Clever, Singapore

Sometimes, you can't help but envy what comes out of the little red dot.

Saw this post on the green blog treehugger.com and it blew my mind with its simplicity. It seems the island republic's A*Star (Agency for Science, Technology and Research, a govt-initiated body) has come up with a urine battery, which is currently good enough to crank 1.5 volts of juice. The idea's so clever simply because it's basic science, something school students could've thought of - IF it was thought of.


Further googling revealed that this battery is actually old news - it had been announced as early as Aug 2005 - shows how in touch i've been about regional news. But then again, i used to read the local mainstream media, whose editors probably use a jealousy factor in news-editing.

But seriously, take a quick peek at A*Star's website and look at the mountain we have to scale to compete/collaborate at the same level as the folks down south (a number of whom, sadly for us, are Malaysians). Suspend for a while all those boasts we make about ourselves from IT to biotech and get the real story of what it means when a neighbor has the will to get things going. Remember that a mere 40 years separates the visions of the two sovereign nations.

Meanwhile we struggle with basic education, unemployable graduates (yet it's always somebody else's fault isn't it, Giant?), an increasingly unreliable infrastructure, and the dearth of real R and D initiatives and opportunity.

So mainstream media boasts aside, you tell me which govt couples vision with gumption?

Even more important, with a leading cast from Dracula to Sleepy Hollow, can we even begin to be serious about the journey?