First Nature Post

I've decided to jump on the increasingly overcrowded bandwagon of NUS Bio Students' Nature Blogs. Now why did I decide to be soooo unoriginal? That's because Nature is so vast, even in tiny Singapore, that all of us cannot cover everything. This is my little contribution to continual biodiversity and conservation education of us. I'm posting this at 4am in the morning, so just let me ramble.

Man evolved intelligence at such a rapid rate that none of the species on this planet even has an inkling of all the cerebral processes that go on in our overstuffed heads that we take for granted. Like blogging, or sms-ing etc. Even so-called "borderline retarded" humans still kick animals' butts in IQ contests. And we get so caught up in our own intelligence, and the illusion of superiority we have over Nature, that members of our species think we own the planet. Until disaster strikes. 26 Dec 2004, is a date many of us remember of a time when Nature decided to bitch-slap us for clearing the mangroves and destroying the coral reefs. For those who haven't realised, the hardest hit areas were places in Indonesia, Thailand, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, where forests and corals were destroyed and pretty beach resorts and ports were built in their place. And yet, Malaysia and low-lying Bangladesh didn't get much damage. Bangladesh is interesting. I'm sure they would like the pretty beach resorts, but they cannot afford to build them. So they leave the mangroves alone. The miles and miles of mangroves probably saved the country. Go google to find out more.

By the way, to the eternal optimists who think that we are too intelligent to kill ourselves and that we will find a way to beat the climate and extinction problem, we are NOT that intelligent. Species are going extinct, by our own doing, without even us knowing that they ever existed. Climate change is affecting the world at such a rapid rate, that even humans die from heat waves and what not. We screwed up the world by trying really hard to screw it up, and it took decades. We'd have to try even harder to unscrew it within the same time period. And so many nations aren't trying. China is talking abt going green for Beijing 2008 and but they are using coal for electricity. The US thinks everyone else should go green but themselves. Our neighbours seem to try desperately hard every year to smoke us out of our own country. Us? Our government signs this green treaty and that and every other, but we are still clearing whatever remaining forests we have and spraying streams with oil to control Aedes (for goodness sakes, they only breed in stagnant water!), and we cut down an 80-year old Angsana Tree because the rich brats we have living here can't keep to the speed limits and think their toys are more important than the tree. (It's like you've been standing outside a PAP kindergarten everyday and watching children run around you until one day, the teacher tells you, "You are in their way. I'll have to kill you.") We have a long long way to go before everyone of us understands the problem.

Oh and one thing about being really intelligent creatures. One thing that has differentiated us from other living creatures is our grasp of Mathematics. Let's look at something basic. Every Primary 2 or 3 kid will tell you that if you divide one by three, you get 1/3; and conversely, 1/3 multiplied by three will give you one. Then the "higher level" kid, perhaps Primary 4, will also tell you that if you divide 1 by 3 and express the answer in decimals, you get 0.3333333333. Of course, the even "higher" level kid, the cocky pure science "O" level kid doing "Additional Mathematics" will add that you can simply write it as 0.3, but with a dot above the 3. And then interestingly enough, the education system says nothing more about this little teaser, and few, in any, students probe further. Let me expand it below.

We have, 1 divide by 3 = 1/3, and 1/3 x 3 =1. We also have 1/3 = 0.333333... If it is true that 1/3 x 3 = 1, then 0.333333... x 3 = 0.999999... = 1.

0.9999999... = 1? Something that's not a whole is a whole. The decimal system. A product of our own intelligence. Go figure.