Ruminations: 2007 World University Rankings: NUS, NTU down
Talk about leaps and bounds - what massive turbulence! When I blogged about NUS rankings before, I mentioned how the university first made its appearance in the rankings by appearing #18 in 2004, and then on it was #22 in 2005, #19 in 2006, #33 in 2007 and #30 in 2008.
#10 is a pretty big deal I guess, but the QS.com Asian University Rankings are only indicative of the upcoming World Rankings - if that is possible - because I feel that Asian universities can expect a hard blow in World rankings (which are followed much more closely in the Asian world). From what I gather, this year's rankings were developed after a marriage between the US News & World Report (which uses 18 indicators) and the Joong Ang Ilbo ranking in Korea (which uses over 30 indicators). So QS.com associated itself with Chosun Ilbo, a Korean English paper that dates back to April 1933 when Korea was a Japanese colony. Funny fact - the paper's publisher was this guy named Bang Ung-mo. (Sorry Koreans. 'Bang' is funny in English and 'Ung-mo' is funny in Singapore. Combined together, it's hilarious!)
Anyway, I think the US News and World Report will still develop it's World rankings based on the 18 indicators and that just means that NUS (and other unmentionables *cough*NTU*cough*) will do badly.
To see where NUS did 'great' (but still not great enough to be Asia's best), these are the indicators and the respective weightage (note how inbound and outbound exchange do not use the word 'international'):
Asian Academic Peer Review = 30%
(academics with knowledge of research in Asian institutions)
Papers per Faculty = 15%
Citations per Paper = 15%
Student Faculty Ratio = 20%
Asian Employer Review = 10%
(employers with experience of recruiting from Asian institutions)
International Faculty = 2.5%
International Students = 2.5%
Inbound Exchange Students = 2.5%
Outbound Exchange Students = 2.5%
Ruminations of an 'artist' of 'sorts'
Friday, May 15, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
It's a cool Summer
Yesterday was a great day. I finalized moving out of Temasek Hall and brought all my luggage to PGPR, into my room at block 27, where I'll be staying till at least July 2010 if I need to (x1). I got a call from the company where I wanted to intern asking me to start coming to work the next day onwards (x2). And I got some financial aid guarantor thing worked out finally (x3). So three times great. And then I hung out with my quasi family in Singapore, having paratha fry anda and then Pakistani Chinese later (that I also got to take-away!).
Although the heart aches, I won't have much time to worry about it this Summer. Firstly, I have my internship, and to give a feel of what it's like, my first day has been rather busy - upon my arrival they asked me to prepare marketing collaterals and print out 45 copies before the lunch break and I proofread the CEO's letter that was supposed to go with it; then after lunch I head down to the other company office at Science Park to meet up with the IT company to work on our company's website and see if the interface is satisfactory; and the rest of the day I do research on incorporating Slingbox or a similar new media technology for a new business model for the company.
Tomorrow I will be ushering at the Imagine for Red fashion show at Vivo City after work, and the next day I am meeting Radu to work on the project he's been working on with other AIESECers - I might be able to assist them in their blogging efforts. The same day I have promised some SPY people my presence at a home karaoke get-together. Sunday the same group of people are going to the beach, and that is where we will finalize our plans for the play we're gonna do later.
The play is a major undertaking as it will involve auditions, rehearsals, bookings, sourcing for props and costumes, and most of all, development of the script. Let's see how it works out, but so far, the four of us working on this seem to be highly motivated.
And last but definitely not least, my mother and two younger siblings are coming to Singapore to visit me and my sister in June! Finally this is a Summer in Singapore that I'm looking forward to!
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Most Heavily Bombed Country in History
Data released by Clinton in 2000 shows that America bombed Cambodia with 2,756,941 tons of bombs. To put this into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during allof World War II, INCLUDING the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively.
Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
A Sikh Writing All This, by Khushwant Singh
Prejudice is like poison. Unless purged out of one’s mind in early stages, it can spread like cancer and make one incapable of differentiating between right and wrong. Of the many kinds of prejudice, the worst is to believe that one’s own religion is superior to all others, which may be tolerated but never taken seriously or accepted as equally valid as one’s own.
The most misunderstood of the major religions today is Islam, which, after Christianity, is the second most widely practiced religion in the world. It also gains more converts than any of the other religions. Prejudice against Islam was spread in Christendom from the time Muslims gained dominance in the Middle East, North Africa and Spain. Christian crusaders failed in their missions to crush Islam in its homeland but continued to vilify its founder, Mohammed.
The emergence of militant Islamic groups like Al Qaida and Taliban gave them reasons to do so. The attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 provided fresh ammunition to vilifiers of Islam.
Since then Islamophobia has been deliberately spread throughout the non-Muslim world. The two principle contentions of the anti-Islamists are that Islam was spread by the sword and that its founder-Prophet was not the paragon of virtue that Muslims make him out to be.
It can be proved by historical evidence that Islam was not forced upon the people; it was readily accepted by millions because it offered them new values, principally equality of mankind and rights to women that were unheard of in those times. In countries like Indonesia and Malayasia, Islam was not forced on the population by Muslim invaders but by Muslim missionaries.
Muslims are extremely sensitive to criticism of their Prophet. A popular adage in Persian is: “ba khuda diwaana basho, ba Mohammed hoshiar! — “say what you like about God, but beware of what you say about Mohammed.”
They regard him as the most perfect man who ever trod upon the earth, a successor of Adam, Moses, Noah, Abraham and Christ. He was the last of the Prophets. If you honestly want to know how Muslims see him, you ought to take a good look at his life and teachings, which he claimed had been revealed to him by God. It would be as wrong to judge him by the doings of Al Qaida and Taliban or by the fatwas periodically pronounced by Ayatollahs and half-baked mullahs.
You do not judge Hinduism of the Vedas and Upanishads by the doings of Hindus who, in the name of Hindutva, destroy mosques, murder missionaries and nuns, vandalize libraries and works of art. You do not judge the teachings of the Sikh gurus by the utterances of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and by the murder of innocents by his hooligans. Likewise, judge Mohammed by what he taught and stood for and not by what his so-called followers do in his name.
Mohammed was born in Mecca in 570 A D. He lost both his parents while still a child and was brought up by his grandfather and uncle.. He managed the business of a widow, whom he later married. She bore him six children. He took no other wife until she died.
He was 40 years old when he started having revelations while in trance. They proclaimed Mohammed as the new messiah. Such revelation kept coming at random, sometimes dealing with problems at hand, at other times with matters spiritual. They were memorized or written down by his admirers and became the Quran, which means recitation.
It should be kept in mind that Mohammed was not preaching ideas of his own but only reiterating most of what was already in the Judaic creed. Allah was the Arabic name for God before him. Similarly, Islam was ‘surrender’ and salman was ‘peace’.
Mecca was the main market city of the Bedouin tribes. They gathered at the Kaaba, the huge courtyard with the black meteorite embedded in it during two pilgrimages — the bigger Haj and the lesser Umrah.
Mohammed accepted Judaic traditions regarding food which is halaal (lawful) or haraam (forbidden, such as pig meat), names of the five daily prayers and circumcision of male children.
Mohammed only asserted the oneness of God that did not accept of any equal such as the stone goddesses worshiped by different tribes. Mohammed never forced people to accept his faith and indeed quoted Allah’s message of freedom of faith. “There must be no coercion in matters of faith — la ikra f’il deen.” Further: “And if God had so willed, He would have made you all one single command; but He willed otherwise in order to test you by means of what He has vouchsafed unto you. Vie, then with one another in doing good works!”
As might have been expected, Mohammed’s mission roused fierce hostility. Many attempts were made to assassinate him but he had miraculously escaped. Ultimately, in 622 AD he was advised to flee from Mecca to Medina. This is known as the Hijra (emigration) and recognized as the beginning of the Muslim calendar.
Meccans made a few attempts to capture Medina but were ousted. Muslim armies led by Mohammed triumphed and returned to Mecca as conquerors. By the time Mohammed died in Medina in 632 AD, the Arabian peninsula was united as a confederacy of different tribes under the banner of Islam.
Most of the ill-founded criticism against Mohammed is directed towards the number of women he married after the death of his first wife, Khadijah. This has to be seen in the perspective of Arabian society of the time. Tribes lived by warring against each other and looting caravans. There were heavy casualties of men, creating serious gender imbalance. Widows and orphans of men killed had to be provided with homes and sustenance. Otherwise they took to prostitution or begging. So they were given protection by being taken in marriages. Also, matrimonial alliances were a good way of creating bonds between different tribes.
Mohammed did nothing not acceptable to his people. He went further: he was the first teacher to proclaim that the best union was a monogamous marriage and fixed the maximum limit to four, provided a man could keep all of his wives equally happy — which was most unlikely.
The pertinent verse in the Quran reads: “And if you have reason to fear you might not act equitably towards orphans, then marry from among other women who are lawful to you, even two or three or four; but if you have reason to fear you might not be able to treat them with equal fairness, then only one.” Bear in mind that at that time polygamy was the norm in patriarchal societies all over the world.
To make a beginning in clearing your mind of anti-Muslim prejudices, I suggest you read Karen Armstrong’s “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time”. Armstrong is the leading writer on comparative religions today. She is not Muslim.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Counting down from 10
Ten things you wish you could say to 10 different people right now:
1. You are an asswipe for not embracing new media technologies and not staying in touch via Facebook, Windows Live and hardly email.
2. I wish those days would return when we were together having a great time all the time.
3. I hope you know that if it wasn't for your love for me, I would've given up long ago. I owe you everything.
4. You are so thoughtless and selfish at times, I wonder if it is because you were raised in a bubble.
5. We have something interesting going on here, so why not try to make it work?
6. You grow more and more stupid everyday. Quit the rebellious phase already. You're not 13 any more.
7. I hope one day you can join the family as I have accepted you the way you are, despite your flaws.
8. In another place, another world, another time, we would have been just perfect for each other. I'm sorry things can't work out in this world.
9. You have been absent my whole life. And you have hardly done much for me. But whenever you take a step towards me, I feel the happiness in my heart.
10. I hope you can stop being obnoxious because you don't need to be, in order to be my closest friend.
Nine things about yourself:
1. I'm writing this on my first first day of mugging for final exams.
2. I started hating fish after coming to Singapore but I just had the best stir-fried Rau Machli (Salmon) for breakfast and I'm loving it! (Oops, lawsuit from McD's)
3. I have a knack for "connecting people" together. I've been told I glue people together.
4. I'm an idealist with some realism and pragmatism thrown in.
5. I love randomness. Plans fail.
6. I want I want I want a french-press to make coffee!
7. I'm weird.
8. I can't wait to start my own family.
9. I am seeking the truth about religion and world politics.
Eight ways to win your heart:
1. Take interest in everything I do. (But don't become a stalker.)
2. Listen to what I say. (Don't ignore things.)
3. Challenge me and debate me without letting it become a fight.
4. Don't make judgements about me if you can't take judgements about yourself.
5. Don't be self-righteous. I would hate to slap you in the face with your hypocrisy.
6. Stop the pessimism - I don't have the energy to listen to your negativity.
7. Make me laugh.
8. Laugh. Smile.
Seven things that cross your mind a lot:
1. Do I have time for a smoke?
2. Can I delay this?
3. Why is the world like this?
4. Is my sister doing x/y/z?
5. Maybe there is something new on my Facebook/Gmail?
6. How can I enjoy this time more?
7. Why can't people just communicate better and solve EVERY problem?
Six things you want to happen to you before you die:
1. Fall in love with the person I marry.
2. Finish my book.
3. Become famous.
4. Start my NGO.
5. See my kids graduate.
6. Understand a faith.
Five turn offs:
1. Pessimism.
2. Being chicken.
3. Interruption.
4. Hair.
5. Selfishness.
Four turn ons:
1. Smell like flowers.
2. Know your clothes (and flaunt them regularly).
3. Know when to be in charge and when not to be.
4. Respects my faith, my dreams, my family and believes in me.
Three smilies that describe your life:
1 =/
2. =\
3. :S
Two things you wish you never did:
1. June 2008
2. September 2008
One confession:
1. I'm looking forward to having some alone time for the next 3 months or so, but I'm also terrified of it.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
What is the Koran?
Researchers with a variety of academic and theological interests are proposing controversial theories about the Koran and Islamic history, and are striving to reinterpret Islam for the modern world. This is, as one scholar puts it, a "sensitive business".
by Toby Lester (January 1999)
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Here are some excerpts from the 12-page article with the same title as this post. If you wish to read it in full-length, you may download the .pdf file attached. I am also attaching some links to some of the references used or mentioned in this article (others don't work any more):
Patricia Crone. Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press. 1987. Beginning with pg. 231.
Fred Donner. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton Univ Press, 1981, beg with pg. 251.
Thank-you Rabayl for sharing this article with me. I found this article very useful for my critical study of Islam in World History.
I share this here, not because I agree (or disagree for that matter) with the content, but because it challenges me to think outside the box as I consider alternate realities, and make my own decision on whether to accept or reject them. I believe religion is a personal matter, and the excerpts below are just to highlight some portions of the article for the person who just desires to brisk through rather than read the whole thing.
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..."So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God's unaltered word," he says. "They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us to do this."...
...If Christ is the Word of God made flesh, the Koran is the Word of God made text, and questioning its sanctity or authority is thus considered an outright attack on Islam—as Salman Rushdie knows all too well....
...A particularly eloquent protest came in 1987, in the Muslim World Book Review, in a paper titled "Method Against Truth: Orientalism and Qur'anic Studies," by the Muslim critic S. Parvez Manzoor. Placing the origins of Western Koranic scholarship in "the polemical marshes of medieval Christianity" and describing its contemporary state as a "cul-de-sac of its own making," Manzoor orchestrated a complex and layered assault on the entire Western approach to Islam. He opened his
essay in a rage:
The Orientalist enterprise of Qur'anic studies, whatever its other merits and services, was a project born of spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance: the spite of the powerful for the powerless, the frustration of the "rational" towards the "superstitious" and the vengeance of the "orthodox" against the "non-conformist." At the greatest hour of his worldly-triumph, the Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia, launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith. All the aberrant streaks of his arrogant personality—its reckless rationalism, its world-domineering phantasy and its sectarian fanaticism—joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of historic authenticity and moral unassailability. The ultimate trophy that the Western man sought by his dare-devil venture was the Muslim mind itself. In order to rid the West forever of the "problem" of Islam, he reasoned, Muslim consciousness must be made to despair of the cognitive certainty of the Divine message revealed to the Prophet. Only a Muslim confounded of the historical authenticity or doctrinal autonomy of the Qur'anic revelation would abdicate his universal mission and hence pose no challenge to the global domination of the West. Such, at least, seems to have been the tacit, if not the explicit, rationale of the Orientalist assault on the Qur'an.
...Abu Zaid steadfastly maintains that he is a pious Muslim, but contends that the Koran's manifest content—for example, the often archaic laws about the treatment of women for which Islam is infamous—is much less important than its complex, regenerative, and spiritually nourishing latent content. The orthodox Islamic view, Abu Zaid claims, is stultifying; it reduces a divine, eternal, and dynamic text to a fixed human interpretation with no more life and meaning than "a trinket ... a
talisman ... or an ornament."...
... Despite the unusual structure, however, what generally surprises newcomers to the Koran is the degree to which it draws on the same beliefs and stories that appear in the Bible. God (Allah in Arabic) rules supreme: he is the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-merciful Being who has created the world and its creatures; he sends messages and laws through prophets to help guide human existence; and, at a time in the future known only to him, he will bring about the end of the world and the Day of Judgment. Adam, the first man, is expelled from Paradise for eating from the forbidden tree. Noah builds an ark to save a select few from a flood brought on by the wrath of God. Abraham prepares himself to sacrifice his son at God's bidding. Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and receives a revelation on Mount Sinai. Jesus—born of the Virgin Mary and referred to as the Messiah—works miracles, has disciples, and rises to heaven...
...Wansbrough's arcane theories have been contagious in certain scholarly circles, but many Muslims understandably have found them deeply offensive. S. Parvez Manzoor, for example, has described the Koranic studies of Wansbrough and others as "a naked discourse of power" and "an outburst of psychopathic vandalism." But not even Manzoor argues for a retreat from the critical enterprise of Koranic studies; instead he urges Muslims to defeat the Western revisionists on the
"epistemological battlefield," admitting that "sooner or later [we Muslims] will have to approach the Koran from methodological assumptions and parameters that are radically at odds with the ones consecrated by our tradition."...
...Islam became one of the world's great religions in part because of its openness to social change and new ideas. (Centuries ago, when Europe was mired in its feudal Dark Ages, the sages of a flourishing Islamic civilization opened an era of great scientific and philosophical discovery. The ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans might never have been introduced to Europe were it not for the Islamic historians and philosophers who rediscovered and revived them.) Islam's own history shows that the prevailing conception of the Koran is not the only one ever to have existed, and the recent history of biblical scholarship shows that not all critical-historical studies of a holy scripture are antagonistic. They can instead be carried out with the aim of spiritual and cultural regeneration. They can, as Mohammed Arkoun puts it, demystify the text while reaffirming "the relevance of its larger intuitions."...
Why I hate to be on-time for Examinations
You arrive at the examinations venue; surrounded by hundreds of students. Every student is reading from heavy books and big stacks of notes. Some are discussing complex questions and displaying what they've learnt so far. Finally, one by one, they all head in. The procters/invigilators stand there in front of each row, asking you your seat number and guiding you, just like when you board a flight. But they're not smiling or trying to please you here. They're just trying to scare you.
You sit there for a while, with pin-drop silence in the room - the only sound being the papers shuffling and sliding against the table as answer booklets and exam papers are handed out. Then the head examiner reaches for the microphone. A shrilling playback sound pierces through your ears, leaving you partly deaf, such that you now hear a constant tone.
The examiner finally begins his announcements. You will not be permitted to leave this room for blah blah minutes before the exam timings end. You make a mental note to try to finish earlier, making you a tad more nervous. You may use blah-coloured pens and 2B pencils only. You quickly check your stationary if everything is in order. You freak out when you realise your pencil is HB. But you're too scared you will get scolded if you raise your hand to ask an invigilator if HB pencils can be machine-read. You are not allowed to bring cell-phones to the exam venue; any cell phones found would be confiscated. What bullshit, you tell yourself. You are already there and your cell phone is in your pocket. You look around while you secretly take out your cell phone from your pocket to ensure it is in Silent mode. Cheating in examinations is considered an extremely serious offence which may lead to expulsion from the University. You know that! God. Are they just trying to freak you out here? It's not like you want to get expelled. If you have accidentally taken revision notes or other unauthorised material into the examination room, surrender them immediately to the supervisor. Crap. You have my notes in the exam hall, but they're lying in the corner with everyone else's bags. After-all, you didn't bring them in to cheat. And what do they mean 'surrender' anyway? Is this a hostile situation? Okay, I'll just ignore that one. Do not look at other candidates’ answers, and do not talk or communicate in any way with other candidates since this may lead to suspicion of copying. Are they kidding you? Seriously? What if you are just looking around subconsciously because that is what you do when you're thinking about your answers? The examinees are like 10 metres apart! How the hell do they think you can see another candidate's answers? You're not Jack Bennett of the Bionic-Six with super-sight. Ah, Bionic-1 was the coolest of them all.
This goes on for a while, until your hands are trembling so much that you actually find the step-by-step instructions for filling out the name, student number and exam codes useful (even though it's fairly obvious that you write your name under 'Name' and so on).
Eventually, the examiner allows you to begin. You have 1 hour 45 minutes to finish this test. Pens and pencils out. 1. 2. 3. Go!
Okay, maybe that is not exactly how it goes for everyone (some examiners are nice enough to wish you good luck before putting you on the timer). But generally speaking, they try their level best to freak you out of your wits. They shatter your confidence. And they all give you stern looks all the time. If you're a favourite of your professor, then the students give you those looks and you can almost hear them praying that you screw up your test.
I just think the best solution is to lose 5-10 minutes on your test so that you can perform better. When you arrive late, you're ushered into the hall like a celebrity. You don't have to walk through rows and rows of tables as someone would always escort you to your seat and personally hand you your answer booklet and test paper. All the other kids stare at you in disbelief because they can't imagine being late for an exam! And your confidence gets a 200% boost when you just smile at them, take your seat, stretch your arms lazily and begin filling in your name and other details. The bottom-line is, you have the presence of mind that is required to excel in an exam, which can not be replaced by tens of hours of studying and the intense paranoia that consumes most students in my class.
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