Greater gender equality in Malaysia

Excerpt from: http://news.my.msn.com/regional/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1118564

Malaysia is considering allowing schools to cane unruly girls to curb an upsurge in discipline problems including gang fights and bullying, reports said Wednesday.

Currently only boys are caned in Malaysian schools, but only rarely and for serious offences. The punishment is administered on the buttocks or the palm of the hand.

Ouch! The girls are getting canned this time around as well. I actually think they should have been sparred of it since they're the fairer sex anyway. Aren't we used to keeping them away from violence and giving them space to be feminine like they should?

Corporal punishment like caning is a type of violence in my opinion.

BUT, this is a huge leap for the feminist movement demanding gender equality. While equality means equal opportunities for the two sexes, there's no reason why it should not mean equal treatment as well! In fact, many feminists are for equal treatment!

So in the future, suppose if the feminism movement has achieved genuine success, boys and girls will be treated just alike, which includes but is not limited to boys treating girls like how they'd do to boys (simplified: girls are treated like boys). Which means that men will no longer need to pay for most dates and no longer need to be gentlemanly or chivalrously since they're supposed to treat girls like how they should treat their own sex.

Is regretting half the battle won?

If you can regret over something that will repeat itself, is it half the battle won?

Let's say you did very badly for an exam. You regret deeply about it. You know it was because you have not put in enough effort. You promised yourself that you'll put in more effort in the next semester, and that you'll not wait till the last hour to do your revisions.

Say that you did prepare hard the next time around and get rewarded with good grades. So we can say that the battle is won.

But say, what if it was the opposite. you repeated history in the next exam. Bad effort cause poor grades and you regret again.

Some people never regret anything in their lives. If they perform badly in an exam, they'll just tell themselves to move on and not look back. They never ever regret having poor grades. To those of them who managed to improve and attain good grades the next time around, we can say the battle is won. But what about those of them that never improve?

Can we then say that those that never improved but had regretted had therefore won half the battle, since they know what should have been done but had not been done versus those that don't even want to think about their failures?

So what if it is opposition inspired?

Lately there has been 2 street marches going on during weekends in Malaysia. The first was probably the biggest while the second is probably second biggest in the decade. The government didn't approve too much of the marches or demonstrations, one of their reasons being that they're opposition inspired and that these members of the opposition are doing this to gain an edge in the upcoming general elections.

So what if it was opposition inspired?

So what if people did it to get a shot at getting a government role in a nation?

Arguably, most if not all leaders led their people to some ideology or reform partly because they see themselves in very high positions should they be they're successful. Aung San Suu Kyi who is currently leading the democratic movement in Myanmar and Benazir Bhutto similarly in Pakistan is probably doing them to get a shot at becoming premiers of their countries themselves. But how is that wrong?

If people can fight for the will of others, it seems there's nothing wrong with rewarding them for being champions of our cause. If Prime Minister Badawi and his Barisan National party continues to represent the views of his people, surely there is nothing wrong with keeping them in office. That's all politics is about.

It is the role of the opposition to gather and exclaim the views of the silent in our society. Peaceful marches cannot be inherently wrong just because they are opposition inspired. They are after all, supposed to represent dissent.

At This Point

This semester,
I did very badly for my coursework;
It was the worst ever coursework marks I got in my life;
But I thought I have done my best last-minute exam revision yet.

I felt weird,
Up until now, I've gotten away with good final revisions;
But this is it, my finals won't save it this time;
It is just too much to ask for good grades.

I'm scared like a person who has just committed a crime;
It's only time before my results come to light;
And I get seriously screwed for my laziness.

I know my parents will not raise their voices at me;
Yet I still fear their reactions;

I ultimately fear not doing well;
I fear that I'm being faced by the limit of my abilities.

At this point, I'm dead scared of my results which I will soon collect;
At this point, I'm more convinced that I have only mediocre intellect.

Maybe it's good;
Maybe I'll emerge more humble.
But,
Who would pay the price of fine wine for plain water?
I doubt I'm willing.

Cars are like what?

Sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you'll hear guys telling you that girls are like cars.

Like girls, different cars look and feel differently inside;
Like girls, different cars respond differently;
Like girls, some cars cost more to maintain;
And like girls, different people like different cars too.

Some are reliable, some others breakdown rather easily.
Some are nice to drive, some others make you wonder if it's worth your money.

Some like sporty cars, others like it elegant or simple.
Some look at the model when buying a car, others may look at its interior or engine.
Some will be content with their own car, others will wonder why are they stuck with their car.

Some own more than one car.
Some don't like second-hand cars.
Some buy certain cars just to show-off.
Some change cars when they can afford a better one, when it gets too old, or when it is broken.

And while everyone feel different degrees of belonging to their cars, they generally don't want it to be scratched or damaged.

Name initials may influence grades: study

Taken from:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/lf_nm_life/initials_performance_dc

Certain initials may look better than others as monograms but they can also have an impact on how well a person performs in a sport or at school, according to a new study.

Researchers who studied the impact of initials found that baseballs players whose first or last name starts with the letter K, which signifies a strikeout, tended to strike out more often than other players.

And students whose names start with the letters C or D, which denote mediocre marks in some grading systems, did not perform as well as other pupils with different initials.

~~~~~~~~~~

The effect was the same in a study of the grade point averages of 15,000 graduate students over a 15-year period.

"Cs and Ds do reliably worse than everyone else," said Nelson.

"All the students are working very hard to succeed as much as possible, it just happens to be that if you find failure less aversive than someone else, you'll fail slightly more often," he added.

The researchers said their findings are in line with the name-letter effect, in which a person's favorite letter is often one of their initials. The favored initial may influence life outcomes, such the city a person lives in or the choice of occupation.

My initials have a C in it. I guess I'm doomed in my academic life :(

Correlation studies like this one does not necessitate a relationship, but they do show probability. Higher correlations denote higher probabilities for the said relationships and predictions.

Why trade?

People don't seem to understand why they get money. Money is an asset, but assets basically do nothing unless it is used. Consider keeping a gold coin in a vault sealed for eternity, you've just made that gold coin worthless to anyone in the universe except for what is inside your mind.

We do things we're good at so we can produce optimally for what we are working at. We get money for the purpose of improving the standard of our lives. Money used to consumed functions so. Money saved to be invested is done so more can be consumed in the future.

So we give money in return for goods or services that we would like to have. The objective of working is to improve our lives after all. Many have no problem understanding money until here.

And when it concerns nations, people forget exactly what this medium of trade is all about. They ask for government policies that seek to reduce imports through all means that are remotely profitable. Take for example the scenario in some western countries; to make agriculture viable, otherwise uncompetitive industries have to be subsidized just so they can export for competitive prices, which means that revenues must be lower than taxes spent on subsidies because the net effect after accounting revenues and subsidies are lower prices (net loss). This basically means that subsidizing nations are subsidizing the consumption of foreigners.

If people just learn that it is alright to import more competitive goods from other nations, they will get more bang for the buck. Higher standards of living will follow from being able to consume more, or invest for future consumption. All the while, labor from uncompetitive industries can be conserved for sectors that will actually yield a net income for the nation.

If governments and people really do understand that, there will be no tariffs or quotas on foreign goods and no subsidies for uncompetitive industries. We will just do what we have a comparative advantage in and buy anything else. Is it very different than working in a desk job to pay for your bills, loans, food, and entertainment? Not quite I'm sure.

Or would you prefer to go fish with a small net, go mine coal for electricity, work on the fields for meat, and build your own TV set just because you feel it's not nice to spend money? In the end of the day, by working on the desk job (which you're good at) you get to enjoy a higher standard of living than if you were self-sufficient and DIY everything.

Trade benefits both sides and so do free trade.

Difficult people

Some people are just so into their minds. I'm talking about people that says how they won't change their mind, people that just won't bulge in the face of contradicting reason. They are at best, dominant.

Society somehow encourages these people because society seems to hold a certain awe for them. Girls may like dominant boys more and therefore perpetuate certain traits as families raise their children through the values of its parents.

Leadership is another problem. Arguably, having qualities of leadership is very desirable because it does put a person above his or her peers and this is I think, what most enshrining the value of leadership is seeking. Since leadership is strongly associated with strong characters, people get another incentive to want to appear hard, a dominant trait.

Which further makes it harder, because society holds dominance in such a high pedastral, that dominance is seen to obviously be more desirable compared to characters in between the extremes of dominance and its opposite. Just look at women today, they just want to do what men does. They see certain positions and jobs traditionally hold by men to be more desirable, at least in comparison to tending to the family.

What bugs me are personalities so dominant, it inconveniences others around. People that demand for things to be done according to their ways are probably most familiar to us. And people who just won't consider the other side of the story similarly is so. Its more extreme side involves people who even exclaims their unwillingness to be persuaded by opposition reasoning.

But dominant people are not antisocial by definition. I would say that dominant people seek to be infallible, treating the accommodation of ideas other than his or her own as a sign of weakness. Since dominant persons do not desire to appear weak, they actively seek to be infallible and unaccommodating to different ideas.

Which is exactly why dominant leaders are a danger to society. Due to their lack of willingness towards opposing views. Leaders should after all consider all perspectives before picking what seems to be the best choice. If they get too consumed with themselves, some voices will be shut out, which is bad since decisions will be taken in a relatively uninformed manner. Society however, loves them. People don't usually vote competence nor wisdom or intellect, they vote for personalities they have faith in. And personalities they have faith in so happens to be tough personalities.

And then they complain how their politicians are dumb and how they hate difficult people.

Letter on Internet Censorship

During the last INTIMA Forum (1 month ago from this post), I raised a few issues one of which pertains to internet censorship in the college network. The director of the student services department asked for me to write a report to her regarding which sites were censored. A friend of mine asked me to post here about it.

I went overboard and wrote a full letter instead of a brief report. Here is what I had submitted, verbatim.

I initially noticed that www.collegeboard.com was blocked when the college network returned me to ecampus.inti.edu.my . That was awhile ago and now it seems fine.

Friends point that www.kennysia.com and www.xanga.com is blocked too. The former is a harmless blog. The latter is a blogging service.

Both are harmless. The thing here is that I'm sure that these are not the only sites that are blocked. The trend here is obvious, harmless sites are getting the block.

Google's 'cache' is blocked too. This function in Google allows you to view pages saved by Google devoid of any pictures and media, it's text only. The usefulness is apparent when sites are offline, barring any access to its information. The cache from Google enables one to view information saved by Google that would otherwise be unaccessible then. Important tool when doing research as you do not want to skip valuable stuff.

Google also allows viewing of PDF and DOC documents in HTML, meaning you can view in your web browser PDF and DOC materials. You may ask why is this important but in case you do not know, INTI's gateway seems to dislike downloads, giving downloads a painfully slow download rate. The result: if you're looking to retrieve PDF and DOC materials from the web by downloading them to your local drive to be viewed, you need wait an entire day.


That was the gist of the issue raised during the forum but let me humbly advance the issue further.

The point in pointing out these 'blocks' is not to request for the college management to consider 'unblocking' them, (for I could have done that with less effort and less inconvenience it seems if I had referred them to the relevant offices) but to request that the college reconsider its policy of blocking internet content. In my humble opinion, I strongly believe that the college should not have a hand in any forms of social engineering and therefore has no reason to even engage in internet content filtering. I'm sure this opinion of mine is shared by many students alike.

I do understand that there are schools of views that advance how certain content should not be accessible through the college infrastructure due to reasons of impropriety, for example pornography. But consider the age-old argument of impracticality. If the process is going to be automatic, otherwise what would be non-offensive sites will be blocked. If the process is going to be manual, it is going to be subjective and worse, too impractical for it to have any effect.

The forum is as what I believe, a place for students, not just your students but your paying customers, to voice out what they believe should be given attention to. I'm saying this because I am actually very convinced that nothing will be done to loosen current levels of content censorship, save maybe the few sites which I have named. Yet I raised the issue with the slightest hope that it'll be given even some attention.

Take no offense with what I've said so far for essentially I'm making no requests.

I thank you :D

Keep the 'Goreng Pisang' mentality

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/10/28/nation/19306308&sec=nation
Drop the ‘goreng pisang’ mentality, says Abdullah

SEREMBAN: The Malays must shed the goreng pisang mentality and learn to become successful agricultural entrepreneurs, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

“When one person sells fried bananas, many others follow suit.

“When this kind of situation happens, eventually supply exceeds demand, causing prices to drop,” he said.

The Prime Minister said despite efforts by the Government to promote agriculture, the Malays are still sceptical about venturing into the sector.

They blame the banks for not giving out loans when they, in fact, had not proven anything.

This is simple economics.

Price is a function of supply and demand. When prices are high, suppliers have more incentives to produce more. Higher production increases supply and causes a downward pressure on prices.

Such situations tend to create efficiency by promoting more efficient and cheaper methods of production. This kind of competition is good for the economy and the government should promote it.

A nation can only compete in a global economy without protectionism by means of comparative advantage (producing things so they are cheaper or better compared to rivals). As a nation, we should aim to produce more goods where we have a comparative advantage compared to other nations, and this means competition is totally favored.

In the end, the economy's main goal should be to increase standards of living. If people are able to buy a certain good cheaper, they can increase consumption somewhere else (or invest for future consumption), and this increases the standard of living.

Be very afraid when politicians take the side of producers. Policies of this sort benefit a few producers out of the wallets of those of us who don't produce that good or service.