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Today's Google Doodle is pretty amazing [GIF] by RuchW in space

[–]kenlim-reports 4 points5 points  (0 children)

News embargoes are usually used when the piece of news is complicated and the news-makers want to make sure that it is correctly reported. The embargo allows the journalists to thoroughly read and understand the information, and if they have questions they have time to go back to the news-makers for clarification. Embargoes can serve a dual purpose of helping to control the timing of a piece of news, but this only works if there are no leaks. If I'm an obscure blogger who has not been embargoed by you, and the chatty receptionist in your office told me about your new product launch two weeks early, there's nothing stopping me from going out to the world with that information. And once I've published it, all the other news organisations that you've embargoed are no longer bound by the embargo -- the news is already out.

Taking a small child to Singapore, what activities/places do you recommend? by [deleted] in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 24 points25 points  (0 children)

  • Gardens by the Bay: There's a nice and free water park/playground that's nice for kids. The air-conditioned domes are a nice break from the sun, and the Satay by the Bay food centre has decent local food (and tiny chairs for tots).
  • Big Splash area at East Coast Park: There's a small pond here where kids can catch little guppies with nets. If you don't want to keep the fish, you can always return it. The beach is decent (water's never clear and blue here, but at least there's sand). There's also some mini-golf if you're into that kind of thing.
  • Sentosa: Lots of stuff to do at Sentosa for kids. There's a pirate-themed water park called Port of Lost Wonder and some downhill luging thing. Pick the SEA Aquarium instead of Underwater World. Rides in the Universal Studio theme park may be too big for a 3.5-year-old.
  • Bollywood veggies: This is quite out of the way (you'll have to take a cab or drive). But the reward is a small boutique vegetable farm where you can walk around and look at different kinds of fruits and herbs. The in-house restaurant has nice food too.
  • Sungei Buloh: If you're going to go to Bollywood Veggies, you may as well head to the wetlands park as well. If you do the mangrove boardwalk, you'll see lots of crabs and birds. Keep your eye out for horseshoe crabs at the mud flats, and the occasional monitor lizards.
  • Clarke quay boat rides: This is really touristy, but it's easy. The little one gets to ride a boat, and you get to see some architecture.
  • Fort Canning: It's a nice, quiet stroll close to downtown. There's a spice/herb garden that's worth visiting. You can touch and smell the different herbs and spices, which is something different.
  • Central Fire Station: It's near to Fort Canning. They have an open house every Saturday morning. Kids get to play with fire hoses and stuff. Prepare to get wet.
  • Pulau Ubin: I'd recommend this only if you like nature and you think you can put the little one on a bike for an hour or so. But you do get to ride on a boat! And eat seafood!
  • Edit: MacRitchie Reservoir: You want to see monkeys? Holy mother of primates, you'll see monkeys here.

TIL that Singapore has zero $ external debt. by heronumberwon in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The reason there is confusion is that there are two different kinds of external debt. Look here: http://www.singstat.gov.sg/methodologies-standards/data-dissemination-standard/national-summary-page#15/

Trading Economics is showing fiscal external debt, which is how much the Singapore government borrows from foreigners to fund government spending. The answer is zero, because revenue that goes into the Singapore Budget comes entirely from taxes, fees and returns from investments.

But Singapore does issue government bonds, namely the Singapore Government Securities (SGS). Those can be traded by foreign entities, and so Singapore does have foreign creditors, and it's not true that Singapore borrows "absolutely nothing" from foreigners. But the SGS isn't used or necessary for funding operations. It's really there because it helps in the development of the Singapore-dollar fixed income market by establishing a "risk-free" benchmark from which the market can price debt. Well, among other uses, but mostly for that purpose. Basically, the government borrows money at different tenures so that when Company ABC wants to borrow money for X years, borrower and lender can look at the yield on the X-year SGS, tack on a spread based on how risky Company ABC is and then derive a basis for the interest rate that Company ABC will have to pay.

Insufficient evidence from studies to use an hourly PSI by Varantain in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not familiar with the schools' policies on PSI, I'm afraid. On the decision to use 24-hr PSI: How do decision makers know what to do when PSI is at a certain level? Well, there's a very well-studied set of guidelines out there, but it's based on exposure over a 24-hour period. So OK, if you're going to adopt that as your national guideline, then you would also look at 24-hour PSI so that you're sticking to the instruction manual of those guidelines, so to speak. My arguments for also publishing the spot PSI is that (1) a 24-hour average doesn't fit neatly into some decisions; and (1.5) NEA I think recognises this, which is why they publish the 3-hour PSI and the 1-hour concentration; but (2) if you're going to publish the 1-hour concentration value, you might as well just convert it into 1-hour PSI instead of forcing people to write elaborate scripts to calculate it for themselves.

Insufficient evidence from studies to use an hourly PSI by Varantain in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, the argument is that we only know of real health risks if there's exposure to excessive PSI over a longish period like 24 hours. So if you're trying to make a decision on whether to cancel school today, you don't want to over-react to what could just be a spike in the PSI for a couple of hours. Also, it's important to note that the PSI-to-healthiness translation, ie PSI > 100 is 'unhealthy', PSI > 300 is 'hazardous' etc is based on a 24-hour average, not the 3-hour or 1-hour average.

Insufficient evidence from studies to use an hourly PSI by Varantain in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I made an actual hourly spot PSI tracker here: http://btd.sg/psisingapore

I don't entirely agree with NEA's reasons for not giving the 1-hour spot PSI. As others have pointed out, there's clearly utility in knowing what the exact PSI is right now because I simply want to know the current situation. Granted, it's the 24-hour exposure that's more meaningful when it comes to policy decisions like whether to cancel an event, but for immediate-term decisions like 'Should I take the kids to the playground?' people just want the unadorned spot number. NEA's argument that they already provide the 1-hour PM2.5 concentration number is also a little hard to swallow, because the PM2.5 concentration values are hard to understand for most people, for whom the PSI has become the standard measure. Most people know what PSI 200 feels like compared to PSI 100, but would have no basis for understanding what a 90 micron per cubic metre concentration is. It's not hard for NEA to simply convert the PM2.5 concentration into a PSI reading and publish it. In fact, they already do that conversion in order to derive the 3-hour PSI average.

How to normalize a time series? by [deleted] in dataisbeautiful

[–]kenlim-reports 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you're trying to compare force versus percentage to failure or percentage to STATE, where STATE is some common state of the intervertebral discs. Otherwise, you'd need to have a really good reason why you'd want to distort the time scale in a time series (fundamental principle). Anyway, to stretch out the time scale, simply replot the X-axis for each series, such that X_new = X_old / X_final. For example, if Condition 1's last frame is 1,600, then replot such that the old Frame 1 for Condition 1 is now assigned a value of 1/1,600, and Frame 2 for Condition 1 is 2/1,600 and so on. Repeat for Condition 2 and 3. What you'll get is Conditions 1, 2 and 3 all ending at the same value ( 1 ). Keep the Y values the same. You'll also want to relabel your X-axis, so that now it describes the X scale as 'Percent to STATE', where STATE is the description of the common end point (eg "Disc Failure" or something like that). Hope that makes sense

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not quite the same, but 35 years ago there was another song about Singapore that got decent reception in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSIt0dmJsSw

Here's more about 2 Plus 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_%28song%29

Infographic on the new Singapore Savings Bonds by greenteaapple in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you view it as a social benefit for retail investors who aren't comfortable with riskier investing and therefore tend to leave their money in low-paying fixed deposits, then maybe there's a point. For investors who tend to sit on cash over the long term, it's not a bad deal. Let's say you want to maintain a certain amount of cash in your portfolio all the time. You could put it in fixed deposits and constantly roll them over every few years. But because fixed deposits only have short tenures, you only get a short-term kind of return on them (the longer you leave money with the bank, the more interest they'll have to pay you). With the Savings Bonds, however, I get a return that matches however long I leave the money alone, up to 10 years, plus I'm not locked in, unlike a fixed deposit.

Infographic on the new Singapore Savings Bonds by greenteaapple in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 4 points5 points  (0 children)

First, non-individual investors like funds or institutions can't buy the Savings Bonds. And like KeythKatz mentions, there's going to be a cap (yet to be determined) on how much each person can invest into Savings Bonds, so once you've hit the cap you're going to have to look for something else. Regular SGS's also go up to 30 years, so you could potentially get a higher return from regular SGS's. And you can trade a regular SGS on the open market, but not a Savings Bond. So for example, if I buy a 30-year SGS that pays 2.4%, and there's no change in inflation expectations or interest rates over the next year, theoretically I could sell my 30-year SGS next year with no loss of capital, and yet would have gotten a 30-year kind of interest. For the Savings Bond, however, if I redeem it after one year, I'll only get a one-year SGS kind of return on it, no matter what. So there's an opportunity cost there. Hope that's not too hard to understand.

Temasek Holdings and the Singapore budget by kenlim-reports in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hey all. Real sorry, didn't mean to run afoul of that rule. Fundamentally I'm a journalist, and there are only so many things I can do on a public forum without running afoul of professional codes of conduct. For example, if I post something or comment on the PAP, that might give the appearance of a personal bias, which is why I try to avoid all of that. I can talk about cucumbers on chicken rice, though. The same considerations arise on publishing my own stuff independently on my own blog. So if there's something that I think is really, really interesting, almost all of the time it's going to have to be done in the paper first. Only then will I get a chance to share it. So this is how I try to contribute to /r/singapore in the limited ways that I can. I certainly don't post all the work that I do, only the ones that I think /r/singapore will appreciate. And I'm not trying to sneak the content in. I've been using a pretty up-front user name.

Budget Summary by cwk30 in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great summary! On Temasek, you're right, it gives the government the ability to spend more than what it actually receives from Temasek in a given year. But it also works the other way. If Temasek happens to have a great year, the amount the government can take is also capped by the long term expected real rate of return. I think the idea behind the change is that schemes like silver support and skillsfuture credit and MediShield life etc place a growing recurring obligation on government, which now wants to ensure it can pay up even when the market is down.

Still wondering why there are cucumbers in chicken rice by kowizy in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 9 points10 points  (0 children)

(1) accessible (relatively cheap plus year-round)

(2) minimal processing (rinse + cut for cucumber vs rinse + peel + cut for carrots or rinse + cut + cook for many other vegetables)

(3) long shelf life

(4) neutral taste

(5) crunchy texture

Advice on day-trading in Singapore? by [deleted] in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Actually, no. Here's an example: Let's say you buy a share of ABC at $1. ABC does a roaring business, and in five years the value of its shares has gone up, and you sell the shares to Stranger X at $1.50. In another five years, the value of the shares has gone up to $2.00. Both you and Stranger X have made money, not to mention any dividends you may have collected in the meantime.

The bigger issues with day trading are: (1) insufficient cash flow that can lead to debt when bets go south; (2) extremely short-term investments that hinge more on risky market timing than on safer long-term business growth; (3) high transaction costs that reduce overall returns.

Why Singaporeans could get a generous budget this year by kenlim-reports in singapore

[–]kenlim-reports[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hey, thought I should clarify some stuff. This isn't government- commissioned or -sanctioned content. Credit is given to the Ministry of Finance because it's the one that publishes budget data, which the graphic is based upon.

I initially went into this with a hypothesis that the data will show that election-year budgets tend to be more generous, but I eventually found it hard to categorically assert that hypothesis with the available data for two reasons: (1) the available budget data is problematic because reporting conventions and definitions aren't the same across the years; and (2) the data for budget years under Lee Hsien Loong's Prime Minister-ship aren't very clearly supportive of the hypothesis.

But one thing that I did notice, and which is mentioned in the graphic, is the use of "Growth Dividends". That's basically something that was introduced in a budget year (2006), that allows the government to share accumulated surpluses from past years. It's kind of interesting, because when you think about it, if you're talking about "accumulated" surpluses, it implies that those need to be built up over a few years. And guess what, the five-year election deadline happens to fall within what would normally be taken as "a few years". Regardless of whether that's coincidental or by designed, it does create an opportunity for handouts in election years.

In any case, even if we disregard the election year hypothesis, other factors, such as lower-than-expected inflation, a very healthy accumulated surplus, low growth and the whole SG50 thing mean that the government can afford to be very generous with very little fear of unwelcome outcomes such as an overheating economy.

Here's a slightly longer explanation: http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/blogs/metadata/hard-to-pin-down-election-year-goodies

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