I had earlier said certain words in the English language are precise. But one sentence in the page one lead story of TODAY (14 Sept) went like this: Mr Bryan Ghows of Unilegal LLC said that this law [a proposed consumer data protection law] cannot be "too unique".
And how do you propose to make it not so unique that it is not too unique, Mr Ghows?
On the other hand, there are some words where you cannot be too precise! An ST report yesterday (13 Sept) on a bid by delisted department store CK Tang to mop up shares from minority investors first mentioned a precise figure -- there are 476 minority investors. No problem, so far. Then, later in the story, this cropped up: "The 1.8 per cent, or 4.38 million shares, not held by the Tang brothers is in the hands of about 476 shareholders...".
Nope. You can't say "about 476 shareholders". The nearest approximation is "475" but why not just cut out the offending word "about"?
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Okay, nit-picking time is over. I am glad Minister Vivian Balakrishnan echoed my point made in an earlier posting about how it is the sub-surface peat that is the real culprit in all that smog coming from Sumatra around this time of the year. As quoted by TODAY (14 Sept), he said: "I just came back from Africa. I saw them burning agricultural land as well. They find it a cheap and quick way to clear agricultural land.
"But one particular problem we have in this part of the world is that the land has a lot of peat in it. So once you start a fire, even after the fire has gone out, the peat in the soil continues to smoulder for a long time. And that contributes to an increased haze and smokiness that you see in our part of the world."
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Staying with TODAY, one reader ended his letter on Singapore's population and the inflow of immigrants ("Our population can't keep rising", 14 Sept) with this punchline:
As [the late President John F. Kennedy's] environmental adviser Kenneth Boulding said 45 years ago, "Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either a madman or an economist."
Hmmm, either a madman or an economist!!
I've already got jokes about preachers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc, but not economists, purveyors of the "dismal science". Surely there must be stuff a-plenty about them? Indeed. Here's a choice collection (some tweaked by me), courtesy of an unnamed fellow from Notre Dame University...
1. Sign outside the door of the office of US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke: "Further stimulus could result in uncontrolled expansion".
2. A man walking along a countryside road comes across a shepherd and his flock of sheep. He tells the shepherd, "I bet you $100 against one of your sheep that I can tell you the exact number in this flock." It is a big flock, so the shepherd takes the bet.
"The exact number is 973," says the man.
The shepherd is astonished, because that is exactly right. "Okay, I'm a man of my word; take an animal." Man picks one up and begins to walk away.
"Wait," cries the shepherd, "Let me have a chance to get even. Double or nothing that I can guess your occupation." Man says sure.
"You are an economist for a government think-tank," says the shepherd. "Amazing!" the man replies. "You are exactly right! But tell me, how did you deduce that?"
"Well," says the shepherd, "put down my dog and I will tell you."
3. Economist A and economist B are walking down the road. They come across a pile of horse manure.
A: "If you eat it, I'll give you $20,000!"
B takes out his tablet computer, runs an optimization program and decides he's better off eating the horse dung. So he does and collects the money.
Continuing along the same road, they come across another pile of horse manure. B: "Now, if you eat this, I’ll give you $20,000."
A too takes out his computer, evaluates the proposal, and agrees to eat the stuff. He collects the money from B.
They walk on, as far apart from each other now, and pinching their noses. B starts to think: "Listen, we both have the same amount of money we had before, but we both ate horse manure. I don't see us being better off."
A replies: "Well, that's true, but you overlooked the fact that we've been just involved in $40,000 of trade."
4. Last one...
Q: Why did God create economists?
A: In order to make weather forecasters look good.
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