triplecorrelation.com

Strangely enough, the iTunes on my iPhone now says it does not work in Singapore. It won’t even let me download free stuff, like podcasts. This is very strange given that iTunes works on my laptop in Singapore. I can download and purchase just fine here, but only to my laptop. I googled this and found other people complaining about the same problem.

Apparently iTunes is only available in North America, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand. But it not available in Asia, though that’s where the people are.

Update: After writing this, I found a workaround.  I created new iTunes account with a US address, and when it asked for a credit card, I clicked “none”.   Then on the iPhone, I went to “settings->general->reset” and reset the location warnings.    It didn’t work immediately, but after the 1st failed attempt iTunes started to work.  I could download NPR’s wait wait don’t tell me!

After reading in the news that California plans to regulate the power consumption of flat screen TVs, I did a little checking on my setup. My TV, a Sony 32″ LCD, consumes 156W. My DVD player, a fairly simple Sony model, takes a miserly 9W. The power hog is my home theatre receiver. This Yamaha 5.1 channel unit consumes 530W in 5 channel, 230W if only stereo is used! And the subwoofer is powered, drawing an additional 40W. This is likely the maximum power consumption, when the volume is cranked way up. But even at moderate listening levels, the unit gives off a lot of heat. I think the DSPs on board that operate on the compressed digital audio are to blame. The idea of consuming half a kilowatt just to listen to simple movie dialogue is appalling.

Last semester, I went with the NTU staff recreation club to Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia.  The park contains a rainforest dating back over 130 million years. It is divided by rivers and contains tigers, elephants, many monkeys, and lots of monitor lizards.

The trip was as interesting as the destination.  We boarded the train at the station in Tanjong Pagar.  Though the station is in Singapore, the station itself is actually part of Malaysia.  Ditto for the train tracks. In what other country does the railway belong to another country? Therefore you go through immigration at the station, and are in Malaysia as long as you are on the train, though you are travelling through Singapore!  The train reaches the Singapore/Malaysia border at Woodlands.  There, we got off the train and went through Singapore immigration (to leave the country) and once more on the Malaysian side (to enter Malaysia).  Confusing? Yes!

The train is an older diesel locomotive, with airplane type seats and a dining car, and grody toilets.  The train stops at practically every small town along the tracks.  We reached our final stop, Jerantut, at 1 am, after 8 hours of travel, and were taken to a hotel for the night.  The next morning, we took a bus to the Park entrance.

We stayed at the Mutiara resort. It’s a luxurious (to me) resort located right at the edge of the park, actually just inside.  Among the funny quirks are that you cannot buy alchohol outside the park,  being part of the state of Pahang, which is “dry” Malaysia.  But you can buy inside the park. I guess that’s because the park is national rather than state territory.

You might think that a tropical rainforest is hot, humid, and full of mosquitoes.  Actually, it is not.  It is cooler than in Singapore, being in the shade.  It is humid for sure, but not oppresively so.  The bugs were not a problem.   I was not bitten once in the whole trip.  I think that’s because the rivers flow fast through the park, and the birds and other critters keep the mozzie population down.

The best part of the trip was the boat ride up the Tahan river.  The huge trees shade the river, and the water is cool and clear.  The guides make sure you get wet by using their paddles to spray up water.

Long boat, of the type I went on in Taman Negara

I did have a minor medical emergency on the trip.  I slipped and fell at the entrance to the Gua Telinga cave, and had to go the Klinik for stitches.  Fortunately, Malaysian clinics are good and very cheap.  I came home with 4 stitches on my leg as a kind of souvenier.

Taman Negara is “awesome” according to the Lonely Planet guide to SE Asia. I agree.  Here are some pictures.

On the Tahan river

River bank near swimming hole, Tahan River

Rapids near swimming hole

Recently I had a conversation with an American friend in California. She characterised the Singaporean political system as “benevolent fascism”. I knew what she meant, though I would not use the word “fascism”. Singapore doesn’t have a recognizable political debate, but there’s no fear of the govt — in fact, it is a civil society where people have basic freedoms.

The USA can claim to be the most free nation in the world, but it is one where the political system is seriously screwed up. I was appalled on my visit by the level of discourse, particularly over the health-care reform. The ads on CNN, sponsored by groups with orwellian names like “citizens for responsive health care”, spread lies, fear and disgust with the aim of killing any meaningful change. They seem to be effective at that. Paul Krugman, writing in the NY Times, recounts a “town hall” meeting where a person demands that their legislator keep govt from taking over Medicare! Jon Stewart shows clips on the daily show of town hall meetings where people ask Pres. Obama to stop govt workers from choosing how people die.

And then there’s California, with its raving lunatics in Sacramento that can’t even agree on a budget without resorting to $10 billion in accounting gimmicks. Even the local newspaper, the Mercury News, breaks the budget deal down into “cuts” and “accounting tricks” as if it were a fact of life.

I never thought I would say this, but the Singaporean govt appeals to me as a better system every time I read the news.

Try tan(pi/2):

Bing:

http://www.bing.com/search?q=tan(pi/2)&go=&form=QBRE&filt=all

Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tan(pi/2)&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2

Wolfram Alpha

http://www42.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=tan(pi/2)

W.A. at least knows the answer is infinity. It’s not wrong to say complex infinity, as W.A. does, but the answer leads to other errors:

http://www39.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Re(tan(pi/2))

This is a huge night market, one of many in Taipei.  We got there at 8pm, when things where just starting.  The place was still full of people shopping, eating snacks, and generally seemed cheerful.   We got there by taking the Metro, which reminds me of the Singapore MRT except that the trains run slightly faster.  I also found another nice thing about Taiwan: if you are a foreigner with a map and look a bit lost, people stop and offer to help you.  In that way Taiwan is friendlier than any other country I’ve been to.

Shirlin night market, Taipei

This island is in the South China Sea, about 40 miles off the coast of Malaysia. We went there from Singapore by bus to Mersing, and then caught a ferry to Tioman. The island lies in the Pahang Marine Park, and is surrounding by rich coral reefs full of fish, turtles, sharks.  It is an absolutely fantastic place to go diving or snorkelling.    Our hotel had a 4 hour snorkelling trip, which took us to 3 stops.  The first two stops were near Rengis Island, a half hour from Tioman.  The last stop was a little coconut shaped island near shore.  The water is warm and clear, and the reefs are teeming with fish.   I saw giant clams, parrotfish, zebra fish, and a giant turtle.   Apparently there were sharks around, small ones, but I didn’t see those

Some pictures from the trip are on Picasa web here.

This is the energy content of “used water”, also known as sewage. I learned this at Prof. Ng Wun Jern’s inaugural Tan Chin Tuan Lecture at NTU today. So if a family has 2 toilets, flushes them 7 times daily (the US average), and each toilet is 1.2 gallons, then in about 15 days a m^3 of used water is created. The average family in the USA consumes 30 kWh/day, so lets see… in a year produces enough energy through sewage to meet its energy demand for an entire day.