Zad's Cavern of Random Works

A Singaporean-based blogger, @CriticalSpectator , recently pulled off a stunt creating headlines by posting on his Facebook page remarks implying certain sentiments among Malaysian Malay Muslims regarding the Palestine–Israel conflict and the war on Iran. The framing demonstrates intellectual dishonesty, or at least intellectual laziness and ignorance – as well as, in his own words, portraying them as “brainwashed and fundamentally bigoted”. It was reported in The Rakyat Post as well as its Facebook page . CriticalSpectator implied hypocrisy among Malaysian Malays by comparing Malaysia’s Bumiputera rights with Israel, implying it an apartheid system and calling out what he described as their “imaginary” moral superiority. His first post has since been removed by Facebook. He then reposted a chart comparing legal ethnic discrimination in Israel and Malaysia with the title “Malaypartheid”. Not to worry – I too created my own charts with facts duplicating his style below. ...

Though I don't expect to have readers, I would still like to make a small update/announcement regarding the North Borneo Dispute issue. I hope to one day to write-up my full analysis, however that won't be anytime soon. However, I will inform that recently I have various recent significant findings on this issue. The analysis will include more transcripts and translation of agreements written in Jawi Malay. Apparently the 1878 agreements has to documents. The 1878 agreement between Overbeck and Sultan of Sulu in my post titled ‘Transcript and Translation to 22 January 1878 Agreement Signed by Sultan Jamal-ul-Azam of Sulu appointing Baron de Overbeck’  was the Surat Kuasa (letter of appointment), not the Surat Perjanjian (agreement letter), which would include information on the transaction. Overbeck's agreement with Sultan of Brunei in 1877 has a similar format: One Surat Kuasa , but multiple Surat Perjanjian . My future write-up will also include legal agreements prior...

There is an age-old “unanswered” question about mathematics: Was mathematics discovered or invented? Foreshadowing: I have the answer. Though it is not considered a paradox, it acts like one, because mathematics is obviously both discovered and invented — yet, one cannot be both. This question has been discussed at length by some of the brightest minds in the subject. It is considered a deep philosophical question with multiple interpretations and is central to the philosophy of mathematics. There’s a video clip of mathematician Roger Penrose spending four minutes answering this question in an interview . Another mathematician, Edward Frenkel, spends thirteen minutes on the Lex Fridman podcast discussing this conundrum . There is a five-minute TED-Ed video discussing this. Yet none are able to reach a definitive conclusion — there is no straightforward answer, nor a workaround, nor an explanation of why this question is so difficult. What surprised me is that even bili...