Food For Thought
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Originally posted by BadzMaro:
Oh comon, It's the basis of the joke on why God cant sue Satan
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Originally posted by ^Acid^ aka s|aO^eH~:
Oh comon, It's the basis of the joke on why God cant sue Satan
lol... food for thought huh. :P
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Expert view aside....here's how ordinary people felt about the "Allah" saga in M'sia.
I hold my hands up at this point and claim I know nuts about this subject and hope that someone enlightens me somewhat.
Rahman: ‘Allah' is a name. Names are always retained even when you translate from one language to another.
Hence, the Malays retain the name ‘Allah' in everyday usage and do not change that name to ‘tuhan'. Jesus spoke the Aramaic language. The first bibles were in Greek/Latin/Hebrew and the name used for God is Eli, Eloah or Yahweh.
Christians should have kept to those names. The English bibles translated those names to god. But God was never the name used by Jesus. Neither did Jesus use ‘Allah'.
The problem arose in Malaysia when the English Bible was translated to Bahasa Malaysia. Now who is the expert in Bahasa Malaysia?
If Christians are honest, they will consult Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka to get the correct Malay translation for God. It definitely cannot be the name ‘Allah'. It is the word ‘tuhan'.
Now why do the Christians insist on ‘Allah'? It is anybody's guess.
Geronimo: In response to Rahman's posting, for your information the matter of using ‘Allah' by the Christians was never resolved nor settled.
The case was in fact awarded to the plaintiff, the Catholic Church. Umno decided to appeal the case and it has been left in the attorney-general's (AG) office since then, collecting dust.
I am a Catholic and we use the word 'Allah' during our Sunday masses (in Bahasa Malaysia). So what? Are these bigots going to conduct another covert operation in the churches to check if we are using the word?
Perhaps someone should check with the patent office whether they have registered the word as a trademark.
Oh, by the way, where is MCA chief Chua Soi Lek and his ilks? Why are they suddenly so quiet about this issue? Don't tell me there are no Christians in MCA.
Chelsea: According to Islamic belief, ‘Allah' is the proper name of God, and humble submission to His will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith. Christians and Jews also use the word ‘Allah' to mean ‘God'.The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for 'God' than 'Allah'. (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses ‘Allah' for 'God'.)
Arab Christians for example use terms ‘Alla-h al-ab' meaning ‘God the Father', ‘Alla-h al-ibn' meaning ‘God the Son', and ‘Alla-h ar-ru-h al-quds' meaning ‘God the Holy Spirit'. (See ‘God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God')
And here in Malaysia, we have Muslims who cry out loud against its usage by the Christians. It really proves a huge ignorance of this word and its existence. It is not even a Malay word. Thanks to who? Umno.
Allah, Tuhan, Tua Pek Kong, whatever... I am ashamed to be a Malaysian, fighting and arguing over the rights to use God's name. Who on earth can decide? As a human, no religion can have exclusivity over a name.
My God is Jesus. But if the Buddhists want to call their Buddha Jesus... go ahead. I would be proud and not feel threatened.
Enlightened: The problem is not the word ‘Allah' used in the Bible. It is the tendency of Christians to go around converting people and in some instances the less educated fall prey to their agenda.
This act itself shows disrespect for other religions. Taoists, Maoists, Buddhists and Hindus will be able to relate to this.
Timothy: It is nobody's business to tell nor force me on how I should address my personal god, To me, he is the ‘Allah' of Abraham, God almighty who is also ‘Allah Al Raheem, Allah Al Rahman, Allah Al Azeez'.
When I greet my Muslim and Christian friends here "Assalamuaalaikum," they would reply with "Muaalaikumusalam", and vice versa. We have no problem with that.
It is just only some Malay Muslims on this planet Earth who fear the weakening of their akidah (faith) all because of what others believe. To those people, don't go to Europe then, everyday you will find yourself having weak knees.
Keturunan Malaysia: I don't have to agree to anything on how to address God as I so please. It is all about me and Him and nobody else's business. Can anyone hear what I call him in my heart and mind?
HumptyDumpty: DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng is not so smart after all. It was unnecessary for him to raise the issue now just on the eve of GE13.
If it was raised by Umno then it is a different matter. When he did that, it just opened the floodgates and the pressure is on PAS to state its stand again.
This is a sensitive topic and it is not easy for ordinary Muslims to understand the derivation of PAS' decision. In principle, PAS' decision is right. However, in context of the Malay Muslims' siege mentality, they feel threatened lest Muslims get confused.
Umno's spin is not easy to deflect as many Malay-born Muslims are still ignorant about their own religion (thanks to Umno) and many Muslim scholars are still more Malay than Muslim themselves.
Joe Fernandez: Christians should not set themselves up to be scapegoats like in the Middle East, West Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
We don't want to root for BN and be persecuted by Pakatan Rakyat and vice versa. Christians should not vote along party or coalition lines. Instead, they should vote out all incumbents holding a seat for three terms or more.
Other incumbents should be voted out if they didn't perform and/or didn't stand up for Christians when they were being attacked from all sides by fanatics. Let's see what the results show.
Not Confused: This is just a rogue PAS member trying to get headlines - a bad idea. I am Christian and will use the word ‘Allah' any time I please, and I don't give a damn about the government's jaundiced views on the use of a word that is in the dictionary.
No one, race, religion or individual can claim exclusive rights over any word. ‘Allah' has been used by many races and religions the world over for hundreds of years. Muslims, and least of all Muslim Malaysians, do not have the right to its exclusive use.
Get over it and move on.
Proarte: The 'Allah' prohibition is an example of the arrogance of power and invidious calculations by politicians who abuse Islam.
‘Allah' is a term which Malay Islam cannot hijack. With due respect, the majority of Malays have a superficial understanding of the Quran and have theologically been dumbed down by Umno, PAS and even Anwar.
If they understood the Quran, they would know that the Quran affirms the Torah and Bible as being Allah's message to humanity and that the Quran is a continuum of this process. Are Malay Muslims implying that Ibrahim of the Torah and Isa of the Bible are not Allah's prophets?
Internationally prominent Muslim scholars are bewildered over the Malaysian 'Allah' controversy. Tariq Ramadan who lectured in Malaysia recently informed us the word 'Allah' pre-dates Islam and has never been a Muslim prerogative and that the issue should never have arisen.
Sheikh Yusof Qardawi, in turn, has been quoted as calling the Malaysian 'Allah' prohibition "a joke". -
Here's something new:
Applying economics to the world of dating: Does it work?
Supply, demand, opportunity and sunk costs, luxury and essential items, they're all given a mention.
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http://sg.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/meaning-chinese-wedding-banquet-094700535.html
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Why I am Not a Professor
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The Decline and Fall of the British UniversityThis read saddened me. If only also because it confirmed what I have always suspected about our education system here as well.
And also because while I have tried to break out of this on my initiatives, too few fellow SGreans will ever want to try to solve the problems on their own.
And then the problem festers...
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Saw this on another blog:
The issue with current Singaporean students is that they don’t take initiative or be decisive of what they want to do. They simply can’t go ahead and be brave to pursue what they really love to do in their life. Many leave what they truly love to do the tried and tested (for example student love to be a for law simply because his parents think that law will earn more money).
Students you need to know that the responsibility of your own education is on yourself. Yes I do agree that teachers, textbooks and homework are there to spoon feed you: but it is when you take charge, you will go the extra mile.
The education system is a blank canvas of yours. It is your brush that paints and colour your canvas. The system has never asked you to study in a specific manner and method. Choices are still yours.
Think about how many times when your high achieving fellow classmate tell you that he/she did not study, but at the end of the year do well in the exams? Is what they say really what they do when you’re not looking? Take a moment to have a thought over it.
The system has never explicitly restrained talents and abilities of students. In fact there are more and more channels of discovering talents through CCAs, leadership opportunities and overseas trips. These opportunities were not available or common among those who graduated before me.
And my first thought was EXACTLY.
Too much, way too much hubris has been heaped on our education system. It has become the scapegoat for many of our students' flaws today.
It is not perfect, but there isn't any such thing anyway! If our education system is restrictive, we should be prepared to use it only to our advantage and explore other ventures.
Why are we assigning so much faith and effort in trying to learn within the education system, when education itself ironically doesnt lie wholly within the system?
How many times have I taught a tuition class that doesn't know why it exists or even know what they are learning?
Will these students be willing to take time off from education and learn something else, and come back to the system with a better idea and mind-set aout what they should be learning?
Sadly, no. No matter how much I try to convince them that they must know what they are doing, they just somehow prove resistant to that.
We can keep blaming the system, but when we see the problem, should we still engage in the blaming that cannot solve our own predicament?
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To keep this thread alive in part...but this is also very interesting.
Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement
Most Ph.D. students spend their days reading esoteric books and stressing out about the tenure-track job market. Thomas Herndon, a 28-year-old economics grad student at UMass Amherst, just used part of his spring semester to shake the intellectual foundation of the global austerity movement.
Herndon became instantly famous in nerdy economics circles this week as the lead author of a recent paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," that took aim at a massively influential study by two Harvard professors named Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Herndon found some hidden errors in Reinhart and Rogoff's data set, then calmly took the entire study out back and slaughtered it. Herndon's takedown — which first appeared in a Mike Konczal post that crashed its host site with traffic — was an immediate sensation. It was cited by prominent anti-austerians like Paul Krugman, spoken about by incoming Bank of England governor Mark Carney, and mentioned on CNBC and several other news outlets as proof that the pro-austerity movement is based, at least in part, on bogus math.
We spoke to Herndon about his crazy week, and how he's planning to celebrate his epic wonk takedown.
"This week has been quite the week," Herndon told us in a phone call from UMass Amherst's campus. "Honestly, I was not expecting at all the kind of attention it has received."
Herndon, who did his undergraduate study at Evergreen State College, first started looking into Reinhart and Rogoff's work as part of an assignment for an econometrics course that involved replicating the data work behind a well-known study. Herndon chose Reinhart and Rogoff's 2010 paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt," in part, because it has been one of the most politically influential economic papers of the last decade. It claims, among other things, that countries whose debt exceeds 90 percent of their annual GDP experience slower growth than countries with lower debt loads — a figure that has been cited by people like Paul Ryan and Tim Geithner to justify slashing government spending and implementing other austerity measures on struggling economies.
Before he turned in his report, Herndon repeatedly e-mailed Reinhart and Rogoff to get their data set, so he could compare it to his own work. But because he was a lowly graduate student asking favors of some of the most respected economists in the world, he got no reply, until one afternoon, when he was sitting on his girlfriend's couch.
"I checked my e-mail, and saw that I had received a reply from Carmen Reinhart," he says. "She said she didn't have time to look into my query, but that here was the data, and I should feel free to publish whatever results I found."
Herndon pulled up an Excel spreadsheet containing Reinhart's data and quickly spotted something that looked odd.
"I clicked on cell L51, and saw that they had only averaged rows 30 through 44, instead of rows 30 through 49."
What Herndon had discovered was that by making a sloppy computing error, Reinhart and Rogoff had forgotten to include a critical piece of data about countries with high debt-to-GDP ratios that would have affected their overall calculations. They had also excluded data from Canada, New Zealand, and Australia — all countries that experienced solid growth during periods of high debt and would thus undercut their thesis that high debt forestalls growth.
Herndon was stunned. As a graduate student, he'd just found serious problems in a famous economic study — the academic equivalent of a D-league basketball player dunking on LeBron James. "They say seeing is believing, but I almost didn’t believe my eyes," he says. "I had to ask my girlfriend — who's a Ph.D. student in sociology — to double-check it. And she said, 'I don't think you're seeing things, Thomas.'"
The mistakes Herndon found were so big, in fact, that even Herndon's professors didn't believe him at first. As Reuters reported earlier:
"At first, I didn't believe him. I thought, 'OK he's a student, he's got to be wrong. These are eminent economists and he's a graduate student,'" [UMass Amherst professor Robert] Pollin said. "So we pushed him and pushed him and pushed him, and after about a month of pushing him I said, 'Goddamn it, he's right.'"
After consulting his professors, Herndon signed two of them — Pollin and department chair Michael Ash — on as co-authors, and the three of them quickly put together a paper outlining their findings. The paper cut to the core of a debate that has been dividing economists and politicians for decades. Fans of austerity believe that governments should cut spending in order to grow their economies, while anti-austerians believe that government spending in times of economic duress can create growth and reduce unemployment, even if it increases debt in the short term. What Herndon et al. were claiming, in essence, was that the pro-austerity movement was relying on bogus information.
When Herndon and his professors published their study, the reaction was nearly immediate. After Konczal's blog post went viral, Reinhart and Rogoff — who got a fawning New York Times profile when their book was released — were forced to admit their embarrassing error (although they still defended the basic findings of their survey). And today, another UMass Amherst professor,Arindrajit Dube, followed up on Herndon's paper with additional proof that there were serious theoretical and causal problems (as opposed to just sloppy Excel work) in the Reinhart-Rogoff study. Observers have been raising serious questions about what Herndon's work means for the future of austerity politics, and Reinhart and Rogoff's respectability as scholars.
Herndon says he isn't implying that Reinhart and Rogoff intentionally skewed their data to support a pro-austerity finding, and simply reported the errors.
"I don’t want to sound the alarm and call for anyone’s jobs," he says. "I didn’t do this to be punitive or malicious."
With Reinhart and Rogoff's once-authoritative work now under serious question, there's no question that the austerity movement has been dealt a major blow. But Herndon's finding won't likely stop politicians from trying to reduce the deficit. The global march for austerity began before Reinhart and Rogoff's work was published, and will continue as long as there are people who believe that governments can shrink their way to prosperity.
Still, Herndon holds out hope. He calls austerity policies in the United Kingdom and elsewhere "counterproductive," and implies that part of why he took up the study of Reinhart and Rogoff's study was to question the benefits of current economic policy. "I have social motivations," he says. "I care deeply about how policy affects people."
Now that he's left his mark, Herndon says he's coping with the effects of academic celebrity — getting a new publicity head shot taken, receiving kudos from his professors and colleagues, handling interview requests. He says he's gotten extensions on some of his papers in order to handle his quasi-fame, but that he hasn't been popping Champagne yet in celebration.
"I’m going to celebrate this weekend," he says. "But for now, I have a really gnarly problem set."