Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Obama reverses Bush policy on stem cell science
Posted by: gimster on: March 30, 2009
YouTube – Gold for Bread in Zimbabwe
Posted by: gimster on: March 16, 2009
Facts from the UN’s HDR 2007/2008
Posted by: gimster on: February 25, 2008
The following are ‘Global Political, Economic, and Social Facts’ extracted from the UN’s Human Development Report 2007/2008 by the Infoplease website.
In the last two decades, political and civil rights have improved substantially throughout the [...]
Migrant Labour
Posted by: gimster on: February 24, 2008
Attended a public lecture on Migrant Labour that was part of the ‘NUS Southeast Asia Week & CSR Awareness Speaker Series’ last Friday (22 February). Got handouts from two societies that work with migrant workers in Singapore, so I’m sharing here the links to their websites:
Humanitarian Organisation for Migrant Economics (H.O.M.E.)
Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)
An Inconvenient Truth
Posted by: gimster on: July 3, 2007
Have you seen the Oscar-winning documentary?
Read the range of reviews and user’s comments at metacritic.com
Check out the film’s website
While watching the movie (three times and counting), I drew this mind map:
which I exported in PDF format
and Jpeg,
using Freemind
Let me know if you want the mind map in the freemind format so [...]
WE LIVE IN SINGAPURA the MTV version
Posted by: gimster on: May 11, 2007
Update (May 15, 2007)
The Shockwave version of the same video is clearer and has the options to turn on the animator’s commentary (supertitles) and turn off the subtitles. View it on the animator’s page here. Or download it here.
Quote of the day
Posted by: gimster on: April 15, 2007
The greatness in a person can only emerge when he has shown his ability to create, passion to pursue, courage to commit, and capability to achieve.
Lee Kum Tatt
Founder Chairman, SISIR, Science Council and RISIS Co Pte Ltd,
‘a leading scientist, creator of the RISIS orchid, and a very interesting and philosophical [...]
Dropping subjects
Posted by: gimster on: March 13, 2007
- In: Education| Politics| Singapore
- 4 Comments
Isn’t it my job to observe and analyse controversy, but not court it?
Santokh Singh, formerly a teacher, says ‘Stop making our students drop subjects‘ in his New Paper column and traces the history of this phenomenon in Singapore, which has been discussed in Parliament recently.
The Off-Duty Ed., Xmac, ponders these issues in relation to [...]
The Corporation – Some issues presented
Posted by: gimster on: March 1, 2007
Some of my pupils will be viewing The Corporation. Here are some of the issues presented in the video, as delineated by the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education in its teacher resources for the film (available on the Web site for the film):
Labour practices in developing countries – while some argue that paying [...]
Quote of the day
Posted by: gimster on: February 8, 2007
‘If we can’t criticize religion anymore, there will be no women’s rights, no birth control and no gay rights.’
Philippe Val, publisher of French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which reprinted the Danish cartoons that provoked a Muslim backlash a year ago
Source: Time.com
Russians
Posted by: gimster on: September 25, 2006
In Europe and America,
There’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Krushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too
How can I save [...]
Quote of the day
Posted by: gimster on: July 5, 2006
- In: Culture| Gender| Politics
- 2 Comments
When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.
Elayne Booster
(Quote found on the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) Web site)
Frank Furedi and the Culture of Fear
Posted by: gimster on: June 13, 2006
The most recent comprehension exercise my students had to do was based on a passage adapted from this article by Frank Furedi, entitled 'The Market in Fear', first published in Spiked, 26 September 2005.
Frank Furedi
I had told my classes that I will post some background on the passage on this blog. The article from which [...]
Photo essays
Posted by: gimster on: May 7, 2006
‘Photography may have the power to inform, but I think it has very little power to change things’.
- Thomas Hoepker, photographer,
in his photo essay entitled ‘World of Changes’ on Magnum Photos
Yet another teaching/learning resource found via Slate.com.
For instance, there are these shocking pictures in a slideshow format, accompanied by gutwrenching audio commentary and a [...]
Cartoons as snapshots of today’s issues
Posted by: gimster on: May 7, 2006
Using editorial cartoons to teach and learn GP or current affairs is not new, but I just stumbled upon a new, and probably quality and enduring, source. Here's a sample of two cartoons for the source:
An interesting juxtaposition of quotes
Posted by: gimster on: May 7, 2006
The special issue of TIME dated May 8, 2006 (Cover story: The lives and ideas of the world's 100 most influential people) has the following two quotes placed right next to each other in the Verbatim column on the NoteBook page:
'Even in the United States, which has 200 years of democratic history, most of its [...]
May 3 is World Press Freedom Day
Posted by: gimster on: May 2, 2006
The observance of World Press Freedom Day started in 1993 with the proclamation by the UN General Assembly (source).
Throughout the world, 3 May serves as an occasion to inform the public of violations of the right to freedom of expression and as a reminder that many journalists brave death or jail to bring people their [...]
A spot of fame, and a look back
Posted by: gimster on: April 20, 2006
According to the blog stats chart, this blog had 309 hits for the 24-hour period starting from 8AM (Singapore time) yesterday. The threefold increase from the previous record of 106 is in no small part due to Mr Miyagi's very kind feature of The General Paper in his column in TODAY (linked here for the [...]
Language, power and language education policy
Posted by: gimster on: April 20, 2006
Guardian Unlimited ran a report yesterday entitled ‘China to Train U.S. Teachers in Chinese‘:
The initiative will bring more than 150 guest teachers to U.S. high schools from China and immerse nearly 600 American teachers of the language in Chinese culture through summer institutes there, organizers said. It will also provide financial aid to nearly 300 [...]
Education factoid: The launch of Sputnik (1957) and maths teaching in America
Posted by: gimster on: April 17, 2006
'The Sputnik crisis spurred a whole chain of knee jerk reactions in the USA. Among these [was] an overhaul of maths teaching'.
- Alex MacGillivray, A Brief History of Globalization.
From the book I'm reading at the moment, which I highly recommend.
For more on the link between Sputnik and maths education, see:
USATODAY.com – Space race cited in [...]
- Something more concise for evaluation in the application question
- Purposeful reading for GP (updated)
- Evaluation
- Students of GP
- Application Question Resources
- 'The world is one big GP essay'
- 'Is an ageing population necessarily a bad thing?'
- Everyone's a critic...
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
- The hedonic treadmill
- Elim: wld like to join
- vijaykumar: DO LET ME HAVE MAXIMUM ESSAYS @COMPREHENSION PASSAGES.WOULD LIKE TO GIVE SOME HINTS ON ESSAY WRITING @COMPREHENSION PASSAGES. DR VRAMCHURN
- vijaykumar: would like to have as much heilp as possible from contributors to publish a gp txt bearing in mind the new syllabus.contact me on vijay@yahoo.com any
Global Voices Onlines >> Breaking News
- Cuba: Details of the Sánchez detention emerge
- Yoaní Sanchez & other Cuban bloggers detained, beaten
- Russia: Major Search Engine Closes Its Blog Rating
- Jamaica: Cat Among Pigeons
- Guyana: Outrage at Police Torture Allegations
- Bangladesh: Chinese Pressure Censors Tibet Exhibition In Dhaka
- Leptospirosis outbreak in the Philippines
- Egypt: Two Trains, a Buffalo, and a Minister
- Honduras: The Beginning of the End of the Crisis?
- Tunisia elections: Fairness and Impartiality !!?
