Listening to a video conversation this morning, I heard that the proposal to lower the voting age from 20 to 18 in Taiwan didn’t get through. That didn’t get my attention as much as the expressed disappointment of the person presenting that fact. I am not surprised at his expression of disappointment, I am just […]
It was great watching this conversation on GoodFellows and I took away two main things from it. The first was how a solid work ethic of diligence and loyalty to the company and co-workers would triumph over any changes or deterioration in work environments and the second was that AI-generated content was actually similar to […]
As time goes on, we will acquire more and more data, information and hopefully, increased understanding of “How Things Work”. The CNA article on empowering Singapore’s Police to collect DNA samples in more situations is part of that growing body of information, knowledge, etc. This is natural, and we can expect more to come. Understanding […]
That might sound like a strange title for a post, but as I see more and more people talking about things like having your house full of books, which is supposed to ensure literacy for your children, having personal coaches, mentors, and so on, and of course, whether you are “fans” of sports teams, stars […]
The title might remind you of a catchphrase some time ago, advertizing for the “Life!” section of The Straits Times. It sort of summarizes what was going through my mind as I read the article from Geopolitical Futures again. The article link is below. 1991: False Dawn History repeats itself. History rhymes. What these people […]
I read with sadness this morning that Queen Elizabeth II died on 8 Sep 2022 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. She had been Queen for 70 years and will be missed by many. The only question on my mind was “Did she truly know the Lord Jesus Christ”? That, after all, is all that really […]
I haven’t finished watching the latest “Battlegrounds” conversation helmed by Lieutenant-General H.R. McMaster, but I see the trajectory going according to what I’m used to, and it’s a good trajectory. So I’ll finish the video at leisure afterwards and pen a short note right now. I’m finishing my lunch at one of the eateries at […]
There might not be many people who would publicly proclaim that a woman’s place is in the home, man’s place is at the workplace or whatever place brings in the income for the family. That is because of a limited view, a limited concept, of what constitutes home and what constitutes workplace. “Home” is not […]
A post by Geopolitical Futures’ Dr George Friedman on the state of universities nudged me to share this. The link to his article is attached. So are links to videos of separate conversations between the Honourable John Anderson and Professors James Tooley and Salvatore Babones. Do take the time to read and watch. I assure […]
This might be an unusual title for a quick post, but it’s based on something I said. Something I said that I wish I hadn’t. Something I need to remind myself never to say again. Someone had called for a ride for three of her workers and I had been assigned the job of picking […]
When I was younger, I was all for the idea of only using organic fertilizers, meaning animal manure, fish waste, encouraging helpful nematode proliferation (meaning earthworms, but not too much) and rotating land under cultivation to let portions lie fallow every seventh year. Recently, after hearing so much talk about how food production has actually […]
Why do legislatures make official overseas visits? Simple. To get more money by establishing relationships and thus increase the flow of trade, which is good for everybody. I also said before that “Navies are for networking”, with tongue in cheek, of course, but they are, if you think about it. Are you “concerned” over such […]
The author of this piece, Ted Gover, PhD, Associate Clinical Professor at Claremont Graduate University, seems to know what Xi Jinping’s intentions are vis-a-vis third term prospects and armed conflict over Taiwan. I would tread carefully, since it is manifestly difficult to know what any world leader is thinking at any particular time. It might […]
I call this “Reminders for Journalists” because nothing I will write here is anything new, either for them or for the reading public, which includes me. Straits Times’ Opinion Editor Grace Ho writes about the often ad hominem attacks journalists, especially female journalists, face when engaging with audiences online via email and social media. Many […]
A Straits Times article with this theme caught my eye just now. As always, I ask whose responsibility it should be. My answer is of course each and every employee’s responsibility! Why are we asking employers to be responsible? The employer’s responsibility is to ensure that the company continues to thrive and be of increasing […]
This was what caught my eye this morning. Another yawn-inducing piece. Except that the Fed isn’t responsible for inflation. People who have bought into the lie that printing more money stimulates economic growth are. Well, you can’t stimulate something that’s not there. The only way to get wealthy is to be diligent in producing goods […]
It seems that too much of what we have built, or allowed to be installed, has a very short MTBF, or “Mean Time Between Failures”, going anecdotally by what I experience on an almost daily basis. You want data? Help me, I don’t have time for these kinds of things. You suss out the data […]
It wasn’t possible to have this video on the site itself, so I’m embedding it from YouTube.
Jason L Riley has written “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell”. I have not read the book yet but have heard Jason Riley talking about it on a couple of interviews. Having heard those, I have no hesitation recommending the book itself to you if you can afford to get it and are so inclined, […]
I’ve been hearing historian Dr Niall Ferguson, who is the Millbank Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, amongst many other titles, use the term “counterfactual” more than a few times now, and always wondered what on earth he meant by it. That was answered for me when I listened to this podcast, and I do […]
I attach the video link and also embed the video in this short post. It is a discussion between three eminent historians of today about the “Big Three” of the Second World War, namely Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin and how they fared vis-a-vis their national strategic goals as they went about defeating Hitler. This is […]
Surveys, polls and the like are nice, quick and easy tools to use, especially when they can be crafted to elicit responses one is looking for. Companies, governments, research folk and the like, seem to love using surveys, polls, modelling and so forth because they can be made to produce faster results, “conclusions” and they […]
War games, business simulations, fantasy feeder games and the like are all models. Models are fantasies we create about people and places as we’d like them to be. Advertisements are models. Marketing is one big model. Political hackphrases are models. They primarily attempt to put flesh on the dry bones of the greatness we aspire […]
I have just watched George Friedman on Mauldin Economics discussing, of course, the situation in Ukraine, what it means for the rest of the world, etc. The video can be found below, and I would encourage you to watch it in its entirety, and maybe yet again if you need to in future. One of […]
At a talk some years ago, I heard the speaker, someone who moved in diplomatic circles, say that the three leading causes of death in the world were: Actions by a foreign government. Actions by your own government. Actions by your own family. Not ever having been an academic, I didn’t know what numbers he […]
“Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence”, or so we have been told. Just because the water seems fresh and clear doesn’t mean the liver flukes aren’t there. We shouldn’t get paranoid over that, but we ought to still boil the water before drinking or make sure the water gets filtered or otherwise […]
Once again, I see arguments over more tax, how to tax, whom to tax, ad nauseum. By the way, it’s “whom” to tax, not which corporations to tax. You can’t tax companies, you can only tax people. Once again, when will we take to heart that raising tax rates lowers tax revenues, and vice versa? […]
I discovered that there was such a thing as “human resources”, especially a scourge called the “Human Resource Department” several years ago and came to loathe the phrase. Not long after that, I discovered the term “Human Capital” used by economists and that sat a lot better with me. Humans have a tendency to squander […]
Over the last few days, I have seen at least two persons, one Matt Taibbi writing on Substack, and the other George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures, apologizing for being wrong about the assumption that Russia would NOT invade Ukraine based on analyses of the situation. Why? Overall assessments were essentially there in the ballpark. Russia […]
The word “lebensraum” meaning “living space” has been on my mind again recently. That’s because we humans never seem to be satisfied no matter how much we have. Maybe that’s because we think “contentment” means “complacency” and they are not the same thing at all! How can we get ourselves to be content with what […]
Channel News Asia (CNA) sent an email titled “Making sense in a world of flux”. The phrase “redistribution of wealth” caught my eye. I followed the link to this article titled “Greater social spending and redistribution rest on economic growth and government prudence”. Reading the article, this paragraph caught my eye: I wonder what “A […]
I’ve done four episodes of “Literature” with my friend Benjamin Thomas on YouTube, and I was introduced to the idea of poetry as “bending the rules of grammar to add layers of meaning”. Well, today I was musing (well, brooding, actually) on what our Presence promotes, whether it is in-person or otherwise. So I indulged […]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in “Letters and Papers from Prison”, wrote “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” While most of us would regard this as honourable and true, especially when compared to Mein Kampf’s seemingly interminable […]
This morning, Channel News Asia’s (CNA) “The Big Read: Singapore goes all in with F1 – will it pay off for a desperate tourism sector?” caught my eye. Risk assessments, boldness, and memories of the enjoyable times I had facilitating team building programs for DPDHL’s (Deutsche Post DHL) IT Services Cyberjaya under the auspices of […]
Yes, “To kill a mockingbird” was dancing around inside my head. Let’s get that out of the way. I found myself sitting on the floor this morning picking hairs and sticky dust monsters out of a plastic broom we have. The broom was made of plastic, and the business end of it was comprised of […]
I just read on LinkedIn that the two most powerful passports in the world are that of Japan and Singapore. Holding either of these passports grants you access to 192 nations without the need for visas beforehand. Of course, right now, you would want there to be arrangements for Vaccination Travel Lanes (VTLs) as well, […]
Edited transcript. Well it’s the 14th of january 2022, Elijah’s Expressions. Today the topic: If you resign should you fret about the “hole” you left behind? This was sparked off because CNA sent me something in the email. I subscribed to the newsletters and so on and something caught my eye, “Colleagues who resign create […]
Edited Transcript It is 13 january 2022, Elijah’s Expressions. Yesterday I was talking and referring to something called ANOVA single factor. I’m not going to go into detail about ANOVA single factor today, that’s for videos down the road. Remember I said I need to do a course on statistics. I think I will do […]
“Good governance key to helping Singapore reinvent and stay relevant in post-COVID-19 world: Ong Ye Kung” was the headline which caught my eye when I received the Straits Times (ST) evening update in my email inbox. I ask what good governance is and how good governance is achieved. The answer, to my mind, is that […]
This is an edited transcript. 12 january 2022 Elijah’s Expressions. Today’s topic – Hybrids are better. Or are they? I’m talking of course about working from home, running remote teams and so on and so forth. Right off the bat let me state this, that many others have already observed. Work from home cannot be […]
In my Straits Times feed this morning, the article “10m population not really a ridiculous number for S’pore to plan for: Liu Thai Ker” caught my eye. While I am not one to favour crowds, I am also keenly aware of the need for a basic population mass in order that any nation state be […]
This is an edited transcript. 11 January 2022 this is Elijah’s Expressions. Today I want to talk about a topic called “Has the free market run its course?” About last year I was having a conversation with a couple. They were involved in economics. I think they were lecturers in economics at one of the […]
Sometimes you can’t help but eavesdrop when you’re in the same confined space with others and the topic happens to be a trigger one like culture. Enjoy! Edited Transcript 29 December 2021 Elijah’s Expressions. Today I happened to eavesdrop on a conversation. I can’t help but eavesdrop because of the limited space that is available […]
Why would anyone want to have slaves? Does owning slaves make you richer? I don’t think so. Came across this video from the Hoover History Working Group and that’s my main takeaway. Do watch the video in its entirety, and look for Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, especially Chapter III, for his perspectives. […]
This was what came to me as I watched the video called “The Last King of America” by Andrew Roberts. The introduction was done by Victor Davis Hanson, and Peter Robinson was in the audience and got to ask a question also (Extra!). Andrew Roberts says that King George III was a much misunderstood king. […]
A recording of what came to me as I watched “Battlegrounds with H.R. McMaster | Australia: Peace & Prosperity Across the Indo-Pacific and Beyond”, which is embedded here also. What is prosperity? Is it just money, or is it people? More specifically, is it Human Capital? How about Intellectual Property? Would Intellectual Property matter so […]
A short video I did in response to a CNA Insider’s video on “China’s Mega Dams: The Threat to Asia’s River Communities.” Do we have a right to water? What if our water sources start dwindling or even dry up? How do we diversify? Do watch the CNA video in its entirety, CNA makes great […]
I am putting the video I did on 01 Dec 2021 here, together with the Goodfellows video which sparked this off. Do take the time for both. They are worth your time, and if you want more discussions on like topics, come on board as a subscriber! Go to my membership page, read and email […]
The verse from “The Illustrated Art of War” by Samuel B Griffith swirls around in my mind and comes to the fore from time to time. I am in the midst of lifelong learning and have been greatly blessed by Thomas Sowell and many others who are in the Hoover Institution part-time or full time. […]
No, I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I simply call out the way most governments worldwide have reacted and flip-flopped where the current craze, and, perhaps, jaded weariness, with SARS-Cov-2 (COVID 19) is concerned. I recall my own nation’s full-throttle rush to invite investors in with low to no taxes and an eager, industrious, low-cost labour force. […]
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