There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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Are we more like chimps or orangutans?

A couple of biologists have caused a bit of an uproar in the scientific world by suggesting that our closest cousins are orangutans rather than chimps (the DNA of chimps is much closer to our DNA than orangutan DNA apparently).

But rather ironically, the question would actually fall on deaf ears in the countries where the orangutans actually come from (Indonesia and Malaysia) as neither chimp nor orangutan is considered to be our closest cousin in those countries - Darwin’s work may be considered a comical farce but it also poses a threat to the conventional wisdom. 

Bring in evolution and the bloody great tower of cards simply collapses.

Personally, I’d have to side with the chimps. They are better actors after all (do you really think orangutans could have done those PG Tips ads?!) 

 But then again, the chimps don’t have beards. Hmmm…

Oran Utan at Taman Safari

Comments

  1. Anonymous12 September 2010 at 04:00

    Orangutans...their dreamy.Like that big fellow up there.Bet his dreaming of margarita.

    ReplyDelete

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