Leadership Unchanged, for Now The Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP) 19th Ordinary Party Conference held on 31 October saw the party’s main leadership, the Central Executive Committee (CEC), mostly unchanged: Dr. Chee Soon Juan remains Secretary-General, while Prof. Paul Tambyah retains his role as Chairman.…
#METOO: SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES ON MALES RISE
A once overlooked but now rising demographic In the light of month after month of sexual harassment, vouyeurism and assault cases in the news, it appears that sexual assault cases on male persons are on the rise. Even recently, there has been a case…
#TRYAGAIN: NEW CHALLENGES AGAINST SECTION 377A
Mr. Chan’s challenge On 14 October, former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong published a 72-page report titled “Equal Justice Under The Constitution And Section 377A Of The Penal Code: The Roads Not Taken” on the online-based Singapore Academy of Law Journal. The report is…
ISRAEL CAN INTO MOON CRASH
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress On 11 April, the unmanned Israeli moon lander Beresheet (Hebrew for “in the Beginning”, as written in biblical texts) made an unsuccessful descent onto the lunar surface. This was attributed to a chain of technical issues, such as…
SATELLITE WARS: THE MODI STRIKES BACK?
“Power, Unlimited Power”? On Wednesday, 27 March, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi announced that the country had successfully tested ASAT (Anti-Satellite) missiles. The missile was fired from a testing facility in Odisha, Eastern India, led by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO),…
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING MARX – THE SPECTRE OF VANDALISM
Vandals Make Their Marx, Once Again On Saturday, 16th February 2019, Philosopher Karl Marx’s grave in London, Highgate Cemetery was found awash in red paint amidst colourful bouquets surrounding the grey marble plaque. From the pictures posted by Highgate Cemetery’s Twitter that day, one…
MYANMAR’S LGBT PRIDE BOAT PARADE-ISE
What Happened? Myanmar’s LGBTQIA+ community just had their maiden voyage on the first-ever Pride Boat Parade held in Asia last Saturday, 26th January. More than 600 participants set sail off a river in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, as part of the Yangon…
RUBIN IN SALT: GOOGLE PAID ANDY RUBIN $90 MILLION DESPITE SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATIONS
Andy Rubin, also known as the “Father” and creator of the mobile operating system “Android”, was asked to resign from Google by co-founder Larry Page in October 2014. The New York Times released a report on October 25, describing how Mr. Rubin was offered…
TOMMY KOH SETS STRAITS TIMES’ STRAIGHT ON IPS CONFERENCE COVERAGE
Veteran Singapore diplomat Tommy Koh went on Facebook on Friday, October 26, claiming that the Straits Times (ST) resorted to “biased reporting” of the 30th anniversary dinner and inequality conference of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). In his Facebook post, Prof. Koh inquired…
I THINK, THEREFORE I AM SEXIST: AMAZON ABANDONS DISCRIMINATORY AI
Software engineers at Amazon have been working on an AI to automate the painstaking process of job recruitment since 2014. The company used its own data to teach the AI what the company needed, using resumes that have been collected over a decade. The…