Category: Random thoughts

Lately there is a study that “screen time” physically changes the brain of 9-10 year-olds. It’s too early to tell what that meant, but early result from the study determined that children who spend more than two hours of daily screen time score lower on thinking and language tests.

You might fear for the future humanity if we all get collectively dumber, since the only toy kids need these days is an iPad. But future is not what I fear, I fear for me and my present. Those 9-10 year-olds that spend more than 2 hours screen time and with supposedly stunted thinking and speech, that was me, and I am sure it is true for many of my peers.

Not that I recall what I did when I was 9-10 year-old, you know, due to my reduced thinking ability. But back then, you can’t save your game. So if you want to see the ending, most games requires you to do it in one sitting, that often mean many more hours than two.

Highly portable computers may seem a recent development, but electronic games aren’t. People who grow up playing electronic games are now well into the middle age. We can’t lug those cathode ray tube TVs and wired consoles around, but it did not stop us for spending hours on them. If you see any adults that acts like idiots and communicate badly, you can blame those games already.

That said, kids these days seem to get smarter and smarter. I don’t know what to make of it, perhaps due to my reduced thinking ability. On that note, it is possible that they just appear smart to me, you know, assuming that my thinking ability is reduced.

Also I am not posting as much as I wished, perhaps due to my reduced linguistic ability.

Recently the Malaysian government discovered that the immigration checkpoint on their end of the Johor–Singapore Causeway is slow in processing travelers. The finding pointed the finger at the immigration officers, accusing them to be slow because they are often late and spend too much time on their phone.

If I am a Malaysian immigration officer, I would tell them they are in no position to make any accusation of slowness. It took them five decades to realise a fact this obvious, I would argue that this makes the Michael Bay movies worthy slow motion stamping immigration officers look like the poster child of efficiency.

Anyone who have crossed the Singapore-Johor border knows that the traffic bottleneck is always on the Malaysian side of the immigration. This has been happening since the existence of the check point, and far from a recent development

If I am a Malaysian immigration officer I would also argue the finding is illogical and factually incorrect. The slowness predates the existence of mobile phones so it is absurd to put the blame on this.

The authority’s solution for this apparently is to install cameras to monitor the immigration officers so that they don’t stamp passports like Keanu Reeves dodging slow motion bullets in the Matrix trilogy. If you ask me it is exactly this kind of thinking that made their bureaucracy so inefficient. Say they do this, who do they hire to look at those boring monitor screens of people stamping passports? A dog would be bored to sleep. What is preventing the guy who is supposed to stare at those screens Netflix binging on his/her phone?

For them to get rid of such entrenched inefficiency it’s actually quite simple. They just need to hire people who are well versed in bureaucracy and human behaviour, like me.

My solution would be both simple and effective. I would remove most if not all of the officer’s basic salary and pay them by the number of passport cleared, say 50 Malaysian sen per passport. You can be sure they will stamp those passports like there is no tomorrow.

If you are a thinking guy you might fear this would jeopardize border security. My solution is equally simple, they would get paid even more when they flag a problematic entry. Say 1 Malaysian ringgit for flagging an invalid travel documents. 5 ringgit for flagging a criminal, 50 ringgit for terrorist. And to make sure they don’t abuse the incentives, a negative 50 ringgit for making a wrong call.

Of course the numbers need to be fine tuned to the Malaysian economy, but you get the idea.

This would be enough to make the immigration clearance super efficient, but my flair for organisational excellence does not end here. At the end of every shift there would be a guy/gal who gets the most earning, let’s call him/her the top scorer. The top scorer would get a special benefit on the next shift, to man an “express counter”. The express counter is for those who are in a hurry. To go through it, the traveler would have to pay 10 ringgit. 5 ringgit would go to the immigration officer and the rest goes to the department. A win-win-win for the immigration officer, the immigration department, and the traveler.

Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia, sama sama (you are welcome).

Another little known fact of me is I am a keen student of modern conflicts. I consider anything from World War 1 onward as modern. Currently, in my opinion the most interesting potential conflict zones are, from west to east:

– Israel

– Taiwan

– North Korea

This is in contrast to more low stakes territorial claims like the Falkland Islands or the Gibraltar. I am throwing this out here just in case anyone is surprised when I suddenly declare myself the expert on Israel or Taiwan conflicts down the road. I am as expert as a layman can be and I am totally legit.

I tend to stay away from serious topics like politics or war, because I find those topics depressing. I prefer writing stuffs that makes people feel good instead of bad. However this time with the hooha on the Kim-Trump summit, I feel that the mainstream media and online discussion are completely missing the point. I will try to make this heavy topic as palatable as I possibly can.

The US media for example is focusing on if Trump was bamboozled by Kim. This is funny because not too long ago the same media was criticising him for war mongering, now the same media is criticising him for making peace. Online discussion revolves around stuffs like if Kim can be trusted, or praising both leaders for making peace. Or worse, if the 20 million Singapore dollars spent on the summit was well spent.

All those have little to do with the main story. To tell the whole story I have to start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, a young boy named Kim Jong Un was born. His father, Kim Jong Il was no ordinary man. After all, how many men do you know could make his whole country cry, very loudly, when he passed? Those that did not cry will find other reasons to cry later on. Such is the absoluteness of his power.

Kim Jong Un had a few older brothers. They were much older than him. His father found them disappointing. I am guessing this is a well known fact. The brothers were excellent examples to the young Kim, the path not to go down if he doesn’t want to end up in the dog house. This insight, along with his other inherent instincts, would eventually propel him to be the first Kim to pass the favourite son test and be introduced to the rest of the country as heir apparent.

One day, Kim Jong Il passed away with much fanfare. Kim Jong Un assumes the throne as his father intended.

Prior to carrying the mantle of the chosen one, Kim Jong Un spent his youth in Switzerland. So he knows how a prosperous country looks like. He probably also know how free media and democracy work. Judging from the website kimjongunlookingatthings.com , he appeared to have traveled throughout North Korea extensively. Despite his people’s apparent strong preference of meeting their loved ones at the end of the day and showing him only their very best sides, it still looks nothing like Switzerland.

Now that he is king. Nobody knows what to expect. The western media is speculating if he will turn North Korea into Switzerland, a liberal democracy. Or may be he will turn it into China, a one party state with a capitalist economy. The North Korean elites are his father’s men. He is personally groomed and handpicked by his father. It is not a stretch for the North Koreans to expect him to continue the path of his father.

He has his own idea apparently, they were all wrong. The media still got it wrong.

Back to the part where he won the favorite son contest. As mentioned earlier, Kim Jong Il was no ordinary man. You don’t rule a country till you die of natural cause because you are easily hoodwinked. For him to have picked Kim Jong Un over his much older and experienced brothers, The young Kim Jong Un must be really good, or really good at impressing his father, or most likely, both.

With the isolation and the sanctions going on for decades, you don’t need to be a genius to see that it is only a matter of time that he will be the king of nothing. His father was from a different time. South Korea bet on the United States and prospered. North Korea bet on Soviet Union, which eventually collapsed. It’s pretty safe to say the horse that died is the wrong horse to bet on.

Now that we established that he is no average Joe, he would want to do something about the part that soon he will be the king of nothing. Now the western media written by a bunch of interns (no offence to all the hardworking interns out there) hoped that he should simply open the door like Gorbachev did to Soviet Union. Remember that the elites were his father’s men, these are soviet era hardliners. If he did that he would probably be murdered in his sleep. He might win a Nobel for this, but most likely posthumously.

Then there are other ideas that North Korea should reform ala China. He would crack open the iron curtain slowly and negotiate with pretty much everyone else. “Negotiate” is a nice word for it. The more accurate word would be “beg”. North Korea had practically nothing to offer to anyone at that stage, there would be no bargain without chips. Plus the North Korean Elite would smell weakness and murder him in his sleep anyway, this time without the Nobel prize.

So the smart guy thought, he is not really king if he has to please all those fanatical nincompoops. The nice perk of being king is that sometimes the solution to a big problem is straightforward. Rather than waiting to be murdered in sleep, why not just murder them in their sleep? And replace them with like minded folks while we are at it.

So that’s what he did before he did anything, he made examples of those who have other ideas, while the western media is lamenting about missed opportunity in reform. The truth is it is his reform in progress.

Next he would have to prevent impending Ragnarok, and preferably turn North Korea into Switzerland. You might laugh at the idea that North Korea can be a Switzerland. I’ve been to Switzerland, on the road they are cranky and snobbish, just like the North Korean soldiers I saw on Youtube. I only went to the Italian part of Switzerland, I cannot imagine how the German or the French part of Switzerland is like. The biggest difference is Switzerland is rich, and without the brilliant guidance of the Brilliant Comrade. I suspect Kim Jong Un sees things the same way I do, and he is now tackling the money part.

It was said that North Korea prints counterfeit money, and also smuggle drugs and weapon to earn hard currency and get to get around the sanctions and isolation. I really have no idea but CIA said so. It is a known fact that Kim Jong Il was a movie fan. I don’t know if Kim Jong Un loves movies as much as his father, but I think he is at least the fan of Godfather trilogy. Interestingly there are many parallels of Kim Jong Un and Michael Corleone, but I won’t go into the details here. My point is what can a family crime syndicate do to get more money? They go legitimate! To do that, they need to get all the legal restrictions on trading and financial dealings lifted. This may sound crazy, but if you think objectively it is clear that the shortest path to get there is through the US. If US lifts its sanctions, other countries will automatically follow and North Korea would be on its way to be a normal country.

A lesser guy would go beg the US and promise to play nice in the future. His father pulled this trick a bunch of times, and then reneged, rinse and repeat. It would probably work again. But what happens if he doesn’t revert to belligerence like his father? This is a country that was moulded in the image of his father, one that bets on the Soviet horse and paints the US as its mortal archenemy. Even if he got rid of the non-complying elites, the fanatical rank and file soldiers brainwashed all their lives won’t be so easy to put down.

The only way to appease the multitudes of fanatics would be to lead and negotiate from a position of strength. With a country this poor, there are really few options. The only thing that could put his country on a remotely equal footing would be the half finished nuclear program inherited from his father.

Apparently he accelerated it, along with the means of delivery. North Korea successfully detonated nuclear devices several times with much fanfare. The world knew it, most importantly the North Koreans knew it. They did the same with ballistic missiles. That said it is not clear if they managed to miniaturise it enough for use on a missile, or if the missile can fall onto the same country it is being lobbed at. But those are merely unimportant details, he can now move on to stage 2.

Stage 2 would be to step up on rhetoric and threaten war. Everyone then think North Korea is crazy and nuclear war is imminent. But Kim Jong Un is not stupid. If he did that he would piss off everyone else including China. The UN would step in, he would be dead or tried in international court. Being king of nothing is bad but is infinitely better than those two prospects.

Then stage 3, which is to dangle peace treaty and denuclearisation to South Korea. South Korea never turns away from the prospect of peace, can’t really blame them. It is basically an offer that they can’t refuse, Corleone style. This sets the stage for the summit with the US. Donald Trump risks looking like a bloodthirsty warmonger if he doesn’t play along.

Kim’s mistake was to continue ratcheting the rhetoric of nuclear war for domestic audience, at the expense of US. Donald Trump especially does not like to lose face, and he promptly cancelled the summit, citing North Korean “tremendous anger and open hostility”. A few days later the summit is back on. Rudy Giuliani said Kim was “on his hands and knees and begged” Trump to resume the summit. Mike Pompeo scolded Rudy Giuliani for trying to torpedo the summit and denied it. But I believe what Rudy Giuliani said. It made sense, fits the whole narrative, and confirms my suspicions all along.

So is Trump being bamboozled? Or made a bad deal? Or the if agreement lacks substance? I don’t think that is the point at all, it is simply Kim making an offer that everyone including Trump can’t refuse. Kim is the architect of the show, the rest doesn’t have any much choice and simply played their expected parts.

I thought Trump was smart to cancel the summit in the first place to establish who is the alpha in the tango. That was his alpha dog instincts I guess, had he been a normal president they probably would not risk it for ego.

Is Kim going to give up the nuke? He may or he may not depending on what he thinks he can milk out of them. But he is definitely trying to milk it for all it’s worth. Will he be trying to actually use it? I don’t think so. He is far from stupid. Is he going to spend more money to improve the nuke? I don’t think so for the moment, his hands will be full with the Switzerland project. And for guys praising Kim and Trump for having the “courage” to end war, you are so far off the mark. Peace was never threathened nor it was in the agenda, except for the South Korea.

It’s been a while since I last posted. Soon after my first retraction this blog is in neglect, things are really not looking good. I am renovating my home at the moment so it’s been very busy and tiring. Today I have a bad headache, so I am in bed, and then I read this:

Avengers: Infinity War may be gearing up to fix Marvel’s X-Men continuity problem

This blasphemy made me crankier than I already am, so when life gives me crankiness I turn it into verbosity.

One of the the lesser known fact is that I am the world authority on X-Men comic, Fox’s X-Men movies, and MCU. Nobody knows this, but it doesn’t mean it is not true.

I hereby declare that this is bull shit, based on one single line of dialogue from 1 episode out of the whole 5 seasons of the least popular part of the MCU, Agents of SHIELD.

Phil Coulson: There are no psychic.

Nobody cares or notices or remembers this line, and I bet the writer too. But because I am the world authority on the subject matter, I am able to decipher the importance of this line.

Professor X is a psychic (I am acutely aware the preferred terminology is telepath), Phil Coulson basically hinted he does not exist in MCU. Which means so are X-Men and mutants, they simply cannot exist without Professor X as a central figure, unless they want to call the show Mutant Heroes, The Jackman Show, or something this lame. Marvel is basically using this line to say that the whole of X universe does not exist in MCU, in past or present.

It does not exclude the possibility of it getting introduced in the future, but it is unlikely in my expert opinion. Because the way MCU is currently going now they are using inhumans as the subject of intolerance, fear and racism, a role that is traditionally played by the mutants, and the central theme of what the X-Men fights for. To add mutants to the mix would complicate the storytelling too much for general screen audience.

Thus using my self-declared credential I hereby expertly declare The Verge should hire more qualified writer on the subject. But of course it could well be that my weakness was exploited and I was just clickbaited.