Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
In response to a parent's plea for censorship
Last Sunday (19/9/2010), the Straits Times Lifestyle published an opinion pieice by Mr. Andy Chen arguing that, as a father of two young girls, he will prefer the current censorship regime in Singapore be maintained as it is.
Evidently, Mr. Chen was responding to the recently released recommendations by the Censorship Review Committee (CRC). Specifically, judging from what Mr. Chen wrote, I suppose he was responding to the recommendation by the CRC that instead of maintaining a current symbolic ban on a hundred "objectionable" websites (to my knowledge, while it is not known exactly what websites are on this banned list, most of them are said to be pornographic websites or websites which have religiously or racially sensitive content on them), the ban "should be replaced with a transparent, server level filtering service, combined with a simple and well-highlighted choice to opt in at the point of subscribing to or renewing the Internet service".
As was argued by Mr. Chen, such a recommendation, if implemented, will make it more difficult for parents of young or teenage children to protect their children from accessing or being exposed to sexual content on the internet.
While I can empathise with Mr. Chen's strong desire to protect his daughters from what he may see as objectionable sexual content on the internet, I however must respectfully disagree with his plea for censorship as a means to doing so.
Evidently, Mr. Chen was responding to the recently released recommendations by the Censorship Review Committee (CRC). Specifically, judging from what Mr. Chen wrote, I suppose he was responding to the recommendation by the CRC that instead of maintaining a current symbolic ban on a hundred "objectionable" websites (to my knowledge, while it is not known exactly what websites are on this banned list, most of them are said to be pornographic websites or websites which have religiously or racially sensitive content on them), the ban "should be replaced with a transparent, server level filtering service, combined with a simple and well-highlighted choice to opt in at the point of subscribing to or renewing the Internet service".
As was argued by Mr. Chen, such a recommendation, if implemented, will make it more difficult for parents of young or teenage children to protect their children from accessing or being exposed to sexual content on the internet.
While I can empathise with Mr. Chen's strong desire to protect his daughters from what he may see as objectionable sexual content on the internet, I however must respectfully disagree with his plea for censorship as a means to doing so.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
“Xenophobic Singaporeans?”
What follows below is a translated reproduction of an opinion piece by Ms Li Hui Min (李慧敏), published in 《联合早报》/Lianhe Zaobao on 5th September 2010.
Xenophobic Singaporeans?
In his National Day 2010 Rally speech, Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong explained in great detail the government’s population policy in the hope that it will influence Singaporeans to welcome foreigners. However, is the dissatisfaction experienced by Singaporeans against the increase in foreigner population in Singapore a result of xenophobia or is there some other reason at work? There are actually several aspects to the issue of foreigner population in Singapore but due to the lack of space, this essay will only discuss two of these aspects.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Mr Brown -- "Oh Army!"
Although I am not a "Lau Peng" (still got several more ICTs to go), I can empathise with them since, having ORD-ed before 29th August 2010, I will be missing out on the first 1/3 payout of the National Service Recognition Award.
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