Category Archives: Science

Mainstream Media Coverage of BERSIH 3.0

The cov­er­age of BERSIH 3.0 on the main­stream media has been as expec­ted, ludicrously one-sided. Every 10 minutes of the local news chan­nels will be devoted to a “BERSIH SUCKS!” seg­ment trans­ition­ing into “LOSS OF BUSINESS FOR ONE DAY DISASTROUS SO DISASTROUS” before seguing into “BN IS THE BEST” news with the occa­sional “GUY COMMITS

Harvard Strikes a Blow Against Greedy Publishers

If you have had to do any form of research work in a uni­ver­sity, you would have encountered that one or two vital papers that is unavail­able for use because your uni­ver­sity lib­rary does not sub­scribed to the journ­als they belong to. The reason is as every­one in the research com­munity knows, journal pub­lish­ers are

Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision

The Pub­lic Lib­rary of Sci­ence has a col­lec­tion of papers that appar­ently show that util­ising vol­un­tary med­ical male cir­cum­cision, HIV can be pre­ven­ted in a cost-effective man­ner in east­ern and south­ern Africa. As I am no med­ical pro­fes­sional, my views on male cir­cum­cision lies entirely with the research­ers who are more well-informed than me and

Earthquake

I know this would be laugh­able in earth­quake prone coun­tries where a bit of a tremor would hold as much blog-worthiness as the death of a farmer in Afgh­anistan. But since I am stay­ing out­side of the Ring of Fire, the music stand that shook like a drunken middle-aged busi­ness­man in a bar to sen­ti­mental

A Boost for Open Access Journals

The Wellcome Trust will be sup­port­ing the dis­sem­in­a­tion of sci­entific know­ledge by launch­ing an open access journal called eLife which will dir­ectly com­pete with high pro­file journ­als Nature, Sci­ence, and Cell. Sir Mark Wal­port, the dir­ector of Wellcome Trust, said that his organ­isa­tion is in the final stages of launch­ing a high cal­ibre sci­entific journal called

Spider Silk for Violins

Pretty cool sci­entific proof of concept from Shi­gey­oshi Osaki of Nara Med­ical Uni­ver­sity. As a self-taught abysmal violin player, I am always on the lookout for expens­ive tech­no­lo­gical gim­micks that will improve my play­ing (or at least appear­ance of improve­ment) without devot­ing the pro­por­tion­ate amount of time to prac­tising like a pro­fes­sional. Who would care

Only on Independent Media

The Malay­sian Insider, des­pite whatever flaws it may con­tain, at least has one brain up (and per­haps the balls of Zeus) on the tra­di­tional main­stream media bod­ies in Malay­sia. Zurairi A. Rah­man has pub­lished an art­icle call­ing out the extraordin­ar­ily stu­pid and self-serving decisions (my words, Zurairi is much more of a gen­tle­man in prose)