I’m not just talking about just Google failing here, I’m talking about the ENTIRE INTERNET failing!

Crowdfunding is exploding, and kickstarter is exploding with it.

In 2012 alone, Kickstarter successfully helped start 18,109 projects, from pledges of nearly 300 million. That’s a lot of cash from just random strangers hoping to help someone else realize their dreams, or to help the public in general.

Noteworthy projects include an open-source geiger counter to detect radiation levels in Japan, a kickstarter initiative that released recordings of Classical music to the public domain and funding a Bus Stop in Georgia.

Previously I wrote about a great report from MASTIC that surveyed the perception of the Malaysian public regarding Science and Technology. What I failed to mention or rather what I ‘chose’ not to mention at the time was a specific portion of the report that dealt with the Theory of Evolution, and the reason why I didn’t want to address it was to not distract from the original intention of that post.

This however, is a different post, one with a different intention that aims to ‘inspire’ some question regarding the Malaysian public attitude towards the Theory of Evolution and towards science in general.

What MASTIC says about Evolution

1. Human Beings as we know today developed from earlier species  of Animals (True or False)

2. The Universe began with a big explosion (True of False)

For both these questions, MASTIC believed that the answer was False! This is of course inconsistent with what the European and the American survey that deemed the right answer to be TRUE! More importantly– this answer is inconsistent with the scientific evidence at large.

When government officials begin to inject their personal beliefs into the scientific establishment without any regard for the evidence to the contrary– then we begin to see a decline in science, that’s when science itself comes under attack. Science is above all interested in the pursuit of truth, and that pursuit has led it to the theory of evolution that establishes a framework to understand the diversity of species in the known world–both past and present–and connect the past to the present via Darwinian natural selection. Evolution maybe a theory, but it definitely isn’t theoretical–and the scientific community has long accepted Evolution as ‘THE’ definitive theory that explains the diversity of species that exist today (and yesterday), while its supposed ‘competition’ receives no attention at all–mostly because the supposed competition of the theory of evolution are without basis and are not supported by the evidence.

The fact that MASTIC think that they can change the answers to something so fundamentally agreed upon by scientist the world over is disturbing–nearly all of biology involves a solid understanding of Evolution, and yet here is MASTIC denying a scientifically accepted FACT!

The Star today reported on ‘4D fortune teller’ who was arrested for in connection with a cheating case worth over RM1 Million.

Of course most of think that the guy got what was coming to him, however the question becomes how do we say a ‘4D Fortune Teller’ was cheating–to the point where we can charge him in court (under section 420A of the Penal code). The report goes on to state that:

DCP Mohd Shukri said the man would distribute pamphlets in various areas, highlighting his supposed ability to predict lottery numbers.

“When he gets a call from someone interested in his service, he would tell the person to deposit money into his bank account to perform special’ prayers to get the lottery number.”

“He would also scare the victims by telling them they would suffer bad luck if they did not deposit the money,” he said.

My only question is, why was this one particular person singled out?

Why not go after the entire Feng Shui industry in Malaysia–after all don’t they promise the same thing? Isn’t Lilian Too doing nothing more than promising her customers better luck? Isn’t this guy doing the same thing–promising his customers better luck (albeit in more concrete terms)

We haven’t even begun to talk about how Financial institutions make predictions of the stock markets by placing ‘buy’, ‘sell’ or ‘hold’ calls on various counters–does anybody do a thorough analysis on these calls to make sure they’re nothing more than just random guesses? In fact for the most part, many studies have shown that Index funds (that simply buy all the stocks in a given index at a weighted average) do better than actively managed funds (where a fund manager actively selects counters from a specific index). 

The study makes for a good read–but the main point I was interested though is this one question on how the Public Viewed science, in which 3 possible answers were given, either they thought Science did more good than harm, Science did more harm than good or that Science was neutral. In 1998, nearly half the population viewed science as causing more good than harm, but in 2008 that number increases to nearly 3 quarters. So we see a stark rise of about 25% of people going from being on the fence about science to believing it causes more good than harm.

However, there were about 8.7% of the population who believed science caused more harm than good, these are those who think that science has a negative effect on society, and what’s interesting is that the number of people in this country has barely changed in the last 10 years, remaining more or less constant around the 6-8% range.

Anyway, they offered a ‘vintage’ phone offer that includes phones like the Nokia 3310,  that comes with interchangeable covers, clock and alarm and best of all–an awesome snake game!! For the low low price of just Rm1499, you get the phone and 30GB of data–although that may a bit of challenge to use the Data, given that the phones pre-date not just 3G or LTE–but EDGE as well.

Finally after a year of procrastinating I finally sat for my TOGAF exam. I’m glad I finally did it, but I should have done it much earlier.

A lot of people wonder what TOGAF really is, TOGAF is an acronym that stands for the The Open Group Architecture Framework–yes it’s a mouthful and you’ve probably never heard of it before, but I personally believe architecture is a great place to be in these days, and ever since I moved into solution architecture (slightly more than a year ago) I’ve never regretted it.

Studying for the exam was straightforward enough, and the entire exam takes about 2.5 hours, not bad in comparison for the 4 hour PMP exam or the 3.5 hours for the CCBA. However, where TOGAF slightly differs is the fact that the certification involves two exams, aptly called part 1 and part 2.

Part 1 consist of 40 multiple choice questions, and unlike most other examinations this one has 5 possible options. In my opinion this is actually the harder of the two exams, but this one is a pre-requisite for part 2. If you fail part 1, you go home.

Part 2 consist of 8 ‘complex scenario questions’, which unlike the straightforward questions in part 1 consist of a complex scenario and 4 possible answers. However, the scenarios are quite elaborate AND take time just to digest and read –let alone answer. Once you’ve digested and truly understood the question, there’s still a matter of choosing an answer from a list of 4 possible answers–the only catch is that the answers aren’t right or wrong–there is a gradient to the answers and only the ‘fully right’ answer scores you full marks, the other ‘partially right’ answer score you fewer points. The last thing to note about part 2 is that it’s open book, which is helpful only if you know where to find the information from the 700 page TOGAF documentation.

In conjuction with the release of the Government Transformation Project Annual report, the Star today reported:

The Malaysian education system is on track to becoming among the world’s best as stringent monitoring is in place to ensure its success under the Government Transformation Plan (GTP).

“The rate of improvement of the system in the last 15 years is among the fastest in the world,” the GTP report said.

Malaysia also ranks among the top in the world for equitable access to education.

So after the furore over the Malaysian Insider article that wrongly accused the Government of using spyware on its citizens, the MCMC rightly issued a press statement denouncing the article.

Unfortunately, even the MCMC has to do some reading up a bit before it post up press releases. According to the MCMC press release which you can read in it’s entirety here:

We often talk about how where the next Apple, Google or Amazon will come from, rarely do we ask ourselves where the next Red Cross or Salvation Army would come from.

What’s even rarer is the question of how we can get our local NGO and charities to stop being Jaguh Kampungs and start being real world-changers that affect change in the areas of their focus.

Dan Pallotta thinks he has the answer, but it involves giving up some of the deeply entrenched notions we have around charities are start looking at charity in a more holistic way.