupportable the God theory was, I was devastated.  I had lived my entire life on the supposition that God existed, his will, purpose and teachings were all contained in the Holy Bible and every doctrine of the Christian faith was not just true but demonstrably true.  Of course, like all good Christians, I did not go further to investigate how Christian "truths" could be shown to be true; I merely accepted that they were all true.  It was only when I read up more and tried my hand at defending the faith that I realized how utterly defenceless faith was.

At that point, I took it upon myself to read up every argument in favour of God.  I was not one to let the grass grow under my feet and I researched extensively into the subject.  It was easy to weed out the dunces from the scholars.  The dunces are people who know nothing about real Bible scholarship and they write mainly popular books that appeal to the Christian masses but their facts are at best broad generalizations or at times totally concocted and even fine Christian scholars would blushingly avoid them.  Josh McDowell, an apologist I admired when I was a boy in school, is of course one of the dunces.  His "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" and "More Evidence that Demands a Verdict" that meant so much to me as a boy are books that should go under the category of "Jokes".  His arguments are the same old ludicrous arguments that CS Lewis first forwarded a century ago.  Today, most Christians are too embarrassed to bring up these arguments in a debate with atheists because they are so obviously flawed and it wouldn't take an atheist more than a minute to chew them up and spit them all out in the Christian's face.  I have limited time for this entry and I won't discuss how wrong McDowell/Lewis' argument is unless someone really needs me to go through it which I am prepared to do in a separate blog entry.  McDowell's section on the canon of scriptures is shoddy, misleading and easily dismissed.  Anyone who's read the real scholars Bruce Metzger and FF Bruce on the canon will know McDowell was talking through his behind when he wrote the book.

I don't want to say anything bad about McDowell; I'm sure he's a fine Christian and I respect him for that.  I recall how excited I was when he visited my university and I wanted his autograph very badly and the only book I had with me was my textbook on Family Law.  He was gracious enough to sign it and he included a biblical quotation and he made a joke about how wrong divorces were and to be fair to me, I have never in my entire life done a single matrimonial matter and so you might say I took McDowell's advice quite seriously.

McDowell has no pretensions about being a scholar.  He's an apologist and his job is simply to defend the Christian faith.  He hasn't got the depth of learning and scholarship that Bruce Metzger and FF Bruce have.

So I was desperately looking for strong arguments in defence of God.  Sadly, every debate that I read or watched on the net ended with atheists beating us Christians flat.  In every argument, we were floored and given the knock-out blow.  Our embarrassing defeats continued debate after debate until I stumbled upon a shrewd and sly debater called William Lane Craig.

Craig is a philosophy teacher and he is a professional debater.  He seems to beat the atheists who are unfortunate enough to have to debate with him.  So, do I rejoice in this formidable champion and defender of God?  Not in the least.

You see, what I want to see in a debate is honest victory in God's favour.  I need an affirmation that my faith is true.  But Craig is not what I would call an honest debater.  He is artful and deceitful.  I'm sorry I have to refer to a Christian debater as deceitful but that is precisely what he is.  Every time I listen to him, I get this very uncomfortable feeling in me that here is Christendom's most illustrious conman.  Craig's arguments are always the same old trite arguments that my poor fellow Christians have been using for the past few centuries.  But what makes Craig different is he conceals the unfair arguments in such a way that his opponent fails to see why the arguments are flawed or unfair.  His methods are varied but they are all underhanded.  He uses technicalities, sophistry, play of words and confusion to defeat his unwary opponent.  I can give examples of every method he has used so far.  I've even seen him start his debate by insulting the opponent and his books as a preemptive measure.  I've seen him declaring "universal truths" and try to bind his opponents to those "truths".  I have seen him use old and hackneyed philosophical arguments (that have long been abandoned by most Christian apologists) but by playing on words, he gives a new lease of life to these flawed arguments.

I used to get very uncomfortable after listening to Craig and as time went by, I became angry.  Craig must know he's dishonest so does he really believe in God?  By that time of course, I had lost all hope of ever finding a Christian debater who could argue effectively for God without resorting to deceit and technicalities.  God is a lost cause as far as debates go.  The other thing about Craig's bag of tricks is it made me see how incredibly honest atheists were.  St John's Gospel tells us that those who tell lies have Satan for their father.  It's the atheists who are Christ's true followers in the usual religious debate that I read or see.

The reason why I write this post is I have just listened to an old debate.  Craig and two other religious chaps were debating with Dawkins, Shermer and another atheist in Mexico in 2010.  I listened to Craig's 6-minute talk and I felt the old anger rising.  Why can't Craig go to God on his knees and ask for the strength to be honest?

In that short talk, Craig wanted to forward an unfair argument.  He wanted to make the atheists prove a negative, that God does not exist.  Any idiot knows that you can't prove a negative.  Nobody can prove that invisible fairies don't exist or Bertrand Russell's celestial tea-cup doesn't exist.  We can't prove that there really is no Santa Claus on flying reindeer any more than we can prove that there are no pixies, leprechauns or purple unicorns with pink polka dots.  The usual rule is if you assert the existence of any object or entity, the onus must be on you to prove its existence.

But we Christians don't like that because there is ZILCH evidence for God's existence.  Our God is Almighty, all-compassionate and highly intervening in human affairs, so we believe.  And yet there is ABSOLUTELY not a shred of evidence for his existence.  Craig knows this and he knows that in a debate he's got to unfairly push the burden of proof onto the atheists.  He also knows that to say at the outset that he wants atheists to prove a negative would be so obviously wrong that he'll probably be jeered by the audience.  So what he does in each debate that I've seen him in is to hide the fact that he's shifting the burden of proof deceitfully.  In the Mexico debate, this is how he did it.

The debate is on whether there is a purpose in the universe.  Craig starts off by saying that there are two statements that his opponents are sure to accept.  If there is a God, there will be a purpose in the universe.  If there is no God, there is no purpose in the universe.  So far, so good.  He goes on to say that if his opponents are to succeed, they will have to show that there is no purpose in the universe and they can't succeed in that unless they also show that there is no God in the first place.  There you are!!!  Burden of proof shifted unfairly again!

This is really very sad.  This is not the first time I have caught Craig up to his tricks.  There was another debate that I listened to and I managed to list 5 lies or deceitful remarks that he came up with in the short space of 5 minutes or so.  After having read and listened to countless debates between my fellow Christians and atheists, I am now very cautious when I listen to the Christian speakers.  I react towards my fellow Christians the way I do towards a gypsy woman carrying a baby who accosts me in the middle of a road in Rome.  I become wary, cautious and I hold on to my possessions.  And this is not the impression our Lord wants Christians to give to others.  Even in a debate for God, we MUST uphold the most rigorous standard of honesty or if we think we can't win in the debate without being dishonest, we always have the option of avoiding the atheist altogether.

I set out to justify my faith by listening to arguments in favour of God and what I got from it is nothing less than clear evidence that my fellow Christians are dishonest when they argue for God.  What does that do to my faith?

I wish my fellow Christians will remember the words of our Lord that lies come from the Father of Lies, ie Satan.  Even if we are debating for God and we are desperate because we are fighting a losing battle, we should still be totally honest.  As an honest Christian, my approach is different from Craig's.  I openly admit that there is absolutely no evidence for God's existence.   I openly admit that the problem of evil does show that logically, God can't be both omnipotent and all-compassionate.  I am totally honest about the outrageous contradictions and concoctions in the Bible and the total unreliability of the Bible and there are serious flaws in its canon, compilation, scribal corruption and transmission.

I really wish there were no problems with the faith but I know that's not true.  And of course I'm quite unlike Craig and some of these Christian defenders in that for me, truth is really of paramount importance.  I know I can tell lies for God and I certainly have done that in the past (I mentioned this in an earlier blog post) but I have for a long time now resolved to be perfectly honest when I'm dealing with the truth or the lack of it in my own religion.

Site of serial killing revisited

Just 3 days ago, there was a huge commotion when someone threatened to kill himself with a chopper in a market just across the road from this site.  That incident reminded me of something more sinister that happened here a long time ago.

In the 3 pics below are the usual Government housing residential flats known as HDB (Housing and Development Board) flats one sees everywhere in Singapore.  Housing is a huge success here and there are, except for very unusual and extremely rare cases, absolutely no homeless people in Singapore.  There is a lovely garden, a bench to sit on and even a gazebo.

The tranquility of the surroundings belies the violence that occurred in one of the flats here 31 years ago.  It happened in the top flat in the first picture - but you will have to picture it mentally because it's concealed by the leaves of a nearby tree.  I tried to take a pic from the other end but the sun was against me.    It was the scene of Singapore's only case of serial killing in which 3 persons lost their lives and the story reads like an Indiana Jones adventure story, complete with blood drinking and human sacrifices to the goddess Kali.

The serial murderer, Adrian Lim, is probably the most hated person in Singapore.  The memory of his brutal crimes remained even long after his trial and conviction.  As late as 1998, the New Paper conducted a poll on the most terrible crime in that year.  30% of the people polled refused to talk about crimes in 1998 and insisted the Adrian Lim murders were the most terrible even though they took place almost two decades before.

Adrian Lim had been an abject failure all his life.  He went to the Anglo-Chinese School until Secondary 1 when he dropped out at about the age of 13.  He did various odd jobs until his fortunes turned for the better when he became a medium.  In superstitious Singapore, Adrian Lim's business as a medium thrived and at one point, it was reported that he raked in about S$7,000 a month from just one client.

Adrian (let's not use his surname which is probably the surname of 20% of Singaporeans) preyed on feeble-minded women and women with psychiatric problems and made them virtually his slaves.  Two of his women, Tan Mui Choo and Hoe Kah Hong lived with him.  However, Hoe was married and when she moved in to live with Adrian, her husband, Loh, went to the flat to look for her.  For some superstitious reasons, he believed the story that his wife was receiving spiritual treatment from Adrian and he even stayed for the night in the flat and early the next morning, he agreed to participate in the healing ritual.  Loh and his wife Hoe, under Adrian's instructions, locked their hands together and immersed their bare feet in pails of water.  Adrian then administered electrodes on Loh with a high voltage which killed him while Hoe was only knocked unconscious.  When she recovered, she lied to the police that her husband had been electrocuted while turning on a faulty electric fan.  No further investigations were conducted and Adrian was off the hook.

In the meanwhile, Adrian was being investigated for the rape of one of his clients during a healing ritual.  He felt the need to sacrifice two children to the goddess Kali in order to receive divine protection.  He instructed Tan and Hoe to bring children to him which they did.

The first was 9-year-old Agnes Ng who was last seen at a religious class in the Roman Catholic Church of the Risen Christ in Toa Payoh.  She was lured into the flat by Hoe, sexually assaulted by Adrian and smothered with a pillow before her blood was drawn and drunk by the trio.  More blood was splashed on the portrait of the goddess Kali.  Her head was then held in a pail of water until she drowned and to make sure that she was dead, Adrian electrocuted her.  Her body was then stuffed into a bag and left in the lift lobby of an adjacent block of flats.

The second victim was a ten-year-old Malay boy called Ghazali bin Marzuki.  Hoe saw him playing in a playground in Clementi and told him she needed his help and he went with her in a cab to Adrian's flat.  But Ghazali was a more hardy child and the sedatives did not work that well on him.  Seeing that he was going to give some trouble, Adrian attempted to tie him up but he was roused from his sedative-induced sleep and he put up a struggle.  Adrian and the two women rained blows on him and knocked him out.  They then drew his blood to perform rituals, after which, as they did to Agnes, they proceeded to hold Ghazali's head in a pail of water to drown him.  Again, the boy proved resilient.  He struggled, threw up and at one stage, he even defecated which made it necessary for them to clean up the flat.  But that was not all.  Ghazali's nose bled profusely and there were pools of blood in the flat.  Adrian gave instructions to Tan to clean up the flat while he and Hoe dragged the body down the stairs and left it under a tree.  There was a trail of blood that led all the way to Adrian's flat.  Adrian and Hoe cleaned up as much as they could but they were not totally successful.  It was this blood trail that led the police to the flat and to the subsequent arrest and conviction of all three of them.

I don't want to think how the parents of these children must have felt when they read the account of what happened.  If this had happened in Norway, Adrian and his accomplices would have long been released from prison.  But thank God Singapore is not one bit like Norway.  All three of them were tried, convicted and sentenced to death.  After the conclusion of the legal process and the dismissal of their appeals, they were hanged on 25 November 1988.

Thank God for the death penalty.  Perhaps that is also the reason why that was the only serial killing in Singapore.  He who kills shall swing by the neck while the entire nation cheers.  Serial murderers who feel stifled in Singapore are more than welcome to go to Norway where they can be sure of being received with tolerance and understanding.

Why society defends paedophiles

Screen capture from Stomp: Click here (Copyright: Straits Times)

It's funny how many Singaporeans I have met who seem to defend the paedophiles and put the blame on an underage girl who must have been exploited and groomed to be a prostitute.  The truth is although I blame the paedophiles absolutely, I became a little uncertain when I saw the girl's photos.  She does not look underage at all.  She could easily pass off as a woman in her early 20s.  I also saw the website advertisement for prostitutes.  They specified that their prostitutes were 18 and above.  I began to dither and I felt I should be slow to blame the men.  Now, if a man wants a prostitute and he goes to the website, how on earth is he to know that the girl is above 18 apart from seeing what the ad says?  He can't be faulted for believing the ad, can he?  It was then that I began to feel some sympathy for these men.  Perhaps they aren't paedophiles after all.  They thought the girl was 20 or whatever the age was and although I can go on my moral high horse and say they shouldn't pay for sex in the first place, that's being judgmental.  The fact is they DIDN'T know the girl was underage and it's no different from a man going to a 30 year old prostitute.  I may not like it but that's neither here nor there.  There's no intention on the part of the men to have sex with an underage girl and they committed no crime.

That was what I thought until I had the good fortune of talking to a friend (I'm not sure if he would like his name to be mentioned, so I'll err on the side of caution and exclude his name for the time being).  He was a police officer in the US and he has considerable experience in tracking down and arresting paedophiles.  He told me something that changed my perspective altogether.  Whatever trickle of sympathy I had for the men has now evaporated.  They should be dealt with according to the full extent of the law if Singapore wants to avoid being seen as a country that is ambivalent about the problem of paedophile crimes.

You see, most of us inexperienced lay people know nothing about the world of prostitution.  We think it's highly probable that these men were mistaken about the age of the girl.  But that's not the situation in real life.  In the world of prostitutes and pimps, an underage girl fetches a better price.  The newspapers have disclosed that these men paid in the region of S$500.00 for sex with the underage girl.  When I first read that, I thought that must have been the going rate for a prostitute but I was wrong!  My friend tells me that the average prostitute charges in the region of S$50.00 in Singapore.  What these men paid was 10 times the fee that one normally pays for a prostitute.

I know nothing about the world of prostitutes but I'm familiar with bicycles.  Supposing I want to buy an entry level Trek mountainbike (with low end parts) and I'm asked to pay S$6,000.00.  I'd hit the roof.  That's because for that amount of money, I should be getting a high-end bike.  I shouldn't pay more than S$600.00.

Clients of prostitutes are no different.  They know how much to pay for an average adult prostitute.  There's no way these men could have got the underage prostitute for S$50.00, just as I can't possibly expect to buy a Merlin bike for S$600.00.

If these men had paid for the services of the underage prostitute, there is no way they can feign ignorance of her age.  They had paid ten times the usual fee a prostitute charges and the extra they had paid for is nothing less than the tender age of the victim which is obviously looked upon as a premium by these filthy perverted paedophiles.  Anyone who can do this must be a dangerous social predator who should be locked up for decades.

I hope that people who know nothing about prostitutes and what they charge for their services would stop excusing these vile paedophiles and begin to clamour for their just deserts.

Edit: 2:00pm 25 April 2012: Just as this blog post was still hot off the press, one of my friends informed me that she searched a few social escort sites and discovered that the fees for 20-year-olds were no different from those for the "mature" women (above 30).  They all commanded the same fee (if not more) as what the 17-year-old was charging.  Although I must admit that I find the men in this affair despicable and vile, I have to admit that perhaps some of them really thought the girl was above 18 and if that is so, they should be viewed perhaps with less frowning.  We should bear in mind of course that if it hadn't been commercial sex, it wouldn't even have been a crime because in Singapore, the age of consent is 16.  I think I'm out of my depths in the world of prostitution so I shan't make any more comments about prostitutes and their clients and I'll just focus my attention on food, biking and religion.

"Howdy!" spake Abrahm for he was sore afraid.

It's very easy to tell that a text is not genuine just from the language.  I was on google+ this morning when I read the post of someone in my circle and this was what he wrote.

I had not heard of Doctrine and Covenants before and so I clicked on the link and I was taken to the lds.org website which is of course the official website of the Mormon Church or the Church of the Latter-day Saints.  The link took me directly to Section 24 of a book called "Doctrine and Covenants" which is one of their sacred texts.  This was what I saw:

That was of course the introduction and immediately after that, was the sacred text itself:

Just the first four verses and I smelt a rat.  I went on.

Obviously, something is amiss.  My gut feeling tells me instantly that this text is a forgery.  Or to use less provocative language, it is not genuine.  My eyes then skipped some of the verses and I read the end of it, convinced that something was seriously wrong with the text.

I have said many times before that I do not, as a rule, criticise other people's religion.  I think it's more appropriate for me to criticise my own religion, which I have done many times in this blog and my other blog on religion.  I have shown why the Bible contains very serious errors and possibly even outright lies by the evangelists.

If I am to say something about the sacred text of the Mormons, I have to be more careful.  I may go on the anachronism of the language but I should draw no conclusion.  Perhaps it's good to bring this to the attention of a Mormon.  If there is anyone who can offer a defence of the text, it's got to be a Mormon.  After all, Mormons all over the world seem very eager to chat with strangers about their religion and surely a polite question about the use of language in their sacred text should be warmly received.  Besides, I'm a milk drinker and I don't like the taste of coffee and alcohol and I should be the darling of any Mormon Elder.

So I wrote this in response to his google+ posting:

Sorry for the break. Screen-capture can only be done in segments.

I haven't yet got a response to this.  I don't think I was insensitive or rude.  I have only read a few verses and it's already like opening a can of worms.

Language is a good tell-tale sign that a document is a forgery.  I can't speak for Mormon sacred texts but I know that scholars have shown that some New Testament texts are clearly forgeries.  They were written by Hellenistic Christians long after St Paul's time and they set out to convince their readers that the epistles were in fact written by St Paul.  What they did not realise is that it's very hard to fake another person's language even if he lived only about possibly 50 to 70 years before the forgery, as can be seen in some New Testament books.  Joseph Smith wrote in a language 200 years before his time and it's not surprising that he blundered.  No, I'm not insulting a Mormon prophet.  I'm saying he already did a very good job.

[Edited: 7:38pm, 24 April 2012:  A friend of mine brought to my attention the fact that the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith and so my complaint that the language was contrived to give a semblance of antiquity should not be seen as directed at God since Smith alone was to blame.  I then realised how ignorant I was about Mormonism.  Frankly, apart from their practice of baptising the dead, the famous holy underwear, their earlier (and subsequently banned) practice of polygamy and the super friendliness of their missionaries who always wore a white short-sleeved shirt and a broad smile, I knew absolutely nothing about their religion.  I just did a search in wikipedia and it seems the Doctrine and Covenants is a separate revelation from the Book of Mormons.  Interestingly, wikipedia says:

The revelations were not God's words verbatim, but "couched in language suitable to Joseph's time."  In 1833 Smith edited and expanded many of the previous revelations, publishing them as the Book of Commandments which later became part of the Doctrine and Covenants.

But my point is it's not couched in language suitable to Joseph's time.  It's in a language that purports to be 200 years BEFORE Joseph's time but Joseph got it wrong and that is precisely what I'm talking about.    Notice Joseph even had time in 1833 to edit his revelations but he continued to couch them in pseudo-Jacobean language.  Why did he do that?]

One man's meat...

I was just looking through my old photos and I thought I'd add a silly and corny caption to this pic.  But is the caption really all that silly?  I used to wonder how some clergymen could be so overly sentimental in their sermons without laughing at themselves.  There was one sermon I heard years ago that I thought was really stupid.  A few days later, I met a friend who had attended the same service.  He told me he had brought his sister who was suffering from depression to church and she was so touched by the sermon I had thought was stupid  that she no longer contemplated suicide.

We are all different individuals and what may seem stupid to someone may prove encouraging to another.  It's so natural for religious people to give a religious interpretation to everything they see (which accounts for stories of people seeing the image of Jesus or Mary or any of the saints on a wide variety of objects, some of which are downright ludicrous) and it's perfectly possible that someone may look at this photo and the caption and conclude that this is in line with what Jesus tells us in St Luke that even the stones would cry out and praise his name and because of this, he feels comforted and ministered.

It matters not that this caption is corny.  It matters not that the whole idea is stupid.  It matters not that there probably isn't a heaven.  If just one depressed individual should look at this and be encouraged to go on with life without thinking of suicide, wow! - it'd make my day and the logic of atheism can go hang.

For the sake of publicity

Of all the students in uni (I have to remind myself not to write "varsity" which is dated and for old people only), music students must be the most unusual.  They evoke a strange set of mixed feelings in me - awe and sympathy.  What they have in them is something none of us mere mortals can ever dream of.  It's funny how they can create so much magic by just running their fingers down the keys of the clarinet or oboe or sawing the strings of their instrument with the bow.  Those of us who play musical instruments know just how incredibly difficult it is to achieve that kind of virtuosity.    And yet, there's no money in what they do!

The idea of the impoverished artist has been so romanticized that we sometimes forget how bleak and unromantic it is to be truly impoverished.  Many orchestras in Europe have done so badly that they have to shut down and where does that leave the musicians?

Female musicians may very well fare much better.  They can always fall back on their feminine charms and a lovely seaside album cover of a female violinist standing knee-deep in the sea dressed in some skimpy dress soaked in seawater is sure to attract the attention of men who aren't really interested in Paganini's Capriccios.  Vanessa Mae may be an inspiration to other female musicians to flaunt their bodies and remind their male admirers who can't tell a crotchet from a quaver that you don't have to be fat and dumpy to be a brilliant musician but what about male musicians?

I was quite amused when I first saw this flyer advertising a recital by a young student violinist in Taiwan.

You may not be able to see clearly at the bottom left of the photo what pieces he was to play around this time last year but no, Lady Gaga's hit songs weren't in his repertoire.  The programme for the evening was not Hotbod gyrating to the beat of Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff" from that famous 1997 movie "The Full Monty" (sorry, am I dated again?) but he would be playing Stravisnsky's Italian Suite and two violin sonatas by Eugene Ysaÿe and Grieg wrapped, I'm sure, in several  layers of impenetrable fabric right up to his neck.

In Singapore, the T'ang Quartet are no strangers to posing for the camera in their birthday suits.  The picture below is from their ad in the 2007 Singapore Arts Festival.

I seem to recall an older photograph in which all four of them posed naked in different parts of a bathroom with their instruments strategically shielding their nether regions.  I remember that photograph only because it occurred to me at the time that they wouldn't have dared to pose that way if they played the clarinet, the oboe or the flute!

Do other artists resort to using suggestive photos of themselves?  Can you imagine Salman Rushdie standing starkers holding a copy of Midnight's Children in front of him?  I can't but of course I'm being silly.  Rushdie's selling point is his art of story telling, not his body.

But shouldn't it be the same for all artists?  The selling point for any artist has got to be his art and not how he looks with or without clothes.  That may be the ideal but as we all know, we don't live in an ideal world and very few in Asia or even elsewhere in the world really listen to good music.  Women have always worn revealing clothes to get some attention and why should a young male artist not make full use of his nicely sculptured torso?  It's not his fault that the world is teeming with uncouth plebeians who would rather go to a Linkin Park concert than spend the evening listening to Stravinsky.

Einstein and God

I'm sure everyone has read on his email or has seen a youtube video of how an atheist Professor was tripped up by a little boy and that boy was Einstein.  If you haven't, this is the best version of that story, mainly because it's in video form with excellent cinematographic effects.  It's even more convincing because it's in German with English subtitles:

When I first saw the video,  I knew something was wrong because in the first place, the boy's arguments are the same trite flawed arguments I've heard from evangelical Christians.  I could not believe that Einstein would be that stupid as to advance such obviously erroneous arguments.  It would be a sad day for physics and his theory of relativity if he did.

But of course, this is a famous urban legend and if you are interested in its origin and falsehood, you may want to read this link (possibly the most comprehensive available):

Urban legend - Einstein

There is also another link to a different website that explains this urban legend quite well too:

Another link on Einstein and God

It's absolutely indisputable what Einstein's view of God was.  He called religion a "childish superstition" and if you want a reliable source for this, you may click on this link:

Guardian newspaper - Einstein and God

In other words, the story about Einstein and the professor contained in the video and email postings is a lie manufactured by someone who's desirous of making our faith look good.

As everyone knows, I'm a devout Christian but if there's one thing that really embarrasses me, it's our shoddy attempt to defend God from a charge of non-existence.  He's accused of not existing simply because there is ZILCH evidence for his existence, and I do mean zero, naught, nil.  But cooking up a false story in a stylishly produced movie complete with wonderful effects just to glorify the faith by dragging in someone as illustrious as Einstein is morally wrong.   Why do we Christians spin such a dishonest yarn about Einstein and the professor?

93% of scientists in the US are atheists.  That's a fact that you can easily google if you don't believe me.  Just google "93% scientists are atheists" and you will have the sources.  It's probably much worse in Europe which has seen a huge decline in belief.  We also know that we are habitually trounced by atheists in debates and arguments.  The only way we can win some ground is to go into sophistry in a convoluted philosophical argument and question everything right down to the reliability of our senses, truth, etc but any atheist can see the weakness of such an argument.  If accepted, such a ludicrous argument will negate the need for a debate in the first place which of course suits us fine because the only way to stop getting thrashed in a debate is not to debate and what better escape route there is for us than to remove all the goal posts and declare that everything is unreliable and we can't have a debate in the first place?

Given the lack of respectable justification for us to have faith, it is therefore not surprising when we see instances of Christians telling lies for God.  I have been guilty of that myself.  I think I wrote an account of it a couple of years ago in this blog.  The fruit of that lie was I made it easier for three persons to accept the Christian faith.

[EDIT: Yes, I did write a confession of having told lies for God two years ago, or on 21 May 2010, to be precise.  Here's the link:   My confession ]

But as I grow older, I know that lying for God is the last thing we should do.  Honesty means everything to me and our Lord makes it plain in St John's Gospel that those who tell lies have Satan for their father.

Before I end this post, I should stress that the many Christians who share this video and other similar but equally false stories of Einstein and his professor are probably not dishonest.  Most Christians believe their faith to be 100% correct and flawless.  They find it perplexing why an intelligent brain like Einstein's would reject the gospel.  They are told from a very young age that clever people are usually proud and pride stands in the way between them and the Gospel of salvation.  And they believe that to this day.

The real liars are probably the makers of the film.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would make a film without first finding out more about the subject matter of the film.  If they knew the story to be a lie and they went on to produce the film, they would be guilty of dishonesty.

Knowing now that the video is a lie, would we continue to disseminate it, perpetuating a lie and upholding that very embarrassing tradition of telling lies for God?  Bear in mind that telling lies for God is not the straight and narrow path that our Lord urges us to take.

The Dalai Lama in Hawaii

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama jokes with members of the voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a crew following the Earth Blessing and Consecration of the Hōkūle‘a and its upcoming World Wide Voyage at Kualoa Regional Park on Oahu, Hawaii, on April 16, 2012. Photo/Eyes of the Island Photography"

I thought I should post this piece of news from the Dalai Lama himself on my blog.  The above is entirely copied from the Dalai Lama.  I wish to assure my readers that I'm not a fanatical Christian who will not post anything about other faiths and religions. 

What's in a name?

What's in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.

So wrote the Bard but is that true?  Would you buy this?

If you click on the photograph and choose to view the full pic, you will see the fine print at the bottom: "Purify pores and leave skin dull-looking".

Everyone knows what a rose smells like but nobody knows how this product is going to work on our skin.  And if, true to its promise, it leaves the skin dull-looking, not even its name which cleverly conjures up in the mind an image of Yeatsian serenity is likely to tempt anyone to buy it.

Language does matter.

The person an orchestra can do without!!

The most dispensable person in the orchestra is the one you can replace with a dummy!!!

BJ - it puts back whatever weight you might have lost

I thought that since I had had a heavy prata breakfast, a light fruit lunch would be good.  After all, a friend of mine recently posted "before" and "after" pics of himself and he lost a lot of weight after he went on a fruit diet.  But his was a genuine fruit diet and not a fruit diet after a heavy prata breakfast.  But still, you can't go wrong on a fruit diet or so I thought and I promptly got myself two mangoes.  If there is one fruit I don't mind binging on, it's the mango.

As we all know, life is more complex than this.  I felt hungry after my lunch of mangoes.  My friend who went on a total fruit diet must have felt much worse.  But I'm not him.  I'm a practical kind of guy and I'm not one of those martyrs who are into self-immolation or who can, at the drop of a hat, go on hunger strikes just for a cause.  No cause can possibly justify self-harm.

And of course BJ's strawberry cheesecake beckoned.  I yielded.

This evening, I had learnt my lesson.  A fruit diet is for fruit bats and monkeys.  I had a huge chicken bryani dinner and I felt good about it.

I wander through each chartered street

If you happen to walk past this stationary car (see photo on the left) and look over it, you'll probably just see the back alley of a shabby row of shops in a nondescript part of town.  You wouldn't stop to take a closer look.  You most certainly wouldn't bother to take a pic.  If you had seen me pausing to take a pic, you'd probably think I was a little out of my mind.  You would walk on hurriedly, eager to be in a better and cleaner part of town.


Ah!  But you see, the Hercule Poirot in me immediately spotted what the untrained eye is unable to pick up.  Let me blow the photo up for you:

Face deliberately blotted off

Earlier, this man was asleep on the pavement.  Is he another one of the very few homeless people in Singapore.  I had thought for a long time that Singapore was the only country in the world that had no homeless people. That view of mine was slowly shattered.  Read the following posts and trace how the scales slowly fell from my eyes:

1.  First post
2.  Second post
3.  Third post

And now this.  But let's not be too hasty and jump to a conclusion without more facts.  This man may not be truly homeless but it's hard to imagine why anybody would want to lie down on this filthy pavement if he weren't homeless.  It's still amazing that Singapore is the only country in the world where you have to search really hard to find even one homeless person and when you've found him, you aren't even sure if he really is homeless.  In all the other countries in the West, homeless people are a common sight.  Singapore may be near perfection but obviously, there's still some work for the social workers to do.

Investigative blogging - social issues

Just as responsible newspapers have their investigative journalism, I too have devoted some of my blog space to investigative blogging.  My blog has lately given some attention to matters of great social interest such as homeless and destitute people and I have become alert to people around me who might be in serious want.

I'll be posting pics and accounts of such social issues and it's my ardent wish that disseminating such information far and wide will result in some change for the better.  These posts will all be tagged "Social issues" on this blog.

Journey with me into a different world, a world most of you have only read about in novels.

Don't pay for your drinks!

Lee Kuan Yew, in his wisdom, abolished Chinese schools in Singapore a long time ago and turned Nanyang University which was then a Chinese university into the NTU of today where English is the primary medium of instruction.  He quite rightly reasoned that English, the world's common language, would be of greater benefit to the people of Singapore than that silly Northern Chinese dialect which is not even the language of Singaporeans.  People of Chinese descent form the majority of Singaporeans but all these Chinese people had ancestors who came from South China where Mandarin was considered a foreign tongue until that unfortunate day when the Commies took over China and forced this Northern dialect on every China citizen.

Although Singapore has 4 official languages, English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, English is the ONLY real official language.  Road signs are in English and official letters from the Government are all in English.  English is the language of the courts and this can sometimes be amusing.  It's not uncommon for the courts to scramble for a Hokkien interpreter because a witness can only speak Hokkien even though counsel for both sides and the judge all understand Hokkien perfectly.  It can be hilarious when the interpreter makes a mistake in the translation and the judge has to ask him to translate again, this time, more carefully because everyone in the courtroom knows what the witness is saying in Hokkien.  But the courts can only record evidence in English.  Given the primacy of English in Singapore, one would naturally assume that Singaporeans should speak and write it like native users of the language.  But the reality is quite different.

My pet peeve, as readers of my blog are no doubt aware, is the national newspaper, the Straits Times.  On many occasions, instead of being the champion of good English, its journalists have flagrantly flouted every imaginable grammar rule.  Sometimes, they use the strangest unidiomatic expressions and they stray as far as they can from standard English.  Lately, news readers who can't even manage a decent pronunciation appear on the air and online.

It is not surprising then that after my prata breakfast in Little India this morning, I found this sign in a supermarket that is sure to confuse anyone.  But since I have talked about my prata breakfast, it would be wrong of me not to post at least a pic of the most delicious prata in the whole of Singapore.  I have travelled far and wide and this prata is the tastiest I have ever eaten but alas, it's sold in a rather inelegant eatery and the food is not attractively presented and so, this pic of the prata soaked in curry won't do justice to its real taste which is heavenly.  But I don't care about externals.  As they say, the proof of the prata is in the eating.

The sign in the supermarket was placed where the alcoholic beverages were and it read "FIRST PAYMENT AFTER DRINKING".   My first thought was this was an instalment scheme to lure customers to drink first and pay later.  You must understand that this supermarket is not exactly in the more elegant part of town and there may very well be customers who are attracted by such an offer.

There was another sign in Malay:

"Pembayaran pertama selepas minum".  It means precisely the same thing as the English sign.  You need only make the first payment (not even the full payment) after you have drunk the alcohol.


There was another sign in Tamil which I couldn't read.  Finally, there was this notice which again was very badly written but at least the meaning is now clear.

All this confusion could have been avoided if the supermarket had merely posted a sign that said "PAY BEFORE DRINKING" and in Malay, "BAYAR SEBELUM MINUM".

A Different Kettle of Fish

Not all fish are the same.  This chart tells you what fish to eat and what to avoid.

This chart is taken from the Washington Post and I think it will benefit all my readers.  But if Washington Post is unhappy with the posting of this most valuable data, I'll remove it immediately.  It's really their property but it's too good not to spread round.