Singapore is currently “debating” how much to pay its elected leaders. Singapore public servants are well paid by most any standard. According to the papers here the Prime Minister made SG$3,072,200 in 2010 (making him the highest paid politician in the world according to this article [money.ca.msn.com]). Three million dollars. But they are reducing that down to SG$2,200,000 this year. It recently took four pages of the paper to explain how they arrived at these numbers — base salary, annual variable component, 13th month bonus, individual bonus and national bonus… It’s all very complex stuff [salary.sg], just to justify overpaying already rich public servants; you know people who work for the voters, the vast majority of which do not make so much. In fact the average household income for Singaporeans in 2010 was SG$96,000 (according to a Singapore Statistics Department report here [singstat.gov.sg]). Then again, as many Singaporeans know its’ not a country its’ a corporation and the PM is the CEO. CEO’s every where are making astronomical salaries, on the BBC they other day I heard that the average CEO salary was 147 times that of their average employee. By that score Singapore Inc is not too bad at less than 23 times.

Anyway, there is lots of debate and propaganda about Singaporean politicians salary on the web. But the debate gave me an idea. Since politicians are elected and they work for the voters shouldn’t their salary be pegged to the average income of their constituents? I’d like to see politicians paid this way; if they manage to increase the income of their constituents then their salary would go up, if it goes down on their watch then they suffer equally. You want to make astronomical amounts of money so you can swim in it like Uncle Scrooge then work in the private (banking) sector. Politics is supposed to be about improving the public good and service. It should not be a career choice based on salary, I don’t know how to you can take the power trip aspect out of it but I think we should take the greed aspect out. Maybe you’d still have to be rich to run for office but at least it would not be a direct path to getting richer. Besides the perks make up for a low take home salary.

Serious cold calls for serious meds:

Most common side-effects [of Clarithromycin] are gastrointestinal: Diarrhea, nausea, extreme irritability, abdominal pain and vomiting, facial swelling. Less common side-effects include headaches, hallucinations (auditory and visual), dizziness/motion sickness, rashes, alteration in senses of smell and taste, including a metallic taste that lasts the entire time one takes it. Dry mouth, panic and / or anxiety attacks and nightmares have also been reported albeit less frequently. In more serious cases it has been known to cause jaundice, cirrhosis, and kidney problems including renal failure. Uneven heartbeats, chest pain, and shortness of breath have also been reported while taking this drug.

Clarithromycin may cause false positives on urine drug screens for cocaine.

Adverse effects of clarithromycin in the central nervous system include dizziness, ototoxicity and headaches, but delirium and mania are also uncommon side effects.

When taken along with some statins, drugs used to reduce blood serum cholesterol levels, muscle pain may occur.

There is also the risk of oral candidiasis, due to the increased yeast production in the body from the antibiotics.

Wikipedia entry on Clarithromycin

..a new study argues that for a democracy to function at all, you need lots of ignorant people blindly siding with the majority.

…

There needs to be just enough people who know anything about the issues to act as leaders for everyone else, but the majority disintegrates if there are too many viewpoints pulling in different directions.

…

[The researchers] looked at golden shiners, a species that is naturally attracted to the color yellow. The researchers took a bunch of these fish and trained most of them to act against instinct and swim towards a blue target, while the rest were trained to follow their natural preference and go for a yellow target.

When the researchers placed just these two groups together, the smaller group of yellow-seeking fish was able to dominate the blue-seeking fish, making them all swim to the yellow target 80% of the time. This is because their natural instinct gave them a stronger desire go after the yellow target than their counterparts. But then, when fish with no prior conditioning were added to the mix, the influence of the yellow-seeking fish quickly dropped away, and the initial, blue-seeking majority regained control.

From Democracy needs ignorant people, says science [io9.com]

The article is a summary of a paper in Science [sciencemag.org]… now go read the article about how ignorant fish are required for an enlightened fish democracy to work. Before I plagiarise the whole damn article.

December 2011, Lunar eclipse seen from Labrador Park, Singapore.

Senator Sanders proposes a new amendment to the constitution [senate.gov]… seems like a good one:

ARTICLE—

SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.

“free web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.”

Maciej, from Don’t be a Free User [pinborad.in] blog post at Pinboard.