Three O'clock Truncheon

Sharing my Income and Expenditure 2012 Spreadsheet

2012-01-13T21:33:00.000-08:00

Since some people have been asking for it, and I have time now to do it, I've uploaded the spreadsheet I use to keep track of my expenses.

Cleaned it up a bit and took out all of my own data.

Download it here: https://rapidshare.com/files/3464923592/Income_and_Expenditures_2012__Shared_Copy_.xlsx

Now my aunt has no excuse to not know how much she spends on Haagen Daaz each month.

The categories under the expenses reflects the categories used for the Malaysian Household Income and Expenditure Survey. I wanted to compare myself to what Malaysians in general spend on. You can check out the report at your local libraries. If I have the time, I'll scan the relevant pages.

Oh, if there's any improvement I can make, feel free to suggest.

A Merry Bumi Christmas

2011-12-26T07:03:00.001-08:00

Spent Christmas with a uni buddy of mine, his Swedish wife and a few others making a gingerbread house. The gingerbread house is from Ikea, naturally.

And since Malaysian politics were the topic of the evening, we decided to make the gingerbread house a little more Malaysian.

There was one part where the wife hurt her finger on the melted sugar, so the joke went "the non-bumis suffered to build this house, now the bumis will feast!"

Tripping Down the Lane

2011-09-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I've been missing someone rather badly recently. Can't think straight anymore. Bleh. Not as if she's still thinking of me, anyway.

Well, if you're reading this: I miss you, doll.

A Bersih Saturday walk-about: Part 2 of 4

2011-08-27T07:58:00.001-07:00

Took a while for me to update.

A Bersih Saturday walk-about: Part 2 of 4

Continued from Part 1

“Dan sebab Maybank pun warna kuning, HIDUP MAYBANK!”

“HIDUP MAYBANK!”

“lol”

Along our walk to Pasar Seni, we chatted. I found that my UK friend - let’s call him Nazri - whom I first met while we were with a student society there is now a lawyer.

“Lawyers from the Bar Council are out in force today,” he said. They’re easily identified by their white shirts and black coats. Nazri wore a gray T-shirt. “Too stifling,” he said, making reference to the afternoon heat and possibly to the reserve he would’ve been expected to conduct himself with.

The Bar Council had always had a strong presence in the Malaysian civil society and that day was no different. 150 of its members had pledged themselves to bail out whoever got arrested. Members of SUHAKAM were also present donning bright yellow vests and keeping an eye out for human rights abuses.

Very few vehicles were on the road and most of the shops were shuttered. The sun, however, was shining brilliantly.

Our conversation turned to old friends.

“Marcus would’ve loved this,” I said, making reference to a late mutual friend.

Marcus Ng was my senior at Essex University. He was one of those Malaysians who had real passion for Malaysia and the Malaysian civil society. While I take a more cynical view of politics and especially of politicians, Marcus truly embraced the spirit of political change. Everyone knew Marcus.

A soft-spoken revolutionaire, he passed on far too young at 25. Many people turned up at his funeral. Among his friends at Essex, the impact was deeply felt.

“Yes. Yes, he would’ve,” Nazri replied solemnly.

Nazri and I didn’t need to walk very far. We saw a large group moving from Puduraya, past Nando’s and into Chinatown. The frontline marched at a quick pace in locked arms, ten men abreast, chanting “Bersih, bersih!”. Thousands trailed behind them.

“Jom, come along!” said Nazri as we stepped into the mass.

Before going any future, we need to talk about colours.

It wasn’t a totally gormless decision for me to wear red that day; since Bersih was supposed to be peaceful by nature and the Patriots were less likely to experience issues with the police due to their alignment with the government-of-the-day, wearing red was a safe choice. Besides, I like red.

Very few individuals were actually wearing the yellow Bersih shirts - the ones who brought them held them aloft. The crowd was good-natured, but quite boisterous.

The chants were quite political, despite the non-political nature of the rally demands themselves. Quite understandable, given the participation of many pro-Opposition and Pakatan Rakyat supporters. Nazri shouted along with the non-political chants, but kept still on the anti-Government ones. I felt that he was not very pleased with the misappropriation of the event. I marched along silently.

We marched along the street up into Chinatown. The crowd stopped as we were turning into the road leading up to Stadium Merdeka. A news helicopter circled overhead and a rather brave photographer climbed a shop roof and stood over the ledge for what I would believe to be a very good picture of the crowd.

The road was blocked, there wasn't a way through. The afternoon sun was beginning to heat up but cooler heads held sway despite the minor stand-off. After a few minutes of mulling about, the crowd turned back and marched back to the Maybank building, where people were beginning to gather.

I couldn't make out who was speaking on the steps, but the fellow was announcing that some of the Opposition leaders has been detained. He spoke further on political issues but I lost interest in what was said; I was more interested in the crowd around me.

In front of me was a rather plump Chinese lady taking pictures, with a yellow headband around her forehead. To my right was an Indian fellow chatting with and asking a middle-aged Malay man where can he buy a yellow Bersih shirt. The crowd would part to allow cars to pass, and cheered as the cars honked in support. I would like to think that free from politics, Malaysians have no problems with each other. Certainly, it was a rose-tinted view that overlooks the fundamental differences and grassroot frictions that kept the race-based political parties in business, but the thought was heartwarming.

There was a tiny commotion as another crowd approached the assemble. Some whispered that it was PERKASA, the right-wing pro-Malay NGO. The tension dispersed once it was clear that it was the DAP, the left-wing Opposition party. PAS with their women garbed in headscarves joined them a little later.

I looked around and saw that Nazri was nowhere in sight. Since there was nothing for it, I headed up the hill to the side of the Maybank building to get a better view of the crowd. People, tired from the walk, were sitting on the steps and at the top of the hill around 20 men were holding their Zohor prayers.

There was a commotion on the streets below me. I turned around.

The crowd in front of Maybank retreated to the left of my vision, leaving a wide gap between itself and what I assumed to be the police to the right beyond what I could see. The crowd then slowed. Some of the men rallied and turned back towards the right; the rest followed, kicking up a racket.

They were charging the police line.

Above the tumultuous roar, I heard faint pops from the right. The crowd stopped a second time, and was routed. They scrambled up the stairs, clambering hands over feet. A thick column of smoke rolled in. My throat itched. My eyes watered.

The police had shot us with tear gas.

Harimau Malaya!

2011-07-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

Come on, Malaysia!

A Day in the Life of a Finance Salaryman

2011-07-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

A Day in the Life of a Finance Salaryman

On some days, I really wish I was in some other industry.

6.30 am - Wake up in a litany of mumbles and groans. After dressing up, take a cab to the train station and then an LRT ride.

8.00 am - Grab breakfast at the café. If workmates are at a table, stop by.

8.30 am - Work starts. Schedule meetings, international benchmarking, call people, do graphs for PowerPoint slides, presentations, analysis etc.

10.20 am - Receive e-mail requiring urgent response. Drop everything else to rush this.

11.00 am - Take a minute to check on prices of stocks in personal portfolio. Get a minor boost to work performance when stocks go up.

1.00 pm - Lunchtime. Usually it’s a take-away sandwich if busy, the equivalent of chap fan if not. If truly stressed, head out for a burger and ice cream.

1.30 pm - Back at desk. Check out Malaysian Insider or stock prices again. Tidy up table.

2.00 pm - Lunchtime over. Find out that previous scheduled meetings were superseded by another more important meeting. Have to send out more e-mails and reschedule everyone’s times.

2.55 pm - Supervisor asks for obscure documents from a long-forgotten project.

3.00 pm - Meet outside party. If it’s a high-level meeting and I’m the lowest-ranking fellow there, have to listen intently jotting down the minutes. Detailed minutes will take half a day to finish.

5.30 pm - Contractual clock-out time, but no one goes back at this time. Working spirit usually evaporates at this point. Restart work on whatever it was I was doing this morning before all these ad-hocs came in.

7.00 pm - Consider going back. Pack up, grab something to eat and head on home.

8.40 pm - Reach home. Turn on Lowyat.net and put in stock instructions for tomorrow (I don’t trade during working hours – work ethic etc.)

11.00 pm - Work until sleepy. Cry self to sleep over having a foreveralone life

Article: Wall Street, companies brace for the worst: a US default

2011-07-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

In a weeks' time, the world is going to find out whether the US is going to default on its debts - possibly resulting in one of the most seismic shifts in the financial future of the world.

While sovereign default are not uncommon - Russia had defaulted last decade, causing an economic depression then - the US is a whole different kettle of fish. Few companies hold Russian bonds and roubles; a majority of companies as well as states hold USD and US treasury papers. What was previously seen as a stable bedrock of the financial world is now fast becoming a quicksand.

And as the article mentions, even if the US Gov decides to raise the ceiling, they still face the possibility of a downgrade.

May we live in less interesting times.

Wall Street, companies brace for the worst: a US default

NEW YORK, July 23 — American businesses, from Wall Street banks to major industrial corporations, are preparing contingency plans for a pair of once-unthinkable events: the United States defaulting on its debt and the loss of the nation’s top AAA credit rating.
While most bankers, investors and executives still cannot imagine that politicians in Washington could be reckless enough to let the government run out of money to pay its bills on August 2, they can’t guarantee that the game of chicken that has been played in recent weeks won’t go awfully wrong.

Lawmakers and President Barack Obama need to agree to raise the current US$14.3 trillion (RM42.5 trillion) legal borrowing limit by that date to avert a default but the decision is being held hostage to arguments between Republicans and Democrats about how to cut the US budget deficit.

And yesterday evening, the prospects of an agreement suddenly dimmed when top US Republican, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, broke off talks with Obama, saying they had become futile because the US President was demanding an increase in taxes.

It all means that just as companies once formulated expensive backup Y2K plans just in case computer systems couldn’t recognise the date January 1, 2000, investors are devising ways to cope with financial markets pandemonium if the worst happens and the government of the world’s biggest economy runs out of cash.

Ringing in their ears are dire warnings from the guardians of the nation’s financial well-being — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said only last week that a default would be “calamitous.”

In some cases, bankers are delaying their summer holidays, while companies are making sure they have plenty of access to cash, and investors are being told to hedge their portfolios, with gold one favoured asset for that.

“We’ve to some degree taken on a defensive posture. We are now at 10 per cent cash with so much uncertainty. In April, we were at two per cent,” said Keith Wirtz, chief investment officer at Fifth Third Asset Management, with US$18 billion in assets.

At Morgan Stanley in New York it is all hands on deck at a time when many traders might otherwise be expected to be off to the beaches and the lavish mansions of The Hamptons, a very short helicopter ride from the city.

“I can tell you that we don’t have any empty seats on the floor,” said Jim Caron, global head of interest rate strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York.

“That will absolutely be the case the week of August 2nd,” he added. “Even with summer, no one is out of here at 4:30.”

Many are dogged by flashbacks to the financial chaos in September 2008 after the Lehman Brothers collapse, and the failure of lawmakers to pass legislation to authorise a US$700 billion government bailout of the banks, which sent markets into a tailspin.
General Electric, which was hit badly by those events, has boosted its cash holdings and cut its long-term debt in the past three years to put it in a better position to withstand such events.
The largest US conglomerate now holds US$91 billion in cash on its books and has US$40 billion in short-term debt, compared with the US$16 billion in cash and US$90 billion in short-term debt it had three years ago.

“The main thing that we’ve done and it’s not specifically for the discussion going on in the US about raising the debt ceiling or the European issue, is we just have dramatically increased our liquidity,” said Chief Financial Officer Keith Sherin, in an interview.

“It’s part of our stress test that we do with our team and our regulatory and board members to be able to operate the company in the event of a significant external disruption.”

Industrial equipment giant Caterpillar Inc is more worried about the impact on the confidence of its customers of Washington’s debt and deficit arguments as it is about its own resilience, according to its Chief Financial Officer Ed Rapp.

He said the company has very diversified funding sources and strong cash flow. “I think we’re in a good position in the event you get some disruption for a period of time.”

For investors it is all about hedging risk to a greater extent than normal, which means assets that will retain their value if the dollar, US stocks and US government bonds head south.

John Taylor, chief executive officer of the US$8-billion currency hedge fund FX Concepts, said he believes gold, which is close to a record having surged over US$1,600 an ounce yesterday, will trade higher for another two to three months.

DOWNGRADE

The second previously implausible event — a one-notch downgrade in the US government’s credit rating — is quite possible even if the ceiling is raised in the next 11 days.

At least some of the biggest fund managers can’t say they weren’t warned.

This week, the head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings group, John Chambers, has gone on a so-called roadshow, meeting with major money managers and pension funds including California State Teachers’ Retirement System in California, to discuss the agency’s ratings outlook on the United States. CalSTRS holds US$7.87 billion in US Treasuries as of June 20.
“I left the meeting thinking, ‘Yes, we will be downgraded,’” a fixed-income portfolio manager at a major investment firm in one of the meetings told Reuters on Thursday. “I think S&P is just trying to front-run and get us prepared.”
The Obama administration has grown increasingly frustrated with S&P, accusing it of changing the goalposts in its downgrade warnings. In telephone calls to top S&P officials, the Obama administration has asked why the ratings agency keeps shortening its timeframe for long-term deficit reduction, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

S&P says the criticism is “erroneous."

INSURANCE

Treasury traders are trying to set themselves up to guard against heavy losses in the event of a spike in yields that could — in some views — follow a US downgrade. They’re also positioning themselves to make a little money if the US does default and other investors call in insurance protection against their US bonds.

In the repo market, a place where investment banks and companies can get overnight cash loans in exchange for Treasury bills used as collateral, traders were awaiting word from securities exchanges, including CME Group, the largest US futures exchange operator, and ICE US Trust, on possible cuts to the value of Treasury securities used as repo collateral.

None of the exchanges that handle repo trades have detailed their plans yet, but Jim Binder, a spokesman for OCC, the sole clearinghouse for US stock options said his organisation was waiting to see how the market reacted to a downgrade.

“Until we start to see that actual volatility, it’s still an academic exercise, not a jump into action,” he said.

Bernanke and New York Fed President William Dudley met yesterday with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss the implications if the debt ceiling is not raised.

On Wednesday, top Fed policymaker Charles Plosser said that the central bank is actively preparing for the possibility of a default.

The president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said the US central bank has for the past few months been working closely with Treasury, ironing out what to do if the world’s biggest economy runs out of cash.

“We are in contingency planning mode,” Plosser told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday. “We are all engaged. ... It’s a very active process,” he said in the most extensive comments yet on preparations for a default from a US official.
Plosser said there were very difficult questions to grapple with. For example, the Fed lends to banks at the discount window against good collateral. But what happens if US Treasuries no longer fit that bill?
“Do we treat them as if they didn’t default, in which case we would be saying we are pretending it never happened? Or do we treat them as if they defaulted and don’t lend against them?” Plosser said. “Those are more policy questions.”

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the Treasury market’s main trade group, is helping securities’ firms’ back offices tweak their systems to prepare for possible missed interest payments on Treasuries or a debt downgrade.

“We are working with our members, particularly on the operations side but in other areas as well, to identify any areas that may benefit from revised conventions/practice recommendations under various scenarios, but, there has been no great plan in place as this was never envisioned,” said Rob Toomey, a managing director at SIFMA and the organization’s associate general counsel.

Some market participants can hardly contemplate what a default would be like. One trader at a primary dealer said: “outright default would be Armageddon. It would fundamentally alter the landscape globally.”

He said the New York Fed had not reached out to his firm to make contingency plans.

“I think that is a very difficult conversation to have and you’re probably not going to get a wide range of opinion on that,” he said.

The market’s favored index of fear, the CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, has been at a subdued level, though after Friday’s breakdown that might not continue.

It’s just above 17, which is in line with its recent range. If it rises above 20 and approaches 30, it would suggest investors were getting sufficiently nervous about market gyrations to take out more protection against losses.

“Right now there’s just a minimal chance of there being no deal, but never say never,” said Dan McMahon, director of equity trading at Raymond James in New York, who was speaking before the Boehner announcement.

“If there was a default, good lord, we’d fall 5 to 10 per cent right off the bat,” he said of major stock indices. “It would be like October 1987, but it really doesn’t even warrant talking about right now.” — Reuters

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/business/article/wall-street-companies-brace-for-the-worst-a-us-default/

No Time for Market Myths: IPOs

2011-07-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

No Time for Market Myths: IPOs

“Apply for every IPO, they’re sure winners!”

IPOs (initial public offerings) are announced whenever a private unlisted company applies to the stock exchange to get listed. The owners of this company give up a portion of the company in order to get capital.

Whenever an IPO is announced, many retail players get into a fluster. After all, they're bound to profit when the price jumps up on the first day, right?

Not necessarily.

Investment banks often put a slightly-below-than-market value to the listing price in order to generate interest. What CEO won't be happy to hear that his company's shares are 100 times oversubscribed? Does it mean that the company would be getting less than it would?

Maybe, but then again for the investment bank, it stands at a lesser risk of needing to fulfil their underwriter obligations.

Sometimes, they get their pricing wrong (or right, if you want to raise the most fund) and those caught bidding above the fair value get slaughtered. Other factors that drive the prices down include market sentiment, irrational investors or undisclosed bad news (Ideal Jacobs [0162], I'm looking at you).

While some companies like Petronas Chemicals (5183) continued to grow and grow, other companies like M-Clean (0167) dropped from the get-go.

Lesson to be learnt here is this: don't buy the IPO if you wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't.

I've always wondered what happened to Sarah Tan after she got married years back. She was the only reason I tuned in to Channel V.

A Bersih Saturday walk-about: Part 1 of 4

2011-07-16T22:10:00.001-07:00

A Bersih Saturday walk-about: Part 1 of 4

“Ma, you do realise that there’s like three rallies out there, right?”

“I’ve scheduled this facial last month and there’s no way I am going to cancel it.”

9^th July was not a typical Saturday.

Saber-rattling between the ruling BN government and the Bersih movement for free and fair elections led to a tense stalemate. Was Bersih going ahead with its 300,000-man march across KL after the King had deigned to meet Bersih leader Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan? Will there be clashes with the UMNO Youth Patriots and Pro-Malay PERKASA counter rallies?

It did not help that the national Opposition were chomping at the chance to align itself with Bersih, lending credence to the Gov’s claims of Bersih being Opposition-led, despite Datuk Ambiga’s admonishing of Datuk Seri Anwar for trying to speak on Bersih’s behalf. Bersih was all over the news and it showed: the day before, jams had started to form and policemen with water cannon trucks started to line up the Merdeka Square.

I was lounging around the house deciding on whether I should snoop around the Bersih, Patriot and Perkasa rallies when my mother came in to say she’s going to the KLCC for her facial.

“And you know there’s no way to get to KLCC with all those road blocks, kan?”

“We’ll park at Ampang Park and ride the train.”

She would have waded through a million people - Nothing is going to get between her and her Kanibo.

The road was blocked all around and so we parked and rode the train from Ampang Park. Despite the train being the only means of getting into KLCC, there was a small crowd there but it was emptier than what it would have normally been. No queues at the cinema, barely anyone at the fountains and you actually could get seats at the foodcourt without having to ransom anyone.

As mum and aunt went to their facial, I boarded the train to Masjid Jamek.

A relatively empty KLCC

A crowd was already gathering at Masjid Jamek consisting of mostly onlookers and riot policemen. The feeling was not unlike the pre-match of a rugby game or backstage before a play; there was a quiet, orderly commotion, where everyone seems to be prepping up ahead of something big.

Scenes from the Masjid Jamek station, around 11 am.

In the distance, I could make out a few more truckloads of riot policemen and water cannons.

As I was walking around taking low-resolution pictures with my Blackberry, I bumped into an old acquaintance of mine from the UK. He was heading to Pasar Seni where, he was told, a large crowd was mustering.

“Wanna come along?”

“Sure, why not?”

McDonald's Buy-One-Free-One Double Cheeseburger Coupon (11 July - 13 July)

2011-07-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks, left my BlackBerry USB cable at work so I can't upload the pictures and videos of Bersih yesterday.

Have a McD coupon instead.

This is How You Make Money from the Stock Market: How to Identify Undervalued Stocks

2011-07-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is How You Make Money from the Stock Market: How to Identify Undervalued Stocks

Tip 2: Identify a bargain through Net Asset Value and P/E ratio

“Buy low, sell high” and you’re well on your way to riches. However, in a market where price is set by demand and future expectations, how is one to know what is the high and what is the low?

The pro answer would be to determine the fair value of a stock, taking into account possible future earnings, discounting risks, scanning the local and global economic environment etc but that takes too long, and seriously, many of us can’t be bothered.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inbangkok/

State(ment of) Asset

A quick tip is to use figures like net assets – easily obtainable from the financial statements. These figures are also useful as screens to filter out the better stocks you may want to have a better look at.

Net assets is total assets minus total liabilities. If its a mutual fund or something, it'd be net asset value (NAV) which is pretty much the same. It means taking all its assets like cash and sum value of its properties and machineries (or the value of the investments of a fund) and offsetting that by its liabilities, its debts and payables. It’s also called the shareholders’ equity as it’s what the shareholders theoretically have after the company pays off all its debt.

Dividing this number by the number of shares gets you the NAV per share. This is effectively the value of the assets that you’re paying for each share, without taking into account the potential earnings of the company. It’s like buying a farm for the value of the land and equipment but not taking into account the rice in the field. If the share price is RM2.00 and the NAV per share is RM1.00, you’re paying RM2 for RM1 of the farm.

Buying for a Song

“Is it possible to buy RM1 worth of assets for less?”

Yes, you can. Companies like DRB-Hicom (1619) are trading below their NAV. This means that if they were liquidated (selling off all of its assets and paying all of its debts), the shareholders will get a nice profit on the price they paid.

However, hold your buffaloes. While sometimes there doesn’t seem to be any apparent reason for the low price, sometimes these companies are undervalued for good reasons: illiquid market, bad economic sentiment, poor earnings outlook etc. That’s why we’re going to look at another ratio.

Next issue: Future earnings and the P/E ratio, but first, some coverage from the Bersih rally tomorrow.

No Time for Market Myths: Property

2011-07-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

No Time for Market Myths: Property

“Property prices never go down”

While it’s true that they don’t make land anymore, there’s certainly plenty of land to build more houses. Combine this with the fact that most of the price run-ups are due to leveraged speculation (most evident when you see rental yields dropping), and you get spectacles like Florida and Bukit Beruntung.

Having a Lynas plant as your next door neighbor probably isn’t going to help matters, either.

Only buy houses you can afford. Cars and housing for yourself should never go over half your income, and it should be a third if you can push it down that low.

However, if you’re investing in property then you should’ve done your homework to make sure that the income generated (and the certainty that there will be rent) should subsidise the mortgage from that property.

I’ve never understood how Thai girls can be so darn pretty. I mean, just look at Aum Patcharapa Chaichua. Sure, you can just about pronounce her name if you try real hard and read real slow but look at her.

Banknote graft dragnet arrests ex-BNM assistant governor, 7 others

2011-07-02T08:01:00.001-07:00

Banknote graft dragnet arrests ex-BNM assistant governor, 7 others

From the www.themalaysianinsider.com

KUALA LUMPUR, July 1 — A joint Malaysia-Australia swoop on a bribery scandal to secure bank note supply contracts has seen eight people arrested today including former Bank Negara assistant governor Datuk Mohamad Daud Dol Moin.

Australian federal police also arrested and charged two currency printing firms and six of their former senior staff with bribing foreign officials early this morning.

Mohamad Daud faced two counts of corruption charges for accepting gratifications each amounting to RM50,000 from a businessman Abdul Kayum Syed Ahmad through a middleman as an inducement to assist Note Printing Australia Ltd to secure currency printing contracts for RM5 polymer notes from Bank Negara Malaysia.

Both Australian police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) began investigating the case in 2009.

Last year, the MACC detained three individuals linked to the supply of RM5 polymer notes.

They were arrested following a report that Melbourne-based Securency International had offered bribes to officials in Malaysia.

All three, including a businessman, were charged with being paid RM11.3 million to secure the contract from Bank Negara and to ensure that the government of Malaysia opted for polymer notes.

Securency, based in Craigieburn, north of Melbourne, is half-owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the nation's central bank.

A recent report in Australian newspaper The Age said that Securency had hired a company chaired by the brother of Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein to help it win banknote contracts in Malaysia in 2009 as it could “offer it access to, and influence over, Malaysia’s top politicians”.

But the company, Liberal Technology Sdn Bhd, said that Datuk Haris Onn Hussein, who is also Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s cousin, had sold his shares in 2006.

The report noted however that Securency has not won any banknote contracts in Malaysia since its last major one in 2004 and said that it is not suggesting that Najib or Hishammuddin are involved with Securency’s deals.

Securency has previously secured contracts to print RM50 notes in conjunction with the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and the RM5 polymer notes in 2004.

For one thing, this is a huge reputational disaster for BNM. Some of the comments on the news sites are calling for even the Governor to step down, despite Global Finance Magazine having chosen her as one of the best central bankers in 2010.

One of the things people have to differentiate here is between her performance and the ethical conduct of some of those under her. There must be thousands of people working under her, and unless the practice is endemic, I'm sure there's other things on her plate than peering into the personal finances of her employees.

Mitigating this somewhat is the fact that it's not one of those things that's too important, in terms of the setting of monetary policy. Corruption is wrong, especially in such an institution where trust is key, but it would've been more disastrous if the bribe was to influence the setting of the OPR, for example. Reportedly, the Governor didn't have a high opinion of Dato' Daud, either.

On a related sidenote, one of the comments made by one of my colleagues when she heard the news was, "I know its wrong, but seriously, Rm100,000? Can't even do corruption right."

No Time for Market Myths: Kiyosaki

2011-06-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

No Time for Market Myths: Kiyosaki

“Pay Yourself First”

It galls my bladders whenever I hear people say “pay yourself first” instead of just “save”. Not really a market myth, but I’m just annoyed by it. Maybe it’s the economist in me that hates the unnecessary waste of syllables.

As a writer, I am aware of the hypocrisy.

Saving is good, don’t get me wrong. However, it should never be ‘save at all costs’ just as not ‘all debts are bad’. When interest rates are low and inflation is high, savings (especially in bank accounts) makes no sense especially if there are other investment opportunities.

Remember, saving and investing are different things.

For some reason, I was disappointed with Awan Dania. It's probably because I imagined Scha Al-Yahya’s voice to be different.

Article: Women will wed for love, if partner has job

2011-06-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/features/article/women-will-wed-for-love-if-partner-has-job/

NEW YORK, June 22 — Most women would marry for love over money — unless the man is unemployed, according to a new survey.
Three out of four women said they would not wed someone without a job, and 65 per cent would feel uncomfortable tying the knot if they themselves were jobless.

But more than 91 per cent of single women said they would marry for love over money. (Consistency much?)

“It is ironic that women place more weight on love than money, yet won’t marry if they or their potential suitor is unemployed,” said Meghan Casserly, of ForbesWoman which conducted the survey with the website YourTango.com.

Even more telling, she said, is that 77 per cent of women surveyed believe they can have it all — a fulfilling relationship and family life, as well as a successful career.

But 63 per cent of women said they work 40-59 hours, and 62 per cent of women in a relationship said they spend just three waking hours or less with their partner during the work week.

“The career is really taking the No. 1 position for working women,” Casserly said. “It’s pretty ironic that this number of women believe they can have everything. How? When?”

Women: Everything also want.

This is How You Make Money from the Stock Market: Total Returns

2011-06-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

This is How You Make Money from the Stock Market: Total Returns

Tip 1: Knowing what total returns are

When people think about making money on the stock market, they’re thinking of buying a counter cheap and selling it high, in other words: capital appreciation. It’s a pretty awesome feeling when one of your stocks rise by 10% in two weeks, but capital appreciation is just half of the story.

Total return is capital appreciation plus dividends.

Dividends themselves aren’t important. 12 sens per share is nothing if the share price is RM20. What’s important is the dividend yield. That’s how much you get by dividing the dividend with the share price (0.12/20.00 = 0.6%). Think of it as interest.

If the div yield is 5%, you put RM1.00 and you get 5 sens free on the distribution date. Just like interest.

As important as the money a dividend-paying company gives out, a company that’s gives out dividends possibly indicates that it is keeping its shareholders in mind.

You often get companies that sit on piles of cash with no plans to utilize them, just keeping them for in reserves as a scrooge would. The only people benefiting from this are the directors – ample money for their bonuses, eh?

When you buy a share, you’re buying a share of the company. It’s not just the directors’ money, it’s your money, too.

Many companies paying high divs are in the mature industries, where growth is limited like the telcos. What you want to find is a company paying respectable div yields and a good growth.

An example of this is Mitrajaya (9571). Back in November 2010, it was trading at RM1.20 with a div yield of 10%. A profitable construction company announcing project after project, growth was good. As at 20 June 2011 it’s trading at RM2.61, more than double what it was. Still own it.

Next episode: How you identify undervalued stocks. You wanna buy low and sell high? You gotta know if the what’s low and what’s high.

itt: My fave cartoon

No Time for Market Myths

2011-06-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

No Time for Market Myths

“You write too much and take forever to update”

A few people have told me that it’s a blog post, not a doctoral thesis. So I’m going to write quick to-the-point things on things people say that annoy me, like subsidy fallacies or anything from Kiyosaki. Oh god, Kiyosaki.

Because I like Dali's blog, I'm going to post pictures of pretty girls, too. Like Lisa Surihani.

Why You Should Borrow for Your ASB

2011-06-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

Why You Should Borrow for Your ASB

Every year the question gets rehashed: Should I borrow money to put into Amanah Saham Bumiputera? It gets a fair amount of debate with people pulling out their Excel sheets to prove either you should or shouldn’t, leaving those less knowledgeable confused.

My answer:

Yes, you should. If you have the cash flow to meet the repayments, it’d bring you a lot more money in the long run than if you do it old-school.

The key point is to not take out the dividends you get at the end of the year. You don’t take money out at the end of the year if you put in money every month, so why would you take the dividend out if your objective is to save?

The rationale:

Arbitrage opportunity, the time value of money and compounding interest.

Essentially, what you’re doing is to take cheap money to earn a higher rate. You profit from the difference, that’s arbitrage.

By borrowing (or leveraging), you bring a large amount of money upfront which can then earn interest. 7% of RM100 is much less than 7% of RM10,000.

Now, if you leave the dividend untouched in the account, THAT portion starts earning. This ties back to the previous point. That 7% of RM100 (RM7) will earn much less than the RM700 (7% of RM10,000). That’s compound interest.

Now, there only two constraints here: Cash flow to meet your repayment obligations, and having the discipline to not touch the dividends. Don’t over-leverage and make sure you have enough to meet your monthly payment as well as your monthly spending and you will maximize your income.

Where people get it wrong:

The banks are making money off your loan. That’s money from your pocket you could’ve saved.

It doesn’t matter if the banks are making money, what does matter is that YOU are making money.

Forgetting that there’s a cap to your deposits

You can’t put in money beyond RM200,000 (or is it RM250,000 now?) so you can’t continue contributing into the fund beyond, say, 12 years. After that, you’re just coasting on the RM200,000 (as far as the ASB goes). By taking out a loan up to the max 25 years, you’re effectively paying into ASB over a longer period.

Forgetting that you get the principal amount when the loan gets paid off.

On some of the e-mails and posts that I read, people are comparing between the amount you get from saving up the amount and taking a loan. Be careful to note whether it measures the returns or what the bottom line is. Many forget that the principal that you’ve been paying for is by that time all yours.

Imma Lvl 61 Superhero!

2011-05-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much been addicted to Superheroes Alliance these days. Been the most used app on my Blackberry for the past, what, two months?

Essentially, it's one of those online wait-a-few-minutes-to-gain-points-and-money-to-attack-people games, like Earth 2140 way back during the 56.6k modem days. Basically an RPG, you choose an avatar, name him and send him off to missions or fights to get money and level up. You use money to get buildings which give you more money and you use that to get vehicles and superhero sidekicks to attach to your alliance.

Oh yeah, your alliance. You add a friend onto your alliance, you get an extra slot to attach all those +10 Tanks and +15 Ninjas or whatever. The more you have, the easier the missions and battles get - don't add them, and you'll be wailed on by people with 500 'friends'.

It does get tedious, but meh it's addictive.

High Expectation Asian Father

2011-04-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

Is now my favourite meme.

Closely trailed by Confucius

Wages and Wagons: Don't get a car if you can't afford it

2011-04-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Dave Brown from The Independent

After that prodding from Mahirah, I sat around mulling on how'd I best serve the vast readership of my blog. Now that I've been immersed for a year in corporate-speak, I've deliberated to rationalise effectively towards my core competencies:

i) baseless, opinionated comments
ii)money.

Yes, I realise that I'm writing for a maximum of four readers. Meh.

After getting that 2.1 in PPE, I came back to KL to serve my bond as a banker (others would call it regulator, but it doesn't sound as cool). Pay is alright and the perks are good but the hours are murder. There's days when you don't get to see the sun, and office sleepovers are an experience I would recommend you not to have. Invest in a good fluffy pillow if you do.

Still, I appreciate that my pay's pretty fly considering what the other non-bankers are getting per month. 2,000rm for a Mass comm grad? 800rm flipping burgers? Many SPM-holders are getting by with 1,500rm a month, which is what the Gov says is the line for urban poverty.

Those who know me would know that I'm on the right side of political spectrum, so I'm not going to baww over people getting lower pay for doing jobs which are, although important in their own ways, less in demand by the market. You don't have to flip burgers - with some effort, you could've become a burnt-out, sleep-deprived economist instead.

The point of this post isn't to put down the low-earning plebs. There's days when I honestly would give up the pay and perks to do something that allows me to go home by 5.30pm. The point of this post is to put down car drivers.

Reading the online comments on this article by the Malaysian Insider made me rage. As I was scrolling down, I knew what's going to be the main issue: cars.

Look, if you can't afford cars - don't get one. It's simple. Heck, you know what? I can comfortably afford a nice car but I don't. I take a cab to the station and ride the train to work. With the money I save up, I put it all down on the stock market, rode the recent rally and made 23% gains year-to-date. Sometimes I get a free ride to the station and save up on the cab fare, too. I'm not even talking about buses.

Some people say it's a need for them to have a car, to get to work and all that. I call it bull. I live in an area where it's darn difficult to get a cab, not to mention miles away from a station but I'm doing pretty good.

That 'need', I can safely say because I have it too, is the need to be cool. Girls can say that cabs are risky and I understand that, but for the penniless bros out there, man up and 'fess up: You want a car because you want to step out of a cool ride and not the modern incarnations of public serf-wagons.

If it's about getting a car to haul ass around town, you'd be getting a second-hand Kancil you can throw away after a year or two. But we're not looking at Kancils, are we? Of course not. Cars named after hornless rodent-like mini-antelopes are not chick magnets.

Furthermore, don't get job that's 100 miles away from your home. I know of someone who travels a hundred kilometers to-and-back each day for work. She could've easily chosen to stay in KL at the HQ when her section relocated, or alternatively get a different job, but she instead chose to rag on her fuel bills.

I am also raging on people who buy and live in homes close to public transportation AND NEVER USE THEM. Thanks for running up prices, douches.

The one where I came back

2011-03-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

your existence in the blogging world is sorely missed! come back to the illusion of self-importance!

Fine.

An Economist Truncheons - The 2009 Sugar Shortage

2009-08-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Despite the gov telling everyone that there's enough sugar to go about, people are skeptical - rightly so with all the 'each customer may buy only 2kgs of sugar' signs all over the shops. It's the gov's fault, really. Well, kinda. It's also your fault, too, but we'll come to that.

You see, sugar is one of the things the gov keeps under a price-control scheme. Problem is, they kinda set the price too low. Good for the people who's buying them - not so good for the gov. Because of the festivities coming up, and add to that recent news about sugar cane crop failures in India, has pushed the price of refined sugar up and up, and all the while the price of Malaysian refined sugar stays the same. In effect, Malaysian sugar is about the cheapest sugar in the world.

"Woohoo!" you say, but not quite. Thing is, we don't grow an acre of sugar cane.

We used too, but it was more profitable to convert that land into palm oil plantations so right now we're importing all the unrefined sugar from the world market (mostly Brazilian) and we refine them here. If we were to resell it, we can make a profit with the price difference, but the moment it enters the domestic market the gov subsidises the difference between the market price of sugar and the price they've set i.e. between the free market opportunity cost and the price you're paying at the shops.

At the last count, the gov subs 60sens for every kg of sugar. The annual consumption of sugar in Malaysia is 1.2 million tonnes. Not 1.2 million kgs, 1.2 million tonnes. That's 1.2 billion kilos. It includes the industrial uses of sugar (like making your Twinkies) but it's pretty much one of the highest in the world per capita. That's embarassing.

It's expensive, too. The total amount of subsidies, just for sugar alone, goes above 700 million ringgit per year. It's effectively paying Malaysians to get obese and diabetic. When people are asking where's their tax monies going to, take a look at those teh tariks - yeah, some of its right there. Thanks, fatso, for gobbling up my taxes. Yeah, you there. Don't hide behind that desk, I can see you. You're too huge to hide behind that small desk there, you're not fooling anyone.

As econs 101 tells you, when the price is low, demand goes up. In Malaysia, it doesn't work that way. If prices of goods go up, the economically-illiterate among you get pissed. When people get pissed, they don't vote for you, and no politician wants that. So politicos will institute this silly subsidy, and people (except economists) will be happy.

As I said before, we're effectively using tax-money to fund Malaysians on their quest to die-by-diabetes. I can understand why govs and politicos want to keep the subsidy, and I can understand that people want sugar (not 'need', no one needs sugar unless it's their only source of daily energy, which is a stupid excuse). I like ice kacang as much as the next guy, but I don't complain when it goes up by ten freaking sens.

What I do when people go through the 'this product is SOOO expensive' whinge is run it through what I call the Spoilt-Kid-Whining-to-Irritated-Dad model for economic behaviour. It's a Platonic dialogue and goes something like this:

"Dad, the price of sugar is SOOOOO high nowadays that I can't afford it! It's so unfair!"
"Do you really need that much ?"
"OF COURSE DAD! I simply CANNOT survive without my 1.5 kilogrammes of sugar per day!"

Now I imagine that that kid is whingeing at me. If the kid's demand seems reasonable, say that instead of sugar, it was a more basic product like bread or rice, then I'd be understanding. 1.5 kgs of sugar per day is NOT something I can understand. If that kid came up to me with that sort of guff, I'd whack the fat off him with a particularly thick piece of stick. You may also substitute 'sugar' with 'luxury, high cc car'. I'd truncheon the fat off them, too.

In essence, it's everyone's fault. It's the gov's fault for being so appeasing that they get walked all over on by the plebs, and it's also the plebs' fault for making sugar a 'need'. It's also my fault too for not beating up more people, but that's only because I'm kind and merciful.

ps: Apparently an all-girl band 'Sugar' is more popular than sugar itself on google. Hmm.

Must...Know....Who...Hot...Girl Is... fapfapfapfap

2008-12-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

Being a loyal anon of 4chons, I am of course an automatic member of the local belachan.net. It's like a Malaysian version of 4chons, but with more added fail. Like this for example.

While I was searching teh site for lulz, I stumbled upon this thread which demanded sauce on this awesome hot girl. Being a horny tard meself, I endeavoured to help, since it was relevant to my interests. For any info on teh gurl, I offer in return, Tina Yuzuki.

Apparently the thread was made of fail. Or faggots. No one lieks Tina Yuzuki, despite her being made of awesomeness and hot.

I extend teh offer here, lulz! Girl at top of post! Name! Nao! Tina Yuzuki in return!

Life as a Married Sim

2008-12-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm back from Thailand (like 3 months ago) it's time for me to industriously contribute to the world's happiness by blogging in my blog, the literary world's version of a drunken fat skanky hoe with a lazy eye clambering on top of a picnic table doing a belly dance.

Get your coins out, boys.

Now that I'm done with my essays I've got absolutely nothing to do. It's the stress, you see. Now that everything's done for the year, tension's a bit slack. Seriously, if your mates want to take a course in Philosophy and Religion, hit them over the head with a shovel until they change degrees. Trust me, they'll thank you.

So I got out my copy of The Sims. It's an old piece of game but it's still alright. For those of you in the dark, it's basically a game where you have control over this household, sending the chaps to work, kids to school, entertain friends, buy stuff, pay the bills and pimp your house. Yeah, play a game about you living a real life.

Being the perfectionist control-freak that I am, I never let my Empy avatar do much on his own. I mean, yeah, the game is programmed so that if you leave him alone, he'd get some food if he's hungry, bathe if he stinks and have a kip if he's drowsy, but I never trust the thing so much to let it control my cherished personification. Can't watch myself wallow in my own filth and die, can I? Under my iron rule, Empy became a popular, awesome dude with a dog to boot. Good dog too, fetching newspapers and going all the way out to the edge of the garden to piss in. Too bad it's called Cher. Having a name like an androgenous 80s singer tainted my view of him. Or her. Not really sure.

This time round, I'm letting the game handle itself. Sort of like a social experiment, if you will. I took over an existing household, a house of three: a man, his wife and a son. The wife works, the son goes to school, house is rather barren but what would I know, Empy's house has more bling than all of P. Diddy's girlfriends combined. Who'd knew being a criminal mastermind will pay so well?

So I started the shit up. Within an hour the wife was at work sewing jeans for 12 cents an hour and the kid's swotting it up in school while dear old dad sat around the drawing room reading up on his latest bodice-ripper. Boring family this. When he got past the climax of the book he grabbed some stuff from the fridge and made some lunch before going back to his novel. Absolute boredom.

Things did not look much better when wifey and the kid got home. After the hypochondriac wife cleaned the loo and kitchen she picked up her novel. Everyone of them hit the books like it was an English lit paper tomorrow, even though there was a TV just right there. Syncronised hunger caused them to prepare dinner, and what do you know, with no skills in cooking the stove went up in flames.

Apparently no one taught them Firefighting 101; they gathered round the fire and screamed and gyrated, trying to dance the fire away I suppose. The fire spread, engulfing the stove and sink (WTF?) and spread onto the floor. The kid's soon surrounded by flames with no way out. He's fucked. Dumb sod raindanced his way to the afterlife.

As the fires die out (there was nothing else to burn lol) there was no longer any kitchen, fridge nor kid. After the dad cried a bit over the lost fridge he went to bed. The servant/mom swept up the remains of the kitchens, son included, into the bin. Stoic woman, I must say. Without a fridge, there wasn't any source of food left in the house and unless I intervened, they'll all starve and die. Which they proceeded to do.

End of day one.

Moral of story: authoritarianism for teh win!!!

Empy Goes North

2008-08-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

Be back in ten days. As if anyone gives a damn.

In Condemnation of Lee Chong Wei

2008-08-17T10:36:00.001-07:00

To be fair, he did get a silver and countless other apologists will point out that it was a home court, with nearly the whole of the billion-odd Chinese fans there, and blablabla... Damn all that glass-full poppycock. This blog is the Three O'clock Truncheon, not the Eight O'clock Butthurt.

My main beef with him is that he had no spirit. His heart wasn't in the game. I wouldn't have been this vitriolic even if he was a three-foot tall midget with no fingers if I could see him sweat it out like some crazed terrier chomping and biting till it could bite no more. I would cheer for a fat marathon runner dragging himself across the finish line on his elbows and knees, even if he was dead last. I would even cheer for Barney going up against a real T-rex, but I won't cheer for someone who surrenders his dreams just because people were not yelling his name.

We can criticise our sportsmen, and sportswomen, for being unfit. We don't care whether our football team gets depressed before an important game because the coach keeps on serving them Horlicks instead of Milo. Whenever our abysmal football team plays ball like an unexperienced prostitute, we readily lay on them the wrath and disappointment that comes even without surprise. They play like air-headed bimbos, we beat them like red-headed stepchildren.

We do it all the time. If I play rugby like someone with two vaginas, sure as hell someone will give me a piece of his mind. If I retort that I didn't play that game well because I was sad my cat bit my scrotum that morning, I'm pretty sure that's not an explanation: it's an excuse. An excuse for me not giving 100%. It doesn't matter if LCW had his head caved in by the hooting Chinese mobs, its his performance that matters. If he's not giving 100% at the most prestigious event in the world, then anything else is an excuse.

Besides, Indonesia and Korea had no problem getting their golds. China must've forgotten to empty out her factories when they played, maybe.

Being a sportsman is not just about having the bigger biceps or the speedier feet. The Olympics isn't some freakshow showcasing the Man Who Swims With Fishes or the Strongest Man on Earth, its a presentation of the human spirit. That chap with his elbow splayed out in the weightlifting had a heart stronger than what his body could cope. THAT is a sportsman.

Would I be up to the task if I were in his shoes? Probably not, but then again I'm not a sportsman. I don't train everyday to do what I needed to do. Actually, come to think of it, yes I do train everyday to do just that. I call it work. You lot do it too.

If you are to present an important deal on behalf of thousands of your colleagues and you psyche out at the end, then you've quite fail to do what you're supposed to do. You've let quite a lot of them down. They trusted you with their hopes, and to lose out not from a fair fight drawn out through a long battle, having you sell each inch dearly, but from a weak will, then it's a damn right for quite a few of us to be quite upset.

My Camera, My Computer, My Gym, and FHM

2008-08-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

After a long neglect, and a request from die-hard fan Mahirah, a new blog entry's a-coming. Yeehaw.

1. Camera Dieded

It IS the summer holidays, so a little bit of lazy-assery is quite expected. In any case me old camera died so no pictures anytime soon. It was a brick of a camera which doesn't go so well with my habit of stuffing it down my jeans (in the pockets, mind you) so the screen ended up so warped that if I had a book of Egyptian hieroglyphs, I could build my own Stargate.

2. Old Laptop Resurrected, Then Dieded Again

The old laptop had a minor resurrection the other day. Dunno much about computers but they say probably that the engine in it got overheated due to the fan not working well enough thanks to the fact that the insides' a mini dust bunny petting zoo.

Shoving a small fan under its arse lends me some minutes to extract many of the pictures already in it, totally not helped by the computer screen which like the camera, is also warped. You kinda need to put your thumb on a certain point at the top of the screen and put pressure on it to de-warp the damn thing so you can see enough to use the pinky of your other hand to move the touchpad around. After a while, the thing will warp back irregardless of your digit being there and you'd have to wrestle the bugger for a bit before trying to find the sweet spot to thumb again. I'd rate the experience just about as enjoyable as fingering an unwilling she-bear.

After trying vainly to pleasure the beast for the gigs of mp3s in there, I quite characteristically insulted the fidelity of its mother and bought myself a new one. A new laptop, I mean, not a new bear.

3. The Gym That I Go To

If you're looking for hot girls at the gym, best give the KLCC Twin Tower Fitness Club a wide berth. The place is nice and all, and the activities there are alright (picked up aikido on Fridays) but most of the fellas there are Petronas engineers who work there and who are like 30plus. The girl at the counter, Ira, is cute though.

From time to time, I treat it like a convenient shower place. After doing the shopping at Suria KLCC, I just pop down there and take a sauna. Beats jumping into the kiddie pool by the recreation lake outside. Getting arrested for suspected pedophilia will probably not be good on the CV.

4. The FHM World's Most Wanted Women 2008 Party

Being a regular reader of FHM, I got this invite to the FHM party at The Loft. Thought I'd drop in, see what's the fuss about. Too bad no one else I know buys FHM, so that meant I was gonna wing it alone that night.

The place was quite cozy, after a pint and a cigar, I joined in a group of guys who turned out to be the rowdiest there. Excellent stuff. Girls were hot (what few there were, the early part being a total sausage fest) drinks were pricey, and after midnight it was pretty jumping.

And if on the off-chance you're that cute, funny VI-hating psychologist girl (Evelyn? Ee Ling?), I'd quite consider selling a 99-year lease on my soul for her to call me or something. Damn I was a total faggot for forgetting to ask her number. Damn damn damn.

Three O'clock Truncheon Takes On The: US Presidential Election

2008-06-17T04:51:00.000-07:00

When compared to the yonks-long Democratic in-battle between Senators Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton, the actual US presidential election set for November begins to seem a tad anti-climatic. It shouldn’t. A young socialist black guy is going up against an old conservative white guy. It could only be more epic if each charged at the other over the plains of Narnia leading armies of laser-wielding piranhas.

Obama personificates the hopes of a nation weary of a warmongering Bush (whose recent popularity poll, incidentally, ranked him as slightly less desirable than being kicked in the groin), but his policies are not as ‘socialist’ as one would think it would be, coming from the more liberal Democrats. While Hilary would’ve taxed companies to pay for pro-worker initiatives and middle-class benefits, Obama’s campaign focused on providing incentives with pay-as-you-go fiscal policies as well as increasing taxes on the rich. He also courted the environmental vote and gave nod to labour laws. Similar tactics all in all in the Democrat camp, but the minor differences in regards to fiscal policies will matter in the long recession ahead.

On the other hand McCain seems to subscribe to the Reagan school of economic thought, tax cutting all the way. Most likely we’ll see further erosions on the dollar if he gets into the office, as well as a possible interest hike or two especially when he’s more or less given up trying to balance the budget in his presidency, what with his commitment to stay the course in the Middle East. However, he pledges safety and economic growth and these are wonderful things to whisper to the business class. His military record stands strong in his favour, as well as his five-year ordeal in the notorious ‘Hanoi Hotel’. It is interesting to note that he is in fact less conservative than he is made out to be: for one thing, Ann Coulter despises him so he can’t be all that bad.

As important as the economy is, the main jousts between the two camps centered on its foreign policy. Democrats plan for a withdrawal from Iraq, while the Republicans maintain that a strong show of force is essential for continued mainland security. Obama’s conciliatory approaches towards Ahmadinejad got him labeled as an appeaser by Bush recently and will most likely lose him a few votes from the more gung-ho states.

So who will win? Being the young man that I am, I’d cast for Obama if I were to have the chance. The Obama Girl is not so much of a tactic (even if it was, it'd still be a good one: I'll damn well vote for anyone Amber Lee Ettinger tells me to!) as an indicator of the sentiment of the younger voters. Issues such as the war and the environment, and how they are conveyed, matters more to them today than a few years back. Mc Cain is seen as an old foggy from a discredited party. Obama wins on the hip factor.

The black vote is a little harder to quantify. Its value has always been a bit overestimated what with blacks being quite disproportionately pandered upon despite only being 30% of the pop and even then many do not exercise their rights to vote. Bill Clinton relied on the black votes, nevertheless, to win his presidency as much as Bush Jr. relied on the evangelical vote showing that they will deliver. Problem is, Hilary Clinton campaigned with her husband’s political war machine with much of the same political base. To simply say that the blacks will vote for one of their own is being a little presumptuous, as would claiming the Democrat battle has embittered them all. The question of whether they will be cohesive enough to balance out the votes of the nationalists, the evangelicals and the businesses which would most likely be McCain’s.

What does it all matter to us Malaysians? Economically, it would be best to have some stability in the Mid-East. Boffins have calculated that the Second Gulf War cost the world eight trillion dollars in unnecessarily higher oil prices. With a poorer America, trade would drop and the world might enter a very inactive period that might last longer than any previous recession within these past two decades.

Higher oil prices driving up prices... increases in unemployment as demand falls… sounds a bit like the 1970s, ain’t it?

Fuel prices up? Cry me a river, plebs.

2008-06-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, some events so visibly morph into historic moments that you'd feel like a blind hobo bumming around on the dark side of Mars if you don't write anything about it. I've already passed on the Chinese earthquake and the Burmese typhoon. Then again, if interwebs forums are any indicator Malaysians don't really care about thousands of dead foreigners anymore now that their pockets are being prodded so I guess that's all right.

The Lifting of the Great Malaysian Petroleum Subsidy it is. I'm sorry to admit that it'll be quite a boring piece at least until I get to the part where I insult low-wage peasants and start claiming the powers of magical unicorns, but I'll put up pictures of girls in bikinis in my next post. Promise.

Now on with the vitriol.

It all started back on the 5th of June when the Malaysian PM, Abdullah Badawi, annonuced that Malaysia will henceforth cease to fellate her citizen and reduced the petrol subsidy by 78.4 sens per litre, increasing the price at the punp to 2.704rm. Further reductions in August will bring the price to a solid 4rm, with the ultimate aim of floating the bloody commodity.

Malaysians went nuts. Petit-bourgeois traders in their shops, drivers in their cars, beggars on the streets and babies in their cribs all rose up in arm, brandishing their abacuses, steering locks, collection mugs and rattles. The height of the violence saw forums littered with the flamed avatars of the fallen. Never in the history of geekdom has so many flamed so few with so much bullshit.

Histrionics aside, this is grade-A guano. There is no excuse nor reason for there ever be a fuel subsidy, and it is a subsidy. Some people go on about how Malaysia as an oil producer aren't really 'subsidising' oil, we're only seling it to ourselves for cheaper. It's the 'Durian Argument' of Anwar's, wherein he said that local durians are sold cheaper than the ones sold in Japan. Bollocks.

Now, Anwar might be a good guy and all and just dumbed the rhetoric down to fit into the tiny heads of voters, but such populism doesn't cut it with me. To wrangle with the example, why would a durian seller not want to maximise his profits if he is able to? If one is a durian seller, one will go find the best market to sell it in, that is what one calls international trade. Why would one be content with a low price? Remarkable.

Furthermore, unlike the privately-owned durian orchard, petroleum is a common resource belonging to everyone of us, not to be benefited more by car-owners and heavy industries. That's the gist of it. By subbing oil, we're rewarding inefficiency by supporting the wasteful. A blanket subsidy such as this benefits the SUV-drivers more than the motorcycle riders, who themselves are better off than those who ride on less.

Since oil is a common good, it is in the interest of the nation to flog it at the best possible price, the world price. The durian orchard owners have the right to even give away his fruits if he fancies it, but there is no such right with oil for no one can claim single monopoly on the resource. The fairest way is not to distribute petroleum cheaply, but by flouting it onto the market and letting the market decide who gets how much. The efficient will get more than the wasteful, the poor will get more efficient, or waste less. No one owes the poor anything.

That is why fund-managers and economists are derisive of Anwar's claims of putting the price back down once he gets into the comfy chair. It's economic suicide. Money does not come out of nowhere, and with depleting oil reserves coupled with increasing demands for oil, we'll subsidise more and more oil per barrel that we export. The march of the international price of oil isn't going to help anyone much, either.

Yes, inflation will go up. The prices of goods will go up, but that is because we've been living in a fantasy land where prices have been kept down artificially. Little known fact that in the same vein, your wages are kept down, too, thanks to the subsidy. Every time a tourist enjoys 'cheap' food and lodgings, taxpayer money is spent. Only once we have market prices for goods can we ever dream of having market wages. Live with it.

The other concern is of course transparency. No one can say that the money saved won't get misallocated, misspent or embezzled and the sleazy reputation of the current government isn't helping sentiments either. However, under a controlled economy with price-fixing and quotas there is a much greater freedom for people to enjoy opportunities to profit illegally. How do you profit from a good that is selling at the market price? With much difficulty. That's why stock traders need to go through convoluted methods to siphon money into their private accounts. The free market will reduce corruption in the long run. Market distortion causes crimes.

All in all, despite the often clumsy moves by the BN gov, they seem to have finally got some backbone and political will to do some restructuring. The move to free up petroleum, as well as the more recent ones of freezing gov projects and reducing parliamentary allowances are heartening signs of good governance.

Too little, too late? Maybe, but nevertheless we must agree that they're at least moving in the right way. Anwar did promise that he'd take over in September; as a neutral, I'm apathetic as long as he doesn't overturn these new positive moves. If he does get the comfy chair in September, but rolls back the price of oil back to 1.10rm, and yet manages to maintain budget surpluses all the way for the next five years, I'll shave my head.

also see http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/world/article/65187

July 12th protest marches? For what? To REINTRODUCE subsidies? Populist wankers with no grasp of economics.

Empyreal is back after long trip to Lazyville

2008-06-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks to the few fellas that put up encouraging comments and all that. Initially, I wanted to reply to everyone, visit everyone's pages and save every mink whale in the ocean, but then there's exams and everything and predictably I got lazy. Those whales will just need to fend off Japanese harpoons on their own.

However, there's only two fellas that's been cool enough to drop a line, and failing to be nice to two persons is serious fail. I'd feel like a callous arsehole (instead of the stingy arsehole that I am) if I didn't give a damn.

Basically, thanks guys. Much love and all that gay rap nonsense. Rest assured that the incoherent stream of uncreative expletives and batshit-crazy ramblings will continue.

Good News for Tesco Trolley Collectors

2008-05-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

A new type of trolley to thieve, gotta catch 'em all!

Trim Trolleys to debut at Tesco
Posted on: October 19, 2007

Tesco will be launching the Trim Trolley that aims to help people work out while they shop - as though shopping isn't tiring enough already. How do these trolleys give shoppers a work out? For starters, they're much heavier than standard shopping trolley and get harder and harder to push as the levels increase. These levels are depicted by the amount of calories a shopper has burned up as shown on the screen. Not only that, the very same display shows the pusher's heart rate for those who are interested to have a higher level of detail in their shopping experience. I wonder whether encouraging folks to exercise while shopping would influence their shopping list.

by Ubergizmo.com

Now we can use it to move our stuff to storage AND work out at the same bit. Brilliant.

Three O'clock Guide to Life: How to Survive as an Impoverished UK Student

2008-05-04T06:49:00.001-07:00

Without having to eat your socks for dinner.

Taking some time off the exam preps to do this long overdue list before inflation knocks the calculations all off. Not in a funny mood, really, (well, I was never very funny anyway) so forgive the lack of jokes. Or rejoice. Whatever.

Living in the UK can be a downright bitch. Everything here's expensive, especially the food that's not Tesco Value, and they know their econs: prices are noticably notched up on holidays and the weekends for some items. Living as a proletariat university student can be rough, but not impossible. Just not very enjoyable and you won't get laid as much as Oakenfold, which might be depressing if you've seen the guy.

As a scholarship kid, I get a set amount of money every six months. That's fine. Minus a couple hundred a month for rent, some bits for the bills, a little on the side for the impromptu holidays abroad, plus maybe a bit to save, and what you have left is not very much at all.

All in, I set aside 170pounds a month for buying stuff; 75pounds for groceries, the other ninety-five for everything else. Now it doesn't seem much, but it's quite enough, though I tend to overshoot a bit.

Now, I think it's best to describe my spending habit a little. You know the Asian chaps that are bloody iron chefs and can't swallow anything that's not restaurant-grade food? I'm the opposite. As I've mentioned before I'm a lousy cook, and tend to get permanently damaged whenever I try something fancier than opening a can of sardines. Thankfully, evolution endowed me with the ability to consume the most wretched foods (and you can't get anything more wretched than my cooking even if you threw bubonic-laden rats into a blender). While it's not the most useful of evolutionary traits, it saves me a ton of dosh each month by not being very picky. In fact I consistently save around 20pounds off the budget.

Now this is the list of stuff that you can get at Tesco. Basics, most of them. I don't try to get all fancy with food because they all taste around the same, but everyone should follow some rules of thumb: vegetables are good, instant food kills you, have some protein, treat expiry dates like suggestions. Once in a while, treat yourself something nice, like that 65p bag of doughnuts. That'll be a luxury item in this list.

Item / Cost per serving (pounds)

Fruits / .25
Jam / .15
Bread (Tesco Value) / .08
Butter / .05
Eggs / .15 (I eat two a go)
Milk / .15
Tea / .04
Sugar / .01
Salt / .01
Pepper / .02
Spices (luxury!) / .10
Baked Beans / .10
Vegetables / .35
Meat (fresh. kinda) / .45 - .8
Meat (tinned) / .10
Rice / .05
Pasta / .05
Sauces (not really necessary...) / .30
Oil /.03
Fish (tinned) / .50
Flour / .05
Biscuits / .10
Cornflakes / .20
Onions, Garlic / .02

I have to admit, it's very austere. Heck, people in gulags might be better off. But it's cheap, and it's reasonable if you don't mind some monotony. By having either beans on toast or some cornflakes in the morning, some pasta for lunch and a meat meal for dinner you can come off for 2.36pounds a day with some biscuits and tea on the side. Since I tend to err on the safe side, you might even get some spare change left over and buy that premium-quality pesto once in a while.

The flip side of me not spending very much at all on myself (even my clothes are like 300 years old) is my propensity to entertain others. Dinners out, the pub or two, random travels, all dig in to the wallet. Most are avoidable, and if you have the sociability of a smelly sex-fiend you'll also save some coins but where's the fun of uni?

Basically, try to not buy stuff you don't need, show up as they're closing shop to get some stuff on the cheap (show up at around 8 and you might just get the fishmongers to get 95% off their last few items), stretch some stuff out and you'll be fine. As long as you don't be a consumption-hungry, label-wearing, food-guzzling lard-arse, you'll do fine. Basically, just be like a guy.

Doves - Birds of Freakin' War

2008-04-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Now I'm sure you lot would have seen all those pictures of peaceful people at peace events peacefully releasing doves, symbols of peace. Heck, if you can grab another one, stick a small sprig in their mouths and superimpose them on a corny watercolour drawing of the earth, you'd have a picture perfect representation of peace. Like so.

Yeah, well, they haven't seen the doves we have in Greenstead.

As I was walking home from the uni the other day I saw three doves on the trees by the junction. "Oh, what wonderful creatures," I would have said to myself if I was gay. As I approached the junction two of them floated up to towards the heavens, just like in the pictures. They then proceeded to twat each other out of the air.

That was the most awesome thing I have seen on earth. Not that I've ever been outside of the earth, so that technically makes it the most awesome thing ever. If they were duking it out on a burning asteroid plunging itself into the earth as a troop of guitar-wielding dinosaurs play Metallica in the background, that would've been better. I guess we can't have everything, can we?

Anyway, I presume that they were fighting over the third dove, which in turn I presume to be female. They could indeed be a homo-erotic family of birds, I don't know, and don't really care. I'm just watching these birds try to run each other into the ground.

As the third bird sat perched on the tree (she doesn't even care) the other two are attempting to fly and use their wings to bollock the other at the same time. They'd fly right next to each other and start to hand out some punishment. I imagine it's pretty difficult, like doing a drive-by in Grand Theft Auto. After a minor skirmish, they would settle on opposite sides, one on the tree next to the rather apathetic female (being quite an uncaring bitch, isn't she?) while the other would rest a bit on the electric line nearby. After a while they were at it again. It went on like this for a while.

Since I was hungry, I yelled at the birds to hurry it up a bit so that I can get my lunch (at home, obviously, I wasn't planning to grab the bird that lost and make a meal out of it if that's what you're thinking). They arrogantly ignored me. Incensed, I resorted to taunting Charlie, the bird that wasn't at the tree, on the assumption that Charlie was on the loss. Give it a bit of an encouragement, I'd like to think. Get it a bit angry, like that scene in Rocky. "Come on Charlie, you flying pot of genetic inferiority! Be a man-bird for once in yer life, you toss!"

Unfortunately, I think I made Charlie a bit depressed instead, which served my purpose either way. After a few more rounds of having its arse handed back to him, Charlie mournfully flew off, in search of some other bird to pull.

Celebratory dove-love ensued.

I Now See Ducks

2008-04-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

I've managed to pull an all-nighter doing my Sociology of the Modern State essay so my comprehension and coherence may not be top-notch now, but I am free. MUAHAAHAAAAAAA, ha. When looking into the eyes of your women, they question is dos time move faster? Dangerous things are afoot. Woot.........

Would you believe it? I had all the stuff for my essay all prepped up in the old laptop and then it goes and dies on me. Wonderful stuff. Still, it was alright. About time bad things happen to me, my recent run of luck has been a bit long. So I sat down to type a new one. Correction, to carve out the intricate web of quotes and citations that make up my unappreciated labours of hatred. Still, no prob.

Pertty lights.....

Then I checked again the yesterday morning list of essay titles and guess what? They updated it, and I was using the old list! Whoo! Whoo! Shit Train! Last stop: The Fan!

Basically spent the whole of yesterday reading all I can on India. Thank goodness I read fast that I can put in four thick books back in the biblio. Typed all night. Yeah. Apart from the bit where I surfed Facebook, then the computer went like rrrRRRR!!! at the back. Thought it was going to explode. Would've welcomed Death gleefully, then shake his hand and offer him a piggyback ride.

Got it in like 40 mins before dedline. I did a litle jig of supreme domination over thy kingdom of essats. Taek that faul thingggggggg.

The library keyboard smells funny.

Now I can't go home because its cold and no mo bus and I have a 9 oclock class. Then I go home. have breakfast. there was also a duck outsidethe door when i wanted to get out. Perschhhhhhhhed on the rails like a perchy thing. tird to do what i always do with ting i find odd: POKE IT! But missed. IT stared. The eyas, THE EYES! I run away scareed. I think i screamed a bit. n the uni motning, no one hears yu scream¬

Typed blog lol wat,. orly? fggghl.....

Why I Hate Kitchens (because they try to kill me)

2008-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yep, set myself on fire again.

There I was frying up some bangers when the pan tipped and splashed glorious hot oil on me. Things were a little frentic for a while but experience has taught me well. I rushed to the sink and run cool water on the wound then footed it upstairs to get some Jelonet and dressing on the spot. Everyone should have a drawer filled to the brim with bandages, medicine and kit, just in case your house gets overrun by zombies or something.

Of course, you'd have to remember to shut off the fire in case everything else burned but I got my housemate down there to watch over the sausages. I returned and exacted delicious revenge on the errant bratwursts. Protip: never chuck sausages onto the pan, roll them slowly in. I know its unmanly and all, but incompetently setting fire on yourself is a little worse.

Fire scar number 2; check.

Don't know why I start frying stuff. Normally I just throw them into the oven and let them bake. Much safer.

This is how it was, or something like that. Had a laugh reading the Sim-story: http://www.somethingleet.com/sims2/ Kitchens are killers, I tell you.

From Acer to Acer, from DOS to DOS

2008-04-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, my faithful laptop of five years perished. I'd just return from my shower to see the damn thing rebooting itself and froze up. Apparently the hard disk crashed or something, but I'd like to think it fell into a coma and never woke up.

RIP (2003-2008)

Aye, it was a good little laptop; little being a misnomer here because it was freaking huge and weighed in a pound less than an adult rhinocerous. Not exactly portable, what with it being four tonnes heavier than a desktop. Not exactly a 'laptop' either, as it tends to inflict third-degree burns from its ass.

I remember the first day I got it as if it was five years ago, which in fact was when it was. Not exactly the most powerful machine at the time, it was alright playing all those older games which dovetails nicely with my fetish of playing 70 year-old games in any case. My last PC being the one I got in 1997, I was enraptured at how fast the thing loaded up Caesar 3. No longer shall I watch Hannibal's elephants ravage my meticulously-constructed Mediolanum like a slide-show.

Point of pride in that it never got a whiff of any virus. Took care of it good on that account. As germ-free as a vat of penicillin. On the outside though it wasn't very pretty. Being a rugged guy and all, I flung the thing about here and there and it got some bruises. Nothing major. They did give me a laptop bag along with the thing, but I never used it, on account of it giving out this funky salaryman vibe.

Was a good laptop, all around. Lasted five years. Towards the end, the screen grew some lines across it and it turned a weird green in places, the thing slowed down to a crawl on occasions out of old-age angst, the mousepad blinkers on and off by itself, you could fry four eggs and a heifer on its processor and unless you prop it up on a book to dissipate the heat, the laptop takes a nap on its own. Still, it delivered my essays and my surfing and all, so it was good.

Well done, lad.

Thus, I commend this heap of junk to the holy processor in the sky. Not that it stands a chance of getting into tech heaven in any case, what with all that porn and 4chan stuff on it.

The Day It Snowed

2008-04-03T11:02:00.001-07:00

Was a fortnight ago. Must learn to crank these out faster.

It was quite expected, the snow. The weather's been quite wonky nowadays in that it never snows in winter proper but sure enough, it'll blanket us in March right just before it get warm. Been like that these past few years. Some say its global warming. Others noted that due to the slight errors in the Julian calendar system, the seasons creep up so perhaps in a hundred years or so, we'll be eating ice-cream in March and pie in July. Fireflies in the sky, seeing blue in the rye, oh why, why. Why?

As if that's going to matter to me. The only things I'll be eating in a hundred years is mash if I'm lucky and dirt if I'm not. Plus, the way my cash is scampering off like middle-aged businessmen from a raided whore-house, I'd best stick to my canned rations and pasta. Not that it's good, and doubtful if it's healthy, but it's cheap. The prospects of early dirt-eating grow brighter by every meal.

Yes, the snow. It was there when I woke up in the mid afternoon as I always do (to my credit, it's not entirely due to my sloth, it's actually tactical: if I wake up later I wouldn't get blinded by the sun). It was a good two-inch of cover. True to form, while others across Essex rolled up the meager amounts of snow into snowmen and giant upright cocks, I stayed in and played Silent Hill 4. Whee.

Weird in that how just a few months ago we had this house-warming barbecue, and now it snowed. Admittedly, it was an ironically cold house-warming barbecue with us dashing outside to throw some meat onto the fire before running back in and shutting the door. Neighbours must have pegged us for nutters.

Brings everything into perspective, really. Just a couple of months left till we vacate this house. I would quite miss it, with the comfy couches and the room that I've grown into. Still, c'est la vie. Life goes on. Hopefully the landlord doesn't notice the huge hole in the carpet, the broken pipe, the busted shower cord and the stained sofa; that 250 pound deposit really would come in handy for the holidays.

Web of Lies

2008-03-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

Occasionally I head down to the lowyat.net forums. Not really sure why, though. Being techno-incompetent since 1999, I usually stay out of those computer-related stuffs. What they do have though, is this open forum discussing basically whatever. Like 4chan, but without desu. Of course, being Malaysian (and like 4chan), everything degenerates pretty rapidly into a savage, bum-clenching pub fight of chaos, illiteracy and ignorance. It's the internet equivalent of going into a math class and getting repeatedly punched in the nose by a four-armed man reciting the Magna Carta in Urdu.

It's great.

Amidst the bloody pwnings and granting of internets, this chap Chewxy invites me to check out his movie project. Not a bad way to while a bit of the summer holidays, plus I've never seen something being filmed before, apart from 'The Towers' soap they made back in Essex with me being the token Asian, which was axed when the third-year chaps left. A shame, though. I was going to be this gambling fiend that slagged off his girlfriend and bedded another chick. Damn shame.

Whatever. So, I took off to see the fellow who was just a few scenes short of wrapping everything up. Just a few fight scenes, a park rendezvous scene, a blowjob scene, a chess-playing scene, and the bit where my silhouette gets poked with a knife. All done within a couple of nights, which was ace. The girls in it were cuties, too, and that's even better.

Minor secret mini-game in there, too.

Basically, the story is about a string of murders, whose sole evidence lies within a string of blog entries. Now it takes a private eye, his cute button-nosed secretary and wits to wade through the screen of internet anonymity to capture the dastardly culprit. It's like what the FBI does to anon in 4chan, but without no party vans. Nor CP, for that matter.

Haven't really seen the thing, to be honest. Was in Essex, Aussies having their summer holidays in December. Madness.

The one where I talk about politics

2008-03-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

It takes years of philosophy lessons to realise a fundamental truth: Anything that starts with the letter E is bound to be nasty. Essays. Elephants. Eggplants. Evolution is cool, because it annoys Creationists. Eskimos, as well. Having to wrestle polar bears for lunch makes you cool. Some of them are in fact positively frozen.

Sorry.

Not that anyone actually gives a trout, but I've decided to change the blog title again. While 'Eccentric Chauvinist' kind of gets the gist, where's the subtlety? No sense of style at all. Tsk tsk. Three O'clock Truncheon combines a solid phallic symbol of oppression with a good dose of 'what-the-fuck?'. Its awesomeness could only be topped by a half-naked Marmite-covered man wielding a broken beer bottle battling barracudas beside big brown bears but behold, backbitten buzzards bid beastly blasphemy. Bah.

Right. I guess it would be rather callous of me if I didn't put in something in regards to the earth-wobbling shock result of the recent Malaysian election. The bit about the film with me in it just needs to wait.

Anyway the result was expected, Barisan lost a bit and the opposition gets some in. What wasn't expected was the size of that bit; the bit being five whole states and something just shy of half the votes.

Now, those that know me tend to lump me into the government camp, which makes me pro-establishment, hence evil and all-around uncool, all of which sounds just about right. Still, at the risk of sounding like a turncoat glory-hunter with nerves of weed, I have to kinda say that I'm not. I follow a funny Hobbesian logic to government and politics, mixed with a bit of Kantian duty in there as well. That means that I am loyal to the gov, it's just that I don't really care which party or tyrant is at the top. Benevolent democratic president? Brilliant. Inept socialist dictator? That's alright. Evil whip-wielding nymphomaniac princess? Yes, please.

All in all, on the surface it looks a good result. Now that the oppoes have cut their teeth a bit, them and the govoes won't continue putting up rubbish candidates whose sole task is to obey the guy at the top. Fact is, both the govoes and the oppoes are equally toss. Bunch of men without initiatives who bob around if there's no strong leader to shepherd them.

For that, I blame what Weber and Peter Evans recognized as a lack of institutional autonomy. Malaysia's governmental weakness lies in ineffectiveness and corruption, and those are the exact same result as having a state's capacity, signified by its bureaucratic strength, diminished by taking up more projects, more functions than it could handle. Expand the bureaucratic capacity with more and better qualified bureaucrats enticed by good over-the-private-sector-pay salaries.

The results would be indubitably for the better, though the short-term effects will sting many in the form of lay-offs and inflation. Yet, this bitter cure will heal a more malign and terminal illness, and the sooner it is done, the less critical and painful the cost.

The other is what Mygdal saw as what Third World countries are often wont to do: accommodate, and thus become weak. To have a strong state, a country must be autonomous from all the social actors in the nation, and politics of accommodation weakens it. By simply pandering to the Chinese community, the Indian community or even the Malay community itself is to perpetuate the weak state.

Hard-line apathy is good. Even instinctively, men gravitate towards decisive leaders because they know what they're doing. Those that advocate otherwise are usually those who stand to benefit from leaders who listens to them. That is what is called regulatory capture, the influence of social actors, any of the groups within society, ranging from the capitalists to the socialists to the union of teachers to the army, on the sovereign decisions of the state. Thereon lies the source of corruption and rentier protectionism.

It is often thought that this Malaysian policy of accommodation between the races is a good thing, it is not. It merely avoids the issue of assimilation. We are one nation, Malaysians all. Until we become Malaysians first and our respective creed or ethnicities last, then we are all damned. The political parties, all of them, are too mired with greed and power and lust for votes to put forth this remedy, though for sure that many amongst their ranks would have come across this piece of knowledge: We are Malaysians, and we must all be so; to have anyone claim otherwise is to weaken the state. By indulging them in their racist fantasies, we let ourselves to wallow in our ignorance, smothering ourselves with our own cultural filth.

For fear of the temporal pain of a surgical reform, Malaysian politicians, both regnant and opposition, condemn this body to the slow menial death of this morbid racial cancer.

Bonfire ala Chav

2008-02-01T11:16:00.000-08:00

It's great to open up your uni newsletter and be greeted
by cheery articles such as this one:

Things are heating up in Greenstead

Be on your guard...

Following reports of break ins and arson attacks in the Greenstead area over the recent weeks, we remind students to be vigilant.

8 cars were set alight in the early hours of tuesday morning in Greenstead. Further information can be found here.

We have had numerous reports from students of break ins, if you need any advice on this matter contact Sam Cox, VP academic and welfare.

Glad to know I live in a ghetto war zone.

Shaving: How to do it like a Man

2008-01-30T12:49:00.000-08:00

Boredom sucks. It's so dull around here that I've taken to cleaning my Mach 3 Gillette shaving blade.

Back in the old days, like seven years ago or whatever, I was shaving with a manly shaver where you turn a knob to open and pop in a manly blade you bought by the manly dozen. You lather up your manly foaming brush with the manly foaming soap and you dab it (manly) across your manly face.

Then you shave. Like a man.

Now there's no more of that stuff around. The only shavers you can find are either those new Machs from Gillette whose blades cost a bomb and cheap-ass Bics that makes you feel like you're shaving with a Kodomo Lion toothbrush. You don't feel manly, you feel like a kid. A big hairy kid that shaves with a brightly-coloured toothbrush.

Then you don't find those foam anymore. All you got are these foaming soaps that come out of spray cans. Yes, they're faster, more convenient and you don't have to wash that damn brush anymore because you use your hands now but I want to be slow, inefficient and bothered. Fie with efficiency. If it were up to me, I'd have my shavers hand-crafted every morning by semi-trained sloths dressed in leotards.

Of course, I'd shave myself. I'd be nuts to have a sloth shave my neck. Their hand-eye coordination are like zero. That's because they're wasted. No one has ever watched them closely (because they're so damn boring) but if you persevere you'd catch them taking a good long drag of weed. Now you know why they move so slow. They're stoned.

Or, hah, Stroned.

Heck, I don't even know why I'm cleaning my shaver anyway. It's going to be full of beard bits and foam tomorrow morning anyhow. Once it gets dull, I'll buy more cartridges of blades. Brand-loyal, that's what I am. Shaves the bits that I don't want with stuff from Gillette and wash the bits that I keep with stuff from Imperial Leather.

Imperial Leather. Now that name kicks ass.

I am now a robot.

2008-01-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

Apparently I have now begun to follow a very predictable routine. Classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; gym on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays; groceries every four days; occasionally going to the SU to watch Arsenal if there's a good game on the weekend.

The transformation is complete. I am now a robot.

Should get back up to speed on some stuff. Studies for one thing. Another would be all those invitations on Facebook that I haven't ignored. There's about fifty now. Back when I was new, yeah, I latched some on, then I got bored and over it. No, I do not want to become a Zombie. No, I don't want to receive any Luck. No, I don't want to race small, supposedly (fluff)y animals. I already got a McLaren in Petrolhead. Shouldn't have traded the Elise, in my opinion.

Another thing that people keep on hustling me about is my singlehood. Stop trying to match me up. I'm not Mulan. My female housemate tells me to get a girlfriend, as did my other housemate's girlfriend, one of my secretaries, a few of my mates, my 'older sisters'. And stop pairing me up. This isn't Noah's Ark.

Do I offend them somehow by my being single? Yes, okay, I agree, I can't cook, which is more or less one of the main points put forward. When I have my dinner, people walk past the dining table and snigger. A few try poking it with iron rods. If I opened a restaurant with my cooking, Gordon Ramsay would've torched it down. For someone who takes pride in his cooking, that would be an insult. I'm not that someone. Do not underestimate my ability to foul up the simplest culinary tasks. The only reason I have survived thus far is that I have learned to consume the inconsumable, proof of evolution at work.

Yes, I'm boring. I'm an economics student after all (not a very good one, but whatever). I'm a creature of routine. I'm more or less homely. I'm not creepy. My jokes are lame, but people laugh so that's okay. I'm not fat, though not muscular either. Probably have to change to a protein diet. Those gym sessions drop like 10% of my weight but haven't been putting much tone on. Yes, my hair is a thick mess and my clothes are ancient but I'm a guy. Who looks like a roughed-up homeless dude, but that's still okay. I don't see why there's such a fuss for me to get hitched up.

I just haven't found the one I like, that's all.

Of Fate, Free Will and Invisible Burgers

2007-12-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

I have always argued against the Compatibilist position that fate-cum-pre-determinism can stand to exist harmoniously alongside free will. Even though I have proven to at least my personal satisfaction that Kantianism doesn't disallow Determinism in its working, I can still not see the argument posed by the Compatibilists as valid. I adamantly claim that it is mere unabashed and unsuccessful apologetics to conform a square peg into a round hole.

My reason to doubt their argument, that which I have previously exhibited in my essay,
comes even more basic than the retort of Causal History, a good and logical rebuttal as it is. My claim against the viability of the fate-and-free-will position is simple: pre-determinism does not exist.

I feel perhaps that a brief recollection of the difference between Determinism and pre-determinism is warranted at this point. To a certain extent, I believe personally in the theory of Determinism in which actions manifested in the past could contribute wholly to the cause of the event currently taking place. A simple example is that a stone dropped from a tower causes, a few seconds later through the force of gravity, a stone to hit the pavement below the tower. Cause and effect. It gets complicated once applied to human actions but that is not the scope of this entry.

Pre-determinism, meanwhile, is the foreknowledge (or to the more extreme, fore-planning) of events before it actually happens. That is to say, a being knowing about the sequence of deterministic events that are going to happen. This of course creates another branch of debate in regards to the infeasibility and paradox of how that being (imagine a deity) now with the foreknowledge of what is going to happen, akin to a movie script, is now made redundant to his own planning. Nevertheless, that is the topic of another entry.

No, for this entry, I shall talk of invisible burgers.

If I were to claim to you that I am now munching on an invisible burger, irregardless of your inhibitions of not hurting my feelings, you will most likely choose to be honest and claim that no such burger exists. There is no texture to this sandwich. No substance. No scent. You can knowingly estimate that I enjoy no nutrients from the consumption of this sightless morsel. There is nothing on the plate. There is no burger. Hence, the burger does not exist...

... in the physical world.

How then, can we talk about something that does not exist? There is no such thing as an invisible burger. Arguably, no one can imagine how it would look like (because it's invisible).
There has never been an invisible burger in the history of the world and probably never will. Yet, how can we talk about things that we cannot imagine nor exist?

The invisible burger does exist. It exists in the realm of lexicons, words. It exists merely as a concept, a [burger] that is [invisible]. It does not exist except in our minds and language. If there were no language, there'd be no invisible burgers.

Same with fate.

To have fate, one needs to have someone to 'fate' every thing. To set it. That would be to theists a god. Yet, that itself is a theory. An unproven theory. The only way for us to determine that pre-determinism exists is by looking at a prediction that comes true. If I were a deity, and set that all events in the world will lead Jeremy Clarkson to whack Gordon Ramsay with a Dodge Viper in Lisbon at 12.34 pm at 12 December 2009 witnessed by Natalie Imbruglia etc. etc. then we can test whether pre-determinism exists by seeing that everything happens exactly as was foretold.

Unfortunately, deities are a bit skimp on giving out details. They can predict that bad things can happen, but will never give a date. Which conveniently leaves people guessing and saying "A-HA!" quite a lot. It is untestable. It also means that we can't do anything differently, because if Jeremy Clarkson had a choice to swerve at 12.33 pm then that means that the whole of the pre-determined future is now made un-determined.

Fate is a retrospective concept. People like to think it exists. It gives hope. What it also gives indiscriminately are excuses. We say that "It was fated" AFTER the event, most likely a bad one, very rarely before (unless it's a guess) because we never know what is going to happen. The concept of [fate] is the same as [invisible][burger], unproven, cheap and not nutritious.

Curiously, to have pre-determinism, one needs a god (or gods) to set the what will happen in the future. Pre-determinism requires religion. However, strictly speaking, religion does not require pre-determinism. Pre-determinism is a concept that shackles god to himself. Without pre-determinism, a lot of what are purportedly divine interventions would not have any inconsistencies. Prayers would now have a purpose. Sin and virtue would make sense. God would be free.

No batteries included.

2007-12-26T17:11:00.000-08:00

Last evening's docilely-squandered late night left me awake in the afternoon too late and too little bothered to join the Boxing Day sales, as if there is anything I might want to purchase in the first place. Might want a pair of running shoes to complement my boots, however, so I might propel myself to shop nevertheless tomorrow morning. Later today, more rather.

Today's another wasted day in keeping with yesterday's achievement. A breakfast, for want of a better name, then tried reading some Fukuyama but lost interest a few pages in. After the extremely superior fiction of Cloud Atlas, it seems that more cerebral books fosters less interest within me. Quite a marvellous book, that, says I the eloquent book-reviewer. While the tale of Sonmi in particular was a gem, the whole concoction mixed beautifully. Had to keep myself from cheating by looking past the pages.

Settled on How to Cut a Cake before that too proved tedious. Read some electronic forums and re Postmodernism, Consumerism and the National Grange in Wiki before realising that the clock I bought from Euro-Disney was a tad off.

Fifteen Euros it cost. Made in China. Generic enough clock with naught to distinguish it from any other bar a Mickey clock-face background. Looked akin to something printed out of MS Word, I have to confess. The impulsive non-shopper that I was, I remembered desperately thrashing about the theme park trying to find at least something as a souvenir before settling on this clock. Fleeced as I was, at least its ticks and rings served some utility. No batteries included.

Took it apart.

The thin waft of grease that greeted me as I disassembled it conjured for a second the memory of those Tamiya model-racing cars that I, as well as half the children of the country, used to cobble together like some miniature mechanic. Talks of how the "red engine is superior to the blue standard engine" and the barters and trade in transactions between young friends a decade old rung some strange bells. Where are they now? The flow of time stranded them on some minor eddy somewhere, or off to some foreign strand of river. The cars, too, I suppose.

Fiddled with the innards of the clock for a bit, accomplishing nothing. Just have to keep in mind that the little hand is half an hour too quick past the moment, then.

Put everything back into place. Hummed the sound of a small whirring engine as I put in the battery.

Stock of tea nearly out. Must remember to fetch to Sainsbury's tomorrow. Later today, more rather.

Boxing Night, Early Morning.

2007-12-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

Rather bored. Rather fun thing, this blog. For a given measure of enjoyment . Realised I rather type like a twat. Probably sound like a twat, too. Depressed. Not really.

Should start saving some funds to rent a place for the holidays, lest I sleep on the kerb-side for whole of next year's third quarter. Should do a little reading. Am I this random in real life? Philosophical worry. Terrible thing, thinking too much. Can't sleep, must focus. Find something.

Santa forgot to come. Did not leave anything out in any case so I guess it's deserved. Fireplace sealed up anyway so I'd wager he not be too pleased with it were he to come anyway. Bad neighbourhood. Don't want Santa to get jumped by chavs. Fat guy in red coat and reindeers probably no match for hoodies with bats.

Tea the wrong side of lukewarm. Battery in wireless mouse shudders to its death, moving erratically the pointer on screen. Even wireless mice have their death spasms. It joins its brethren, the long-dead laptop mouse-scroller, before its timely resurrection.

Silence prevails, apart from the muffled television noises next door. Should be concerned, no TV license, you know. At least I don't have to yell at them to shut up like the other day. Four in the morning playing games! Geeks. Rather rude as well, the cousin. Good thing the neighbour's a nice enough chap. Nearly gave his unmannered plebeian sibling a swollen eye for his lack of grace. Learn some civility, may aid in life, that.

Wound myself up a little at that. Not much, spite boiled away after a sit-down with the fellow. Rather ashamed of being quite livid at the moment. Such silence is a luxury not oft-appreciated, maybe.

Must find something to focus on.

My Essay on the Necessity of Free Will in Morality

2007-12-25T13:18:00.000-08:00

My maiden post betrays my purpose of this blog as a means rather than as an ends. Immanuel Kant would be ashamed of this adherent of his, be it as it may that this blog possess not a rational mind in itself beyond what one attributes to it out of charity. An empty page is naught but a mirror for his master's gaze. Does this not mean that I treat harshly what is in effect my own consciousness, in an act of self-flagellation?

Far be it for such an amateur hobby philosopher to indulge in his mad lonely rants thinly-veiled as a soliloquy, one shall now put this blog's raison d'etre into commission: as naught more than a place to taxi my thoughts and cabinet my essays. The first one shall serve a purpose, nay two: to act nobly as a utility of reference; and to stand as a pillar of effort laid low by chance and repression, obliquely ironic in view of its content.

How unfair does it stand, that my work, forged through the blistering fires that raged within my eyelids and labours extended far beyond the calls of many a night's rest, should be discounted for just tawdry a misunderstanding of policies? Submitted electronically within time, the hard-copy I imagined to be passed on the next class like all my other classes in Government, but lo, how was I mistaken.

For my blind oversight, I am punished full measure; for my dedication and refusals at Morpheus' many calls, I receive nothing. To the dredges of posterity, then, shall I cast my essay, my rather darling essay.

PY408 Fall Term Essay

Is Free Will Necessary for Morality?

By

Morality sets a standard to which one should act and this fact infers that anyone who falls short of this standard should be morally censured while those who exceed it is rewarded with praise. Determinism proclaims that all actions and all events are driven, not willed upon. Put together, it would seem absurd to blame a man whose actions are not his as it is to praise a stone in its fall to the ground, so is free will necessary for one to be moral?

This essay shall attempt to shed light on the issue. It will begin by stating the fundamentals of the popular modern moral ethea to form the base upon which the question may rest. In the second part, the essay will discuss the topic of free will and determinism through the arguments of the supporters of compatibilism and those against it, before introducing, hopefully, an adequately lucid method of cross-tabulating the relations between the moral doctrines and free-will and proving the weakness and irrationality of any attempt to assign blame at all, in the manner of a Kantian.

II

Being moral is an endeavour considered both noble to pursue and elusive to grasp. Countless philosophers and priests opined and extolled their own sets of virtues or threw their support behind another’s, accentuating the fact that behaving well is often difficult to accomplish.

The main dispute lies within the very nature of morality itself. Morality is strictly inessential. To be sure, the thought of behaving immorally conjures up onerous images but immorality exists only when morality does, the latter forming the back upon which immorality is slung. The absence of morality leaves us not with immorality, but amorality; a position to which some would still find as horrid but many would see that it truly confers no connotations either way. This ‘amoral-ness’ will be visited upon again late in the essay.

Contemporarily, the two main theories (an arguable statement, though philosophers do tend to be predisposed to arguing) of morality are consequentialism and deontology, both occupying the two opposite ends of appraising moral conduct. The former stresses results in determining the morality of actions, while deontology focuses on intentions and duty.

Consequentialism is best portrayed by Mill’s Utilitarianism. In finding the best and most moral course of action, one would weigh the benefits and costs of all alternatives and choose the one which offers the most utility expressed in total amounts of happiness. Without being said, utilitarianism requires one to be able to both quantify abstract concepts, such as happiness and suffering, and to be able to reasonably predict future outcomes from ones potential actions with sufficient accuracy. While both of these presumptions, at least in a personal opinion, stretch heavily against the doctrine, the theory is not without its attractions. By reducing morality to mathematics, it offers a measurable way to conduct oneself morally, and it is thus easier for one to judge oneself and others.

The other alternative is deontology, the ethics of the rightness of actions and of duty. Mostly made renowned by Immanuel Kant and his Metaphysics of Morals, deontology examines not the results of ones actions in order to declare it moral but instead looks upon the intentions that led up to its performance. To this end, duties and maxims which are moral are to be constructed and obeyed, even to the point where morally reprehensible results are reached where either it is attributed to a faulty maxim or an unfortunate but inevitable circumstance.

To ascertain the morality of the maxims, Kant created the test of universability and the law of means and ends. In them, men will shed their compliance with externally-, and arguably subjectively-, imposed morality and become legislators in their own right of laws in ‘the kingdom of ends’. Each man will treat another as not a means to an end, but every rational being as an end in itself, and commit actions only so long as it is excusable for him to imagine another person to do morally commit them as well. This of course led to the thought of absolute moral values to adhere to. In such a case, the virtue ethics of the ancient philosophers can also be classed as such.

A more modern doctrine in regards to morality is of morality being nothing more than a social construct. The writings of Rawls in his Theory of Justice treated men as signatories to a social contract, and it can be said that morals are the values that the society upholds and nothing more. This in turn leads to the idea of moral relativism, the antithesis to absolute morals. In such a manner, can any action be judges moral, free will or none?

III

Now that the essay has outlined the basic doctrines on morality and how they judge action by, we can return to the original question: ‘Is free will necessary to be moral?’ At a glance, the intuitive answer would be “yes, it must”. For a person to be judged to have acted morally, one would need to assume that he must have had made a moral choice, and choices, as a rule must represent at least two alternatives to be considered as such[1]. Therein lays the other kink in the question that needs to be straightened.

A theory arises, from both religious texts and advances in psychology, that instead of free will, the actions of the world are determined by factors beyond the agent’s control. Even the purview in the illusion of choice is determined by factors such as desire and even by the tiny movements of atomic particles. The extent to which one accepts the degree of free-will and determinism created two positions: the Compatibilist and the Incompatibilist.

The Compatibilist insists that there can indeed be compatibility between free will and deterministic events, even though it may seem to fly against the face of free choice. Surely for one to choose, it must mean that one must be presented with an option between two choices bearing different results? If the relation between the causes and effect is one-one, implying a deterministic relation, then how can one be faulted for damages or praised for virtue?

To get around this, Harry Frankfurt argues that while the result is determined, the intentions that lead up to it does not[2]. A man is free to ‘want to want to do [an action]’; free to will, hence free will, even though the results may not owe an iota to his intentions. This motive perhaps finds its roots in religious doctrines from which springs forth another sort of determinism: Pre-determinism.

The Incompatibilist will argue against this by stating that no moral judgment can be passed as long as the Causal History Principle is in place (in that any and all prior actions will lead up to one and only one particular event) and that for someone to be vindicated, she must be able to change, at the point in time when she makes her will, the whole causal history to effect her choice, which is impossible since all causals are alien-deterministic[3]. This essay, too, has a similar conclusion but by a different method presented later in the essay. At any rate, this argument is likely to be presented by the Incompatibilist of the ‘Hard-Determinist’ persuasion who believes strongly that determinism outside the agents’ control play an overriding part in the events and choices of men. This alien-determinism naturally forms the conclusion that in no act can a man be blamed or praised, as this essay’s model will also attempt to prove later on.

The other branch of philosophers who believe in the incompatibility between free will and determinism are the Libertarians. To them, determinism holds much less sway than free will, believing that agents can choose to act without being causally determined by unchangeable factors. This position will oddly occupy the same Kantian position as the Compatibilists as the a priori friendliest system to the Libertarians, Consequentialism, will prove to be the most rubbish moral doctrine.

IV

All the arguments put forward by the defenders of each doctrine involves presumptuous examples of moral dilemma and obfuscating arguments bordering on the pedantic, both approaches, though indispensable and un-dismissable, I will choose to abandon in this essay for want of clarity, lucidity and perhaps a fresh approach. This is a simple model of eight boxes, analysing the relationship between intentions and results[4].

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(i)

Consequence

T

T

F

F

(ii)

Intention

T

F

T

F

In the above schedule T implies a favourable action or result, and F an unfavourable one.

Here we have the basic connection between what one wills, and what happens after. In (a) we can see that our agent has chosen to commit himself to an intention favourable to him and his conscience, a ‘good’ choice, which is synonymous with what the agent thinks is a moral act and hence does not go against his personal maxims or convictions. We can see that in the case of (a), the consequence of his conduct is favourable, both to him and whomsoever the consequence effects (see below). Thus, in a normal situation, his actions come under no scrutiny either from himself or from those around him, simply because he has done nothing wrong. It is vice versa with the case of (d) where the agent’s bad intentions led to a bad outcome, for which he can understandably be reprimanded for.

It needs to be clarified that for the intentions or consequence to be good and favourable, it doesn’t need to grant a benefit to those involved. It is merely enough for it to cost or disgust them less than the alternative so that it is a more appealing option in comparison to the dearer alternative, in a very much of a utilitarian manner. Likewise, a deliberate difference in the portrayal of consequences and intentions is the public nature of the consequence, as opposed to the more private intentions, a matter which will be touched on later.

The nomenclature becomes less tepid once we realise that the schedule corresponds with the two moral doctrines we have observed in the beginning of the essay. Consequentialism concerns itself with actions which lead to beneficial consequences and thus identifies with row (i) and advocates actions in which there is a value T within the row. Likewise, deontology is identified with row (ii) and in turn advocates actions in which there is a value T within its respective row. Hence we see that Mill’s doctrine permits the events of (a) and (b), while Kant’s doctrine permits events (a) and (c).

At this juncture, we introduce the assumption that it is morally unacceptable to have mismatched intentions and consequences. Intuitively, we cannot accept the moral result of such a mismatch as readily as we accept a righteous man rewarded (a) or a sly man caught (d). True, if one were to adhere to one doctrine or the other, this persuasion may result in one having more clarity as to which choice has comparative advantage, but surely one would not wish upon another the scenario which forces him to save one innocent young girl from an oncoming train in place of ten errant boys. As such we can say that a mismatch between the T and F values of rows (i) and (ii) will result in a moral dilemma which otherwise would not have occurred.

V

However, the schedule above is misleading. It makes no partition between what one would know and what one normally wouldn’t, as if men could judge a person’s intentions or have foreknowledge of future events like an omniscient god. The schedule did not take into account the effects of time and uncertainty.

Conceptualise a timeline for our agent, with the exact point whence he sets his intention and proceeds to act as time t. Subsequently, we can assign the point in time at which the agent mulls his intention as time (t-1) and the moment the result from his action manifests itself as time (t+1). To be prudent of the word limit, in the same schedule, we will also include the social factor, the “others” externally who judge the agent.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

Consequence

T

T

F

F

?

?

T

F

(ii)

Intention

T

F

T

F

T

F

?

?

This schedule is the same as the earlier one above, but with the ‘?’ mark referring to a factor unknown. All of the new four columns share a common feature, though not in the same context.

For our agent at time (t-1), he can’t be said, when push comes to shove, to know what his intended actions will produce at time (t+1). We thus encounter one of the problems with consequentialism that the essay mentioned earlier. One cannot consistently base ones future actions on the future results that one cannot reliably predict and still maintain that that system is stable.

Logically and strictly speaking, at time (t-1) our agent cannot use utilitarianism to determine his course of action because he cannot assign any value to the consequence of any of his actions with certainty. He can certainly make a guess or a prediction but no one will claim that the results are a certainty. No one, that is, apart from the determinist, but even she cannot say what will occur, merely that it is set and unchanging.

Kantians would find no trouble at time (t-1). In fact, it simplifies Kantianism so much that in fact it removes any possibility of having a moral dilemma by encouraging our agent to have good intentions by making F an irrational choice, though still leaving our agent the option to choose it irregardless. Aside, by assigning an equal value to both the consequences of (e) and (f), this becomes the Compatibilists’ proof by Frankfurt mentioned earlier which perhaps shows that determinism and Kantianism do not disprove each other. As it stands, this is one argument that supports the idea that free choice (and thus free will) is unnecessary to Kantianism and perhaps to morality, too.

At time (t+1) our agent of course is now privy to the results of his actions, but to apply consequentialism at this juncture on his previous decision is pointless and retroactive.

However, (g) and (h) do measure consequentialistically. It is the retrospective part of our agent at time (t+1) held independent of his own knowledge of his previous intentions. Consequently this is how consequentialists externally judge the actions of others and how philosophers often approach moral dilemmas, falsely in the author’s opinion, because they know the intentions of time (t-1) with even less certainty than the Kantian knows about the future.

Take for example, a thief caught in the act. Certainly, the act is wrong and deserves condemnation and perhaps some would go to the extent of vilifying him. This corresponds to (h). If they were to know that he stole food to feed his hungry children then some of them would certainly consider it a moral dilemma, corresponding with (c).

What differs (h) and the seemingly comparable (f) is the timeline. The results of intentions are truly unknowable and this uncertainty plays a role in helping to form the action. In comparison, the events of (h) are done and the only uncertainty is not due to time but of un-enlightenment. No one, for example, would know about how our agent sacrificed an old woman to save a child in a burning home if no one knew and he never told. If our agent feels later on that it was against his convictions, then he’ll be in a moral dilemma (b) but it would be confined only to him, expressed perhaps in the form of remorse or guilt. To the outsider without the agent’s knowledge of the decision at (t-1), he would judge matters as (g), and think nothing more of it.

VI

We shall now insert our final factor, determinism, into the schedule. Assuming that determined events are blameless, the symbol (-) shall represent the factors made immaterial.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

(i)

(j)

(k)

(i)

Consequence

T

T

F

F

?

?

T

F

T

F

-

(ii)

Intention

T

F

T

F

T

F

?

?

-

-

-

We can see that if events at time (t-1) are determined [for which now ‘intentions’ become a misnomer], represented by (i) and (j), consequentialism is vindicated. At moment (t+1) the consequentialist judgment would be whole and correct. However, the scenario, while not impossible to happen, it is unlikely for the simple reason that it can only happen once in a universe previously deterministic because Causal History is now broken at time t. One can comment snidely that this is the single moment that consequentialism is not made invalid.

At this final point, it is prudent to make a final distinction between (e)-(f) Kantianism and Hard-Determinism. The former (in itself) tolerates the Compatibilist argument if determinism is true, but even if determinism is disproved, (e)-(f) Kantianism survives where Compatibilism doesn’t. Hard-Determinism forces upon us through its definition given earlier, the scenario (k). If consequences are determined, then at no time can any previous decisions be anything more than superfluous consequentialistically. Kantianism simply doesn’t give a toss.

VII

In conclusion, is free will necessary?

If you insist on having morality, then it depends on which yardstick you choose to measure with. Consequentialism requires free choice (to be more precise, it cannot accommodate any position of determinism apart from the one moment mentioned above) and hence must presuppose free will. Deontology finds free will inconsequential and unnecessary. Given the bad show the former has done in the model, one can freely dismiss consequentialism which leaves free will ultimately as unnecessary. It is a shame that for want of words this essay could not go on a polemic to argue for the amorality instead settling for the one by Hard-Determinists, which is sufficient enough.

(3003 words)

Bibliography

Ayers, M.R. The Refutation of Determinism (Methuen & Co.; London) 1968
Kant, I. translated by Gregor, M. The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge) 1991
Norman, R. The Moral Philosophers (Oxford University Press; Oxford) 1998
Pereboom, D. Living Without Free Will (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge) 2001
Rawkin, K.W. Choice and Chance (Basil Blackwell; Oxford) 1961
Wegner, D.M. The Illusion of Conscious Will (Bradford Books; London) 2002

[1] Ayers, M.R. The Refutation of Determinism (Methuen & Co.; London) 1968 p.2

[2] Pereboom, D. Living Without Free Will (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge) 2001 p. 101

[3] Ibid. p. 48

[4] This table takes inspiration from a Determinism-Free Will table by Strawson in Pereboom, D. Living Without Free Will (Cambridge University Press; Cambridge) 2001 p. xix.

		(a)	(b)	(c)	(d)
(i)	Consequence	T	T	F	F
(ii)	Intention	T	F	T	F