Playtimes HK Magazine October 2017 Issue | Page 70

last word
New Age Thinking
O
Nury Vittachi on the importance of scientific thinking
ne of my children once asked me whether ham
came from hamsters. “Of course,” I said. “Just like
jelly comes from jellyfish.” I added that our family’s
favourite dessert, Nutella mousse, was a gland
secretion from “a brown elk from Canada called the chocolate
moose”. Kids expect dads to be the font of all knowledge, and
it’s easy to rise to the challenge if you have a good imagination
and a plausible manner. But then came a harder question from
the offspring: “If junk food is bad for kids, why do dads eat it all
the time?”
The real reason, of course, is that the main activity of fathers
is scolding children for stuff we still do ourselves, right? I don’t
think that’s just me. But instead I put on my Scientific Thinker
persona and explained that foods have different effects on
different people.
Luckily there was a perfect example in New Scientist
magazine.
Tribes who live in the Atacama Desert in Chile have evolved
the ability to consume deadly arsenic without harm, it said.
“Kids there probably go to fast food shops and order poison
and french fries,” I explained. “Bit like everywhere else.”
Seeking further examples of bizarre tribes eating weird
things, I googled “Do Singaporeans really eat turtles?” but
instead found a turtle-related newsflash from Science Alert:
“Researchers in Korea are developing a technology that
will allow humans to control turtles through thought alone.”
A human wears a helmet that beams brainwaves to an
apparatus worn by the turtle. Just imagine what unscrupulous
Singaporeans could do with this. “Hello, turtles, we bought
you some cute hats!” Later: “You are under my control. Lightly
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season yourselves with soy sauce and come to me.”
What puzzles me is why the South Koreans have not made
remote brain control devices for children. Or for wives to use
on husbands. “You are under my control. Put down that beer,
lightly season yourself with soy sauce and come to me.”

The report said that the Turtle Brain Control System could “give
the user a sense of oneness with the controlled animal.”
Who wants a feeling of oneness with a turtle?
Be better to achieve oneness with the Buddha.
Or maybe Scarlett Johansson.
But the most worrying recent report on the science page was
the news that Facebook has a team of 60 people working on
a device that reads your brainwaves AND types out the words.
This is not a joke, you can look it up! When this gets launched
ALL MALES are going to be in DEEP trouble.
A colleague told me that academics from the University
of Zurich have proposed the creation of a Mental Privacy law
that makes it illegal to read someone’s mind. It sounds good
in theory, but a) we won’t be able to tell, and b) who’s going to
confess?
“Oops, sorry, I read your mind, arrest me now. By the way,
you’re one sick dude.”
Incidentally, I do realise that one day my child will come home
from school or college saying: “Dad, my teacher says ham does
not come from hamsters. It comes from pigs.”
I have my response prepared: “Yes, I’ve heard that theory
too, but fathers who are Scientific Thinkers always keep an
open mind.”