Wayang boy

Wayang Boy is a family comedy about Singaporeans living amidst the influx of foreign immigrants.

The main character, Raja is new in Singapore and he was brought to Singapore by his Chinese stepmother Emma after his father married her. On his first day of school, Raja is branded ‘a foreign talent’ by the class bully, Xavier. The two promptly get into a fight, dragging classmate Shi Han, into the mess.
As punishment, the principal lays an ultimatum: join the Chinese Opera troupe, or face a month in detention. Queen Elizabeth is visiting the school in three weeks and the principal wants to impress her with a multi-racial Chinese Opera performance.

Through the mayhem of the children’s multi-racial wayang performance, everyone learns anew the meaning of living together as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion.

Just like in reality, this film shows the part of Singapore where there are many foreign immigrants coming into the country for various reasons. It also shows the perspective of what we usually view these foreign immigrants as, and how they despise our view of them. Moreover, this film teaches us that no matter what our backgrounds are, we can always be united as one and work together through times of difficulties.

Consumerism

http://www.savefoodcutwaste.com/food-waste/food-wastage-in-singapore/

http://www.nea.gov.sg/energy-waste/waste-management/waste-statistics-and-overall-recycling
Yes, I do believe that our society leads to a consumerist lifestyle.
Food waste is created in Singapore every single day from our food cycle – production, distribution, retail to consumption
In 2016, Singapore’s food wastage was at 679,900 tonnes. Recycling of food was only 14% of the food wastage.

Some causes of food wastage includes cosmetic filtering, business practices, cultural practices, etc.

Cosmetic filtering:
Occurs in farms, wholesale and wet markets, supermarkets to homes, where food that looks “ugly”, damaged or less than perfect according to market or personal standards are discarded even if it’s edible.
Every day, 250 vegetable sellers at a market in Pasir Panjang spend dusk to dawn trimming, preening and discarding “ugly” vegetables to prepare them for sale to hawkers and wet market sellers.
The criteria: vegetables must be free of pest marks, be in the right shade of colour and not look too ripe.
“Of course I’ve to make my vegetables look nice. If not, who will buy them?” says stall owner Albert Li, 60.
He estimates about one-third of all vegetables at the wholesale market get thrown away for not meeting the mark.
Based on our observations at food waste recycling company IUT Global, the market discards up to 30,000 kilos of unwanted vegetable parts and blemished fruits every day.
– The Era Of Supermarkets, Food Waste Republic

Business practices
Food wastage occurs in food stalls and restaurants when staff and chefs are not properly trained or managed resulting in badly cooked food, or when chefs don’t see the need to cook less and save money for the boss. In addition, improper inventory management where chefs order more instead of less to play safe, also results in food wastage.
There is also the problem of the full-shelf display for most bakeries and cafes:
“It is a universal technique for retailers to display large quantities of goods in their stores to generate interest and excitement and to increase the likelihood of purchasing,” says retail expert Lynda Wee, 46. …
But when the cakes and bread are unsold, it is common for the food to be thrown away at the end of the day.
Food From The Heart, a voluntary welfare organisation that channels unwanted bread from hotels and bakeries to needy families and individuals, collects approximately $150,000 worth of unsold bread and buns monthly. The volume of bread collected fills up around 900 supermarket trolleys.
– The Missing Profits, Food Waste Republic

Cultural practices
Asians tend to provide an abundance of food to guests, and at social or festive events such as wedding banquets and annual dinner and dance events, it is common to see guests unable to finish the eight or nine-course dinner, and thus wasting food.
It is also common to see food waste at buffets, where the all-you-can-eat concept see customers take more food than they can finish. At least 10 to 20% of prepared food goes to waste.
When guests or customers at restaurants can’t finish their food and there are leftovers, some people find it embarrassing to doggie-bag the food as the practice is seen to go against social norms.

Consumerism culture results in environmental impacts such as toxic byproducts produced and land pollution. It is also a contributing factor to poverty and hunger globally.
There are also social impacts such as the unfair treatment of workers.

Singapore

1. Singlish

Due to the multi-racial society in Singapore, there is a mixture of language when locals communicate with one another. Singaporeans usually communicate with English, along with a hint of other languages added in. This set us apart from others as most countries do not have a multi-racial society, thus they do not have a unique language like Singlish.

2.  Cuisines (food court)

There are a variety of cuisines available in the food courts found in Singapore. They come from different cultural and racial backgrounds of the people in Singapore. Moreover, food courts are also unique to Singapore as it is a place where there is a variety of food sold, unlike in other countries where people have to visit specific restaurants for a specific type of cuisine.

3.  Multiracial

Singapore is a multiracial society consisting mainly of Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Eurasians. This is something unique to Singapore as it is rare to find a county with different religions and races living in harmony and peace. Moreover, many of us have identified ourselves as Singaporeans, rather than the separate racial groups.

 

Global corruption

Through the video, I have further understood more about corruption happening around the world, especially at such a big scale. Despite knowing that there is corruption happening everywhere, I am surprised about the familiar names of big companies such as HSBC bank and Shell corporation being mentioned in the video.

I am largely for globalisation.

Globalisation have brought us many benefits. It allows greater free trade, as goods and services are more conveniently exchanged between countries. This in turn have made it easier for countries as they are able to specialise in producing goods where they have a comparative advantage. Moreover, globalisation also resulted in an increased labour migration. Hence, giving advantages to both the workers and recipient countries. Therefore, I feel that globalisation helped to solve many problems like unemployment and poverty.

However, globalisation does have its cons. One main thing is that it made the rich richer, while making the poor poorer, as resources are sucked from the poorer regions by the richer ones. Despite this, I feel that there are ways in which such problems can be overcome, like the transparency standard mentioned in the video.

Thus I am largely for globalisation.

 

Rise of the Machines: The Future has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans

http://www.wired.com/brandlab/2015/04/rise-machines-future-lots-robots-jobs-humans/

The robots haven’t  just landed in the workplace—they’re expanding skills, moving up the corporate ladder, showing awesome productivity and retention rates, and increasingly shoving aside their human counterparts. One multi-tasker bot, from Momentum Machines, can make (and flip) a gourmet hamburger in 10 seconds and could soon replace an entire McDonalds crew. A manufacturing device from Universal Robots doesn’t just solder, paint, screw, glue, and grasp—it builds new parts for itself on the fly when they wear out or bust. And just this week, Google won a patent to start building worker robots with personalities.

As intelligent machines begin their march on labor and become more sophisticated and specialized than first-generation cousins like Roomba or Siri, they have an outspoken champion in their corner: author and entrepreneur Martin Ford. In his new book, Rise of the Robots, he argues that AI and robotics will soon overhaul our economy.

There’s some logic to the thesis, of course, and other economists such as Andrew (The Second Machine Age) McAfee have sided generally with Ford’s outlook. Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. And if even half that number is closer to the mark, workers are in for a rude awakening.

In Ford’s vision, a full-on worker revolt is on the horizon, followed by a radically new economic state whereby humans will live more productive and entrepreneurial lives, subsisting on guaranteed incomes generated by our amazing machines.

I see the advances happening in technology and it’s becoming evident that computers, machines, robots, and algorithms are going to be able to do most of the routine, repetitive types of jobs. That’s the essence of what machine learning is all about. What types of jobs are on some level fundamentally predictable? A lot of different skill levels fall into that category. It’s not just about lower-skilled jobs either. People with college degrees, even professional degrees, people like lawyers are doing things that ultimately are predictable. A lot of those jobs are going to be susceptible over time.

I think that with the rise of the machines, it will bring about some negative impacts on our daily lives. As we create robots which are more skilled and efficient in doing a job than us, these machines would slowly take over what we do daily. This might halt us from upgrading ourselves to pick up new skills. As a result, the economy might also be affected.

The March Against Monsanto is On: The Non-GMO Revolution and the Battle against the “Big 6” GMO Corporations

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-march-against-monsanto-is-on-the-non-gmo-revolution-and-the-battle-against-the-big-6-gmo-corporations/5526376?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles

On May 21st the ‘March against Monsanto’ takes place around the world including Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, Mexico and several countries in Europe and Africa are joining the fight against the GMO giant. There is positive news on the battle against Western corporations that produce and sell Genetically Modified Organisms or “GMO” foods.

Affected food companies: McDonalds and Coca-Cola

Recent trends suggest that the world is becoming more health conscious when it comes to their food supply. For example, for Coca-Cola “sales fell for the fourth straight quarter as demand for its fizzy drinks declined in Europe” as consumers increasingly turn health-conscious, cutting back on fizzy drinks and turning to teas, fruit juices and smoothies according to Reuters last month. The Associated Press (AP) reported in 2015 that McDonalds, an American name brand company that sells pure junk food experienced a 2.6% drop in sales worldwide.

The world’s biggest hamburger chain said global sales declined 2.3% at established locations during the first three months of the year. Already this year, McDonald’s has announced a number of changes in the US including a simplified grilled chicken recipe, curbing the use of antibiotics in chicken, and a pay bump and vacation time for workers at company-owned stores amid ongoing protests over its treatment of workers.

Another bright spot in the battle against GMO foods is that fast food consumption by children at least in the U.S. is also in decline. Between 2003 and 2010, the number of U.S. kids eating fast food on any given day went down, and the calories from some types of fast foods have declined as well, according to a new study.

Attitudes towards fast food chains and unhealthy products such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds have changed significantly. That is a positive change for human consumption but a negative for the McDonald’s Corporation, Coca-Cola, Monsanto and other GMO corporations.

Changing to Non-GMO

Alexia Foods, a ConAgra food brand announced that they too will become Non-GMO project verified and “that all of the brand’s offerings will be non-GMO by the end of 2016” according to their Press Release. Several other food companies are also moving towards Non-GMO products.

Del Monte Foods, Nestlé, and Dannon recently became the latest major food companies to replace genetically modified ingredients with non-GMO alternatives. Del Monte, one of the nation’s largest producers of branded food products, announced plans for an increase in non-GMO product offerings and conversion to non-BPA packaging. Nestlé Dreyer’s Ice Cream, the largest ice cream maker in the world, announced that it would remove GMO ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial colors and flavors in its ice cream products, including Dreyer’s, Häagen-Dazs®, Outshine®, Skinny Cow®, Nestlé® Ice Cream and Nestlé® Drumstick®. Dannon, the U.S.’s leading yogurt maker, pledged to using more non-GMO ingredients in its products, transitioning to non-GMO feed for its dairy cows, and labeling products containing GMO ingredients.

How far these food companies will go, still remains to be seen. But the discussion on the importance of producing healthy, non-GMO food by these companies is an important first step.

Russia’s step towards Non-GMO 

Russia Aims to Become Largest Non-GMO Exporter. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his intent on Russia becoming the largest exporter of Non-GMO food in the world to the members of the parliament in his December 2015 ‘Russian state of the nation’ speech:

Our agriculture sector is a positive example. Just a decade ago we imported almost half of our food products and critically depended on imports, whereas now Russia has joined the exporters’ club. Last year Russia’s agricultural exports totaled almost $20 billion. This is a quarter more than our proceeds from arms sales or about one third of our profits from gas exports. Our agriculture has made this leap in a short but productive period. Many thanks to our rural residents.

I believe we should set a national goal — fully provide the internal market with domestically produced foods by 2020. We are capable of feeding ourselves from our own land, and importantly, we have the water resources. Russia can become one of the world’s largest suppliers of healthy, ecologically clean quality foods that some Western companies have stopped producing long ago, all the more so since global demand for such products continues to grow.

Putin mentioned that the “millions of hectares of arable land” should be used by farmers who are interested in cultivating the land. In other words, make farming an attractive profession that produces healthy food for the Russian population and the world:

It is necessary to put to use millions of hectares of arable land that is now idle. They belong to large land owners, many of whom show little interest in farming. How many years have we been talking about this? Yet things are not moving forward. I suggest withdrawing misused agricultural land from questionable owners and selling it at an auction to those who can and want to cultivate the land.

Russia’s move towards the cultivating Non-GMO food is a clear victory against biotech giants such as Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical Company, BASF, Bayer and Syngenta also known as the “Big 6”.

Kenya’s step towards Non-GMO

Kenya banned the imports and the planting of GMOs on November 21st, 2012. The Kenyan Ministry of Public Health ordered public health officials to enforce the ban on the importation of GMO products and remove all GMO laced products from store shelves.

However, according to an RT News article earlier this year titled ‘Monsanto, US, & Gates Foundation pressure Kenya to reverse GMO ban‘ highlights Washington’s interest regarding Monsanto’s technology to import and to produce GMO crops in Kenya:

Monsanto’s modified cotton seeds produce insecticides to poison butterflies and moths. Dr Charles Waturu, director of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), claims the Monsanto technology is the only solution, even though a recent Spanish study found Monsanto’s seed MON810 does not increase yields or reduce damage compared to natural maize.

Kenyan GM sweet potato project  

In the 1990s, USAID, together with Monsanto, helped spearhead a 14-year, $6 million project through the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) to develop a genetically modified, virus-resistant sweet potato. The project has proven to be a failure. Local varieties outperformed GM varieties in field trials. Researchers in Uganda developed a virus-resistant hybrid through conventional breeding techniques at a tiny fraction of the cost. KARI continues to collaborate with the Monsanto Corporation and USAID researching biotechnological projects, advocating a model of agricultural development that relies upon a top-down approach and unproven, expensive investments.

Many Kenyan farmers resent the U.S., Monsanto and the Gates Foundation for continuing to shove unwanted biotechnology down their throats”

GM seeds can negatively affect soil and often flood markets, making it difficult for small farmers to keep up. Hybrid seeds are more difficult to germinate leading to increased costs for farmers.

Opinion

In my opinion, the increase in health consciousness of people are resulting in us being more careful in selecting the choices of food we consume. Hence forcing major food companies to change their original way of producing a certain food. Also, many countries such as Russia, Kenya, and most EU member states and others around the world have banned or are in the process of banning GMOs are leading the Non-GMO Revolution. This further puts pressure on the biotech companies to change the way their systems work.

 

 

Hiding in the Sunshine: The Search for Other Earths

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/hiding-in-the-sunshine-the-search-for-other-earths

We humans might not be the only ones to ponder our place in the universe. If intelligent aliens do roam the cosmos, they too might ask a question that has gripped humans for centuries: Are we alone? These aliens might even have giant space telescopes dedicated to studying distant planets and searching for life. Should one of those telescopes capture an image of our blue marble of a planet, evidence of forests and plentiful creatures would jump out as simple chemicals: oxygen, ozone, water and methane.

Many earthlings at NASA are hoping to capture similar chemical clues for Earth-like planets beyond our solar system, also known as exo-Earths, where “exo” is Greek for “external.” Researchers are developing new technologies with the goal of building space missions that can capture not only images of these exo-Earths, but also detailed chemical portraits called spectra. Spectra separate light into its component colors in order to reveal secrets of planets’ atmospheres, climates and potential habitability.

“Evidence for life is not going to look like little green people — it’s going to reveal itself in a spectrum,” said Nick Siegler, the chief technologist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program Office at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The program is helping to develop NASA’s plans for future exo-Earth imaging missions.

One mission, led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, is known as WFIRST. WFIRST stands for Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope. The WFIRST mission would be able to identify chemicals in the atmospheres of exoplanets as small as super-Earths, which are like Earth’s bigger cousins, such as Kepler-452b, a recent discovery by NASA’s Kepler mission. This would pave the way for future studies of the smaller exo-Earths. The WFIRST mission would also investigate other cosmic mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy.

This article then leads me to the other article, titled: NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-kepler-mission-discovers-bigger-older-cousin-to-earth

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.”

The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone — the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet — of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.

“On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet explorer has discovered a planet and star which most closely resemble the Earth and our Sun,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.”

Kepler-452b is 60 percent larger in diameter than Earth and is considered a super-Earth-size planet. While its mass and composition are not yet determined, previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky.
While Kepler-452b is larger than Earth, its 385-day orbit is only 5 percent longer. The planet is 5 percent farther from its parent star Kepler-452 than Earth is from the Sun. Kepler-452 is 6 billion years old, 1.5 billion years older than our sun, has the same temperature, and is 20 percent brighter and has a diameter 10 percent larger.

“We can think of Kepler-452b as an older, bigger cousin to Earth, providing an opportunity to understand and reflect upon Earth’s evolving environment,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, who led the team that discovered Kepler-452b. “It’s awe-inspiring to consider that this planet has spent 6 billion years in the habitable zone of its star; longer than Earth. That’s substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet.”

Opinion: I think that from this article and discovery made by the scientists, the advancement in science and technology really helped to shape the humans and our environment. With this new discovery, it is just a matter of time till we find a planet with resources and environment close enough to Earth, where the human population might be able to migrate there if the resources on Mother Earth runs out and is no longer able to sustain life.

 

 

Hong Kong Starts Countdown to Ivory Trade Ban

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/hong-kong-ivory-ban-deadline/

Today Hong Kong has taken a major step forward in phasing out its ivory trade. The government submitted its proposed plan to the Legislative Council, which began debating the details. This is a key step in a long process to shut down both the Hong Kong and global ivory markets.

Hong Kong is a major ivory retail market and a key transit point, especially into mainland China. Tens of thousands of ivory items are displayed for sale in high-rent tourist areas while seizures of huge quantities of ivory by customs authorities confirm its place as an ivory smuggling hub.

After the international trade in ivory was banned in 1989, the city-state instituted a license system for existing legally acquired commercial ivory stocks held by private traders, which at the time totaled 665 metric tons. Studies suggest that amount should have been exhausted by 2004, but today roughly 370 licensed ivory traders collectively hold about 77 tons of ivory.

A report by the advocacy group WildAid, together with undercover video by independent investigators provided to WildAid and WWF-Hong Kong, showed that ivory traders used a “loophole riddled system” to routinely replenish their legally held private ivory stocks with illegal ivory from recently poached elephants. For instance, because the licenses only record weights and are not connected to a specific tusk or product, traders “reuse” their licenses.

Promised by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying during his January 13 Policy Address, the new plan would close legal loopholes through which traffickers smuggle black market ivory.

The plan puts forward a five-year timetable, until the end of 2021, for traders to liquidate their legal ivory stocks. It also suggests that “no compensation should be given,” because of the proposed lengthy grace period and the fact that ivory sales make up such a small portion of traders’ business. And it proposes that penalties be increased.

Penalties differ for noncommercial and commercial wildlife crimes, and the latter are hard to prove. The government proposes unifying the penalties and increasing them “to reflect the severity of offences” and make the crimes indictable.  WildAid wants to make sure that penalties are severe enough (seven to 10 years’ jail time) and that wildlife crimes are prosecuted under a different ordinance that can then trigger the city’s Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance.

Despite the lengthy process, this proposed plan is an encouraging step, says WWF-Hong Kong’s Cheryl Lo. “The Hong Kong government has listened to the people and legislators. It sends a message to traders that there is an absolute end to the ivory trade.”

In my opinion, I feel that this major decision made by Hong Kong is a positive step towards caring more for wildlife creatures. Despite the international trade in ivory being banned in 1989, Hong Kong still instituted a license system for existing legally acquired commercial ivory stocks held by private traders. I think that trading of body parts of animals, whether legalised or not, is morally and ethically wrong in the first place. What gave traders the right to take the life of animals just for their own profit. In this case, I think that both suppliers and consumers are to be blamed. Even so that there are an increasing number of rights for the animals, there are also an equally huge number of companies still taking the lives of animals for granted, as seen in the food and product testing, which is unacceptable. Therefore, I really appreciate what the Hong Kong government has done in terms of banning ivory trade as they listened to the opinions of their own people, which actually is a step nearer to the freedom and rights of the animals.