tim's experiment

Read Full Post »

It is disconcerting for military historians to find the Duchess of Cambridge in the news. There are two egregiously excessive and unjustified equestrian statues in London. One commemorates the Duke of York (1763-1827: there have been many others. The title is traditionally bestowed on the King’s second son). This is the one who in the old song marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again. The other commemorates the Duke of Cambridge (1819-1904) another Royal sprig, who servcd without distinction in command of the Guards and Highland Brigades in the Crimea, was made commander-in-chief because of his aristocratic status and spend 39 years in that post opposing military reform of any kind. I must in fairness add that he did found the School of Military Music.

Now the title belongs to the young man formerly known as Prince William, who became the Dook on the day of his wedding. He also became Earl of Strathearn and Baron of Carrickfergus. These Royal types need large business cards.

Anyway the fuss about the Duchess stems from some topless pictures, snapped with a lens the size of a bazooka while she was staying in a remote house — according to some accounts a chateau — in France. There is no suggestion that she was doing anything controversial, pornographic or whatever. This has provided an opportunity for Brits to pose self-righteously, for journalists to add to the already excessive mountain of words devoted to the late Princess Di, and for spectators in more boring countries to revel in a “Royal scandal”. And meanwhile the happy couple departed for a world tour, winding up in the Solomon Islands where lots of ladies appear topless and think nothing of it. Indeed the Economist found a news picture in which two breasts (not the Duchess’s) were clearly visible at the welcoming reception.

This all strikes me as a little weird.  I can remember a time when female breasts were rarely seen. Boys who were curious had to seek out the National Geographic magazine, which occasionally covered topless Stone Age tribes, or nudist magazines in strange European languages. When the first bikini hit the beaches the appearance of the naked female navel in public was a sensation.  Times have changed. There is nothing noteworthy about the Duchess sunbathing topless in the South of France. This is what everyone else does down there. In many European cities a sunny day brings out the bosoms in public parks. The media are a riot of naked nipples, although not in Hong Kong, and as for the internet … So what’s the fuss about? All right the lady is a princess but if her bare Bristols are seen in public her husband is not going to turn back into a frog. There has never been a problem with men going topless. Isn’t it time for a bit of equality here?

Read Full Post »

People who work on Law Reform Commission panels deserve our gratitude and respect. Poring over the law in search of deficiencies is painstaking, poorly rewarded and often frustrating, because the resulting suggestions too often languish unimplemented.  Having said which, such panels often seem to be in danger of a problem known in anthropological circles as the Firehouse Effect, because it was first identified in studies of American fire fighters. What happens is that a group of people meet over and over again, discuss matters endlessly with each other, and gradually diverge from the mainstream until their conclusions become outlandish, if not outrageous. With all due respect to the panel who have just produced some recommendations on sexual offences, I do think they should perhaps have got out more often. I realise that this particular topic is difficult to float as a theme for casual conversation, but still…

The recommendations, according to Tuesday’s newspapers, are supposed to make the law “gender neutral”. To this end the offence of rape will be extended to include oral and anal penetration as well as the traditional mode. I have two objections to this. The first is that rape is a highly emotive word and it is better to resist its extension as much as possible. No good is done to anyone by the extension of the label (in California) to cases where the woman was eager and willing but had had a few drinks, or its extension (in Sweden) to cases where the woman, having consented once, claims that in a second sitting she was half asleep. I do not suggest that oral or anal penetration without consent should be legal, but if the legislature wishes to make them an offence it should come up with a new label — Unlawful Penetration, or something — not confuse everyone by extending rape into areas it does not now cover.

My second objection is that the law cannot be made gender neutral if biology is not gender neutral. Rape is committed by a man on a woman because that is the only way the equipment works. You cannot put a bolt into a nut unless there is a nut. Being penetrated anally is I am sure extremely unpleasant. I did for a while suffer from a medical problem which required doctors from time to time to explore the passage concerned. Although this was of course with my consent I found it extremely humiliating and painful. I felt emotionally bruised for hours afterwards. But painful though the sensation may be, the fact remains that people do not feel the same way about the anus as they do about the vagina. The vagina is the seat of the Love Goddess, the badge of womanhood and the cradle of new life. The anus is just an exhaust pipe. A man who is anally assaulted is also spared the agony of wondering if he has been impregnated. Consequently, it seems to me, the rape of a woman by a man is rightly considered in a class of its own and the pursuit of gender equality in this particular area is misguided. It also has odd consequences. Having decided to protect male anuses, the panel then had to come to the rescue of female ones. Having taken under its wing, as it were, two of the three orifices usually used for this kind of fun it then felt unable to leave out the third, so the mouth also becomes a potential rape site. I fear the panel has confused “distinctions based on sexual orientation”, which it rightly dislikes, with distinctions based on biology, which are necessary in some places.

These are matters on which honest people can no doubt disagree. I am not so sure about the panel’s views on photography, which seem to verge on lunacy. Apparently the panel considers it “unsatisfactory” that taking photographs of the view up ladies’ skirts (without their consent, I presume, though this point was not mentioned) was not in itself an offence. People caught in this deplorable hobby were perforce prosecuted for things like loitering. The panel proposes to solve this problem by making taking pictures a form of sexual assault. I’m sorry, but this is really stupid. Assault is a venerable concept and it has always involved some contact with the victim. Assault by looking or photographing is a contradiction. Also although the motive may be sexual the assault is not. Unless the lady concerned is a very liberated dresser the picture shows nothing which you cannot see on any public beach. In fact it is a bit of a puzzle why people take the whole matter so seriously. The “victim” is not only unharmed but usually unconscious of anything happening. The picture does not include her face so there is no question of a “saw you on Youtube” moment coming later. Of course we must discourage this sort of thing but it hardly justifies the enthusiasm of Associate Professor Eric Cheung Tat-ming, of the HKU Law persuasion, who  was reported as rejoicing in the fact that this would be classified as a sexual offence so “offenders’ identities would be available in the sex offenders’ register”. Would they indeed? This is just the sort of thing which gives sexual offenders’ registers a bad name. The purpose of such a register is to enable employers in appropriate categories to exclude from their service people whose record suggests they cannot be trusted to work with children and other vulnerable people. It is not supposed to be a mode of punishment and it is a serious deficiency in such a register if it includes large numbers of people whose identity is not relevant to its purpose. People who like upskirts pictures have a taste which I do not share and people who take such pictures are no gentlemen. But there is no reason to suppose that they are a threat to anyone and no justification for branding them as dangerous. Law professors, on the other hand, need to be leashed, if not muzzled.

Read Full Post »

Everyt day we Post readers are treated to a sort of star letter: one reader’s effort which is singled out by getting a two-column headline and a blue background. Monday’s effort, by a Mr CB Lee, picked up a point made in an earlier news story. This stated that nine out of ten problem gamblers who sought help from a Caritas centre for such people were “debt-ridden”. This, said Mr Lee, came as no surprise. Well, I suppose people with a gambling problem tend to have debts, generally speaking. But Mr Lee said the original report did not get to the root of the problem, which was “the abundance of illagal gambling and the aggressive and glitzy marketing by Macau casinos”. Mr Lee concluded that the Caritas report “misses the point and did not really add value to the debate.”

This seemed a mite unkind, so I dug out the original story to see where Caritas had gone wrong. The story quoted a spokesman for Caritas, one Joe Tang Yiu-cho, as saying that “nine out of ten of the gamblers who sought its help were heavily indebted, compared to (note to subs: that should be “compared with”) only three to four out of ten a few years ago”. Mr Tang attributed the change to the appearance of companies willing to make loans quickly and with minimal or no collateral. He also noted that the Jockey Club’s “net margin” — which is what the club calls its profit from gambling — had increased by six per cent in the last financial year.

What are we to make of all this? Clearly Mr Tang is right in supposing that something has changed in his clientele. A jump from 30 per cent to 90 per cent does not look like a random fluctuation. On the other hand Mr Tang’s version of the cause must be considered a speculation. There are other possible explanations, after all. Anyone with a gambling problem is going to run into debt sooner or later, because in the long run the house always wins. Maybe people are waiting until later before seeking help. Or perhaps the public’s perception of what constitutes a problem is changing.

We can, though, I think safely exclude the explanations offered by Mr Lee, which are that gamblers are borrowing from illegal bookies or casinos. They of all people know how slim are their chances of getting their money back. No doubt gamblers can get loans through more traditional channels. I imagine serious gambling addicts are quite ingenious at conning people into financing their habit. But people who lend money have every incentive to be careful.

What really bothered me about Mr Lee’s offering, though, was his complaint about the abundance of illegal gambling and casino ads. Hong Kong does not suffer from an abundance of illegal gambling. It suffers from an abundance of legal gambling. Addicted gamblers do not care who is on the other end of their bets. Every estate has a betting shop. Losing money could not be easier. You can even do the whole thing by phone. Moreover the glitzy advertising by Macau casinoes, wherever it is, is totally outshouted by the free advertising provided by Hong Kong media for the Jockey Club.

In the newspaper which featured Mr Lee’s letter there were no advertisements, glitzy or otherwise, for Macau casinos. There were ads for the usual things: expensive watches, expensive flats, expensive clothes, expensive schools, but not a casino in sight. On the other hand there were two whole pages devoted to horse-racing, the Jockey Club’s traditional way of parting fools from their money, and a further whole page devoted to soccer, the new attraction for eager losers. The television companies are even more generous. Whole race meetings are televised live from nose to tail. Further hours of air time are devoted to advice for punters and post race analysis. News bulletins on the relevant days inform us that “now it’s time to check your Mark Six numbers” as if any viewer who had not bought a ticket in this particular lottery was some kind of freak.

Mr Lee thought that “gaming advertising” should be tightly restricted. Somehow I don’t think the relentless plugging of the Jockey Club was what he had in mind. He lives in Happy Valley. Perhaps he works there too.

Read Full Post »

What a glorious confusion now reigns over the subject of brainwashing! This was an almost unheard of word in Hong Kong two months ago. Now the government stands accused of wishing to brainwash students, the protesters are accused of already being brainwashed by sneaky democrats, religious schools are being accused of brainwashing their pupils. This trend reached its glorious apogee on Saturday when Pierce Lam (whose name, significantly, is almost an anagram of Senile Crap) announced in the letters page of Pravda that most of the population of Hong Kong had been brainwashed by the colonial government. Many of the protesters are too young to have had anything to do with the colonial government so this represents a considerable achievement on someone’s part.

Now let us be clear about one thing. Brainwashing, in the strict sense, was an early invention of our beloved PRC. People with erroneous opinions where locked up together. They were then placed under tremendous pressure to change their views. This came not only from the guards, but also from their fellow prisoners, who could increase their chances of release by developing a fanatical enthusiasm for the correct view. Under these circumstances many people did appear to change their opinions, and for a while exaggerated accounts circulated of the effectiveness of the process. It later emerged that most of the people subjected to brainwashing would revert to their former views – though no doubt with a good deal of caution over expressing them – soon after they emerged from the process. If they managed to escape from the People’s Paradise they tended not only to revert to their previous views but also to be extremely critical of the brainwashing process, which was after all a clear violation both of human rights and the rule of law.

Nobody has been doing, is doing, or wishes to do anything like this is Hong Kong. To that extent all this talk of brainwashing is grossly exaggerated.

Having said which, there is a kernel of scientific truth in the idea that biassed national education will dispose children to believe things which most of us do not accept as true. In the first place, although telling people something does not necessarily lead them to believe it, it does make it easier for them to believe it. This can be demonstrated in simple experiments. Your brain finds it easier to handle concepts with which it is familiar. If you tell people every morning that Big Brother Loves You, a proposition for which there is no other evidence, they will not all believe it. Probably most of them will not believe it. But they will find it easier to believe it, so more people will believe it than would have been the case if the class spent the first five minutes of every lesson reciting the Lords Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance. Readers can probably confirm this from their own experience. I, for example, was subjected to a good deal of Christian education. This did not, in the end, make me religious. But I do find it easier, having heard the story so often, to believe that God spoke to Moses from a burning bush than to believe, as Mr Mitt Romney does, that the Angel Moroni gave some gold tablets to Joseph Smith in 1823.

Religious schools are I suppose intended to produce believers in the religion concerned. But it is a commonplace observation that this does not always happen. Many people who attend religous schools do not emerge as believers in the religion concerned – or in many cases in any religion. In a sense, if you are a parent who does not believe in that religion than sending your child to the school is a gamble.  Probably it increases the chance that your kid will eventually become a Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist or whichever brand the school purveys. On the other hand this may happen anyway. So let us say that the chances of your kid getting religion increase from 5 per cent to 10 per cent. You may think that is worth it if his chances of getting into university increase from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. After all getting religion is not so bad. Many parents, I think, have an uneasy feeling that ethical education is not their forte and a religious school will be good at this.

Now parents who wish their kids to grow up as fanatical super-patriots can increase the chance of that happening by sending their offspring to Left-wing schools. As with religion there are no doubt many pupils in Left-wing schools who do not pick up the intended message and some who react vigorously against it. You get improved odds, not certainty. The question is not whether this option should be available but whether it should be compulsory.

Teachers (of whom I am still one) will wonder at this point whether their efforts are to be exploited. Behind every lesson is the unstated but deeply felt notion that this stuff is important, useful, and true. Attempts to insert things into the curriculum which lack one or all of these characteristics make us uncomfortable. One wishes to do a good job. That usually means that at the end of the lesson the students believe what they have been told. If honesty requires us to announce at the beginning of the session that the content of this class is a load of politically-motivated twaddle then learning is probably not going to take place. Teachers who reflect on the material they are putting over will realise that much of it is rather arbitrary and local. We teach reading and writing in accordance with the local conventions. Systems for reading and writing vary. Mathematics also has an element of arbitrary local choice in it. We do not have to count in tens, hundreds and thousands, but we do. This was more obvious when I was at school because we still had to learn that there were 12 pennies in a shilling, 16 ounces in a pound, eight furlongs in a mile, and so on. So in a sense the teacher is offering as essential and permanent what is to some extent contingent and local. This is only acceptable if there is a clear consensus in favour of this content as useful and truthful. The trouble with the idea of a “China Model” is that it doesn’t represent a consensus at all … even in China. Teaching children the values we all share is one thing. Teaching them the values that officials would like us to share is another.

Read Full Post »

One of the thing which hjas often amazed me since moving to the education field is the number of people who reach very senior positions in this area while being really dumb.

Consider our, or rather the PRC’s, Minister for Education, Yuan Guiren. I suppose this person cannot have reached such an education eminence without some knowledge of the field, not to mention the animal cunning required to survive and prosper in the upper ranks of the Beijing leadership. But yesterday he, as Pravda put it, broke his silence on the national education issue. He said that “all nationals should receive national education”. This settled at least one part of the argument. One of the strongest arguments against national education, and the hardest to refute (because it is always hard to prove a negative), was that the whole thing was just being done to please Beijing. What was hard has now become impossible. It is being done at Beijing’s wish and Mr Yuan has no scruples about issuing instructions to that effect in public.  He went on to say, reportedly, that there was “room for discussion” on the matter. Too late.

Actually there was no reason for Mr Yuan to “break his silence” and a good reason for sticking with it. Under “one country two systems”  education is clearly a matter for Hong Kong, not for Beijing. It has nothing to do with defence or foreign affairs. Hong Kong schools are no more the business of the PRC Education Ministry than Hong Kong railways are that of (perish the thought) the Railways Ministry, or Hong Kong hospitals of the Health Ministry. Those people who periodically assure us that China has scrupulously observed the terms of the Basic Law now look a bit optimistic. After all if ministers are prepared to issue instructions in public who knows what they say in private? Sometimes silence really is golden.

Read Full Post »

It seems the business pages are awash with people who wish to assure us that there is no housing bubble. Prices are perfectly reasonable in historical terms and there is no need for the government to do anything. Well it would perhaps be too easy to ascribe this to either a position in the market or a desire to please friends in the business, but it does seem a bit suspicious. Some of the evidence cited in support of this view is very technical. Some of it is a bit tacky. It seems that real estate agents can always come up with convincing reasons why this is a good time to buy. I wonder why that is…

A particularly eye-catching part of the statistical scenery is the figure for empty flats in Hong Kong, of which there are apparently 120,000. If you are determined to look on the sunny side of things you interpret this as indicating that there is no shortage of flats in Hong Kong. Current high prices are purely a result of our dollar being tethered to Mr Obama’s apron strings. So mortgages are cheap. And there is no bubble. And the government should not increase supply, and if it does then it will get the blame when prices come down.

I have a problem with this interpretation. I do not see the owners of these 120,000 flats making frantic efforts to let or sell them. After all if they wished to do so, they could manage it by lowering their asking price. Every economist since Marchall has maintained that a free market which is functioning properly will “clear”. In other words, if there are 100,000 empty flats for sale, then the price will come down until 100,000 willing buyers appear. Why is this not happening?

I turn at this point to J.K. Galbraith’s old but still very readable book on the Great Crash of 1929/30. Galbraith does not go in for any of the exotic statistical stuff now on offer. He looks at interest rates as a possible problem and rejects the theory. His bubble indicator is rather qualitative. A bubble forms when people aquire things for which they have no use or need, with a view solely to benefiting from an expected rise in the asset’s value. If you bought a tulip bulb because you wanted to grow tulips that was OK. When people started buying tulip bulbs because they thought the bulbs would double in value just sitting on a shelf, they were blowing bubbles. If you bought shares in the South Sea Company because you thought it was a good company with excellent long-term prospects then you were an investor. If you just bought them because you were fairly confident that someone would pay you three times as much for them next week then you were blowing. If you bought a flat recently, to live in, fine. Whatever happens to property prices you will still have somewhere to live. If you bought it because the rent income would more than cover the mortgage payments that is also OK. I hope you didn’t subdivide it. If you bought it because propsrty prices always rise so it will be worth more next year than this year .. well good luck. You’re probably getting better odds than you would get in Macau but it’s still a gamble. And the government is not obliged – though it may be talked into it – to ensure that you win.

The question we now have to ask ourselves is why these 120,000 flats are sitting unsold on their owners’ metaphorical shelves. They are not being let. They are not being sold. They are not being lived in. They are, as one bubble non-spotter put it, a “popular investment for middle class Hong Kongers.” Not to mention mainland money-launderers. But investments come in two categories. Investments which produce an income flow you hold for the long term. Investments which are intended to rise in value are dropped like hot bricks if the relevant prices seem to be going down.

Well we shall see. The proof of the bubble is in the bursting. Bubbles do not deflate gently. They pop. If the fall in property prices is slow and smooth then the apostles of complacency were right. If the fall is sudden and precipitate it will be because there was a bubble after all. It will not be the government’s fault. But some blame will attach to the people who told us there was nothing to worry about, and prices would go onwards and upwards …. for ever … to infinity and beyond…

Read Full Post »

Interesting reversal of roles this weekend. Usually I pipe and my wife takes the pictures or the video. This time she was performing in a concert in the Shatin Town Hall foyer and I was behind the camera – a rather alarming arrangement because I know very little about cameras. The concert was for groups of zheng (it rhymes with bung) players, in numbers ranging from one to about 12.  The zheng works rather well as an ensemble instrument. Oddly enough they have one problem which they share with bagpipers. One does not have a conductor. The leading player gives the signal for things to happen. But the instrument requires the attention of both hands. In pagipe bands everyone is standing up and the leader of the proceedings developes a very expressive foot. You play the zheng sitting down so the leading lady (I have never seen a male zheng player) gestures with her head. This will never catch on with pipers. We have to wear hats.

Actually this sort of musical event is going on all the time. People who think Hong Kong is a cultural desert do not get out enough. We are short of those mammoth artisitic enterprises like grand opera which used to be court entertainments and consequently are too expensive to live without massive subsidies to replace their lost royal patronage.  But smaller scale events are happening all the time. Hang around your local town hall and you will see a great deal of coming and going. In fact the recurring complaint in local music and dancing circles is of the difficulty of finding places to do it. Our beloved government provides a certain number of small rooms in town halls and sports centres where such things can be done. No doubt the number of rooms conforms to some ingenious formula which tells the urban planner how many such rooms will be required per million of population. If you ask me this formula needs to be tweaked a bit.

Read Full Post »