RE: Free will's a gamble

Singapore government has already passed a decision to build an Integrated Resort with the highlight of it being the casino last year. This has sparked up much public debates and many people have criticized the government for neglecting the social repercussions that will inevitably be brought about. As for myself, I do not support the casino decision either. The social downfalls brought about is much severe than the economic boons brought about. Some of the social downfalls may even infringe the economic boons too.To begin with, introducing gambling in Singapore causes moral values which had once built up Singapore to decay rapidly. Since Singapore's independence in 1965, sweat and toil has been the building block of Singapore's success, propelling Singapore from a third world country to a first world country, evolving it from an inconspicuous boat to a gigantic ferry in the sea of international recognition. On the other hand, gambling suggests that success can be attained through luck without any toil, except for the trip to the casino of course. Encouraging gambling therefore causes our national beliefs of being hardworking and thrifty to erode away and is incompatible with Singaporeans, who are still stalwart supporters of Confucian beliefs that shaped Singapore into what it is today. Therefore, the government has not considered national interest before passing this policy.As Singapore continues to advocate gambling legally, the gambling business will grow rapidly, soon causing Singapore be akin to Macau, whose main business is gambling. Although our government promises that such a scenario would not happen, but it is an inevitable fact that gambling will be the major business once started, because gambling achieves success after a short period and we would be addicted to reap even more success by encouraging its growth in Singapore. Presently in Macau, most students are not keen to further their studies because working in local casinos there would already meet their monthly expenses. Singapore may suffer the same consequence if casinos were allowed to prosper here.Moreover, the concept of an integrated resort was published after observing other cities like Macau, Las Vegas and Gentling whose casino business brought about much economic prosperity and at the same time functioning well. These cities do not have a conspicuously high crime rate, thus our government felt that we could do the same and benefit from building casinos. Unfortunately, Singapore is unlike Macau, Las Vegas and Gentling. Macau belongs to China, Las Vegas belongs to United States and Gentling belongs to Malaysia, while Singapore is a country by itself. It also means that while Macau, Las Vegas and Gentling concentrate on gambling, their respective countries are not gambling-centered as a whole, unlike Singapore which would be sucked into the spiral of gambling once it opens casinos.Spiraling into a gambling-centered business also means that Singapore's economy is no longer diversified as it was always so. While other well known gambling cities focuses on gambling as their primary source of income, Singapore cannot blindly follow their example. These gambling cities can depend on other states or the whole country for financial assistance lest they fail in their gambling business, while Singapore would not be able to do so, for the simple fact that Singapore is a nation on its own. As mentioned above, gambling would inevitably be Singapore's primary sourer of revenue once casinos are operational. Gambling, like any other entertainment, will lose its popularity one day and Singapore will suffer drastic losses to its economy once that happens. Hence, operating casinos serve limited economic benefits and even places Singapore in an even more vulnerable position.All in all, gambling does not serve the improve Singapore economically and would even make the situation worse. Casinos are an unfeasible option to improve Singapore's economy. Thus, Singapore should search for other avenues to truly upgrade its economy, social and remove casinos completely out of Singapore.

RE:How advertising informs to our benefit

Advertising is to tell the public a product or a service in order to encourage people to buy or to use it. When people started to exchange their products, this action was existed among the people. People were trying to persuade others to buy their goods in some ways, like putting out a poster or distributing handbills. Advertising can surely increase the products people bought and the competition in making advertisement occurs nowadays all over the world. There are thousands of advertising companies in the world; the staffs there earn money from designing advertisement and seeking for originality for their works. However, not all the advertisements are useful for us. Many companies tried to change some data or basic knowledge of their products. Sometimes they want to make the advertising more successful and sometimes they want to conceal the facts. It can be considered as cheating in some ways. In my opinion, advertising is not so harmful for us.
People think that advertisements are not honest. Actually, most of the advertisement focus on the advantages of the products but avoid to involving disadvantages. Some customers think this action also show dishonesty of the company. Since the special function of advertisements, we cannot expect advertisements to show both the merits and demerits of a certain product. We should know that telling the advantages of the products is normal which can not be considered as cheating, the advertising is still useful.In additon, the author of the article argues that the ability to use information to sell products is an incentive to create new information. I agree with his assertion because in my opinion, customers are not so gullible any more. The method of using a fabricated story to cheat customers is less and less practicable, since the customers nowadays can unmask their lies easily with the help of Internet and other media. Under such circumstances, researching to find new information seems the best way for a company to continue advertising. It is also the only way to achieve credibility with customers and those critics. Therefore , advertising can provide more creative information.For companies, honesty is still an essential thing in their advertising designing. I will not compromise on honesty and integrity because a cheating advertisement will cause more trouble than a poor advertisement. Since it has been proven beyond all doubt that smoking is harmful, there is no way for the advertisement to praise that smoking is good for our health. Also, considering the bad effect on teenagers, it is better that this advertisement should not be too long.On the other hand, to keep honest does not mean to no profit. In order to make money, we need to find out some features of our products, such as less amount of smoke or less amount of toxic substance. Afterwards, in our advertisement, we need to compare our products with others and emphasize the advantages of our products. That is to say, we can only use the ‘relative advantage’ to attract those smokers and make money.Somehow, the most important thing of advertising is to be honest. Fortunately, more and more cheating or useless advertisement can be differed from the really useful one, because people nowadays have more experience and knowledge to do that. It effectively supervises other companies to prevent them from making false advertisements, too. Therefore, advertising is still useful; if you read the advertisement more carefully, less you will lose.

Science: a Menace to Civilisation?

Science is the knowledge about the structure and behaviour of the natural and physical world, based on facts that you can prove. Thus, science is the rule of the nature, of this world we are living in and we human got so many profits from the nature during 12,000,000 years under this rule. Nobody will consider it as a menace to civilisation in this way. However, something has changed in the modern world. People initiate using basic science in technologies, then, technologic science, medicinal science and other modern science appeared and that’s what people know nowadays. They are quite different from the original science; they are more likely to be a study of how to defeat the nature instead of how to obey it. Therefore, many side-effects are brought out. That is way some people say that science becomes a menace to civilisation.

Science is the origin of pollution. The pollution problem is the most serious issue we meet nowadays. Although people want to stop it and limit discharge of polluted water, pesticide and so on, the pollution is still there. The reason is we live in this modern world and something like electricity, plastic bags and batteries are essential for us in daily life. All these pollution origins are invented by using science. We human once had blue sky, clear water, and green land to share with all the creatures on the earth thousands of years ago without the thing so-called “science” and “technology”. We lost all these magnificent things now. People love to enjoy the easy life with convenient machine or computer; however, they are losing the environment and bring human to death. Thus, science may help, but also a “clever” killer who will kill human softly.

Science do harm to the animals. In chemical or medicinal area, testing is a necessary part of researching. No body would want to participate in such a high-risk experiment. The scientist has to carry out most of their experiment on animals, like chemical test or medicine test. Like medicine test, people will test the staff on dogs or apes to see whether the medicine is safe or not and what is the side-effect before they do that to human. It was normal before every new type of medicine is produced. Some of the animals which are tested would be OK, some of them would live in misery, and some of them would even die. The worst result is drawing the spices into danger. In Greenland, a group of people earn money from catching seals for science organization; more than 100 seals die because of that. Human and other animals are all creatures on the earth but different spices. They should be treated equally. Nobody want to live on a planet only with human, the true is our civilisation can not exist without animals. Science cause the death of animals, thus, it is a menace to civilisation.
Science cause more death in war. In ancient times, people use cold weapon in the war and killing people is not that easy with cold weapon comparing with the weapon in modern war. “There were 2000 soldiers involved in the war, only ten plus people die; the war ended when all the soldiers were exhausted and the peace come.” It is one of the descriptions of ancient war. It seems to be a joke; however, it is true in ancient Europe. Science brings guns, cannons, bombs, chemical weapons, missiles and nuclear weapons into the war. Killing people become so easy with them. Sometimes even a whole city can not survive from the war with these dangerous weapons. We should be aware that science causes all of that and science can destroy our civilisation easily.

We can not say that science is totally an evil thing; it brings so much convenience to human. In our mind, the development of science is the development of civilisation. But we should always remember one thing, science is also a menace to our civilisation.

Pornography and Respect for Women

Question
Pornography is seen to be “morally objectionable … (that) degrades women as mere sex objects” while pornography is said to be a mere expression of sexuality. Explain the nature of pornography and give your reasons to why we should/should not exercise any form of censorship in this area.

Sex is an intimate physical activity between two people with different gender. Sex is the essential process for human to reproduce. And it is also an enjoyable thing for human because of the happiness during sex. In many places, people always avoid the topic of sex in conversations。And pornography is surely a taboo to their law, religion and culture. However, some people say pornography is just a kind of literature products. And some people also say that the exist of pornography is inevitable. However, I don’t think people should always be engaged by pornography, especially for us, teenagers should not touch it at all.

Firstly, the information that the women always enjoy to do that thing even when they are forced to do so at first is spread in it. People will have an illusion that all the women want to be raped. For teenagers, all the things in the pornography are new so that it is easy for them to be addict to it. The picture or video in it would affect teenagers a lot on their education of sexuality. And the image they have will remain for a long time in their brain so that their regular daily life will also be affected. Thus, pornography harm people in some way.

Secondly, the female rules in pornography are always the victim. They always the men’s order and the status of the female in pornography are always low. It is easy for people to treat female as a kind of sex animal However, it is totally a wrong expression to female in the pornography. The pornography degrades the status of women in our society, it can be considered as sexual discrimination. Thus, pornography can not be accepted by most of people especially for feminism.

However, pornography is not all bad. Sexual fantasies are human’s nature. And we can just consider pornography as a simple expression about this sexual fantasy. We like music so that we take part in the concert; we like tennis so that we watch tennis game. Some males love sexual fantasy, why can not they enjoy pornography. It is seem to be funny, however, that is the main reason why pornography exists till now. The pornography also provides an opportunity for the people who can not experience of having sex to have visual images.

In some ways, pornography may be good for some people. However, it still can not be exposed to public without any cover. Besides, it will lead the teenagers to a wrong road in their sexual education. It will also increase the rate of criminal, such as raping, among teenagers.

President’s Star Charity Show- is there a need for artistes to perform stunts to milk the public’s compassion for more generous donations?

President’s Star Charity Show is an annual event in Singapore. The artistes are invited to perform to public to milk the public’s compassion for more donations. However, somebody doubt that is it necessary for these artistes to carry out more and more pompous performance to stimulate public’s compassion these year. The doubt is reasonable, because the amount of donation in President’s Star Charity Show is really decreasing these years and the pompous performances do not stop it at all. In my opinion, there is no need for artistes to perform stunts to milk people’s compassion for more generous donation.

Firstly, a pompous performance actually can not milk public’s compassion at all. It will be good if stunts can stimulate public’s compassion. However, there is no relationship between stunts and compassion. Enjoying a stunt is a kind of entertainment; it makes the audience felt comfortable and happy things. But how can the entertainment link to the donation? How can they know the difficulties the poor faced? And then how can they show their sympathy on the poor in this way? You see, during the Charity Show, there are full of screaming and shouting when the famous artistes appear under the spotlight. It is like a vocal recital, the audiences’ aims are to see there own idol but not because of charity. In this way, the Charity Show became useless, and the main idea had changed. Thus, it is no good for artistes to perform stunts to milk the public’s compassion.

Secondly, a great show means a lot of money, even if the artistes do not need pay. And some people say, the government has enough money to hold the great show, but why the government does not have money to help the poor. They also say that was the main reason why they decrease their donations. And some people say, why not the artistes donate more money to the charity, but carry out showy performances without real worth. Yes, if this large amount of money can be donated to the poor, it will help them more. Thus, the pompous performance is no need in the Charity Show.

However, I can not say the Charity Show is no use. We need appropriate people to propagate the thing to public. You see, people will not donate any money if they do not know the charity at all. The famous stars become the ideal propagators. They can make more people fix their eyes on the event. And no other better way is more effective than that. The more people fix on the charity, the more donations will be. There is no doubt that the Charity Show playing an important role in milking others’ compassion and enhancing the donations.

Nowadays, the gap between the rich and the poor becomes bigger and bigger. The rich people can not really understand the situation the poor faced, thus, the compassion loses. We need the Charity Show to make people remind their compassion. However, the Show shouldn’t me an entertainment event. Therefore, it is no need for artistes to perform stunts. And they should do something really relate to the poor and charity.

Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in Singapore

Mr. Brown, as many people known, was called the Father of Blogs in Singapore. He was the first one who initiated the popularity of writing blogs in Singapore. Otherwise, he was also the first one who put personal political commentary in his blogs. Nowadays, the government becomes more open. More advices from public are acceptable to governors. People have the freedom of speech so that they are allowed to talk about the political freely. But do we need regulation to control the political commentary on the internet? Most people do not think it is a wise measure because it means a limitation to the freedom of speech. But I think appropriate regulation of political commentary on the Internet is important.

Firstly, wrong political commentary would lead teenagers to astray. Different kinds of opinions exist in the internet, including criticizes to the government. However not everything in the internet is true. Moreover, internet also offers people especially students a convenient place to get information and study new things. Thus, one piece of information can easily spread widely through the internet. For example, some local people lost their job in the finical crisis; they thought foreign workers snatch their jobs, which is clearly not right; and then this idea spread among the internet. Many people then asked the government to reduce the foreign staff and preserve the benefits of local people. The things also made some local people, including students, hate the foreigners who were actually innocent. This kind of misunderstandings could teach teenagers or students wrong information. Adults can reorganize which they should follow and which should not follow. However, teenagers do not have this ability; therefore, it is easier for teenagers to be affected by wrong political commentary.

Secondly, it is no good for other countries to know our domestic political. Internet is a global thing. Everything on the internet in shared to others all over the world. The foreigners can easily find the political commentary in Singapore. There was an old saying, “Don’t wash your dirty linen in public.” That is said domestic shame should not be made in public. These commentaries will leave a bad impression for the government to the other countries, though some of them may not have any basis. Besides, these entire things are considered as a kind of intelligence of nation. Some of them may not be so serious to be exposed. But the things like the locations of military facilities, power stations or reservoirs are both so important that they cannot be exposed. People may not tell these things on purpose, but the information will be contained in the political commentary unwittingly. Thus, in this way, regulation of political commentary on the Internet is necessary.

However, the regulation is still a limitation to the freedom of speech. We should admit that a country cannot run properly if the people do not have the freedom of speech. And we should also admit that these political commentaries from public help the government a lot to correct its mistakes. Without these advices or commentaries, it will be more difficult for the government to find the mistakes itself. Thus, the regulation seems to be an unwise measure.

After weighing the point I get above, I still think the regulation is essential. Although the freedom of speech is also important, people can still express themselves in other ways like connecting with the local government directly, not only on the internet. And regulation doesn’t mean absolutely no, it is just a measure to help people to raise a advise properly and protect the welfare of nation.