Have fun with Lazyfeed, a web-based news reader or news aggregator with a difference. All you have to do is visit the website, type in "Singapore", "books", "music", "movies" or any other topic — and you will see live updates automatically popping up on the page.
Some of the information may be junk, but you also get material you might have never got otherwise.
Today I had the unexpected pleasure of reading a Straits Times column that's not available online for free. Someone else put it up on the Net and it surfaced on Lazyfeed.
Kishore Mahbubani wrote the column headlined "Time to count our blessings", published on December 30.
He wrote:
2009 may provide a new record for economic forecasts. When the year began, the Singapore economy was forecasted to shrink by up to 8 per cent. As the year ends, it appears the real figure will be close to -2 per cent. A 6 percentage point improvement in economic prospects is among the greatest improvements Singapore has experienced within one year.
The only problem?
"When the year began, the Singapore economy was" NOT "forecasted to shrink by up to 8 per cent".
That dire warning came in April, when the Ministry of Trade and Industry forecast the economy might shrink by 6 to 9 per cent.
At the beginning of last year, the ministry was expecting the economy to grow by up to 1 per cent or shrink by up to 2 per cent.
Then, on January 21, it changed its forecast to a 2 to 5 per cent slump. Not 8 per cent. That came later.
My point?
How can an academic like Mahbubani, the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, get his facts wrong?
The editors at the Straits Times were equally careless. No one bothered to check the facts.
Of course, we throw away old newspapers — or sell them to the karang guni man.
But researchers sometimes do look up old newspapers.
The Straits Times shouldn't be so careless.
After all, journalists are paid to provide accurate information.
So, of course, are academics.
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