the personal blog of C.K.Koay
Reading about the US Presidential horse race has been a past time of mine every four years since Bill Clinton took office in the 90’s. Being a keen follower of American presidential politics, the number to always keep in mind is 538. The US presidential election, like most forms of popular representative democratic governments, is not based on overall popular vote per se.
Continue reading “92.2% chance of Obama winning a second term tomorrow”
The just concluded 2012 Republican National Convention was memorable because Clint Eastwood gave a kooky speech while talking to an empty chair. Apparently, he was castigating an invisible potty mouthed Barack Obama who supposedly sat in the chair. Even before poor Mitt Romney took the stage to give his acceptance speech, the twittersphere was a buzz with snarky and often humorous tweets on the surreal “performance” of the Oscar winning, husky-voiced, octogenarian actor-director.
One of them is @InvisibleObama. He (or she, or they) started a series of funny tweets– often at the expense of Mitt Romney and the GOP) with gems like:-
When Mitt Romney says “Mr. Chairman”, do you think he’s referring to me?
I’m behind Mitt! No seriously. I’m right behind him.
Pretty soon, everyone joined in and even President Obama chimed in with this:-
Memes started popping up:-
Meanwhile, our own Communications and Information Minister (who has the dubious honor of a permanent hashtag of #yorais attached to every tweet regarding him) encouraged tweeting Malaysians to tweet between 8.15pm and 9.15pm on the 31st of August. The topic is should be about freedom, independence and…how grateful Malaysians feel towards “promises fulfilled” (which is the theme of this year’s independence day).
While Rais Yatim claimed that the massive simul-tweet campaign is a success, others didn’t think so when they analyzed the tweets.
Politweet reported a spontaneous need for 111 Malaysians to tweet about their bowl of Curry Mee in Queensbays Mall at around the same time in almost the same language on their Facebook page.
It is interesting to note the prominence of social media in our modern political arena. While one can control the message, one can’t control the medium– without being discovered. In parting, there is only one way to compare what happened in the US with what happened in Malaysia: While Americans are tweeting about an invisible president, invisible Malaysians are tweeting about Merdeka!
This is a crosspost test with tumblr. Check it out at ckkoay.tumblr.com
In a further erosion of our rights to free expression on the Internet, all Malaysians should oppose the newly enacted Section 114A of the Malaysian Evidence Act 2012.
This new law is unprecedented in the sense that the innocent are presumed guilty first and the burden of proof is shifted from the prosecutor to the prosecuted. This law has no place in a modern civil society and should be repealed.
More Information can be found at this link: http://stop114a.wordpress.com
So I logged into my website recently and discovered I’d been hacked since 6th of July 2012. These hackers have been squatting in my digital real estate long enough for a slice of bread to become a thriving mushroom colony.
Fixing it was surprisingly simple. A few tweaks to some files and everything’s back to normal– “normal” here meaning “a website that continues to attract approximately the same audience as my post-modernist avant-garde dance performance.” I have to wonder about the hackers’ motivation. Did they think they’d struck digital gold? ‘Finally! We’ve infiltrated that random guy’s blog about… whatever it is he blogs about!‘
To my digital intruders: I’m genuinely flattered you considered my website worth the effort. It’s like finding out someone broke into your car to steal your collection of car park receipts and that half-eaten KitKat from 2007. I appreciate the validation, though I must inform you that you’ve been performing for an empty theater. My website traffic could generously be described as ‘immediate family members who clicked by accident.’
There is one silver lining to this digital home invasion– they left my original site intact enough for me to restore. That’s surprisingly considerate, like a burglar who only changed the lock on my front gate while leaving my TV, money and valuables in the house intact.
Was it professional courtesy? Pity?
Or perhaps they realized that tampering with my collection of poorly framed photos and rambling posts about nothing would be unnecessarily cruel…
Chinese New Year 2012, a set on Flickr.
Some photos taken during this year’s Chinese New Year celebration.
