Here’s a highly entertaining list of 18 of the world’s strangest airports, via Marginal Revolution. My favorite entry is the one with the runway cutting straight across the city’s main road, just like an old-style rainway crossing. Normally I dislike spreading links for lists like this but this one is particularly eye-opening.
Monthly Archives: March 2010
Mt. Kinabalu Climb
I suppose I should write a post about my experience about climbing Mt. Kinabalu, but there’s already so much information out there about it that there’s little of value that I can add. We did what is by now the standard three day two night package, staying overnight on Tuesday evening at the National Park HQ and starting out from Timpohon gate for the trek to Laban Rata at about 8:20 AM.
My wife and I did better than average on this part of the trip, arriving at about 12:40 PM. One guy we saw however managed to arrive at about 10:30 AM. The rest of our group arrived at about 2:30 PM which is about the average I think. Shan’s mother insisted that we use a porter so that helped us to be faster as we only had to carry our food and water but it also created a problem for us as the porter stayed behind with the rest of them while we raced ahead, so we had no warm clothes to wear at Laban Rata and had to snuggle under the blankets while waiting for our luggage to arrive.
Islamic prostitution in Iran
I’ve been intrigued by the practice of what is effectively legalized and religiously sanctioned prostitution in Iran since I heard about it a couple of years ago and this article is the most in-depth look at it that I’ve read. It’s technically called temporary marriage but it’s clearly prostitution. The temporary marriage contract lasts for a predefined duration, from a matter of minutes to 99 years and there is an explicit provision for the woman to be compensated by the male in some way, with the precise terms being negotiated between the two parties.
What’s interesting is that like normal marriages, any children conceived under the temporary marriage contract are considered legitimate and may inherit the father’s property, but the woman is not required to obey the man as traditionally required under Islam, except in sexual matters. These actually sound like reasonable rules to protect the woman and provide for a measure of security for any children that might result.
In fact, the whole thing is refreshingly honest and straightforward. The religious authorities acknowledge that the primary purpose of such contracts is pleasure for the men and money for the women. They even insist that it be proudly branded as Islamic so that critics cannot say that Islam is blind to the physical needs of men. They also see it as a useful way for women, particularly widows, to earn money to support children who might otherwise go uncared for.
At the same time, the authorities remain puritanically strict against liaisons between men and women that are not sanctioned under Islam. Once you have the paper contract, issued and approved by the proper religious officials, everything is okay, but without it, the liaison is sinful and will be zealously prosecuted in Iran. It’s a weird disconnect.
Greek lessons
I have to admit that I’m one of those who have been following the travails of the Greek government with a touch of schadenfreude. As this article in The Economist put it, how can the German government justify giving aid to Greece when Greek public sector employees get to retire earlier than German ones. Germany has for years been reforming its own welfare programme to save money while Greece has been happily pretending it could afford its bloated public sector workforce, going to the extent of fudging its statistics and outright lying to creditors about its liabilities.
It’s also worth remembering that the Haiti earthquake happened not too long ago and still needs money to rebuild. While it’s true that corruption and mismanagement played a part in the ineffectiveness of the Haitian government, exacerbating the damage caused by the quake, it’s impossible to argue that the quake was anything other than an accident that the Haitians had absolutely no control over. By contrast, an entire generation of Greeks was complicit in the decisions that led Greece into the mess that it currently finds itself in. How then is it morally justifiable to help the Greeks when there are so many other more worthwhile causes that require finite resources?
This blog post, again from The Economist, is very sympathetic towards the Greeks, but to me, they still reinforce the impression that the current problems are the result of specific choices made by the Greek government beginning in the 1980s. By successively voting for governments that continued those policies, the Greek people chose short-term wealth and growth without a care for whether or not these policies were sustainable, and so are complicit in them. Should they be saved from the results of their own choices?
Finally, shouldn’t the principles that apply to countries be equally applicable to individuals? I don’t begrudge the appeals for aid in cases where clearly the people involved have troubles that are none of their doing. Orphans come particularly to mind. But I do get annoyed when I see articles in the newspapers about how the government should be considerate towards people who have accumulated unsustainable levels of credit card debt or how richer people should contribute towards the welfare of those who have incurred responsibilities that they never had the ability to bear. Why should those who have worked hard to live within their means be punished and those have been short-sighted and irresponsible be rewarded?
Devil is in the Vatican
Or so claims no less a figure than the Chief Exorcist at the Vatican for 25 years. This article is surreal to read. It seems like something drawn from the script of a horror movie but it’s actual testimony from a senior cleric who has worked in the Vatican in an official capacity. How cool is it that the Vatican even has a post called “Chief Exorcist”?
But it is kind of troubling to see someone so high up in the Vatican have such a literal belief in the devil. As one commentator on QT3 asked, this guy apparently has assistants to hold supposedly possessed persons down to perform exorcism rituals on them. Wouldn’t it make more sense in our times to take that person to a doctor specializing in mental illnesses? Is there any third party oversight on what they do at all? It makes one think where the line is between respectable quirks of religion and all out looney tunes territory.
Classical music used as punishment in school
Here’s an amusing article about a school in Britain that has started using classical music to punish misbehaving students. It’s normal practice of course to punish such students by giving them detention, but the school is apparently aiming at making detention more unpleasant by piping in classical music into the hall. According to the headmaster, this seems to be working as infractions of school rules have dropped by 60 percent since he started the practice.
Once again, I’m not really a listener of classical music but I do appreciate the intellectual achievement in it, so even I feel a little sad that the pendulum has swung so far that not only do youngsters actively hate it, but that a school is willing to exploit this fact and use it as a form of punishment.
Using Facebook at work sets off alarms
It’s an accepted fact of modern office life that staff will often browse sites like YouTube and Facebook at work. Sure, some employers hate it and try to block such sites from the workplace but in general, I think that employers should acknowledge that trying to force staff to use every second of their working time only on official tasks is a poor strategy. It makes more sense to gauge the effectiveness of staff, especially in roles where a significant amount of creativity or independent thinking is required, through concrete goals and performance targets while allowing employees to manage their own time as they see fit. In some cases, using such banned websites may actually be helpful to some people in their jobs so a blanket ban is just a hindrance.
One employer however has hit on a novel strategy. Instead of directly blocking offending sites from the office computers, the employer puts such sites on a watchlist and then triggers ear piercing alarms whenever an employee in the room browses onto a site on the list. According to the blog post, this allows employees who legitimately need access to these sites to continue to use them but publicly shames employees who are just goofing off at work. The Freakonomics authors seem to think that this is a pretty smart idea but judging from the comments posted in response to their article, the vast majority of people don’t agree.