Hypocrisy in Education

Recently there has been a lot of talk about education in Malaysia concerning languages, SPM, scholarships and university admissions. Its good that people are actively challenging government policies but i can’t help but notice major contradictions in these opinions. Each person seems to have a different stance on each of the issues but they are completely oblivious to the fact that their stances are incompatible with each other. The lack of a coherent all-encompassing position just proves that we are all very selfish individuals.

For a long time, many have come to the conclusion that SPM is a bad measure of student ability. One of the popular arguments to support this idea is that SPM promotes memorization and kills creativity. Therefore SPM top scorers are not well rounded and are actually not worth all that much. Thus SPM does not reflect a students potential and does not predict how bright a candidates’ future will be.

The criteria for giving out government scholarships has been attacked viciously by opposition parties as well as rejected applicants and their parents. They claim  that the scholarships have not been awarded based on merit and that is the only thing that could possibly explain why an applicant with 15 A’s could be rejected while a 10 A candidate makes it.

But if you believe in the first argument, the one saying that SPM has little value, then you cannot believe that the 15 A candidate is better than the 10 A candidate. Wouldn’t the scholarship application process be more flawed, if it accepted students based on a flawed measurement?

The debate about mediums of instruction is even more flawed. How can you agree that English is the world’s lingua franca but say that we can succeed internationally without learning as many things as possible in English?

USM has come under fire for not being able to design a proper online applications system which admitted everyone who applied. They admitted that they were at fault and the program that they used is flawed. Yet angry parents insist that their rejected children should be admitted just because they were admitted based on a technical error. I don’t know about them but being admitted because of a technical error isn’t something I would be proud of.

Merit doesn’t mean what it used to anymore; its not about being the best its about being yourself. People don’t really think that the best deserve the best, they think they deserve it and will come up with all sorts of reasons to claim they are the best.

Feigned meaning

Its been awhile and a lot has happened. Sadly I do not have the liberty to disclose that information just yet. Need to wait for a bit more security. I shall not claim to have what is not yet firmly in my hands.

So instead, I’ll rant about stuff. Blogs!

I’ve started to get sick of reading some of them. There are good ones. But most fall under one genre; the Personal Blog. Again there are some which are really worth reading. Ones that really mean something. But there lies the problem. Everyone wants their writing to mean something. But often the attempt to do so causes the lack of it.

Lets examine a common example; the I’m-so-thankful-for-everything-in-my-life-post.

These types of posts are everywhere. Usually they come after special events like birthdays, college acceptances and anniversaries. However, some blogs will have this as every post. Week in week out, they’ll write about how wonderfully complete their lives are.

“I have such great friends, they bought me cupcakes; the baked goods of friendship!”

Next post…

“My parents just paid off their mortgages. The shackles that once bound our feet to the proverbial MAN have been broken and we are no longer slaves to the capitalist system”

More…

“My girlfriend tripped in church today and her skirt slipped just enough for me to see her panties. GOD MUST EXIST. Of course she’d willingly show me more if I asked but the fact that it happened in church must prove God’s mercy and compassion”

None of it means anything. Yet their authors try so hard to create meaning. It makes me wonder, if a person tries hard to create meaning doesn’t that mean there is no real meaning in their lives? So the more you post, the more pathetic your life is. Take this as a Poetics for blogging. Don’t feign meaning to pass off as the real thing.

In the beginning

In the beginning there was nothing

There still is nothing

So we create something

Let's give it a name

“Higayv:lige:i.”, said the man with the pointy white hat.

“What does it mean?”, a random girl asks.

“Only I can know!”

“Why?”

“I’m the smartest one here!”

“Really? Prove it”

“I know what it means”

“Oh yeah. I don’t”

“So I must be smart”

“True”

“Build something that can be called the House of Higayv:lige:i!”

“Why?”

“You dare question the will of Higayv:lige:i?”

“I don’t even know what that is”

“Which makes it worse. Means you don’t know what it can do to you”

“Don’t scare me with the unknown!”

“Higayv:lige:i commands me to kick you because it is too kind to punish you itself”

“Oh yes please! This is much better than something I don’t understand”

“Muahahahaha!”

“Is Higayv:lige:i pleased? Maybe I should flog myself too?”

“Ewww. You lunat…Yes, he commands you to do that”

“Oh, it listened to my suggestion. I feel so special”

“Yes, it is very kind to sadists like me…Oops, I mean his servants”

“Then I am it’s most humble servant”

“Now build me, I mean ‘it’ a building”

Many winters pass. The building is completed. The girl is dead. Crushed by an huge keystone while trying to build. However before that death happens, with Higayv:lige:i on his side, the man gets children. Whether she liked it or not. He sure looked like he liked it though. The children learn about Higayv:lige:i too. They love Higayv:lige:i. So much so that they do things that little children are not supposed to like. And they like doing it, because they don’t know what Higayv:lige:i can reward them with.

 

To be continued…

IE8 Review

For the uninitiated IE stands for Internet Explorer. Today, Microsoft released the finalized version of IE8. Normally, I’d just laugh at Microsoft’s attempts at browsers. IE7 was horrible. You’d have to wait 5 seconds before tabs could load. So the only thing I used it for was to download Firefox. Eventually, I used Firefox to get Chrome. Really liked Chrome and its become my primary browser. But since I have a soft spot for Microsoft, I gave IE8 a whirl.

Looks

I like the new look. A lot better than IE7. Interface is a lot cleaner than in IE7. Less cluttered. The only gripe I have about it is that top bar, the one that says Google-Windows Internet Explorer. Why is it even there? Just about all the browsers have it too. If you have plenty of screen space then this probably isn’t a problem for you. But I’m on a laptop most of the time. And since Chrome got rid of that, I’d still give Chrome the edge in aesthetics. But IE definitely beats Firefox, in my opinion.

 

Chrome is just so much sleeker. Keep in mind that I’ve disabled the menu bar in IE. So the bar would be even thicker; wasting more screen space. Just another complaint, do we really need an address bar and a search bar. If Google can combine both, why can’t you Microsoft?

Definitely a huge improvement over previous versions, but it could be better.

Speed

I’m way too lazy to take a stopwatch and compare milliseconds. So all I can do here is give a general view of the speeds relative to other browsers. In terms of startup time, Chrome still outpaces IE8. But only marginally. IE outpaces Firefox 3 by a noticeable amount of time.  Since Firefox is faster than IE7 by a long shot, you can imagine how IE8 is light years ahead.

Page load times aren’t an exact science. Depends on too many different factors. And I don’t quite have patience with stopwatches. So check these links instead.

Winsupersite

PCWorld

In my experience, loads in IE8 are on par with Chrome and both are faster than Firefox 3.

Extensions

Extensions were Firefox’s big advantage in the browser world for a long time. Extensions add extra functionality the creators didn’t think of and they were almost exclusively a Firefox thing. Which is why I had to use Firefox at times, to download videos, since Chrome does not have that function nor does it support extensions. IE8 does come with extensions, though they’re called add-on’s instead. At this moment in time, the add-on library isn’t nearly as extensive as Firefox’s but it will soon grow considering that IE has the most users of any browser.

Features

IE8 has a lot of cool features, and one of the most noticeable ones is Webslices. It allows you to check updates in a certain part of a webpage without actually going to the page. Useful if you need accurate stock quotes for a specific company or football scores for a certain team. Sadly it doesn’t quite work for me. Probably because of the weird firewalls my apartment uses (I also can’t use torrents, Ares, or even Windows Live Mail).

 

 

 

 

 

This is what I get when I try. Bummer. I hate my apartment connection. Likes to cut me off from MSN too. But I’m sure this works with less restrictive firewalls.

 

 

 

 

There’s also something called Accelerators. If you highlight an address you can right click and see an option to open the address in Live Maps or Google Maps. Or you can define highlighted words in a dictionary. Or send a portion of an article to a friend with Gmail. All with a few clicks, instead of opening a new tab and copy-pasting. A neat feature that every browser should have.

 

Speaking of tabs, IE8 actually groups similar tabs and color codes them. I know some people who get off on color-coding. So many colors.

 

 

There’s also Quick Tabs View, which is an easy way to preview all your open tabs.

There’s also InPrivate browsing for people who don’t want any traces left behind. Sort of like Chrome’s Incognito feature. IE treats every tab like its a separate process, so if one tab malfunctions the other tabs will still work. There’s also the standard safety features, phishing protection and so on.

Overall

IE8 is a great improvement to IE7 and I’d have to say it’s better than Firefox 3. It has some great features, decent speed and looks. So I definitely recommend trying Internet Explorer 8.  Just for the record, I’m not being paid to write this. Though I wish I was, could use some cash right now.

Funny way to dive into the pool

On the 17th of March, I went down from the 19th floor to go out for dinner. As I was walking towards the exit, I noticed a few police cars parked near the elevators. I ignored them. I hate the police. Had dinner. Came back. And that was that.

The next day, I got a message. It was vague. Meant basically nothing. “Hey Hasan”, it said. I replied. No answer came.

Hour passed and rain began to pour. An answer came but again it was vague, “suicide”, it said.

“Who’s dying?”

“Too late for that”

“Who died then?”, I replied while annoyed at having my tenses corrected.

“You don’t know? A guy jumped out of his window and died near the pool”

“Now?”

“No, yesterday night”

“Are there still bloodstains?”

“Don’t know, maybe you should check it out”

“I shall”

I ran down to the floor where the body was once. I found it was gone with no trace it was even there. Damn! I was too late though, I did notice a tinge of red near the pool. I looked up and expected to see a dive board. There was none, sadly.

Easiest way to discover new blogs

http://www.condron.us/

Check the link. It’ll cycle through different blogs. When you find something that catches your eye, press stop. Its like getting tomatoes thrown at you without the mushy wet feeling. Or the pain. And you can read the tomatoes. Okay this analogy is lame

It’s been awhile since I posted one of these

Change in comments system

To encourage more comments, I’ve decided to make it a bit more simple. When you click ‘comments’ at the bottom of each post a pop-up window opens to allow for easy commenting.Instead of taking you to a different page where you can’t refer to the post and comment at the same time. Hope everyone likes the change and starts commenting.

More than just yoga

A dear friend of mine sent this email awhile ago and for some reason I keep forgetting to post this. It’s absolutely hilarious but in (mostly) Malay. I’m too lazy to translate though. Sorry.

Fatwa-fatwa yang akan datang - Please read...

Makin hari umat Islam makin ditindas dan dikongkong. Bukan oleh orang Cina, atau orang India atau orang Yahudi atau orang Kristian. Tetapi dianiya dan dikongkong oleh orang Islam/Melayu sendiri. Please read on.

Selepas fatwa pengharaman yoga, fatwa-fatwa yang akan datang adalah seperti berikut:

Disember 2008
Orang Islam dilarang mandi di kolam renang awam. Di kolam renang awam, akan terdapat orang-orang yang bukan Islam yang memakai pakaian renang yang singkat dan mendedahkan aurat (terutamanya amoi-amoi china yang cun dan seksi). Ini boleh menjejaskan akidah orang Islam. Cara yang paling baik ialah kita haramkan orang Islam dari kolam renang awam.

Januari 2009
Orang Islam dilarang pergi ke Pulau Pinang. Ketua Menteri Pulau Pinang adalah seorang yang bukan Islam and majoriti penduduk Pulau Pinang adalah orang yang bukan Islam. Apabila seorang Islam berada di Pulau Pinang, beliau mungkin terhidu bau char keoy tiaw yang dimasak oleh orang bukan Islam dan ini boleh merosakkan akidah kita. Cara yang paling baik ialah kita haramkan orang Islam dari pergi ke Pulau Pinang. Orang Islam yang kini tinggal di Pulau Pinang akan diberi elaun pindah sebanyak RM 3000 untuk membantu mereka berpindah ke negeri-negeri yang lain. Perpindahan ke negeri Kelantan dan Terengganu amat amat digalakkan.

Februari 2009
Orang Islam dilarang meminum root beer. Walaupun root beer tidak mengandungi alkohol, namun perkataan "beer" ini boleh menimbulkan keghairan dan kelakuan tidak senonoh di kalangan orang Islam. Dengan pengharaman root beer, orang Islam bolehlah meminum minuman ringan yang lain tanpa was-was. Ginger beer juga diharamkan.

March 2009
Orang Islam dilarang memakan di kedai Mamak. Walaupun mamak kebanyakkannya Islam, tetapi asal usul mereka adalah India dan ada kemungkinan terdapat unsur-unsur India di dalam perniagaan mereka seperti bercakap Tamil dan memakai seluar dalam buatan India. Untuk mengelakkan sebarang syak wasangka, mulai 1 Mac 2009, orang Islam dilarang dari memakan di kedai mamak (kecuali Tun Mahatir kerana dia sendiri mamak kelas I)

April 2009
Orang Islam dilarang bermain ping pong atau table tennis. Ping pong berasal dari negeri China dan oleh yang demikian, mungkin terdapat unsur-unsur agama Buddha atau Confuciusism di dalam permainan ping pong. Ornag Islam yang terlalu banyak bermain ping pong akan terjejas akidah mereka. Sebagai permainan alternatif, orang Islam digalakkan bermain sepak raga (tetapi bola raga mesti buatan Malaysia, bukan dari Thailand).

Mei 2009
Orang Islam yang berkerja dengan kerajaan dilarang mengambil gaji masing-masing. Ini kerana sebahagian besar pendapatan kerajaan adalah cukai pendapatan yang dibayar oleh syarikat-syarikat orang bukan Islam. Orang Islam digalakkan meminta sedekah dari orang Islam yang lain. Untuk memudahkan permintaan sedekah, bakal peminta sedekah digalakkan mencangkung di hadapan bangunan UMNO.


Jun 2009
Orang Islam dilarang keluar negara. Terdapat terlalu banyak godaan yang boleh meruntuhkan akhlak dan akidah orang Islam. Perkara ini telahpun dikaji dengan teliti hasil lawatan sambil belajar ke Bangkok oleh Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan baru-baru ini. Oleh yang demikian, orang orang Islam diminta menyerahkan balik paspot masing-masing ke jabatan immigresen secepat mungkin. Perjalanan keluar negara hanya dibenarkan untuk menteri-menteri dan orang kuat UMNO sahaja, itupun hanya jika diiringi oleh ahli Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan.


Julai 2009
Orang Islam dilarang berfikir di waktu siang. Kebanyakkan masalah jenayah dan maksiat wujud kerana orang-orang yang tak ada kerja berfikir yang bukan-bukan. Untuk membenteras maslah jeneyah dan maksiat, orang-orang Islam mulai 1 Julai 2009, dilarang dari menggunakan otak mereka diwaktu siang. Pemikiran mereka akan dipantau oleh Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan dengan menggunakan sekumpulan specially trained monkeys. Orang Islam boleh menggunakan otak mereka di waktu malam tetapi pemikiran dihadkan kepada perkara-perkara berkaitan dengan makan dan minum sahaja.




Please do not laugh. Many of the above will become a reality if we do not do anything. The rational-thinking muslims in this country are simply not doing anything. We let a very small minority of narrow-minded idiots to control our lives. We, especially the Malay muslims, are fast becoming a laughing stock worldwide. We are obsessed with the little little things.
When there are so many important things remain to be done, why must the Fatwa folks spend their time on little things.. tomboys, yoga, etc, etc. Why don't we ever hear anything from the Fatwa folks for social justice, eradicating corruption and poverty, protecting single mothers, helping the poors, educating the ummah, protecting the environment or ensuring fairness in society.
If you are a rationale, forward thinking muslim, please speak up. If you choose to remain silent, it only means that you agree with whatever is happening. And do not blame the non-muslims for all our troubles. We are asking for it.

Didn’t happen

The topic below was interesting. Really really interesting. There was also too much speculation in it though. Couldn’t work. Damn. Now I’ve decided to analyze Wickham though deontological principles.

Possible essay

After every unit in English class, everyone is required to write an essay that acts as a conclusion to the unit. My last unit studied Pride and Prejudice. Normally people would write about things like the subjugation of women and so on. But that’s boring. More importantly, its been done many many times before. So I have a theory. It’s all about economics! Haven’t put in a lot of thought in this yet but I think I have something here.

Need help. Here goes.

The South Sea Bubble happened in 1720, that’s about 50 years before Jane Austen’s birth. There were huge economic implications from the crisis. Millions of dollars were lost and after numerous trials the culprits were brought to justice but only about a third of the losses were regained. The bubble had to happen during a period of relative affluence since you’d need extra cash to be able to afford stocks. Pride and Prejudice is set in a relatively affluent period as well or at the very least that’s what Jane Austen wants us to think. Therefore she is trying to draw parallels between the two eras to serve as a warning to future generations so that they could successfully avoid economic catastrophes.

That lesson was meant for us! It was meant to foreshadow the recession that we are currently in. Sadly we were too late to see it. Impossible you say? Well there are a few parallels between the story and the American economy.

Darcy has influence on every single marriage in the story. His family has power. This forces me to conclude that the Darcy family represents the US Government. You can even see the separate policies of government.

• Colonel Fitzwilliam obviously represents the military. His failure to achieve any noticeable military successes is similar to the US military.
• Lady Catherine’s need to fiddle in personal matters could either reflect on congressional policies that are pushing for more government intervention that ultimately achieve very little
• Bingley’s flip-flopping could be a representation of the constantly changing stance on government bailouts

Subpar gift? Well so was the President’s

Sometimes its hard to match standards when the bar has been set so high. I’m sure many of us have gone through this before. A friend comes over and hands you the most thoughtful gift you can ever imagine (for me it would be a subscription to The Economist or a desperately needed pair of new sneakers) and all you can give back in return is a few slices of pie.

Well don’t despair. There are people worse than you albeit more powerful and wealthy: The President.

Recently Gordon Brown came to see Barack Obama in the White House and gifts were exchanged.

Brown thought hard about his presents, giving Obama a desk pen-holder carved from the timber of a Royal Navy anti-slavery ship of the 19th century. To that he added the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a British ship saved from Arctic ice by America and whose timbers a grateful Queen Victoria had made into a desk now standing in the Oval Office.

To top it off, Brown gave Obama a first edition of a new seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

Obama gave Brown a DVD Box Set of 25 American movies.

Feel better now? I sure do. But then again I’m too cheap to buy 25 DVD’s.