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.