Terrorist or Toast?

[caption id="attachment_1432" align="aligncenter" width="575"] The Dream (1910) by Henry Rousseau.[/caption]

What do you do when the fire alarm in your office building goes off and everyone heads for the exit? You know for a fact that this is a well-rehearsed ritual, triggered, as long as anyone cares to remember, not by a ticking bomb planted by a terrorist but by the charred remains of a toast left unattended by a careless co-worker somewhere in the building.

Of course, you join the exodus and head for the exit. This is because the cost of what statisticians call Type I error in situations like this one is “asymmetrical”. In case the fire alarm was triggered by a ticking bomb and you ignore it, you risk losing life and limb.

A Type I error is committed when a true null hypothesis is rejected. When an office fire alarm goes off, the null hypothesis is that the alarm is caused by a grave security threat, perhaps a bomb planted by a terrorist. The alternative hypothesis is that a burnt toast occasioned the fire alarm. You would rather drop everything and head for the designated assembly area than risk the consequences of a security breach even if the probability of such an event is tiny.

When our ancestors were still living in the wild at the mercy of the beasts of prey, they had to make similar calculations. Was the rustle in the bush caused by a gust of wind or a crouching tiger? A Type I error, which in this case meant ascribing the rustle to a gust of wind when, in reality, a hungry tiger was prowling nearby, could be quite unpleasant.

Conversely, false null hypothesises can be accepted, giving rise to Type II errors. If a superstitious person is boarding in an old house, then he may take fright at nocturnal sounds, accepting his own null hypothesis that nocturnal sounds in an old house are made by ghosts. The alternative hypothesis is that aging manmade structures can creak and groan, producing sounds which get amplified at night.

The costs of Type II errors can be prohibitive, too. For example, if airport security checkpoints fail to catch armed terrorists, the consequences can be catastrophic.

Type I errors cannot be decreased without increasing Type II errors and vice versa. If, to minimize Type II errors, security screenings at airports are made too stringent, many innocent passengers would be caught up in the dragnet, increasing Type I errors. However, minimising Type I errors means relaxing security measures, risking the possibility of waving along armed hijackers and bombers through security checkpoints, raising Type II errors and security breaches.

Buddha Died After Eating ...

[caption id="attachment_1421" align="aligncenter" width="665"] The cause of the Buddha's death may be a subject of theological dispute but the event itself has inspired countless artists and sculptors down the ages. This 19th century Japanese print shows women and a cat mourning the suicide of actor Ichikawa Danjuro VIII in a scene reminiscent of traditional artistic conception of the Buddha's deathbed, in which animals are often depicted grieving alongside humans.[/caption]

“I forgot today is the Buddha’s anniversary and ate meat!” the Buddhist lady lamented from the back of the car as we cruised along the Princess Highway from Sydney to a South Coast destination.

“Why?” I replied. “The Buddha himself is said to have died after eating pork!”

This was a revelation to the devout lady, who, after a shocked reaction, retreated into silence.

The cause of the Buddha’s death - mahaparinirvana in the Buddhist canonical jargon – is a matter of theological dispute between the two major Buddhist traditions of Theravada and Mahayana.

It is an article of faith in the Mahayana tradition, which has traditionally held sway in Nepal, India, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan, that the Enlightened One died after eating a meal of mushrooms. For the adherents of Mahayana, it seems that anything less than the Buddha’s imagined vegetarianism detracts from his divinity and precept of karuna (compassion) and ahimsa (non-violence).

On the other hand, the more orthodox Theravada tradition, which took root in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, takes a comparatively more relaxed view on this delicate matter, holding that the Buddha died after eating a meal of pork near Kusinagar, India. For the doctrinal purists of Theravada, the Buddha’s system seems to rest on a more substantive foundation than his dietary habits.

Almost half a millennium passed before the Buddha’s life and teaching were committed to writing. Needless to say, myth and legend were pressed into service to embellish his actions and utterances and also to promote the agendas of rival claimants to his “true” teaching.

As the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero wrote, “There are many questions in philosophy to which no satisfactory answer has yet been given. But the question of the nature of the gods is the darkest and most difficult of all…. So various and so contradictory are the opinions of the most learned men on this matter as to persuade one of the truth of the saying that philosophy is the child of ignorance…”

Eating Rice and Mutton Curry from Brass Plates While Thinking About Home

“Come, eat rice and mutton curry from brass plates – just like back home!” read an advertisement for a Nepalese restaurant here in Sydney, playing on the homesickness and ingrained culinary habits of local Nepalese residents.

I habitually pick up free Nepalese newsletters from various Indo-Bengali-Nepalese grocery stores that dot Sydney’s “ethnic enclaves” to read not so much the news and articles but the advertisements for various products and services.

These advertisements paint an accurate picture of the aspirations, hopes, triumphs, heartaches, struggles and yearnings of the Nepalese people here and elsewhere in Australia.

In the world of print media, there used to be two competing views about the place of the "fourth estate" in the body politic (Admittedly, free community newsletters may not be able to claim membership of the fourth estate as their voice is hardy audible in the cacophony of the national discourse still dominated by a few media corporations).

One of these views proclaimed newspapers to be the raw material of history, or even history itself in the making, while cynics disparaged them as little more than vehicles for selling advertisements and for peddling and perpetuating ignorance, falsehood and bigotry.

The undercurrents of these dichotomous views of the print media can be detected even in humble community newsletters. They definitely convey a sense of history in the making (albeit a peripheral one) and they peddle products and services as well as news, gossips and opinions. They editorialize as if they have the power to shape opinion and guide the hand of history - if not here, then at least back home.

A recent newsletter that I grabbed from a local Nepalese grocery store had an advertisement for a “Roaming pest control”, reflecting growing home ownership in the Nepalese community.

Another advertisement for a Nepalese consultancy promised an “entire gamut of IT and Telecommunications services to your organization”. A bulleted list spelled out what an “entire gamut” meant: e-commerce solution, IT application for enterprises, project management, data migration services, quality assurance and testing, and so on.

Interestingly, the same consultancy also offered “cheapest international flight tickets, low domestic flight tickets in Nepal and India”, and, best of all, “... a lifetime journey to the magistical (sic) Himalayan adobe (sic)”, including Bhutan.

Advertisements like this one signify the presence of a viable local Nepalese market, and the pleasing fact that the diaspora is acquiring wealth and entrepreneurial flair.

In keeping with the zeitgeist, another colour advertisement posted by a “business consultant” asked: “Looking for an Exciting Business Opportunity?”, offering to “make it easier to find you a perfect business with finance”. The business consultant also promised to find finance for car loans, even for students, which told me that the fortunes of Nepalese students have improved dramatically since my own days as an impecunious overseas student.

However, the vast majority of the advertisements are still for overseas student services that range from finding colleges, changing courses and education providers to advice for permanent residency, which still remains the ultimate goal of most Nepalese students.

Perhaps inevitably, even the afore-mentioned IT consultancy-cum-travel agency offered services for international students, revealing the full extent of its “entire gamut”. In the full-page colour advertisement, it posed what it hoped to be a rhetorical question: “Finding it hard to select right Collages (sic) / Universities?”

"The System Failed Us"

Too often, the “system” is blamed for all sorts of failures and tragedies, but especially for misfortunes arising from refusal to take personal responsibility.

Some time back, I remember watching an Australian man on TV blaming the “system” for the death of his child from starving. By transferring blame to an abstract entity, he was trying to absolve his own role in the tragedy and whitewash his conscience.

To be sure, a robust system of social safety net is a hallmark of civilised societies – there is zero social safety net in third world dictatorships, theocracies and kleptocracies, which are often one and the same thing.

However, you know things have gone too far when people who shirk personal responsibility blame their misfortunes on the “system”, and when politicians of all stripes try to outdo each other in pandering to an overriding sense of entitlement.

So, it was no wonder, then, that many took umbrage at Gina Rinehart's comment last week, when she stated the obvious: "Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

The fact that Rinehart herself did not work her ass off for her billions - she inherited it from her father - does not disqualify her from making such comments nor does it invalidate the thrust of her comment.