The Two Sides of Efficiency - Consumers and Producer

When I was young, I noticed how inefficient lifts are. Sometime, when all the lift are on the ground floor, then one person goes in, and the lift closes the door and moves off with that one person. Then another come, and another lift goes off with that one person. I felt that the problem is that the control is inside. The lift system cannot forecast passenger needs. A more efficient way, I thought, is to select the floor while you were outside. This way, the system can predict in advance who is waiting for the lift at which floor and desgin the most efficient route. And this idea was implemented at Wisma GKBI (pronounced Gay-Kah-Bay-Yee) in Jakarta. But it turned out that what was efficient for the lift is very inefficient for me.The lift took a long time during non-peak hours because it maximise its throughput, fetching as many passengers as possible in every floor. And I had to wait a long time for the lift.

China's Olympic Child Singer

To me, it really does not matter that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke (林苗可) sanged with seven-year-old singer Yang Peiyi's (杨沛宜) voice, as long as due credit is given. Unfortunately, it seem that in order to present a perfect Chinese girl, the authorities has pretended that Lin Miaoke has both the looks and the voice. When you sacrifice truth and justice, you will miss its benefits, among them, integrity, science, mathematics, good and clean government, and finally, wealth.

Faith Must Rest on Truth

According to the Bible, this is how faith is defined: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 KJV)." Matthew Henry, in his commentary on this verse, wrote: "Faith and hope go together; and the same things that are the object of our hope are the object of our faith. It is a firm persuasion and expectation that God will perform all that he has promised to us in Christ; and this persuasion is so strong that it gives the soul a kind of possession and present fruition of those things, gives them a subsistence in the soul, by the first-fruits and foretastes of them: so that believers in the exercise of faith are filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory." The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines faith as "firm belief in something for which there is no proof; complete trust."

We need faith for everything, not only religion. We have to believe in things which we have no time to prove, which we have not seen or cannot see. We do not have the ability or the capacity or the time to see and prove all things we are told. Without faith, we cannot trust our friends. We will have to live with fear and suspicions.

Science also demands faith. We are told many things in Science and we believe without proving. We are taught in school that the earth goes round the Sun. Have our teachers seen it? Do they or do we have the skill to take the telescope and look into the sky and do we have the mathematical skill to calculate and prove from our observation that the earth is going round the sun? For most of us, we just accept by faith what our teachers taught.

While faith help us in our weakness and our blindness, it is also open to great abuse, since you have to believe in things you do not see and cannot prove. The same faith that allows me to believe in what my science teacher taught me, also allows me to believe in charlatans and fakes. Which is why faith must always rest in truth. Faith which rest in unprovable hypothesis will lead to superstition and lies. Faith that rest on truth will lead to progress.

The Prodigal Son

I had to prepare some sharing on the parable of Prodigal Son last Sunday. My son saw and he asked, "What does 'prodigal' means?" Oh. I always thought I know, but I realized I could not answer him. So I checked the dictionary and found from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary that it means "squander, recklessly spendthrift, or positively, yielding abundantly".

Then the next thing he remarked was, "I always thought that the title is 'The Prodigal's Son'. But now I know it is 'The Prodigal Son'".

The Prodigal's Son. The Prodigal Son. Who is the prodigal? The son or the father?

Unbelievers turn God into a woman

Unbelievers turn God into a impersonal, amoral, fickle woman - Mother Nature. When you do a good deed, Mother Nature may not reward you. When you do a bad deed, Mother Nature may not punish you. Mother Nature causes rain and sun to fall on the good and the wicked. Saints and evil men die in earthquakes, floods, cyclones and tsunamis. You may be the nicest person on earth, but a drunk driver may kill you and many wicked have prospered. If it were consistently so, we should all be wicked. But many good people have their rewards and many wicked people have their just desserts. It is also obvious to us that things well-planned would go well. The place is nicest when there are a lot of good people. So we cannot be too sure about being wicked all the time may bring good. Oh, Mother Nature! You are so fickle.

Mother Nature becomes an impersonal force, an uncertain factor to be considered in our plans. Mother Nature also creates jobs and is good for the economy. She helps to create jobs for philosophers and religious thinkers, to ponder why the good are suffering, and evil are prospering, and the world is so imperfect.

Justice, Mercy and Grace

"Justice is getting what we deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Grace is getting what we don't deserve." When others sin against us, we always want Justice for the other person. When we sin against others, we want Mercy and Grace for ourselves.

Many years (or maybe decades) ago, there was a popular TV show in Thailand called "Justice Pao". I read in some news (no internet then) that it was popular because the Thai were tired of their corrupt government and wished for someone like Justice Pao.

There are many people today wishing to get rid of their corrupt government. But would they truly be happy, if the Perfect Just Ruler were to rule their country? They always want justice for the Corrupt Big Fish who take the 50 million dollar bribe. They believe that if the Perfect Just Ruler were to rule their country, the Corrupt Big Fish will get his due punishment.

But did the people examine themselves? Did they take the 50 cent bribe? Would the Perfect Just Ruler be just, if he only punish the one who take the 50 million dollar bribe, but not the one who take the 50 cent bribe? Or are these people wishing for Justice for others, but Mercy and Grace for themselves?

Changi Airport Terminal 3

My flight (SQ963) landed in T3 for the first time. Not very impressed. Looked very much like T2, except newer. And for the first time, the finger print reader cannot read my thumb. Just coincidence, or is T3's finger print reader inferior to T2's?