Quel Malheur...

J'ai lu cette nouvelle hier. Et aujourd'hui mon frère a appelé pour me dire que mes parents sont malade et ont été hospitalisé.

La dengue menace 2.5mds de personnes
AFP
07/04/2009
Deux milliards et demi de personnes, dans une centaine de pays tropicaux, sont exposées au risque d'infection par la dengue, maladie tropicale en pleine expansion qui est la plus répandue après le paludisme, ont indiqué aujourd'hui des spécialistes à Paris.

En cause dans cette "expansion géographique" : transports des populations, urbanisation massive et désordonnée, problème d'évacuation des eaux usées, lutte insuffisante contre les moustiques vecteurs de cette sorte de "grippe tropicale" et les "gîtes" (eaux stagnantes...) qui favorisent leur prolifération, a notamment rappelé le Dr Raman Velayudhan, de l'Organisation mondiale de la santé, lors d'une conférence de presse organisée par la firme Sanofi Pasteur, division vaccins du Groupe Sanofi-Aventis.
Sanofi Pasteur teste en Thaïlande son candidat vaccin contre la dengue destiné aux enfants et dirigé contre les quatre formes du virus. Cette étude d'efficacité, débutée en février, devrait englober 4002 sujets, dont 2/3 recevront le vaccin testé.

Sanofi Pasteur mène aussi des études cliniques (enfants et adultes) au Mexique, au Pérou et aux Philippines.

"On attend les résultats dans deux ans", a indiqué le Dr Jean Lang, de Sanofi Pasteur. Si tout va bien, selon lui, "vers 2015-2016, le vaccin pourrait être disponible et même peut-être un peu plus tôt".

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C'est un peu trop tard. Mes parents sont infectés par le virus Chikunguya. =(

On Donne

A Hymn To God The Father


WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.


I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore ;
And having done that, Thou hast done ;
I fear no more.
~ John Donne

I've found Donne's poetry very useful actually, because it expresses so much struggling and uncertainty. I was thinking about it, and I realise it's a lot like Jacob on the mountain, wrestling with the angel. I think for the longest time he had no idea who he was fighting, until daybreak when he was defeated into submission, his hip wrenched to force him into a position of worship. Only then could he plead for a blessing, and receive it. A recurring line in Donne, especially when he wants assurance from God, is "the Lord throws down, that he may raise up." Most literary critics think Donne struggled with great uncertainty in his faith. But I read the poems and I wonder, if we have failed to identify the real struggle? Maybe he is struggling with God, and for him certainty was in that struggle, and it was not the effort to remove the struggle or defeat the foe that would deliver him from uncertainty. If you're struggling with your doubts, fears, pride or whatever, look again. At break of day, you may just find that all along you were struggling not with yourself or an unknown enemy, but with God. And that's a great relief to me, because I never can face my sins directly. It's kind of a different way of looking at one's salvation, I guess. We Protestants suffer from this "battle your sins" mentality, when we really should be facing the other way. It's submit to God, resist the devil and flee temptation.

Revelations of Nothing

Just visited my old blog. Haven't seen it for years. I'm surprised by the variety of things I thought about in those years, and how boring I found school life sometimes. I thought I enjoyed school a lot, but now I remember I enjoyed the access I had to libraries more than I actually liked classes and the pressure to perform. It's something that hasn't deserted me all these years--I can't shake off the academic perfectionism I have cultivated over the years. Can't even tell when it started--in Malaysia or here. It certainly crystallized under the need to maintain my scholarship. In a sense, in order to keep my beloved libraries, I had to leave off reading random crap and actually study. So the scholarship ensured I had a good balance of state-sponsored syllabi and random reading. If anyone asks me again, why I came to Singapore, I shall say, "For literature and for the libraries."

I also know why I abandoned the old blog. It was too angst-ridden. Looking back at a distance, I grimace at how my thoughts just bleed across the screen in a cool teal that belies the workings of a heat-oppressed brain. I'm much more reticent now. This is probably the first post on this blog which is confessional in nature, without being at all fictionalized or anything. Shall have to give it a new tag. Like: Warning! Read only when you want to be bored out of your wits. Or: Private property. Trespassers will be persecuted by revelations of nothing.

Matters on my mind. Concerning religion.

1. If God is both omniscient and omnipotent, then it's possible for him to see all our future choices and act in a manner which both preserves our free will and fulfils his ultimate will. I.e predestination and free will is a paradox only reconcilable if God has complete knowledge and full sovereignty. Discuss.

2. The ability to discern good and evil is different from the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is not a precondition for having the ability to discern good and evil. Discuss.

3. What does my existence amount to? If I am only a heap of dust facing the accident of consciousness, then ethics and morality count for nothing but the amelioration of an existence that has no reason for being in the first place. Question I would ask if I didn't believe in God.

4. Why do people--even intellectuals--automatically assume that conservative religious people are either not rational or have never reasoned through their faith? (Probably because it's usually true, haha. And the bad rep of many vocal and unthinking conservatives who go around condemning everyone except themselves).

5. "I find it unfair that God has it all rigged from the start." Comment of friend on book of Romans, which states that God set up the law in order to condemn mankind for our sin, which resulted in death, so that we would realize we needed to be saved through Christ. Theologians usually call this rigging "grace," but plenty of Miltonists would agree with God being very underhand. To the shrewd he shows himself shrewd, I guess.