Star Trek : Into Darkness

I watched the latest installment of Star Trek: Into Darkness in theatre recently. I felt that it wasn’t as epic as the previous one, but good nonetheless. This time, the crews of the enterprise take on a new enemy named Khan. I am actually not familiar with this nemesis of the Star Trek world. The Wikipedia description does give good background information about who this Khan guy is. He is “one of a group of genetically engineered supermen, bred to be free of the usual human mental and physical limitations, who were removed from power after the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s.”

I thought that this Khan guy was somewhat like the Vulcans, in that they are portrayed as beings of superior intellect compared to the human beings and relative lacking in emotion. Indeed, one of the theme that is observed in the star trek world is the juxtaposition of the characteristic of intellect and emotion, with the portrayal that the two have an inverse relationship with the other. The quality of being logical and rational is opposed to what is seen as the primitive trait of emotions.

I think it an interesting inquiry about whether this juxtaposition is true. I do see the likes of such kinds of people who appear as having a lack of emotions, or a lack of ability to express them. There are professors whom I encounter who seem quite socially inept and emotionless. In the law faculty however, most of the professors have a relatively nice and sociable personality. I wonder whether the personalities of professors in the more technical-based disciplines such as engineering sport a blander sort of personality. The stereotype of the absent-minded professor is afterall the caricature prevalent as cultural memes.

Indeed, one of the observations in the field of psychology is the presence of a particular set of symptoms in human beings known as autism. While people on the autism spectrum have supposedly a higher intelligence, they suffer from a relatively lack in social skills and ability to express emotions. However, contrary to public impression, these individuals do experience emotions, perhaps even more intensely than a normal individual; they just have difficulty expressing them.

Instead of the trait of emotions and intelligence being conflicting in nature, I was thinking that perhaps emotions and intelligence are more of evolutionary trade-offs. For example, I do learn that viruses that develop the trait of being more resistant to antibiotics do so at the expense of being less virulent in nature. And as the common stereotype goes, beautiful people are less intelligent than ugly people, and vice versa. There is this concept known as evolutionary cost where the development of certain qualities in a species comes at a cost in the development of other qualities. My thought is that the ability to express emotions is a quality developed by evolution which is an effective method for communication. But intelligence, which improves an individual’s ability to communicate via words, and through signs and symbols, comes as a trade-off to an individual’s ability to express himself via emotions.

There is this interesting bit on philosophy in the Wikipedia page about Khan and the concept of the superman in Nietzche’s philosophy – “Superficially, Khan is believed by some to have similarities with Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch" (superman or overman). Khan is mentally and physically superior to any normal human. In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Borderland", Malik, the leader of a group of "supermen" created from the same genetic engineering project as Khan, actually quotes Nietzsche, telling Archer that "Mankind is something to be surpassed". Professor William J. Devlin and coauthor Shai Biderman examined Khan's character compared to the Übermensch and found that Khan's blind pursuit of revenge is against Nietzsche's ideals of transcendence and self-creation of a meaningful life. Instead, the authors offer Spock's self-sacrifice in The Wrath of Khan as a better example of the Übermensch.”

I have not read Nietzche before, but I think I do get the idea of what his philosophy is about. And it seems like a depressing picture of humanity where might is right. One of the objections that I read from Christian apologists about morality based on atheism is that the atheist has to deal with the problem of nihilism before he can suggest humanism as a code of ethics to live by.

I saw an interview of J.J Abrams who was director of the star trek movies on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He mentioned about him not being a star trek fan but a star wars fan. Jon, a Star Trek fan, humorously commented that he didn’t hear Abrams say anything after that statement, only that he observe Abram’s lips moving. I am not sure how true the saying that people who are star trek fans are not star wars fans, and vice versa. But it certainly holds true for me. I am a star trek fan and not a star wars fan. I like the space sci-fi and the concept of diplomacy amongst different space races on different planets in Star Trek, and not the fantasy, good vs evil theme of Star Wars.

Hard Drive - Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft Empire 4

In my reading of Hard Drive – Bill Gates and the making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson, the author accounts how Bill Gates dealt with piracy issues by computer hobbyists over the BASIC language that he and his team at Microsoft had developed.

The author writes at page 99 – “Those patient enough to have actually received an Altair kit, skilled enough to have assembled the pieces, and lucky enough to have gotten the machine up and running could have cared less who authored BASIC. They just wanted to use it, and when they couldn’t get it, many resorted to “stealing” this prized piece of software that gave them the programming power to turn $397 worth of electronic parts and an Intel 8080 chip into a useful computer that could do more than just flash two rows of red LED lights.”

At page 101 – “According to one account, someone from Homebrew picked up the punched paper tape containing BASIC lying on the floor near the Altair. Someone else later ran off copies of the tape, and at the next Homebrew meeting a large box of tapes was passed out to anyone who wanted one. Gradually, then exponentially, BASIC spread from computer club to computer club like a virus. And no one was paying for it. When Gates learned what was going on, he was beside himself. No wonder he and Allen were receiving so little money from their royalty agreement with MITS, he thought. One day he stormed into Roberts’ office and threw one of his fits that many around MITS had become accustomed to. “I vividly remember the conversation,” recalled Roberts, “him coming into my office that first summer and screaming and yelling at the top of his lungs that everyone was stealing his software, and he was never going to make any money, and he wasn’t going to do another thing unless we put him on the payroll.””

Gates went so far as to offer to sell ownership of BASIC at $6,500 to the head of MITS, Ed Roberts, which the author describes as something that would have been the bonehead deal of the century. But Roberts decided not to take Gates up on the offer, telling an associate of Gates that he liked both Gates and Allen and didn’t want to take advantage of them because they were so young. The author comments that in truth, Roberts decided it made better business sense to continue paying royalties to the two, and reap whatever benefits came from the enhancements they were making with BASIC.  

Bill Gates responded by denouncing the activities of these software pirates. At page 100 – “But as far as Bill Gates was concerned, they were unprincipled thieves. And he called them as much in an infamous letter published in the Altair newsletter, which was reprinted in other computer magazines and ended up as dartboard material in computer clubs from New York to California.”

In his letter, Gates highlighted how the hobbyists act of stealing software programs inhibits software developers from creating softwares to hobbyists. He added that he would appreciate letters from anyone who wants to pay up, or has a suggestion or comment, and that nothing would please him more than being able to hire programmers and deluge the hobby market with good software.

The letter had its backlash. At page 103 – “The Southern California Compute Society, which had been visited by the MITS-mobile in early 1975 and by now had several thousand members, threatened to sue him. “They were upset that Gates had called them thieves,” said Bunnell. “They were not all thieves…just most of them.” Only a handful of people who possessed pirated copies of BASIC sent Gates money as he had asked them to do in his letter. Some fired off their own angry letters in return. What was the difference between making copies of BASIC and taping music off the air rather than buying the recording artist’s music, some wanted to know? Others argued the altruistic position that BASIC belonged in the public domain, an argument that had some merit since Gates and Allen had created BASIC using the PDP-10 at Harvard, a computer funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In other words, these people argued, the computer time they had used was paid for with taxpayer’s money.”

However, there were some good outcomes from the piracy issue. At page 107 – “The BASIC that Gates and Allen had written in those eight frantic weeks at Harvard a year earlier had now spread all over the country, thanks in large measure to the very actions of hobbyists Gates had so bitterly denounced. BASIC had become a de facto standard in the young microcomputer industry. When new computer companies joined the revolution and needed a BASIC language, they came to Albuquerque and did business with Gates and Microsoft. And they came with pockets stuffed with money.”

Speaking about piracy issues in the computer software industry and the anti-piracy measures taken by software developers, the game seems to be one of cat and mouse, and I am not really sure who is winning at the moment. There are indeed many accessible means of obtaining pirate contents online. The most infamous hosting site of pirate contents currently is probably piratesbay which has managed to stave off attempts to close down its hosting site.

I do support anti-piracy because I think piracy is stealing. After all, if you can’t afford it, there is no need to buy it. Intellectual property content are usually not basic goods necessary for public consumption. Save for cases where they actually are, such as medicine. There, I think there may be a case for allowing generic or pirated goods to be manufactured, within certain legal limits, to protect the interest of people.

Life a Machiavellian affair?

I am reading a book by Robert Greene titled the 33 strategies of war. From my reading so far, I am gripped by the portrayal of the nature human relationships that the book claims to be true. It seems to enunciate human relationship as a sort of cut-throat Machiavellain affair. I don’t really like to see life in such a manner. Nonetheless, the book does make an evincing description of how some people operate in the social world to get the advantage, and it advocates for one to understand these strategies and to protect oneself from the duplicitous aims that one’s opponents may harbor. I shall present some texts that I encountered in my reading.

From the preface section page xv – “We live in a culture that promotes democratic values of being fair to one and all, the importance of fitting into a group, and knowing how to cooperate with other people. We are taught early on in life that those who are outwardly combative and aggressive pay a social price : unpopularity and isolation. These values of harmony and cooperation are perpetuated in subtle and not-so-subtle ways – through notions of correctness that saturate the public space. The problem for us is that we are trained and prepared for peace, and we are not at all prepared for what confronts us in the real world- war….In politics, business, even the arts, we face opponents who will do almost anything to gain an edge. More troubling and complex, however, are the battles we face with those who are supposedly on our side. There are those who outwardly play the team game, who act very friendly and agreeable, but who sabotage us behind the scenes, use the group to promote their own agenda. Others, more difficult to spot, play subtle games of passive aggression, offering help that never comes, instilling guilt as a secret weapon. On the surface everything seems peaceful enough, but just below it, it is every man and woman for him or herself, this dynamic infecting even families and relationships. The culture may deny this reality and promote a gentler picture, but we know it and feel it, in our battle scars.”

From page xvi – “This ideal of fighting rationally comes to us from organized warfare, where the art of strategy was invented and refined. In the beginning, war was not at all strategic. Battles between tribes were fought in a brutal manner, a kind of ritual of violence in which individuals could display their heroism. But as tribes expanded and evolved into states, it became all too apparent that war had too many hidden costs, that waging it blindly often led to exhaustion and self-destruction, even for the victor. Somehow wars had to be fought more rationally.”

I thought it an interesting point by the author that the game of cunningness plays out even in context with a superficial pretense of apoliticism. I have heard from a Christian person I know about the political atmosphere of strife that he encounters as a Christian ministry leader at his church, about things such as leadership struggles, and how common Christian phrases can be turned into forces of rhetorics to advance one’s own agenda and political purposes within the church. I don’t participate much in the ministry affairs at my church, but I do acknowledge the possibility that some form of political strife might be present in all churches, going past the superficial images of general amicableness and conviviality that one usually gets the impression of as a casual member of a church community. I do think however that people in the church should maintain some perspective about the issues that they face and not let trivial matters become a source of division or animosity within the church body.

I suppose the political environment is much more intense in secular organizations. I am afraid that I might be politically quite naïve. In part, I don’t participate in the committee of secular organizations. There are probably the likes of those who live life with the credos of a Machievellian, who seek to convert every possible profit into a gain. I do try to analyze such characters from my reading of law school materials, and from my reading of books of people in the business world, and by watching movies featuring themes as such. And I do hear from the experience of people who deal with political aspects in their careers. I was listening to a relative commenting on politics. He made a description of how it works anywhere in the world – people form their alliances and help those within their alliances in order to advance their respective interests. I suppose it pays to be wise about how to go about the political aspects of things in life. But then, I don’t exactly subscribe to the notion that everything runs based on the politics of human relationships. Or at least, the ideal is that they should not be. For example, I believe that the judiciary should be rule-based, and should not be partial towards any individual. And there are certain aspects of business transaction that are handled by the government that should come under regulation in order to deter corruption or cronyism. For example, government businesses should be awarded on the basis of a fair tender and auction scheme. And it is necessary for those who are helming to positions of authority to stick to these ideals and enforce them for the good of society. I suppose what I am trying to say here is that there is a distinction between ideals and practice, and between the public sphere and the private sphere. There are ideals that humans should seek to live by, such as creating a more fair, just, and equitable society. And there are different rules that applies to different domains of society. For example, the concept of alliance formation and alliance-based relationship may be more relevant to the private sphere than to the public sphere which should be more rule-based.

Attending a relative’s wedding

I just attended a wedding of my cousin in Malaysia. There has been recently a spate of weddings from relatives from my maternal relatives. It’s like everyone is growing up and going through another passage in life, getting married and settling down. One of my female relative gave birth to a baby girl, whilst another is pregnant with a child.

I like attending the wedding and seeing a lot of my relatives and distant relatives at the occasion. I like to get together with my cousins, to talk to them, and get to know how they are doing in life. I got to know some interesting relatives whom I had not known before in the occasion. There is this guy whom I met who is studying dentistry, and another who is studying medicine at NUS. Amongst my immediate relatives, there are many people in the field of medicine or law. I do like the fact that I have an aunt who is a lawyer, and another aunt who is a law professor. It provides some inspiration for me to believe that I can do well in the field of law as well.

Attending a wedding also makes me ask the question about whether I will ever get married in life. For one, I have never been in a relationship before, which I believe is rather late considering that I am already 23 years of age. I guess I do suffer from some inferiority complex about whether there are any girls who like me. And I don’t like to take any overt action to express my liking for a girl or to initiate a relationship. When I attend a wedding and see many people there at the wedding, it does cause me to worry about the question whether there will be as many people attending my wedding if I should marry. I guess I don’t exactly think I am a very influential person in life who has much social contact or influence.

I suppose I am still trying to find the right girl in my life whom I can spend the rest of my life with. And I guess I will try looking around and attending functions and social events where I can get to know more girls. There is the Varsity Christian Fellowship at campus, and I try to attend as many functions as possible within my social comfort zone. I am thinking of other avenues by which I can get to know more Christian girls around my age. Perhaps I might go on a church hopping spree, or engage in online dating. But I hope to keep my cool about such things and let things happen naturally, if they indeed ought to happen that way. I do take a line of philosophy about how to approach life from the folk song Que Sera Sera. I suppose there are some things that are not within our control, and it is being realistic to acknowledge the presence of such things.

Is Christianity true, or God real?

It is times when you are experiencing an ordeal of great hardship, and the usual mechanism of prayers find its usual response of being unanswered, that one starts to truly question the existence of God. I mean, if things were not too bad, I wouldn’t be too troubled by unanswered prayers because I would hope that I myself would be able to resolve things and put things in order. And it is usually the case that I find that most of my prayers are unanswered, or at least, the silent answer most of the time seems to be ‘no’. But it doesn’t really bother me until I get something like a constant annoying pressure sensation in my head that begs not to go away. And its insistence on staying past its due really perturbs me. I suppose I could have beared with tinnitus. Now, I face the prospect of having to bear with tension headache for the rest of my life.

And so I figure, what if God isn’t really real? I mean, I should be entitled to my doubts should I not? I am simply being intellectually honest with my situation and observation. What is there in my life that should make me think that God, or Christianity really is true? Even devout Christians that I know who pray do not receive things that are good for them. And I am really dissatisfied with the answers given by Christians about why prayers are unanswered. I suppose I am dissatisfied so even if they quote from the bible. Partly, I do find the answers given by the bible unsatisfactory. It is like there are these strict conditions that has to be fulfilled before God will even bother to hear any prayers. And to me, it seems like attempts of men who conceived of the religion of Christianity to construct the religion in such a way that there will always be an excuse for God for the lack of any signs, miracles, or wonders to prove to the effect of the veracity of Chrstianity. And I could readily see why someone who constructs a religion would want to do that. It is so that the observation of a world which is naturalist in nature would be concilable with the supernaturalism of Christianity. The convenient cop-out is for the creators of the religion to simply explain that these supernaturalist elements is hard of taking place.

And even if Christianity is true, and God does exist, he is certainly not a God that provides too much practical help is he? That is, it really makes no difference whether one believes or not. The thing to do when facing a problem is to take all the reasonable practical action that one is ought to be expected of to resolve it. You may include God into your affair, or not. It doesn’t really matter much. But the best security that you may have is if you should take care of it yourself.

The thing is that I really wish that Christianity were true, as presented in the Bible where God was a more interventionistic God than what I do observe right now in life. The thing is that I want to believe in God and place my trust in him. But I can’t be sure that he exists, or that Christianity is true. I don’t think that the characteristics of God as presented in the Bible square off with what I observe in my life. But I would exclaim that unlike the atheist or the agnostic, I do wish for Christianity to be true, I do wish for God to exist and to set my life, and things around the world in order.