Follow the law please, Mr. Prosecutor!

Today I saw a Taiwan News on TV saying that the Taipei District Attorney is going to investigate about "王羽二十年前謀殺許信良事件." The spokesman states that even though the whole thing is beyond 追溯年限, they still have to investigate the whole thing and find out the truth.

It sounded so right with sense of justice at first, but then a question bubble started to rise in my mind. This DA is actually violating the law. There are several issues:

1. If this one becomes an example, shouldn't we find out similar cases for all the cases and trace them back to 100 years ago?
2. If #1 is not the case, then this DA is treating all the cases not equally but selectively, hurting this DA's reputation (even though it is quite bad already.)
3. The law 追溯年限 was established for a reason. Not honoring law is not only a contempt to the justice system but also a waste to tax-payer's money.

If I were a tax-payer in Taiwan, I should be able to sue this DA office because this office is wasting my tax money pursuing something that is apprently breaking the law. But I doubt if people watching the news really think it over from legal system's point of view.

唉...

Such minister, such teacher and such education

Needless to say, the Minister of Education in Taiwan, 杜正勝, is the worse official I have ever seen in my life. I have only heard such kind of people in history book and those people all have very bad reputation and their damages to Chinese people are 罄竹難書. BTW, according to this guy, 罄竹難書 is not a phrase to describe a lot of *bad* things.

Let me just list a few of his *quotable* sayings -
1. 三隻小豬 can be a Chinese idiom, even though he himself does not know how to make a sentence out of it.
2. Microphones have so many germs that he needs to push away journalists who get close him.
3. 我沒有呼呼大睡... 我只是閉目養神... 誰聽到我呼呼啦? And there is a video clip showing him resting in his seat "safe and sound," unmistakeably unconscious.

Enough said about this guy. 所謂上樑不正下樑歪. Let me tell you a real story about our elementery teacher. Mrs. Money just went back to Taiwan with her family. Her son needs to do homework until 11 PM everyday. A lot of homework? Yes. Kids learned anything? No. Why? Here it goes.

Her son goes to a "雙語小學." In the hallway, Christmas is misspelled and nobody noticed. In tests, "white" is 白色. If you ever answer 白色的, 白的, 白, I am sorry that you will not get a point. Similarly, "老神在在" is 悠閒的樣子. If you answer "悠閒的意思", "悠閒的模樣", "悠閒的", I am sorry you will not score either. In math, 80 * 28 = 80 * 8 + 20 * 80. You cannot calculate it as 80 x 28 = 28 x 80 = 28 * 8 * 10.

Mrs. Money asked the teacher why? And the coming out of the teacher's mouth: "為了統一改考卷." I cannot believe such a rigid and stupid thing still exists in Taiwan. And don't get me wrong, this phenomenon is common in Taiwan. Most of Taiwan's teachers, I am sorry to say this, not top grade students themselves. I blame this to our stupid system. Starting from our times, only people graduated from educational institutes can teach in elementary and junior high. 非本科系的人 needs to take 教育學分 to teach. It sounds OK but you will have to look into another factor. In our times, top 50% students would not choose educational institutes when we picked our schools. And also, we simply picked our school based on test scores, not our own interests, meaning those who went to educational institutes may not have a heart at all in teaching young kids. With this kind of system going for 20 years, you can imagine the quality of teachers.

Lastly, I do believe some special professions should receive some extra benefits, such as free of tax, free insurance, etc.. Police and army, for example, belong to one type that they have to risk their lives to protect others. Teacher and special athlete belong to another type that they incubate our next generation. These people should dedicate their whole time doing their jobs without distraction. But this is not the case in Taiwan because all those people I mentioned above are not financially secure. Their minds are not focused on the jobs but rather on how to make more money. When policemen, soldiers, and teachers do not do their jobs, you can go figure what's going to happen to this country.

我為此三嘆

mm

Science is not what it seems

We are bombarded by a lot of information these days and I am specially interested in health studies and researches. But have you noticed some of those studies claim just the opposite results? You do not know which to trust? When it come to a situation like this, I trust my logic sense.

There are a lot of books claiming that there are some miracle substances or foods that can cleanse your body. I have seen a lot of friends, plusy my parents and sisters, follow those books by heart. Even though some of the authors are professional doctors and surgeons, I am still very skeptical. Let me tell you why.

There is a Japanese doctor in US who performs numerous endoscopic surgeries. He wrote down in his book that most diseases, especially cancer, can be prevented if you follow his suggestions, such as eating meat from cold-blooded animals, stop drinking milk and eating yogurt, eat fresh vegetables and fruits, avoid oil and spices. To some extent, it is true, but this doctor made a very serious error - his sample space is biased. All his patients have one thing in common - their digestive system has problems. By following his diet, I agree that most of his patients feel better or never get ill again, but it is not true that ALL people following his diet will be better.

Science is a process. Results deducted from scientific researches are facts, but they are just partial facts, meaning they are only applicable when the environment and pre-condition is the same as in the lab. Most of the so-called scientific reports these days seem to purposely ignore the details how the "sample space" is picked. Keep in mind, with "skewed" samples, you can still have a false claim and have scientific process to prove your false claim.

"盡信書不如無書"

mm