Tuesday 9 October 2012

Protectionist Rubbish And Deadly Contests

I'm up front about this; I own a Huawei phone.  This according to a US Congressional Committee report now makes me a contributor to the global security risk.  What a lot of rubbish!

Even the US media seem to have cottoned on the the idea that this pronouncement might have more to do with trade protectionism than any actual risk.  According to the Wall Street Journal Huawei are routinely shut out of the US takeover market on one pretext or another.

It seems to me this is all about politics, especially with the lead up to the US Presidential elections which are taking place in a few weeks time.

I have no plans to change my mobile on the basis of shonky evidence and I suspect that there are many others just like me.

Meanwhile in the "Land of the Free" people's minds have been taken of the subject of unemployment, poverty and pestilence by the introduction of novelty events such as the South Florida Roach eating contest.

The winner, one Edward Archbold, consumed dozens of the live bugs as well as an entree of worms and is not surprisingly now deceased.

No one spared a thought for the cockroaches, which according to the report were from an inventory of insects "that were safely and domestically raised in a controlled environment as food for reptiles".

You may well ask, what prize would motivate a presumably sane human being to participate?  The grand prize was....a Python.

The deceased only other 'claim to fame' was a prior arrest in 2004 on a charge of indecent exposure.  He now has even more exposure but didn't live to see it.

I can't see this style of event catching on in Singapore any time soon  given the size of cockroaches one finds in the tropics.  Those that manage to secrete themselves in the back of a Hawker stall are particularly rotund, as was the one that ran across my legs in an eatery off Orchard Road a few years ago.

Fortunately the NEA is rather strict about such matters so I can't really see the Great Singapore Roach Contest ever rivaling the Great Singapore Sale.

Still I would love to have been there to have taken a photo of the contest action using the camera on my Huawei phone.  But of course that would never have happened as it is potentially 'bugged'.
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