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Press Muse – Boilerplate Nationalism
Apr. 5 | Spiegel Staying or quitting? Somehow then-prime minister Goh Chok Tong’s hypocritical comments in 2002 has endured as a dialectical signpost of Singapore’s fledging nationhood. Immigration may claim the lion’s share of headlines in an...
Press Muse – Grafting numbers
Dec. 11 | Spiegel - Channel NewsAsia on Friday (10 December) ran a story on its website about Transparency International’s 2010 Global Corruption Barometer. Refreshingly, this time the story didn’t bear all good tidings, as the headline suggests: Singapore...
Press Muse – Friends with benefits
Dec. 3 | Spiegel - Don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed many an itchy back recently. It’s an endemic and mostly mild condition, but occasionally it flares up and a kindred spirit has to swoop in to offer a comforting scratch. Singapore’s...
Press Muse – K Shanmugam, literary gymnast
Nov. 11 | Spiegel - So newly minted Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam (who is concurrently Law Minister) has been hitting the lecture circuit again, sharing with the world finer intricacies of running Singapore Inc. You may recall his earlier venture in October...
Press Muse – The Numbers Tell No Story
Nov. 3 | Spiegel - UPDATE – 3 November, 2040hrs Wednesday’s (3 November) print edition of the Straits Times’ story provides some basic details on the survey that was missing from the online version published Tuesday evening. In a infobox placed...
Press Muse – Servility to higher powers
Sep. 10 | Spiegel - The Christian Post Singapore published on its website Tuesday (7 September) an intriguing article titled “NCCS Workshop Prepares Churches to Engage Press“. It covered an event organised by the National Council of Churches of Singapore...
Press Muse – Ivory tower irony in last-gasp YOG pitch
Jul. 27 | Spiegel - The Straits Times yesterday (26 July) ran a curious little piece on its review pages. Tucked into a bottom left, quarter-page slot, an NUS academic asked in an op-ed, with discomfiting earnestness: “The YOG is coming. Are you excited...
Press Muse – Oh what a tangled Web
Jul. 23 | Spiegel - Eons ago, an Invisible Magic Friend raised some luscious, fertile trees yet thought it inappropriate to share their goodness. So he told his young ‘uns to lay off, or risk death. But seriously, who could turn down something so expressedly...
Press Muse – A tall tale on objectivity
Jun. 10 | The following article was written earlier, during TOC’s coverage of the homelessness issue. We held it off because we wanted to focus on the stories of the homeless people then. We publish it here now. Spiegel In a tropical city-state, a politician...
Press Muse – Calling STOMP’s bluff
Apr. 4 | By Spiegel Once upon a time, when laypersons chance upon information they deem of relevance to a wider audience, they’d be inclined to pay deference to the professionals – they couldn’t disseminate the information themselves anyway. So they...
Press Muse – Singaporeans dreaming
Mar. 13 | By Spiegel Writer and historian James Truslow Adams once imagined a meritocratic wonderland. A society defined by the noble aspiration he called the American Dream. Drawing from the United States Declaration of Independence and its recognition of “inalienable...
Press Muse – Love thyself, ignore thy neighbour
Mar. 2 | By Spiegel “He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals,” said ‘leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat’ (so claims Wikipedia) Benjamin...
Press Muse – Moving news and pushing pills
Jan. 31 | Spiegel A while ago, I noted the inappropriate use of a Habbo survey as a basis for drawing scientific conclusions on ills of computer game addiction. In particular, I insinuated that Habbo, an online social networking site, were delighted recipients...
Press Muse – It shouldn’t be just business
Jan. 7 | Spiegel I can hardly claim this to be an exhaustive account, but over the past month or so it seemed rather difficult to get a dose of the day’s big news from the front pages of Singaporean English-language newspapers. I first noticed this on...
Press Muse: Speaking “truth” for power
Dec. 28 | Invitation: The Online Citizen & Talk Politics’ Year In Review special forum will take place on Thursday evening, 29 December 2009, at the Post Museum. The forum will start at 7pm and end at about 10.30pm. Please do come and join us. A Man in...
Press Muse – The good, bad and ugly (part two)
Dec. 17 | Spiegel That the political coverage in the Straits Times doesn’t find me well is now well established. Plainly disappointing as it is, however, they do manage the occasional curveball. And this they did in the 11 December issue, when they ran something...
Press Muse – The good, bad and ugly (part one)
Dec. 14 | Spiegel Throwing spitballs at others can be very satisfying. Your target is remote, both physically and emotionally. The blow-back effect from your attack barely registers. Not with me anyway. To this end, I tend to unapologetically target the Straits...
Press Muse – Cynical studies
Dec. 5 | Spiegel Reading Ben Goldacre, medical doctor and outspoken critic of bad science, has done something to my news reading sensibilities – in a pathological way. Now when I read a news story that involves science, statistics and surveys, my ‘bad...
