Tsunami relief, one year later

My internet connection is on the slow side. So just a couple of links for now. Not happy ones, I am sad to say.

- New York Times: "All told, the tsunami generated a record $13.6 billion in aid pledges, according to the United Nations. Just as rare, donor countries kept their promises. The United Nations Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery says 75 percent of the $10.5 billion pledged for reconstruction of tsunami-affected countries has been secured...The progress report on relief and reconstruction is, however, mixed."

- The Washington Times is more brutal: "How come no one is interested in what happened to those billions of dollars? Within 24 hours of Hurricane Katrina making landfall, the media demanded investigations into what, by historical standards, was a better-than-average federal performance. With the tsunami, who cares? The glow of moral virtue in chipping in your donation is so bright the fact that it accomplishes nothing is unimportant."

- But it's not all bad: the relatively small story of how baby Heru is doing well gladdens the heart. (Earlier mention of Heru here, and links thereof.)

add: Earlier posts on relief operations can be linked from this index.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

From Berkeley, CA.



As always, the fat critters of Grinnell Nature Park (inside the UC Berkeley Campus) are out to play. And this time, I have a camera with a video function.







UC Berkeley is still officially "absolutely the best place for a squirrel session".

Quickstops (Dec 19, 2005)

- Dana Dillon and John J. Tkacik Jr., "China's Quest for Asia", Policy Review (Dec 2005-Jan 2006). There is a whole section on Singapore.

- On the F-15SGs in Flight International, and on Strategypage.com.

- On iPods, Creative and other stuff: Singapore on the edge of tomorrow.

- On a different note, I'll be off on a 2-week trip to Berkeley. As previously mentioned, not expecting to blog much until January 2006.

People's war--or not.

From The American Thinker, by J. R. Dunn:

Zarqawi’s problem is that, as a religious fanatic, he has no regard for the political dimension. Anything existing outside of Islam can be disregarded – all nonbelievers, or even Muslim sectarians, are scarcely human, hardly worth the cost of the bullet used to dispatch them. Mao’s three rules and eight points would be incomprehensible to such a mindset.

Read the whole thing.

Meanwhile, I wil probably be too busy to blog much from this point until January. Happy holidays!

Quickstops (Dec 3, 2005)

- Wayne Arnold on what Nguyen's execution shows: the friction between Australia and Southeast Asia. Other Australians on deathrow in Asia.

- Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan on corporate governance at the NKF. From another ST interview with Khaw: "This is not your own company, your own family business. Even if it is your own family business, and you have minority shareholders, you have to be accountable. No organisation can leave just one man to make decisions. Like in old China, when the emperor says this, and that's it, things are done. I'm curious about how the board of directors allowed itself to be almost completely captured by the former CEO."

- Mark Lilla on liberal education in America: "Genuine liberal education is, of necessity, an un-American activity." The piece reads like Allan "Closing of the American Mind" Bloom, lite. (The relevance to us is, of course, limited, since what has not been opened cannot be closed, or so some says.)

Singapore, the misunderstood child

I cannot help but feel that this person grok something about Singapore--at least the Singapore that I know and call home:

At the end of the day, its not my home country and my feelings of loyalty are, at best, stretched. But I can’t help but feel that Singapore is misunderstood. Singapore is the quiet girl in the class who gets straight As in the exams, but is never really popular in school because she is such a prude. Yet she tries really really hard to be the cool-kid. Her parents tell her that she should “seriously” have fun! Yet, they tell her that grades are all that really matters. The poor prude girl is really confused. Could anyone have known that beneath the pristine doll-like image, there is a silently troubled child, with a complicated and sullied inside, every bit as human as anyone can be.

People don’t see the real Singapore - the real Singapore doesn’t exist in the tall financial centers or the huge malls or the parliament buildings, where they make us believe democracy has some role to play. Singapore is not limited to the yuppies who aspire to buy the latest Porsche or the Armani-aspiring corporate mogul-wanna-be who couldn’t care less about what happens around them, as long as they get their 5 (or is it more now?) Cs. Thats just what is presented to the outside world. In fact, even many Singaporeans see themselves through those tinted shades.

If you want to see the heart and soul of Singapore, wander not through Millenia walk or Suntec city, but through the narrow roads of China Town or Little India or Arab street, or even the little parks around Bishan or Ang Mo Kio. The fat lady who sells you the Char Kway Teow or the little girl who brings you the ice kacang at the hawker centers, has a story to tell, if only if you had the time to listen. Singapore is not a land of boring, law-abiding people who don’t think and who work and walk like machines - its a place with as much life and emotion as any other, if only you would look beyond the surface.

(Dictionary.com entry for "grok", if you need it.)

coda:

Some of you might remember Singapore Classics--well, he is now blogging again, but at a new location, entitled "Little Boy from the Heartlands". The reason why I'm putting the notice here is because his second post about a certain Mr. Tan from the heartlands...it belongs here.

update: This one from Double Yellow belongs here as well, though for a different reason.

Slashdot: A Recipe for Newspaper Survival in the Internet Age

A really excellent read. Quite relevant to Singapore--if certain people are willing to listen--because we are small enough for even our national newspapers to be local:

Welcome to the Internet age, local newspaper (and TV) people. I can and do get my national and international news from the New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, CNN, and other online media that cover faraway events better and faster than you ever will. I turn to you for local news. You tell me more about last week's home invasion robbery on 11th Street East than they ever will.

It's time for local newspapers to become truly local; to feature local news on the front pages of both their Web sites and print editions, with only a few out-of-the-area stories up front, augmented by an above-the-fold story list that tells readers where to find national and international news on their inside pages.

Add readers' stories and comments to the mix and you suddenly have a local online community, not just a newspaper. This will not take work away from professional reporters, photographers, and editors, who will still be the foundation of local news-gathering. In fact, increased interaction with local community members will probably give them more work than ever, because they will find themselves inundated with news tips and story suggestions they never would have found on their own. Some of these story ideas will be dreck and some will be invaluable. It will be up to the newspaper's editors to find the (rare) nuggets in the huge pile of dross they will need to sort through every day, and up to the newspaper's reporters to follow up on them.

There's a lot in there, so do read the whole thing.

update: (Dec 2, 2020 -0500) Found on the venerable beep (hat tip: Ria):

Blogs reflect power of the pen: The continuing growth of blogging has changed the way journalists think about their work, argues technology analyst Bill Thompson. And it is for the better.

So much so that the students of Bill Thompson at his online journalism class at City University are all asked to blog:

And of course having to write a blog entry as part of their coursework forces students to read the papers, look around websites and generally take an interest in what is happening with new media, something I want to encourage.

But the real point of getting a journalist blogging at this early stage in his or her career is that the bloggers, in all their variety, with all their different skills and abilities and interests and biases, are reshaping the world in which professional journalists operate just as much as the telephone shook up the profession in the first half of the 20th Century.

He has a lot more to say--about fact checking, about engaging with the readers, about getting used to being harshly criticised and dissected by those who disagree, about Flickr and other photo sharing sites, and so on. But the last part is especially telling:

The growth of internet use and the emergence of easy-to-use publishing tools could well be the best thing that has happened to journalism since radio and then television offered new ways to reach people, but that requires a certain degree of modesty and a great willingness to learn on the part of a profession that is not noted for either attribute.

Read the whole thing.