Does God Exist?

Recent Read : The Naked Bible
An interestiing article (more like a book) analysing the conflicting points in the Bible.


A short note on Win-Win :

I have got an interesting reply from Molewall here. In the last paragraph he said:

"Say, the apple juice factory has lots of apple cores left over from the production of the juice. Instead of throwing away the cores, it can sell it back to the apple farm to use as fertilizer. This way, it is a Win-Win situation. Plus the transport company gets paid to send the apple cores back to the apple farm on the return trip. Win-Win-Win? This way there is no loss to the "system"?

That is indeed very interesting but from my point of view, it is still not a Win-Win situation. The apple cores were an EXCESS on the factory side. If the factory had thrown it away it would have been a LOSS on the factory side (which results in the gain of the fertilizer supplier of the apple orchard, but let's not go there). If we traced the movement of the apple core, we would discover that the apple cores actually travelled from apple orchard to the factory and back. In a sense, the factory actually sold the apple cores and later buy them back. The transport company gain from the LOSS of the factory (or whoever responsible for transport fee) extra payment of the transport to ship back the apple cores.

In a nutshell, if we take out the transport company (because the transport company creates a case that warrant a separate discussion on its own.) from the system, there was no GAIN to the system; What was percieved as a GAIN was actually a prevention of a LOSS (disposal of the apple cores).

I hope that would clear up my theory.


Does God Exist? :

It is perhaps the most frequently asked question by human. Since the times of our ancestors, we have always wanted to believe in a higher entity (or entities), relying on its (or their) existence to explain many phenomenons. However, with the advance of sciences, people started asking, does god exist?

Being someone more spiritual than religious, I tend to view God as a idea, a philosophy, a representation rather than an existence or an entity. To me, God represents the uniqueness of Human, in our ability and need to percieve a transcendent form of existence. It is (to me) a complex and all-encompassing ideology which consists of the myriad wants and needs of human as a collective entity. It includes things like the fear of death and unknown afterlife, the need to percieve an ultimate, completely fair judging power, the protection of less competitive and the motivation to work towards the common good of the race. To me, God can exist outside the bound of a religion, for religion is merely formed of people with similar wants and needs, while God represents the overall ideology.

It is moot to argue about the existence of God. I believe that by the virtue of discussing it, we have already confirmed the existence of God as an ideology. To the believer it represents the ultimate power, to the agnostic it represents an idea that cannot be confirmed, to the atheist it represents a hypothesis which is not to be believed.

Whether we like it or not, God exists, and it has for a long time.

For the record, I am NOT a christian (Christians are not allowed to question the existence of god.), nor am I of any religion. I believe in God as an ideology, but I do not agree with the way some religion use it to manipulate the believers. At that point, God ceases to be an ideology, but instead become a tool. But that's another topic all by itself. Remind myself to write about it some time, after I write about my take on management ideology.

What if Oil Peak happens?

Recent Read : Berlin Peak Oil Conference
It's a report regarding the Peak Oil conference held at Berlin. The conference is attended by scientists, econimists and industrial experts. It's interesting to see what the top minds of our planet have to say.

I have played this scenario with a few friends before.

One of them believed that there might yet be hope for new energy technologies and solutions to replace oil. Another agrees that there will be a regression but the progress will be slow and gradual.

I tend to be more pragmatic and have a more pessimistic regard for human nature. I agree mostly with what the authur of Life after the Oil Crash said, that Oil Crash will come abruptly and the economy will collapse. As a result, the world will fall into arnarchy with billions of people starving to death.

But it might not even come to that. The book hinted but not quite highlight that the world leaders KNOW about the situation. They also know that if they allow the situation to worsen until society falls into anarchy, they will more likely be the targets of angry mobs. So they will not allow the situation to worsen to that state.

But how? Here is my speculation.

If I am top world leaders (the likes of G.W.Bush), I will find means and ways to institute a controlled global depopulation until world population is small enough for a gradual regression (or evolution, if you please) to another society state.

What does that mean? Simply, War World 3. Find some excuse to start a global war, with the main objective to depopulate as much as possible. After certain state, when population has been sufficiently reduced, then stop the war, then START on alternative energy projects and slowly evolve our society state to something more sensible than capitalism.

And that is my optimistic speculation. My pessimistic guess will involve Weapon of Mass Destruction and miscalculation which may involve the extinction of human race.

Interestingly, after the discussion, regardless of our stance or speculation on human future, we all agreed that there will be some form of regression and depopulation, although the optimist remained firmed that it will be humane and moral process (Of course, we all want that.).

When asked what Singapore should do, I suggested that besides starting immediately to source for alternative energy source, we need to get hold of arable land in the Malaysia penisular. The best case is of course via diplomacy. Otherwise, military action might be unavoidable.

However, regardless of what was said, we are nobody, so those discussion are more akin to a fantasy story discussion than anything else.

If you have something to say regarding this issue, I am interested to here it. email me at zuraffo@yahoo.com

The rumor called Win-Win

Recent Movie: The Chronicles of Riddick
Go watch it if you want some brainless, cliche entertainment. I personally thought it was quite mediocre. Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Recent Book : Mr. China
It's one of those book that I started reading it in the book store and HAD to bring it home with me. Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Recent Game : Civilization III
I have just eliminated JAPAN yesterday. Gosh that felt good. Rating: 50 out of 5 for the defeat of JAPAN

Recent Read : Global Climate Change and Peak Oil
More doom and gloom read. Not for the faint-hearted.

No such things called Win-Win :
I personally do not believe in Win-Win situation. That is, I don't believe in physical Win-Win situation. According to the Law of Conservation in the physics world (which makes awful lot of sense, even when applied to economy; especially when appplied to economy), the total amount of energy in an isolated system is always constant. It then follows that if some parts of the isolated system gain in energy, some other parts of the same system must lose energy. Now consider our economy system as a close and isolated energy system (For a scientific and logical explanation of our economy system as a giant energy system, read Energy and Economic Myths), when one or more parties gain in "energy", some other parties must lose it.

If you consider the rumor of Win-Win situation in this system, it becomes very obvious that the concept of Win-Win is a partial truth at best, designed to flatter the false sense of achievement of aspiring capitalists (who are usually not bright or honest enough to see the blatant truth of our world). A Win-Win situation which results in physical gain for both parties must come at a loss of a third party.

Consider this situation: An apple orchard owner has 10 workers. He pays each of them 1 apple per day as wage. A fruit juice factory contacted the orchard owner and propose a Win-Win deal: Instead of paying 10 apples to the workers, sell the 10 apples to the factory. Since the factory can produce 20 bottles of apple juice with 10 apples, it will then sell back 10 bottles to the orchard owner as wage to the workers, and both the factory and orchard will split the profit for the remaining 10 bottles. Of course, the workers must not find out that 1 apple can produce 2 bottles of apple juice. Fat deal for the factory and orchard owner, no? It's fairly obvious in this example who got ripped off in order for the orchard owner and factory to gain. But imagine if you are a poor worker who doesn't know that 1 apple can produce 2 bottle of apple juices, would you prefer a dusty, skinny apple over a bottle of nicely packaged apple juice?

Lesson learnt: In a so-called WIN-WIN deal, the un-informed parties usually get ripped off

Having said that, Win-Win situations are possible if one considers emotional/psychological gain. For example, if Amy has 2 apples, and Cindy has 2 oranges, and they agreed to trade one of the fruits for another. Are there physical gains for both of them? No, both of them have exactly 2 fruits, no more or less than before their exchange. However, there definitely are psychological gains (Different FLAVOR, yeah!). Or in the above example of factories and orchard, if the workers considered nice packaging is more importantly than the actual amount of content, it can also be considered a Win-Win deal (Although by my standard it's more like an exploitation of human weakness.)

As a closing note, let's considered the greatest, most important Win-Win deal ever created in the name of humanity. Around the 1850s, as the devil was sitting in his office worrying about the slow growth of population in hell, mother Earth came to visit him. She confessed that she was greatly disturbed by this black gooey liquid that gets accumulated over the course of billions of years. As they sat there pondering over their problems, the devil, being the more DEVILISH of the two, had a spark of inspiration.
"What if we let the humans discover how to use the black gooey stuff? They will consume it faster than you can blink."
Mother Earth, being more directly involved, asked,
"But will they upset too much of my face, even destroying me?"
Devil pondered for a moment,
"Well, there is the possibility," then grin DEVILISHLY, "But then, given human, they'll probably stuff themselve dead before they even realized it."
"Hrm, a risk worth taking. But what's in it for you?" Mother Earth asked curiously.
"Well, when they start to stuff themselve dead, that's when I'll hit my next millenium quota for Hell's population." Devil rubbed his hand in a DEVILISH manner.
"Deal then. Given the nature of human, I think it's overall a Win-Win deal."
Subsequently, in 1855, James Miller Williams discovered crude oil in North America.

So WHO got exploited in this Win-Win deal?

Art, Entertainment and Nature

Let me start by introducing a bit of myself. I am an avid gamer, playing PC, PS2, and recently board games. I work as a game designer. I am also an artist in my own right, having just graduated from Cosmoprof with a diploma in professional makeup artist. I draw to entertain myself. I read frequently and write short articles as a hobby (although I have stopped for a while).

During the course of doing those things, one thing occurred to me and puzzled me to no end. I couldn't find a convincing explanation as to why human has evolved to come to desire certain form of art and entertainment. In the natural world, this trait is unique to human. According to the laws of nature, living things evolve based on their needs to survive. All living things on the planet have evolved in such a way that they have just what it takes to survive. Human is different. We establish behavioral traits that are inconsequential to our survival.

We don't need watching movies to survive. We don't need makeup to survive. Neither do we need PC games, beautiful painting nor pretty dress to survive. So where does our desire for those things which has no relevance to our survival come from?

My theory is that THAT too is the work of Mother Nature. I believe the desire for entertainment and art had started when human evolved beyond simply survivalistic and started to over-populate the planet. These traits, which do nothing whatsoever in enhancing our being, were developed so that we would waste enormous amount of precious resource vital to our survival in their pursue. In the end, when we have successfully wasted all those resources, we will die off. And the world will perhaps return to a balance.

To summarize, I believe that our desire to indulge, to entertain and to be entertained, is a fail-safe mechanism implanted by Mother Nature, to curb the extend to which we can harm the planet.

Humanity has always quibbed that it has conquered nature, I think that's a child's wishful thinking. That is about as foolish as saying computer or robot will one day conquer man, which, unfortunately, is another point of argument that human likes to get into.

Nobody conquers their maker. Try to believe me the next time you see a movie or play a computer game.

Read of the Day

The meaning of Last Dawn

I figure a good way to start this blog would be to explain its name.

I named my blog "Last Dawn" because I believe that I (and the rest of us) am living in the era of last dawn of human civilization, a.k.a the industrial civilization.

According to some field experts, the extractible oil reserve on this planet is running dry soon. Some put the timeline to as near as 2012.

"But I heard the current oil reserve can hold at least 50 years more, and by then, surely the ever resilient human race would have discovered new technologies which can replace oil" you would say. Well, there is a few things here.

Let's first discuss the amount of oil reserve. Human is not going to exhaust all the oil in the earth crust, because long before that, our society would have crumble. Let me explain. According to the author of Life after the oil crash, during 1930s, it only took energy equivalent to 1 barrel of oil to extract 100 barrel of oil. Now the ratio has dropped to 1:10 as the oil well goes deeper. When it takes more than 1 barrel of oil to extract 1 barrel of oil, oil ceased to be an energy source. And that will happened BEFORE we actually runs out of oil. By then, our economy which is based largely on Oil (Petroleum, the fossil feul), will undoubtedly crumble.

Then let's talk about alternative energy source. I won't go into details here, suffice to say that this article here has convinced me that none of the existing technology even come close to replacing Oil as an energy base. Future technologies are generally too nebulous to depend my sanity on.

Many people argue that oil can last a lot longer; That is NOT my concern. What occurs to me is that Oil (and other fossil fuel, sooner or later) will run out one day, most probably in our life time. When that happens, our society and civilization will regress to pre-industrial age. Assuming human survives the experience, we will be facing a depleted planet and there will be no restoring to our current level of "civilization".

Without cheap electricity power and fuel, we will live without a lot of things we had taken for granted: Air-con, car, hot water, computer, light, etc.

We are at the pinnacle of human civilization and wastage now. This will be the Last Dawn, human will not be able to rise to this level again. That said, I intend to enjoy every last bit of this civilization and splurge every last bit of resource; We are entitled to. After all, we will be the generation which is suffering when oil crash occurs.

Let's party.

Life After the Oil Crash, a website with relevant issue on the coming oil crisis.
Die Off, a website that discuss all the issues humanity faced this day, including population, pollution, oil peak, global warming, etc.
From the Wilderness, an america-centric website addressing all issues, especially political and economical which affects our environment.

The above website are doomed to failure. They don't understand that human don't want truth. We want lies which make us happy.