1,000,000 IQ Drop!

I have a confession : I'm a gameshow junkie. Ever since 'Tekaria" aired on RTM some time in the 1980s, I'm hooked enough that I 'participate' in the shows. My wife even suggested that I auditioned whenever the producers are considering the next season of the show(s).

However, having watched RM1 Million Money Drop a few nights ago, I wonder if there is a conspiracy behind the scenes (so that nobody can win RM1 million) or that the participants are really well, "general-knowledge challenged". I mean, consider these facts:

1. The Malay idiomatic expression "Lari macam lipas kudung"
2. The late Biduanita Saloma's real name was Salmah Binti Ismail
3. Masak Lemak Cili Padi originates from Negeri Sembilan
4. Dondang Sayang is a traditional song/dance of the Babas
5. Kenyir Lake is in Terengganu

However the contestants' choice for answers were:
1. "Lari macam semut"
2. Salma Binti Hayek (which is, actually Salma Hayek of Desperado fame and definitely NOT Puan Sri Saloma!)
3. Johor
4. The Minangkabaus
5. Perak

Extremely easy questions, yet the contestants FAILED!

Heavy Metal Is Good For You!

In my previous posts, I have mocked some so-called 'health products' for their outrageous and ridiculous claims of health benefits. Now I have come across some other products (one is salt (salt!) and the other, let's call it 'magic water'). Now both of them claimed that their products contains '72 (the other claimed 84) minerals needed by your body' and listed down 61-71% of the elements in the Periodic Table as 'needed' by us. Now it's either they really have all those elements in their product (which in turn implying that they are actually idiots) or that they just write of all of them down in order to sound more 'scientifically' authentic to the general public (which also make them idiots and worse, scammers)

Now, let's see what are the elements they claim to be beneficial to us, shall we?

Astatine, Radium, Plutonium, Uranium- radioactive

Manganese, Arsenic, Rubidium, Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, Barium, Beryllium, Thallium- toxic

So, consuming radioactive and toxic elements is good and that our body need them huh? And by the way, most of the other elements are not actually needed by our bodies!

If This Is A Consular Ship, Where Is The Ambassador?

OK, that title is not really related with what I'm writing here but it's close enough.

For years now archeologists have unearthed various artifacts from ancient civilisations, especially of the Aztecs and the Mayans. Some of these artifacts are intriguing such as airplane-shaped objects, 'helmeted' figurines, drawings of a king inside some kind of rocket-propelled vehicles and hieroglyphs of planes, submarines and helicopters. Others even tried to point out higher radioactive counts at certain ancient ruins as evidence of a nuclear war some time in the past....

For some, these are the evidence that ancient civilisations were not as 'backwards' as they were usually portrayed. Still for some, this means Earth were once frequently visited by extraterrestrial beings who shared their superior tech with the ancients.

While I'm quite open about aliens and UFOs, I'm actually quite sceptical about these trinkets, paintings and carvings being the evidence that ancient civilisation tech were just as advanced as the 20th-21st centuries'. I mean come on, we have 65 million (and even older) fossilised bones as the evidence of the existence of dinosaurs but not one of the remains of the actual so-called ancient airplanes, subs or rockets has ever been found. So if they were real, where are the remains? Granted that since they are made of metal, they might have corroded down to nothing from the time of the civilisation's decline until its discovery. But again, not even ONE? I mean, even remains of Egyptian chariots have been found in the Red Sea....To draw an analogy; should humans disappear overnight ( like shown in Life After People), the only evidence of our usage of planes, trains and automobiles are scale models and toys!

Another reason which makes me sceptical is that these people only shows photos of 'airplanes' and 'rockets' but not one land vehicles such as automobiles. So it could be either the ancients were so advanced that there is no need for land vehicles (so how do they commute from house to work - flying cars like airspeeders in Star Wars?); they somewhat look like the German army during WW2 (advanced aircraft and tanks but  most of the artillery and support units were still horse-drawn) or that they (the theorists) actually drew the wrong conclusion?

So, to paraphrase Darth Vader from Star Wars Episode IV :  A New Hope; "If the ancients use planes to commute, where are the remains..and where is the airport?"

Muzium Ouessant Melaka

Baru-baru ni (dua hari lepas je) ex-SSK Perancis Ouessant tiba di Melaka untuk dijadikan muzium. Kapalselam bekas Marine Nationale Perancis ini digunakan TLDM melatih kru kapal selam kelas Perdana Menteri dan aku sokong sepenuhnya usaha ni....kat US dah banyak museum ship sebegini dari USS Intrepid di New York sampai USS Missouri di Pearl Harbor. Masa aku kat UK pulak aku berkesempatan melawat HMS Belfast. Walaupun bukan 100% milik kita pada asalnya, sekurang-kurangnya ia boleh membuka minda rakyat tentang teknologi ketenteraan dan juga azabnya berada dalam kurungan besi bawah air demi mempertahankan negara.

Tapi sayang, masih ada 'katak-katak' bawah tempurung yang memilih untuk terus tinggal bawah tempurung, walaupun mereka mampu untuk menolak tempurung tu sendiri. Nak kata dia orang ni bodoh kang marah pulak...tapi bila tengok statement dalam facebook tu terserlah pula kebodohan tu (ke ketaksuban melampau?). Apa2 pun mari kita tengok pilihan terbaik statement mereka ni.....

"Membazir duit aje beli buat perhiasan" (Kalau buat terponggok diam membisu tu ye la jugak, ni dijadikan tourist attraction berbayor, membazir ke? Dan paling ironi kalau si pemberi kenyataan ni akan turut beratur nak masuk!)

"Kapalselam Scorpene ke ni? Yang beli RM4bilion" (ni Ouessant, kelas Agosta la!)

"Hahaha beli buruk 2, free 1 berkarat" (Masih ramai terpengaruh gambar Tunku Abdul Rahman tengah service - berteritip dan nampak buruk; sebab ramai ignorant landlubber, tak tahu apa jadi kat bawah waterline kapal)

"adeyyy..kapal ni dah lama ada kat Lumut...guna untuk latihan di permukaan aje...takleh menyelam" (Yang tu ex Dutch Navy punya Zwaardvis....takkan tak reti beza Belanda dengan Perancis?)

"Ni kot yg dulu yg dulu tak bole selam yg dibeli oleh mindef? Tu yg tukaq scorpene 2 biji, padahal bg duit kat satu org tu beli yg ww2 punya 2nd hand, rupa2nya nilah dia akhirnya muncul gak" (Apa-apahal Ouessant dibina pada 1979, jadi bukan la 'WW2 punya secondhand')

Dan yang paling repetitive "..nak buat tukun" dengan "besi buruk"

Hairan jugak, lagi zaman Information Teknologi berkembang, masih ada yang tak dapat maklumat.....

p.s. Pertanyaan aku cuma satu aje : Apasal cepat na jadi muzium, dalam seminggu sampai dah buka untuk umum...tak buat ubahsuai ke? Apa-apa hal kalau ada kesempatan, aku pun nak pergi jugak!

Doing Islam A Disservice

As Muslims we know that our religion is The Truth. There are no ifs and buts about it. However as Allah has given us the brain to think and with human's curiosity, it is natural that we want more answers and proof to strengthen our faith. There are plenty of things and happenings around us to show His Greatness and even science has proved it. However there are still people who makes things up in order to show the truth of Islam. Instead giving Islam more credibility among the non-Muslims, it makes us a laughing stock. Take the following calim I found in a forum. Bear in mind that there are still the truth in that guy's claim. However mixing made-up 'facts' with the truth doesn't make the story 100% the truth! 

"The Kaabah is not only the Qiblat, but also the focal point of Man in his everyday life. The simplest example is our Astro satellite dish. Did you notice that most of them faced the Qiblat? That is because Makkah is the centre of the world....."

Some things in this world remain mysterious and no amount of scientific exploration can find the truth; others can be revealed and shows the Truth of Islam. However, trying to justify Makkah/Kaabah as the centre of everything by using the Astro sat-dish as example is simply pathetic. Our Astro dishes receive their signal from MEASAT-1 and MEASAT-3 commsats sitting 23,000 miles (or something like that) above the Indian Ocean at longitude 91.5 degs East and so it happens that some sat dishes have their orientation coinciding with the Qiblat, so there. And the guy's third sentence contradicts himself - why did he write 'most' instead of 'all'?

The Headhunters!

When I was a kid, we children were warned not to wander or play alone because some nasty guy armed with a sickle might spot us and lop our heads off. The severed heads will then be buried underneath bridging projects so that the 'water spirits' are appeased and won't interfere with the projects. As kids we were really terrified of such stories and terrified still whenever we came across farmers who bring their sickle around (actually they need the sickle to gather weeds and grass for their livestock). The growth and development of Malaysia during the late 70s and early 80s with a number of infrastructure projects going around give more 'substance' to story, especially during the building of the Penang Bridge.

As time goes by, such stories faded from our collective mind, although it still surfaces from time to time although not as frequent as it was in the 1980s. The reason I wrote about this entry is because I probably have found out the myth behind such stories. It didn't even originate here, it was in London! Bored at the end of the office hour, I checked out the Wikipedia and it was theorised that the popular nursery rhyme 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' refers to the burying of children under the bridge's foundations so that the bridge won't collapse unless human sacrifices were made - which was debunked by archeological findings.

So, there you go. There were actually no sickle-swinging men looking for human sacrifices, it was just a tale brought by the Brits and adopted by us generation after generation....just like a bunch of other urban legends....

Man On The Moon Revisited (Again!)

The debate whether man has set foot on Earth's only natural satellite rages on 39 years after the last flight of the Apollo space program in 1972. Many conspiracy theorists point out the 'irregularities' showing up in the photos but recently a forumner said that his own SCIENCE teacher is not convinced that Neil Armstrong et al has reached the moon. His reason?

"The moon's too hot...even hotter than the volcano (lava that is)...At night its too cold...colder than the Poles (North and South Poles that is, not people from Poland!) so that engines and equipment  are unable to function"

And also "Combustion needs oxygen....how can the engines fire when there is no oxygen on the moon?"

Bear in mind that it was a SCIENCE teacher who said that.....

As a note:

1. The moon (or indeed, the space) is very hot during the 'day'...but not as hot as lava. Average 'day' temperature on the moon is 117 degrees Celcius whilst lava is anywhere from 700 to 1,200 degrees Celcius. At 'night', it is indeed colder than the Poles with an average of -203 degrees Celcius.

2. That range of temperature exists not only on the moon but also just outside our atmosphere where there were hundreds (if not thousands) of satellite operating perfectly since Sputnik in 1957.....

3. About the last point, has the teacher never heard of liquid oxygen?