THINK

In a much bigger picture, various bad things happen to people all over the world and all the time. There is no need to specially pick out one bad thing and apply special consideration and treatment while demeaning the rest of the problems that happen to people on a regular basis.

As a race, we humans are dying day by day since the time we are born into this world. If we do not wish to die faster than we can avoid, then we inevitably have to face up to all sorts of risks, internal and external.

When talking about care for the disabled, most people equate “disabled person” to a person who has musculoskeletal disabilities. Marketing materials also often portray handicapped persons on wheel chairs to stir emotions. People tend to empathise and believe we need to cater special arrangements for them because the ill-informed are made to believe that these people are the minorities (we don’t see handicapped persons everywhere) and that they are being ostracized by the society.

However, disability is more than just all the handicapped persons. A disabled person can be in one of the 14 categories recognised and documented in US Social Security Blue Book:

1. Musculoskeletal System
2. Special Senses and Speech
3. Respiratory System
4. Cardiovascular System
5. Digestive System
6. Genitourinary Impairments
7. Haematological Disorders
8. Skin Disorders
9. Endocrine System
10. Multiple Body System Impairments
11. Neurological Problems
12. Mental Disorders
13. Malignant Neoplastic Disease
14. Immune System Disorders

People with such disabilities can range from unnoticeable to mild to severe; and it is also possibility that many with such disabilities never realise they had it until much later.

Disabled people can exhibit various characteristics which may affect performance of work and its environment such as:

• Inability to learn, integrate, express
• Inability to calculate
• Have to visit toilet very frequently
• Fatigue, tiredness, sleepiness
• Unable to work under certain environments, e.g. sunlight, smoke, low ventilation, high altitudes
• Excessive medical leave, due to weak immune system
• Infectious disease carrier e.g. bronchitis, flu

So then how can we cater to all the disabled in our society? Clearly, there is no other better way than to spare them from the requirements of work. They are pathetic enough.

You see, the human race does not stubbornly, unreasonably and intentionally inflict pain and suffering on itself. Life, aka the process of dying, does it itself.

When we remove all our emotional attachments, we work logically. Logic says that we should mostly leave the disabled people alone and make the others work hard for the economy, for the country and for the world.

We can spare all the disabled persons the hardship of work, but the sad consequence is that more and more people, due to life undoing itself, is claiming social security benefits for their disability (social security claims is made possible due to our emotional calling), but governments and organisations are finding it harder and harder to support these people on top of the aging populations. Alas, we have to rope in the help of the disabled and squeeze every ounce of them still functional.

Look back at the list again and see what we can do. Well, it is a no brainer that the easiest group to target is the handicapped people. We just need to build ramps and lifts to ferry these people to their desk and they will be able to support themselves, and then convince the public and corporations that they are still cognitively functional and adequate to carry out a wide range of tasks.

Quite ironically, somehow most of us have twisted mentalities and doubts about the very society and world that we thrive in: So here we have this system of human treatment whereby through natural, logical selection, we pick the most enabled persons to work. In fact most societies strictly require all abled persons to work otherwise they will be discriminated based on social stigma, but we do not frown upon unemployed persons who are handicapped because we naturally excuse them from work. Then, at the same time, we think that this preferential treatment for the handicapped is a form of ill-treatment just because if they wanted work, they cannot get.

There are many more disabled people than just the handicapped alone, and without doubt, the more “social dependents” we can remove from this group the better. But remember not to be emotional and always be clear of the logical reasons to do this. Do not blame the society, for this is life. Ultimately, rather than we finding ways to help the disabled, the disabled themselves should find their own means to continue this living. They took the risk of living therefore they have to face up to the consequences now (Begs for a whole new topic of “Why and how am I here on earth). I am sorry to say, but most of these people really just cannot stand up to a fair and competitive environment being handicapped. In case a person is really talented, he will have his chance naturally and will not require any social help, for example, Beethoven who is deaf.

Finally, the decision to give special treatment to “disabled persons” in itself is discriminatory. How can we decide if a person is disabled or not; what is the difference between unnoticed, mild and severe conditions? Do we only empathise with the critically ill but overlook the welfare of the potentially ill persons? Do we not judge work performance the same “human” standards but instead have different set of standards based on how many limbs you have; how good your bladder is; or how glucose intolerant you are? The lesser known truth is that there is no clear line between an abled person and a disabled person if look beyond just the set of handicapped persons.

Have you wondered why your some people cannot follow simple instructions; or keeps on making typo mistakes in documents and reports; or cannot deliver a good presentation to clients; or have bad driving skills; or is always sleeping on the job? Unlikely as you may argue, chances are, they may be suffering from symptoms of disabilities that are lesser empathised and publicised by the public. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to help these people and worse of all, we are not even helping at all! Most of these poor folks will be dismissed as incapable, lazy or simply falling below expected performance.

All in all, “helping” the disabled is just a marketing cliché and a tone set to stir emotions and garner support for the real question of “what to do with the disabled” since we cannot and do not want to support them. Any mandatory special treatment given to these people only imposes more burdens for the rest of the human race.

Conventional wisdom says that one will never know what will happen (in the future), that we face uncertainties down the road; it also tells us that compared to the future, we know much more of what had happened in the past. But I beg to differ.

I could argue that it is actually easier to predict the future with a high level of certainty than to know what events had unveiled in the past arising the present.

For example, if it is said that the answer to an equation is , we can never quite know whether it was or ; even if some of the operands were known, there are still quite many possible equations that gives the answer . Conversely, if in the present we set the operands to it will always equal . In fact predicting the future and pre-setting the future is what we do on a daily basis, especially in science and engineering.

The problem with being certain about the past is that it requires us to be certain about the number of pieces that makes up the present, but that is not an easy task at all as we cannot logically proof that there is no coin in the room when we only cannot not find a coin.

Well, as always, conventional wisdom contradicts each other, the future is indeed in our hands.

I cannot justify the existence of the human race.

People say it is “immoral” to kill or take life away but we have been doing so for all ages since the dawn of time. Even the life of a plant, is still life.

If we should not kill, then what justifies its survival?

Is not killing with one’s own hands, only a way to avert the emotional distress generated in our mental state? Then how can not killing be moral if it is based on a selfish motive?

Some say we do not kill, because the victim deserves to live. Then justify it!

Less accidents and natural disasters, living things are most killed by other living things mainly as a resource. But the human species, being at the top of the food chain, are resources to no other.

As a matter of fact, the people are mostly killed because someone else finds us a thorn in the eye.

All humans do is consuming resources, consume and destroy other living things.

All other living things deserve to live because they serve as resources to other species in the ecology e.g. food chain, except the human species.

“Human resource” should really be a misnomer.

Big corporations like to speak of “human resource” and how to make use of it to create more financial success. “Human resource” is one of the greatest delusion and excuse for human survival and existence. As much as we like to believe that living humans (rather than dead ones – like other dead things we consume) are resources, we are merely consumers and we deplete resources at an increasingly higher rate than before.

Let us rationalize this “financial success”.

In a profiting trade or transaction, a resource is exchanged for money. The resource is ultimately consumed, but the money is not. The resource in its manufactured form can be food, a car, furniture or a house; but in their raw form, they all stem from the basic ingredients found on earth, metals, plants, animals, fuels etc. These resources are depleted with every exchange.

Big corporations use “human resource” in more and more “efficient” ways to generate money, but at the same time, deplete resources at alarming rates. The outcome is that now we have lots of money to share and distribute, but no resources.

Now, for goodness sake, how deluded humankind is to think that “human resource” is what we think it is? The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that humankind enjoys feeding their ego.

What good is financial success and loads of paper money when there are not enough resources to exchange for?

Environmentalists like to speak of a sustainable environment. If you study about sustainable farming, you will most definitely learn that sustainability is about control and balance of the farm ecology.

Superimpose the same story on the earth ecology, it is not difficult to see that the cause of imbalance is the human species, and the mode of control is to kill and/or stop procreating. But I know, it is counter intuitive to any animal instinct and almost impossible to implement.

But know this, we are supposed to be the beings with the highest order of sentience, capable of discerning the greater purpose for the benefit of all of livingkind.

The reason why we are designated to be at the top of the food chain is because; we will and must also know sacrifice and self destruction.

Suicide, contraceptive, abortion, cigarettes, drugs, disease, weapons, hate, war are all that we have learnt to do.

I think it was back in primary school I learnt in a science class that human cells are suicidal (ref. apoptosis and paraptosis). This counter-intuitive nature of a basic living unit etched in my head forever.

Indeed, even nature teaches as that in order to sustain live, we must also learn to suicide at the same time.

It can be seen that the principles of life sustainability is not much different between cells, organisms and animals.

Most statistics against software piracy assumes that each pirated software equals one lost sale, and goes on to further “estimate” the total number of illegal duplicates. The total lost is often cited as 200 billion per year at least. But this methodology is questionable.

1. There are many copies of illegal software used by people who can do without them. In other words, they would never spend money to purchase them.
2. If piracy were not possible, sofware companies could potentially lose the same 200 billion per year worth of users who are interested in the product and may make a purchase decision thereafter.
3. Software piracy allows people to work more efficiently at infitnite gains (per dollar spent for the sofware) and generates additional disposable income (from the savings) that can and will be injected back into the economy.

I was trying to impress a not-so-clever person with a riddle like this:

Rob has a secret letter for Sally. In order not to give the suspicious delivery man, Tory, any chance at reading its content, Rob puts the letter in a specially created rigid steel box and locks it with an unbreakable lock. How can Sally get the secret letter without using Rob’s key or damaging the steel box or the lock?

Now, you try it!

— SPOILER BEYON THIS LINE —

Obviously, she could not get it so I explained:

After Sally recieves the box, she also locks the box with her own lock. Now locked with 2 locks, Tory delivers the steel box back to Rob who will unlock his own lock and then send it back to Sally again to uncover the secret letter.

But she still cannot get what I said. I even had to demostrate physically to let her see. Before I finally conclude that she really is no-so-clever, she turned to me with an extremely puzzled look and said, why all the trouble? Sally can just give Rob her own box and lock, and we can save Tory 1 trip!

— SPOILER ENDS —-

I was actually trying to impart some knowledge on crpytography, starting from the old theories. The riddle is an analogy of shift transformation used ages ago. But she manage to gave an analogy of the modern crytogrphy is the RSA, public key method. In the end, I was the one getting super impressed.

It goes on to show that being able to think or generate new ideas does not necessarily depend on intelligence, past experience or knowledge on the subject. A creative mind may be all you need

So much for recommending web2.0 technologies to all my clients but not having the chance to seriously look into building my business around it.

By chance, I just did an in depth review on the latest applications that the web 2.0 community has been developing and realized how much it has evolve since its coming not many years ago. I must say I am totally amazed at the rate things are developing and the ever increasing ways implemented to keep people networked together to create a uniform marketplace.

The result is a whole new paradigm shift in the marketing perspective. Everything we do now is highly customer oriented and marketing needs to be focused on answering the wants of these feature-hungering people. Businesses can no longer hide negative comments from the community, instead, must learn to embrace them gracefully and work towards appeasing the users.

Gaining and an internet presence is much more easier today, the real challenge is whether or not businesses can stand up to the scrutiny of the vast community, not forgetting that it is also a breeding ground for competition.