A Pedagogue's Progress

Online discourse in this country

2010-10-06T19:59:00.000+08:00

Online discourse in this country

I should be marking, but this piece -- or rather, the comments on it -- caught my attention. Let me say from the outset that my secondary-school self was never especially fond of Ong Teck Chin (or Drong, as we used to call him) as a person. But his resignation, welcome though it may be, isn't the issue here. The issue is just how ridiculously bad some of the comments on the piece are. I won't dignify them by citing them, but they run the gamut from tangential homophobic rants to blatant factual errors to unsubstantiated accusations to...well, see for yourself. To be fair, there are a couple of sensible posters, but in situations such as these, the trolls always tend to win.

To read:

2010-07-25T18:20:00.002+08:00

Andrew Preston

Seth Jacobs, America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and US Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004) on American Catholics' support for Diem.

American Adventurism Abroad

2010-07-16T18:37:00.002+08:00

American Adventurism Abroad

Michael Sullivan's concise and straightforward volume categorises and describes America's involvement in the affairs of other states big and small since the end of WWII, starting with Greece in 1947, moving through infamous and not so famous episodes in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and ending with Haiti in 2004. The book's central thesis is that intervention aimed primarily at securing America's hegemony over the global capitalist system rather than promoting democracy. My main issue with the book is that only the latter, i.e. negative, claim is convincingly substantiated through the multifarious examples of anti-Communist Third World dictators installed and propped up by the US. The former claim isn't really directly sustainable in places like Laos, Yugoslavia, and Grenada, which is perhaps why Sullivan declares at the start that US intervention was more about "upholding the economic system: the idea of capitalism itself" than protecting specific business interests.

And what about security as a motivation for intervention then? The book could have done with a more in-depth exploration -- perhaps a chapter -- of America's "principles" of intervention. Why do they remain consistent over multiple presidencies (save Carter, whom Sullivan hails as a noble exception to the rule)? These are questions a historian would ask.

Writing

2009-11-21T23:36:00.003+08:00

Writing

Although you'll probably never guess this, I've always found writing difficult, probably because I don't like re-writing (which all style guides recommend) and am a perfectionist when it comes to my own prose. I often end up agonising over individual words, getting distracted by something else, and then returning to the original piece of writing with my train of thought lost.

I do find, however, that writing comes more easily to me when I've been writing a lot; it's a bit like warming up before you go for a run. Take this blog post, for instance. The final product doesn't do justice to how rapidly it was composed (by my standards). This is probably because I've been writing testimonials for the past week or so. They have been a pain to write because of all the artificial constraints imposed upon them. The Testimonial is a very very very minor literary form, although slightly higher in my estimation than the Official Bureaucratic Response ("Dear sir, we thank you for your feedback...").

Now that I've distracted myself with this little post -- the first in ages -- I shall return to testimonial writing, in the hope of getting all done by Monday.

Speculation

2009-07-19T19:01:00.002+08:00

Speculation

No, not currency speculation, transfer rumours. This Twitter site that I've been following for the past few weeks claims to provide genuine insider information from Anfield and says that Liverpool will be signing Silva AND Villa after Alonso goes. Sounds too good to be true. What about the central midfield vacancy then, or is Rafa going to drop Gerrard back to midfield and hope that the Davids form a more potent attacking combination than Torres-Gerrard? And how on earth are we going to afford David Villa?

Reunion

2009-06-21T03:15:00.002+08:00

Reunion

A little underwhelming, alas, with not as many familiar and interesting people as I expected, especially among the house '04s. Plus, the planned activities have been lame (stargazing anyone?) and it's the weekend, so the profs aren't around. Still, I ran into my thesis advisor on Friday and updated him on my plans. Will be seeing another professor tomorrow for breakfast, and then heading back to Boston for the tail-end of this trip. I guess there's still lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe to look forward too.

Graduate school

2009-06-17T11:40:00.004+08:00

Graduate school

I have found a way of synthesising my undergraduate thesis, current teaching experiences, and "life story" into my statement of research interests (to be written at some point of time in the future). All this while ensuring that these interests are realistically within grasp given my linguistic proficiency (which can be improved upon).

Fundamentally, I intend to specialise in 19th and 20th century international history from an Anglo-American perspective. I am particularly interested in the circulation of Anglo-American ideas and their reception in the non-Western world, especially China and Southeast Asia. What mechanisms and institutions existed to help transmit these ideas globally, and how did local conditions -- cultural, political, and economic -- influence how these ideas were received and subsequently modified to suit domestic demands? What were the consequences of these "flows" for both Anglo-American and non-Western peoples?

(There, I'm sounding so grad student already.)

Prester John, of course, was also a global history in some sense of the term, as it examined the influence of non-European ideas on politics and culture in medieval Europe, and revealed that the boundaries which defined Western Europe were perhaps more permeable than we think. My interest in transmission processes also stems in part from the thesis: how did the legend pass from East to West?

Teaching contemporary Southeast Asian history and politics, in particular the histories of nationalism and nation-building, has sparked my interest in the influence of Anglo-American ideas on global politics. What's fascinating is how these ideas were appropriated and modified to suit local contexts: how Sukarno, for instance, adapted nationalist thought to Indonesian demands, or how early 20th century Vietnamese reformers grappled over the fate of the monarchy and the pressures of French colonial rule.

I Am Charlotte Simmons...and Thomas Mann

2009-06-17T11:17:00.003+08:00

I Am Charlotte Simmons...and Thomas Mann

A compelling read -- I couldn't put it down and finished it in four days -- but upon reflection, not a great book. Funny, but too clever by half. Perfect teen movie material. The characters, with the exception of Charlotte and perhaps Adam, are flat and hugely unsympathetic, the plot's predictable and heavy-handed, and Wolfe tries a little too hard to show us that he "gets" how college students (and administrators) think, speak, and behave.

I did, however, completely fall for Charlotte. Which, for people who know me, should come as no surprise.

Thomas Mann, on the other hand, is just fabulous. Out of the collection, I've thus far only managed Death in Venice and Mario and the Magician, but am looking forward to more once I get back to San Francisco. Maybe I should re-read The Magic Mountain.

Berkeley, CA

2009-06-08T00:01:00.002+08:00

Berkeley, CA

The weather's lovely, the food's great, and the books are cheap:

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly -US$6
David Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World - US$3

The next time I'm back in this country, it'll be for graduate school.

Complications

2009-05-27T20:11:00.002+08:00

Complications

The term's winding down, all essays have been marked and returned, RMUN is around the corner, and Hanover awaits. But the more distant future is unclear: they haven't replied (how surprising), and today, my end of the year workload just...quadrupled. Hah. That said, this latest development may actually be a good thing, assuming we make it know to them right away. Must talk to the right people tomorrow.

A lot's been happening

2009-04-25T20:17:00.002+08:00

A lot's been happening

1) I have a meeting with them soon. The important thing will be to come across as reasonable and firm at the same time. I'm prepared to be not so nice if I have to. Must learn from others. This could be a major turning point.

2) The Art Auction was a success. While the amount of money raised was perhaps less than what we hoped, the students learned so much from organising it. As I told them after the Auction, I've been privileged to work with such an multi-talented, tireless, and high-spirited bunch of people. If I was more efficient than usual in handling the administrative work, it's because I didn't want to disappoint them.

3) I had the opportunity to talk to some parents earlier today, before the Auction. I told them that their children were too good for scholarships and that working for the government would benefit largely the government and not them. (Teaching at RJC and perhaps teaching in general are exceptions to this observation.)

We are wheels in the machine

2009-03-10T17:30:00.002+08:00

We are wheels in the machine

That's what they just told us today, at the lunch. How nice. It was interesting to note that only the three of us from RJ had anything to say on the matter. And how they batted aside our queries in that typical educratic manner.

The term ends soon, but the work doesn't. Oh no. It just gets worse from now on.

Wow

2009-03-06T17:18:00.002+08:00

Wow

I have no idea how we're going to beat 83.7% next year (and 98% for Humanz).

And 8 Distinctions out of 9 supervisees isn't bad either.

This Friday

2009-03-03T19:05:00.003+08:00

This Friday

I'm surprisingly calm about this Friday. The results are a fait accompli, I don't have a Civics class to return results to (next year will be very different), and I'm only responsible for half their History grade. Plus, I have other things to worry about, like marking. Maybe I'll be sleepless on Thursday night, but I doubt it, since Thursday is a long day.

I'll be happy if those who deserve an A get an A. That's a lot of people. Of course, many who don't deserve one will get one, and a few who do will not. That last bit is what will be really upsetting.

It would be nice if, in your happiness (or even your sadness), you say hello to your ex-tutors and thank them for their efforts. No need for flowers or champagne. Just a simple "Thank you" will do.

Public service announcement for J3s

2009-02-26T18:27:00.002+08:00

Public service announcement for J3s

It's probably next Friday.

Poetry

2009-02-21T19:37:00.002+08:00

Poetry

One of the most underrated things that I learned from studying poetry -- from Mr. McConnell's Practical Criticism in JC to Bill Cook's class on Modernism at college -- was how to write good prose. I still don't "get" most poetry that I read, but close reading New Critical-style, with all its attendant technical terms, forced me to hear how my own sentences unfolded on the page -- their structure, length, and rhythm. It forced me to contend with the implications of my words. Why this one and not that? Doesn't this expression just sound horribly cliched? Can't this be expressed more succinctly -- more poetically? The "best words in their best order," as Coleridge said about poetry, and Mr. McConnell said to us the first time we did it for PC. (It's strange how I remember such things.)

Students

2009-02-21T19:19:00.003+08:00

Students

May I never have to work as a bureaucrat or only amongst them. It's in times like these, with work piling up (term paper marking! Vietnam's economic development! GP!), that you appreciate being amongst such brilliant and engaged young men and women. Stepping into the classroom and launching into lessons energise me in the absence of lunch and sleep. Even informal conversations with them renew one's faith in humanity. I cannot imagine how they manage; I get tired even thinking of their daily schedules. All I can do is help them to the best of my intellectual and organisational abilities. This is how I shall see through 2009.

Lincoln's global impact

2009-02-16T18:50:00.002+08:00

Lincoln's global impact

This bunch of articles in the New York Times on Lincoln's influence in Germany, Japan, Liberia, and Hungary reveals yet again the global impact of American ideals and representative figures. Manela and Armitage have already written books on this impact. I smell a dissertation topic.

2009-02-15T11:20:00.002+08:00

I am compartmentalising my brain, creating little virtual pigeon-holes in which to stuff stuff: JC2 History, JC1 History, JC1 GP, HISSOC, THI, committee work, Civics, etc. The holes are getting smaller and smaller even as the stuff gets bigger and bigger.

Form without substance

2009-02-14T19:26:00.002+08:00

Form without substance

"Representative democracy is the very essence of our political system, and voting is the foundation of representative democracy" - Law Minister K. Shanmugam, as reported in today's ST.

Enforced productivity

2009-01-30T22:50:00.002+08:00

Enforced productivity

I have been surprisingly productive this past week. According to my meticulously constructed Academic Planner (Term 1 2009) -- itself an effort at imposing order upon chaos -- I am ahead of schedule by one full set of lecture notes! This is assuming I dispense with our northern neighbours by Sunday evening, before a declining Liverpool take on Chelsea at midnight.

New year, new subject

2009-01-15T18:40:00.002+08:00

New year, new subject

Initial fears have temporarily subsided, but may very well be resurrected once J1 classes start and the pressure of having to churn out lecture notes increases. I am actually rather looking forward to GP; it should prove a nice foil to History, and vice-versa. The focus, as usual, will be on writing, thinking, and reading -- on cultivating certain attitudes toward the world and oneself. Politics and the English Language will be one of the first texts on the reading list.

The Singaporean public "intellectual"

2008-12-06T14:39:00.003+08:00

The Singaporean public "intellectual"

One of my former students, Tan Ee Kuan, is featured in today's ST Forum taking down Kishore Mahbubani by a few notches. You can read Mahbubani's original article here and Ee Kuan's response (with readers' comments) here.

Ee Kuan's criticism of Mahbubani's attack on Paul Krugman is right on the money. Mahbubani doesn't even make an attempt to engage with Krugman's contributions to economic thought, and sounds very much like your average American right-wing pundit (I love that use of "Simple!") when he claims that liberal media bias was chiefly responsible for the award. I don't think the pro-government establishment has ever forgiven Krugman for writing in "The Myth of the Asian Miracle" that "Singapore grew through a mobilization of resources that would have made Stalin proud."

Even sillier is Mahbubani's claim that Deng Xiaoping should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and recognised as the greatest man of the 20th century, based solely on the utilitarian calculus that he lifted 400 million people out of poverty. The not-so-small matters of Tiananmen and China's persistent human rights violations have been conveniently forgotten here. (Of course, the Swedish did hand out a Nobel to Yasser Arafat, so I guess anything is possible.)

"Intellectual colonialism" is a flawed argument (again, I can't help but notice that Mahbubani calls it the "simple and brutal answer" to the issue that he presents), especially when employed by employees of the state-government-party. Singapore's leaders are ever so good at validating themselves in relation to "external endorsements" selectively, like when proclaiming the achievements of Changi Airport or double-digit GDP growth. So Mahbubani's claim that "Singaporeans should stop waiting for external validations of our achievements" flies in the face of everything he says subsequently about "world-class universities, museums, performing arts centres and think-tanks." Of course, when it comes to Western standards that cast Singapore in an unfavourable light, like press freedom rankings, well then, our minds have been colonialised and all that and the standards clearly reflect Western Liberal Media Bias.

The idea of an expensive propagandistic campaign to "rebrand" Singapore as the city which launched the "Asian Renaissance," besides being fiscally imprudent, is again full of intellectual holes. Just look at his justification for it - a slender piece of anecdotal evidence, drawn from a completely different historical period, and featuring completely different "products" (razors vs. this woolly notion of national greatness). Gillette succeeded partly because it was an American company with the resources during the war to launch an advertising campaign, and the financial and cultural clout after America's victory to win over the British masses. Moreover, Gillette's advertising campaign was a private one and did not affect government spending; Mahbubani's proposal would do so, and its effects, unlike the sale of razor blades, be unquantifiable.

Mahbubani's piece features poor arguments, selective use of evidence, self-congratulation, and intellectual bullying. And he's supposedly our foremost public intellectual (just Google his name).

Update:

Some of the responses to his piece are just ridiculous!

Fallout 3

2008-11-11T22:31:00.002+08:00

Fallout 3

Main quest was a little too brief (although superbly climatic), but the game is definitely lovingly constructed and challenging -- up to the point when my Small Guns skill reached 80-something or so. Now if only they removed the level cap. It's frustrating to go around blasting deathclaws and not getting any experience for it. Guess I'll have to wait for the expansion. In the meantime, map exploration proceeds apace...

Stuff to do

2008-10-31T21:05:00.002+08:00

Stuff to do

1) Exercise. Starting tomorrow.

2) Teacher recommendations. Two down, quite a number to go. Have to read those portfolios as well.

3) PSC SARs. Ugh.

4) Fallout 3 / Far Cry 2.

5) Reading. With one eye on next year.

It's over

2008-10-31T18:39:00.002+08:00

It's over

The exam was earlier today, and with it came the close of one cycle and my first ever A-Levels as a teacher. There won't be many of those. As for the paper, well, let's just say that History examiners, of all people, should know what it means to respect dates and their constraints on the syllabus. Section B was do-able however. And our scripts, relative to those of others, should be of higher quality.

Interestingly enough, I came across one of my A-Level papers today, along with the examiner's reports for both papers, hidden away in a dusty green file that Mrs Sng left behind when she left all those years ago. I can't remember the questions that I attempted, except for the piracy one, which to this day I have no idea how I managed, given that it was not something we covered in class at all. Then again, back then we were a lot more independent-minded. All my knowledge came from books (Weiss, Forsythe, and Coate on the UN, Jonathan Spence and Immanuel Hsu on China, this huge volume on East and Southeast Asia specifically for A-Level students), articles (Foreign Affairs had this nice one on the nationalities problem in post-Soviet Russia, while all I knew about world trade came from this one article from the Economist), and random stuff off the Internet (this was before Wikipedia). Making the transition to university life was easier as a result. I'm not sure it will be -- academically at least -- for a lot of this generation.

Believe

2008-10-27T17:56:00.000+08:00

Believe

From Football365:

Liverpool's display was a masterclass in match-management, a lesson in how suffocate opponents, in exploiting and revealing weaknesses, in the power of discipline, in refusing to yield the initiative.

Entertainment in football can take many different forms. Sunday's game would have been subdued viewing for those who have bought into the modern-day, TV-dictated definition that an entertaining game of football is a game of numerous goalmouth action and endless end-to-end breaks. This was a throwback, a reminder for those who can appreciate the skill of controlling as a game as an artform that football works best as a contest. It's not just about how you play; how you make the opposition play matters just as much. Liverpool's performance was a demonstration in how to make good on a piece of slight fortune and win. As such, it was close to perfection.

That Xabi Alonso's 10th-minute shot required a deflection to make its transformation from hopeful punt to match-winning strike is undeniable. Yet, with eighty minutes still on the clock, Chelsea had ample time in which to make their response. Their stage was set; either they scored or they lost. Simple, really. And yet despite the clarity of that knowledge, they managed to create a grand total of one chance. One.

A lucky win? Forget it. A boring win? Forget about football if you couldn't appreciate its quality.

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

2008-09-06T01:32:00.003+08:00

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Finally landed myself a copy -- and for 20% off as well. Am about halfway through it, and would like to complete it before the marking starts. It's amazing how much of it brings back memories of History 11 and Jere Daniell's meandering, old-school lectures on the Revolution. Also, Bailyn seems to have read and digested every single pamphlet ever written by those hopelessly verbose colonials. As he himself points out early on, early American pamphleteers weren't exactly Swifts or Defoes (and I find even them hard to bear!).

The numbers, at last

2008-09-04T01:39:00.002+08:00

The numbers, at last

Thanks MOE! $374,136.20. Divided by 72 months, that's approximately $5196.34 per month. In June 2010, I'll have served 36 months. Add 10 months NS bonus and the number is 46. So the amount to be repaid will be $5196.34 x (72-46) = $135,104.74. By then, I should have enough to cover this amount and ensure that I am not a penurious graduate student. The three months between then and when term starts will have to be spent...studying like crazy.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The earliest applications will be due in early December 2009, which means that preparation has to start at the end of this year, after the A-Levels. Then I need to head back to Hanover in June to let the professors know about my plans. Then I need to actually find time to write the damn applications. And then, I need to get accepted!

Blaster rifles

2008-09-04T00:53:00.003+08:00

Blaster rifles

I never understood why Blaster Rifles were all the rage until I cast a quadruple-strength Haste, eliminating recovery time between turns and allowing my party to fire continuously so long as "A" was pressed. Then I mowed my way through Dragonsand in minutes. Ah, old-school RPGs. Now if only I had the sequel!

Teachers' Day

2008-08-28T19:57:00.002+08:00

Teachers' Day

Am looking forward to it considerably less so than last year. With experience comes cynicism, and the realisation that students aren't what they so meticulously and self-consciously make themselves out to be. I wonder if they realise that we aren't that stupid; that we spend more time talking about them than they do about us. Like the colonial powers, we have our native spies and informers. And we have our ways of getting back at you (notice the shift from the third to the second person): not through grades, but certainly through university recommendations, testimonials, progress reports, recommendations for scholarships, college awards, and internships, and rankings.

So-and-so is bright, but lacks intellectual curiosity and thus would not benefit from a Harvard / Yale / Dartmouth education. Moreover, s/he comes across as manipulative, selfish, and a grade-grubber.

Alas, so-and-so fits the stereotype of the elitist and arrogant Rafflesian very snugly. Every conversation I've had with him / her has shown this to be true. For example...

So-and-so has demonstrated an appetite for hard work, but little more than that.

400 essays coming in soon. Quota per day is 25, so that's around 16 days.

William McNeill on History

2008-07-22T16:56:00.002+08:00

William McNeill on History

[The] study of history may . . . enlarge individual [and] direct experience [so] as to allow some men to become wise; and all men may hope to profit in some degree from a study that enlarges knowledge of the variety of human potentiality and circumstance so directly as history does. . . . Other disciplines and branches of knowledge, of course, have great importance in any practical application of knowledge to society or to individual lives. Historical wisdom more often acts as a brake and moderator than as a motor or guide line for deliberate efforts to change personal and social life. But this constitutes practical wisdom, the fine flower of experience and knowledge, which grows best in a mind that has reflected upon and mastered at least some portion of the vast historical heritage of man-kind.

The entire article can be found here. Link from HNN.

Jetlag

2008-06-19T07:16:00.002+08:00

Jetlag

I am not going to recover from this jetlag any time soon, what with the Euros and all that. I might have to just stay out the entire day to prevent myself from falling asleep.

L'origine du Christianisme is engrossing; it's probably the most intellectual documentary I've ever seen and for that reason would never run on the History Channel. I mean, all it consists of are professors talking about the Bible!

Back to school for a bit now.

Technology and thought

2008-06-16T21:08:00.002+08:00

Technology and thought

The Atlantic on how Google and the Internet are changing our ways of reading and thinking, and not necessarily for the better:

So, yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct, and from our hyperactive, data-stoked minds will spring a golden age of intellectual discovery and universal wisdom. Then again, the Net isn’t the alphabet, and although it may replace the printing press, it produces something altogether different. The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.

This explains our current educational malaise better than anything I've read.

For students deciding between UK and US universities

2008-06-16T01:25:00.005+08:00

For students deciding between UK and US universities

Admittedly, I'm not a neutral observer in this: the US is, for most of you, a better place to spend your undergraduate years than in the UK. Here are several reasons:

Specialisation is the wrong way to go in this day and age, even in tried-and-tested subjects like Law and Economics. You want to be flexible and adaptive.

And how do you know that Law is right for you? Have you any idea what it means to be a lawyer in this overlawyered country? How do you know that you won't like something else better? In other words, committing to a future career or even university subject/major at this point in time is to ignore the possibility that more attractive alternatives will crop up in the future.

It doesn't matter what you major in. I repeat: it DOESN'T MATTER what you major in. You can major in Classics and still get a job at an investment bank.

In general, top-end US universities have smaller classes than their British equivalents. Smaller classes tend to be more conducive for intellection (which should be one of the great joys of university life overseas), because they allow for more interaction between students and professors. One of the great things about studying in the US (at least for me) was forming friendships with my professors. Unless you're in Oxford or Cambridge, this probably won't happen in the UK. Don't believe me? Ask around.

Nearly all American universities have a campus. The London universities (King's, UCL, LSE, Imperial, SOAS, etc.) don't.

You can get more financial aid from (private) US universities than UK ones. In fact, the following US colleges are need-blind for international students: Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, and Middlebury. Of these, the last 3 are well within reach for RJC students. I'm fairly confident that other US universities are moving in this direction too.

On a similar note, US universities have much more money available for undergraduates looking to pursue independent research.

LKY is on record as saying that he'd have gone to the US if he were a young Singaporean today. Ok, maybe this isn't a very good reason.

I'd like to hear the arguments for the other side, e.g. less time needed for a degree in the UK, making education there cheaper. And please, no silly claims about the superiority of British to US culture. This makes for interesting chatter, but it not a legitimate reason for choosing one country over the other. Only if you're 101% committed to a particular career and are manifestly uninterested in or hopeless at everything else apart from your chosen subject should you choose the UK.

Reality check

2008-06-15T12:24:00.003+08:00

Reality check

Paris and France were a glorious break from the constraints of domestic life: striding through the Louvre to the tunes of Handel's Wassermusik and Bach's Goldberg Variations; visiting Marlinspike (or Moulinsart); biking in the Loire Valley (and getting lost); fine Corsican cuisine; meeting Alistair Horne in person; Shakespeare & Company; watching the Dutch crush Italy; the conversations on religion, history, Singapore, and mutual acquaintances; and all the museums in Paris.

Now it's time to get ready for the most hectic term of working life.

Edit: I hadn't realised that this is my 100th post. So I'll make it a bit longer. In point form:

My my, how productive I've been since returning. Finished most of Vatikiotis' Political Change in Southeast Asia, answered a couple of important emails, and should be done soon with one item on my lengthy checklist of school-related things to do.

Starhub's coverage of Euro2008 is awful, and makes the Football Channel look good. I mean, Darryl David and Mark Richmond? Weren't they out of fashion in the mid-1990s? That and the need to start the pre-match coverage an hour before games start...by showing the players arriving at the stadium and warming up. It doesn't help that we have solo commentators, none of whom are immediately recognisable.

I sometimes wonder how this students these days are going to survive in university and working life. Then again, getting thrown in at the deep end does sometimes work. I'd employ this approach more, except that it usually results in a few drownings.

Speaking of university, it's been four years since I graduated. Approximately half of my bond is up. By the way, if you're a JC2 student of mine reading this, and are thinking about studying in the US and obtaining a recommendation from me, you should see me at the earliest possible opportunity in Term 3 so that we can work out a plan. There are certain things that US universities look out for.

The Atlantic on Burma

2008-05-19T13:44:00.001+08:00

The Atlantic on Burma

A series of articles on Burma, written in 1958. I especially like the following excerpt:

Is there a danger that the army, realizing its strength and prestige, might try to control the Government? Could Burma follow the familiar pattern of other small states where the military, in the name of the people, or efficiency, or national honor, have taken over complete control? I think this is most unlikely. In fact, there have been moments of crisis in the past decade when this could have happened and it has not. Today the armed forces of Burma work in complete harmony and partnership with the civilian leaders. The army chiefs feel themselves part of the team which has worked and fought together for thirty years to secure independence. None of them have displayed the egomania that would drive them to use the army as a tool for personal ambition. They are determined that the new Burmese army should be thoroughly democratic and imbued with the idea of service to the needs of the people.

Catharsis

2008-04-25T18:41:00.002+08:00

Catharsis

Today's discussion went well, although I feel sorry for the note-taker given how fluid things ended up being. It's good to know that there are like-minded people out there; some have even stronger views than mine. As for my thoughts on the Big Issue, I defer to Montaigne:

...it is greatly to be doubted whether any obvious good can come from changing any traditional law, whatever it may be, compared with the evil of changing it; for a polity is like a building made of diverse pieces interlocked together, joined in such a way that it is impossible to move one without the whole structure feeling it. ("On Habit")

It's time I stopped being so...accommodating and returned to something like my Dartmouth self, which has been itching to get out since I got back. Four years this June.

O! call back yesterday, bid time return. (Richard II)

The other day, the historian-critic in me revolted at the yoking together of Braveheart (the man, not the movie), Teddy R. (the president), and Strider. We have such simplistic conceptions of leadership. Has anyone down under read Machiavelli?

Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.

Alright alright, I should probably try to get some work done before meeting the parents tomorrow. Threat of communist subversion or superpower rivalry? What an unfair question!

Productivity

2008-04-23T19:25:00.002+08:00

I am that much more productive when the football goes badly, because I can't bear to read the match reports for a couple of days.

The Indonesian Revolution

2008-04-12T21:12:00.002+08:00

The Indonesian Revolution

Sneak preview of my lecture notes on decolonisation in Indonesia:

Sukarno and the Republican leadership were responsible for holding the nationalist movement together, exerting both diplomatic and military pressure on the Dutch, and convincing the international community of their authority over the archipelago, as well as their anti-Communist credentials.

In other words, the nationalists, strengthened by World War II, were able to overcome the problem of disunity and, in doing so, limit the obstructive influence of the Dutch and win over the US (which, as we know, initially favoured a more gradualist approach to decolonisation).

Nonetheless, the nationalists were not solely responsible for decolonisation. The emerging conflict between the US and the Communist bloc lent greater weight to the nationalists’ crushing of the Madiun uprising. Also, the Dutch shot themselves in the foot by not acting decisively against the PKI, and instead looking to exploit the Madiun uprising to their own advantage. Dutch miscalculation, as much as nationalist assertion, weakened US perceptions of them.

The US’ intervention was also important in determining the timing of independence. With the Dutch dependent on the US for financial support, the US’s threat to cut off all Marshall Plan aid in March 1949 forced the Dutch to back down immediately. Thus, although the nationalists had gained an advantage over the Dutch by then, the US accelerated the decolonisation process, which would otherwise probably have dragged on for much longer.

Richard III - three versions of "Now is the winter of our discontent"

2008-04-05T22:47:00.004+08:00

Richard III - three versions of "Now is the winter of our discontent"

This brings back fond memories of JC1 Lit with Adrian Thirkell. I had that speech memorised once -- snatches of it still come back to me from time to time. Richard III and Thirkell's loving exegesis of the opening soliloquy was probably what got me hooked on Lit. (His generous grading didn't hurt either, and the number of new words that I picked up from him was astonishing.)

Ron Cook rushes the speech and doesn't savour his words enough to my mind -- we don't quite catch the puns and wordplay. Also, "determin-ed"? Interestingly enough, he is enunciating it correctly according to the Longman edition (which I used for English 24), but incorrectly according to the Arden version (which I used in JC). Since "I am determined to prove a villain" is a standard line of pentameter, I see no reason for the extra syllable. It's such an important word too -- better say it properly.

Jonathan Slinger has someone else on the stage with him for a bit -- is that meant to be Edward? Not sure why he's there. In any case, his delivery is much livelier and full of menace, intelligence, and bitterness, which is the way it should be.

McKellen takes creative license with the text and has the rest of the cast listening appreciatively to the first part of the speech. It works quite well, actually, because Richard has two audiences in the play, and McKellen's opening scene establishes that brilliantly. The moment in the washroom when Richard, contemplating himself in the mirror, suddenly (or deliberately) becomes aware of us, the viewers at home, couldn't be done on stage half as effectively.

Rameau

2008-04-05T22:24:00.004+08:00

Rameau

My YouTube music collection is steadily growing. Here's an especially beautiful piece from Rameau - fast forward to around the 5:30 mark. That's when the theme from Casanova (Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller version -- so-so movie) starts.

Mark your calendars

2008-03-31T19:42:00.002+08:00

Mark your calendars

There are exactly 7 months to 9731/02 (31 October 2008).

Some holidays those were

2008-03-16T21:00:00.002+08:00

Some holidays those were

Japanese Occupation down: 18 pages of notes and 30 lecture slides. Now for Decolonisation: how incredibly complex the Indonesian Revolution was! (One of these days, I'll pick up Kahin's book on it.) Fortunately or unfortunately, we do not really have to make sense of it all, just examine it through the nice little categories that Cambridge has provided: nationalists, colonial powers, international factors.

Marking will kill me.

Here's a lovely Mark Edmundson article about kids these days. He's talking about American college students, but he could very well be discussing RJC ones:

For students now, life is elsewhere. Classes matter to them, but classes are just part of an ever-enlarging web of activities and diversions. Students now seek to master their work — not to be taken over by it and consumed. They want to dispatch it, do it well and quickly, then get on to the many other things that interest them. For my students live in the future and not the present; they live with their prospects for success and pleasure. They dwell in possibility.

Term 1 over

2008-03-06T21:09:00.002+08:00

Term 1 over

Watched The Stage Club's performance of Black Comedy and Light Tragedies last night with the class. The first two plays were okay, but Black Comedy itself was brilliant. I don't think it can be the Learning Journey however!

The term is over, and the so-called holidays are upon us. Only the J1s really have a break. The J2s are desperately preparing for their Common Tests, and we teachers (or at least new ones like myself) are preparing next term's work. J1 marking and JO / Decol notes will take up most of my time, but I also have to get debriefs done, fix the History notice board, and finish other random tasks which often seem more appealing than the most important ones.

Madness

2008-02-25T19:26:00.002+08:00

End of term madness

The end of term is approaching and there are many things to gripe about (as A01B discovered today):

Broken technology. It took three teachers to get the &%^$*#! projector working in LT6 today. Cables in, press buttons, cables out, press more buttons, call technician, etc. There are six LTs in the school. Why don't they all have laptops which we can simply plug our thumbdrives into? Instead, we're forced to lug our laptops around school. Meanwhile, those 30+, oh-so-useful flat screen TVs, each costing several thousands of dollars...

Missed classes. A-Level results are going to be out next week. We usually do quite well for our A-Levels and will probably get a day off from school as a reward. In other words, more missed classes. I mean, I'm only starting my first tutorial question of the term with one of my J1s this week, because of all the missed Thursdays. But the hardest hit will be the J2s, for whom we simply must finish the syllabus. Makeups are in order, and they are always a pain to schedule.

The global "food staple" conference. Hubris. We're pretty good, but not that well-known. Kinda like Singapore actually. Let's start locally, and then see how things go from there. I mean, the only foreign participants are from the Philippines, for crying out loud! And the jargon is nauseating. And it "eats" -- heh! -- into my holidays.

Term papers. It was a difficult question. But that's no excuse for some of the dross that I've been reading. A country-by-country approach?! In J2!? Contrary to what many people might think, the A-Levels do not take care of themselves, even for our students.

On a brighter note, the guy I interview on Sunday was very impressive and I hope that he gets admitted. It would be refreshing for Dartmouth to accept someone NOT from the top five JCs for once. Oh, and I have a DPO / ex-DPO social event this Friday to look forward to.

Yeats -- Sailing to Byzantium

2008-02-25T18:35:00.002+08:00

Yeats -- Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Stuff to do

2008-02-16T17:33:00.003+08:00

Stuff to do

Return costume (by Monday)
Complete record book (by Monday)
JC2 marking and answer scheme (by end of term)
Civics Elective slides for US session (by next Thursday)
Notice board (by end of Feb)
JO and Decolonisation notes (for next term)
RI visit (24 March, 10-11)
JC1 term assignment (due 26-28 Feb)

We're missing a lot of school days this year. Yesterday was Take5 in the morning and the Humanz Party at night. Both were enjoyable, but it meant that both the J1s and J2s missed their lectures. Next Thursday is Orientation 2, which means that I'll be missing tutorials with 1B and 1D yet again. How are they going to write their term papers if they haven't attempted any tutorial questions? Makeups are in order, for sure.

Worrying

2008-02-01T21:32:00.000+08:00

Worrying

I must have picked up the worrying from my dad, although unlike him, I don't suffer from sleepless nights because of work-related concerns. These days, it verges on paranoia at times. Must. Stop. Worrying.

It would help if I finished the following work in a timely fashion:

J2 ~~Revision~~ and ~~AFC lecture notes~~ and slides [half done].
J2 Civics Elective lesson plans -- have to coordinate with others
~~Remaining H3 proposals~~
~~J2 Common Test questions~~
~~J1 tutorial question for next week~~
J2 Term Assignment answer scheme.
History notice board (the present board has become something of an historical artifact)

Am interviewing a Dartmouth applicant tomorrow. It'll be my first time out of the house (not counting school) in weeks!

Update (4 Feb)

The interview went really well; she might be my first ever interviewee to get admitted!
Civics Elective meeting tomorrow; hopefully things will be a lot clearer afterwards. Already have some ideas down.
H3 proposals are in. Now to get them started on their essay outlines and research.
Marking starts next Thursday with JC2 papers. Must work on answer scheme for question (which is a killer, haha).
NUS History Seminar -- must ensure that the kids are on track.

Update (8 Feb)

Review slides done.
Started work on JO notes, even though they're not due until next term.
Started work on Civics Elective slides -- so much will depend on what classes we end up with.
Must finish AFC notes. The topic, while fascinating, should not be on a History syllabus.
We'll be without Torres for the Chelsea game. Oh dear.

Update (9 Feb)

AFC notes done.

A welcome move

2008-01-25T21:42:00.000+08:00

A welcome move

Dartmouth is now need-blind for international students, a move that will hopefully encourage more people to apply there.

The fourth university

2008-01-21T22:09:00.000+08:00

The fourth university

Wayne Soon's post on Singapore Angle got me thinking again about a liberal arts college as our fourth university. I'd love to see this happening, but something tells me we'll be getting a souped-up polytechnic instead: the policy-makers who matter like Lui Tuck Yew didn't attend places like Dartmouth and Williams, and for the most part didn't do their bachelor's degrees in the US (graduate degrees don't count). They just won't get it, I suspect. They ought to be reading John Henry Newman, Allan Bloom, James Freedman, and Martha Nussbaum; but they'll end up merely thinking of the usual economic imperatives -- ignoring the contributions made by US liberal arts graduates to the world's most powerful economy. In any case, haven't we moved beyond the profit motive? Shouldn't we be moving in that direction?

The Wilsonian Moment

2008-01-20T21:50:00.000+08:00

The Wilsonian Moment

A clear and concise read. Unfortunately, Manela does not cover Wilson's impact on Southeast Asian nationalism and "limits" himself to Egypt, India, China, and Korea. Given France's centrality to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, it would have been nice if he'd looked at a French colony, like Indochina, for instance. Still, it's not hard to imagine how the Wilsonian moment played itself out in Vietnam, the East Indies, and Burma. Manela starts off the book with an anecdote on Ho Chi Minh in Paris that I shall use in the future. It's a pity that the syllabus is so inward-looking and regards the influence of external developments on the development of nationalism as peripheral, i.e. as worthy of only passing mention in essays.

Stop the press!

2008-01-14T18:32:00.000+08:00

Stop the press!

Hitchens has given up smoking. The next thing you know, he'll be a teetotaller.

He and Bill Clinton also dated the same person at Oxford (though, as he points out, not at the same time).

Next week

2008-01-10T21:52:00.000+08:00

Next week

It all really begins next week, when I start tutoring the J1s.

09A01A

2008-01-05T14:20:00.000+08:00

09A01A

Monday, 8.30 am. Can't wait. I wonder if I should enter by the back door like Robin Williams did in Dead Poets' Society -- whistling.

Alas, J3SR13 has no back door, and I can't whistle!

2007

2007-12-31T19:48:00.000+08:00

2007

I was back in school today for a staff meeting and got to say a few words, over cheese and a glass of wine, to our new Cambridge English graduate-principal about how to stop RGS girls from defecting to Hwa Chong Humanz (like she did way back when). Initial impressions of her are very positive: I just wonder if she has enough clout to keep me from the MOE's clutches come the end of 2009. Jamie and I then moaned about the poor quality of the Football Channel and John Burridge's bad dress sense. Found out that I'll be a CT next year -- though not of 08A01C, but (probably) a J1 Humanz class. This promises to be fascinating, though the workload is going to go through the roof. Thank goodness my lecture notes for Term 1 are all but done; their imminent completion will mark the first time ever that I've accomplished what I've set out to do in the holidays. I remember trying to do thesis research here in the spring and summer of 2003, and failing completely.

I haven't read that many books this year as the previous two years, unless you count the stuff I read for school (some of which, like the ones on economic development that I read over the past month, are ridiculously boring and arcane). I also haven't kept a list of readings; my notebook records only four, the last being Imagined Communities in June, and the others being John Lewis Gaddis's general history of the Cold War, his Landscape of History, and The Lost World. I've managed a couple since then, of course, the last two being Niall Ferguson's Empire and The Scarlet Letter (both of which I managed to take copious notes on). I also read The Last Days of the Renaissance, The Israel Lobby, God is Not Great, The Modern Researcher, Forgotten Wars, and 3/4 of Indonesian Destinies and The American University. I probably attempted half a dozen others but never really got stuck into them.

Next year, as usual, I will aim to finish more books than I buy, but I have already gotten off to a poor start by ordering In Command of History, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, and The Wilsonian Moment. The last two, both written by Harvard History professors, ought to make for some fascinating comparisons. Right now, I can't see beyond Harvard for graduate school: Ferguson, Jasanoff, Manela, Armitage, and Meier are as formidable lineup as any.

Books aside, 2007 was the year that I got my first proper job. That's about it really. RJC is an amazing place to be, and I'm so glad I'm not going to be a career civil servant.

Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand

2007-12-18T17:45:00.000+08:00

Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand

Lecture notes on the above countries are done, and much shorter than their Political Structures counterparts! But bibliographies are thrice as long, because Economic Development is approximately three times more difficult than the previous topic. Only Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, and AFC left, and I've already gotten some of Malaysia and Burma down from the resources in my personal collection.

Liverpool

2007-12-02T18:35:00.001+08:00

Liverpool

The hullabaloo at Liverpool over the past week or so has been blown out of proportion -- and I'd have written this even if Tom Hicks hadn't come out today with this somewhat reassuring statement. Hicks and Gillett aren't mugs, and it would have been madness for them to get rid of Rafa, which is what the silly British press . The team is on the up, unbeaten in the league, and with its two best passers (Alonso and Agger) yet to return; sacking the manager would upset the supporters and the players, lead to even more instability, cripple our best chance in years of winning the league title, and prove financially disastrous because of all the above.

Rafa threw a not entirely unjustified tantrum, the owners reacted, and Rafa backed down. Let's hope both parties can reconcile and resume working towards the good of the club and the team.

Bioshock and nostalgia

2007-12-02T17:54:00.000+08:00

Bioshock and nostalgia

After picking up a GeForce 8800GT and a new set of speakers (the first in 8 years, believe it or not!), I downloaded Bioshock off Steam and am slowly working my way through it. Another amazingly beautiful game, but in very different ways: Crysis is all about beaches and tropical vegetation; Bioshock is Art Deco, corridors, mood lighting. About the only thing they have in common is superlative water effects. Crysis has a so-so plot straight out of a Jerry Bruckheimer blockbuster; Bioshock channels Ayn Rand and the dystopian literary tradition.

I was at my secondary school's ten-year reunion last night. Ten years! And still they all look the same. Which is fine: but they seem to think and behave the same way too, slipping back into their old roles with ease. I exchanged cursory greetings with most of them and had extended conversations with a few, including B and I, whom I had drinks with afterwards. As I told the organisers (including Ben, whom I should catch up with) afterwards, I probably won't be around for the reunions in five and ten years time. If I am around in 2012 and 2017, it'll either be because I'm back here on holiday, or because something has gone wrong with my career plans.

Jacques Barzun's 100th Birthday

2007-11-25T19:57:00.000+08:00

Jacques Barzun's 100th Birthday

On the occasion of his 100th birthday, it seems appropriate to write a short note about how much Jacques Barzun has influenced me in the five years that I've known him through his books (of which I have only 14: From Dawn to Decadence; The House of Intellect; Begin Here; Teacher in America; The Modern Researcher; Classic, Romantic, and Modern; Darwin, Marx, Wagner; Berlioz and the Romantic Century; The American University; Clio and the Doctors; A Stroll with William James; The Culture We Deserve; God's Country and Mine; and The Jacques Barzun Reader).

But as I'm not nearly as prodigious a writer as he is, and with dinner imminent, I'll just limit myself, for the moment, to these lines from A Stroll with William James . Barzun is describing his intellectual debt to James at the beginning of the book:

I find him visibly and testably right -- right in intuition, range of considerations, sequence of reasons, and fully rounded power of expression. He is for me the most inclusive mind I can listen to, the most concrete and the last hampered by trifles. He is moreover entirely candid and full of gaiety...The tone and temper of his thought, aside from its purport and contents, is a prop to independence of mind, an antidote to the opium of modern ideologies, a tonic in the resistance to the sludge of "modern communications," popular and advanced. His resolving lucidity in analysis, his hard-won freedom that frees others (a rare consequence of liberation movements) enables me to better endure or enjoy whatever befalls me -- and all this in the simplest way of making actual and unmistakable what I would otherwise grope toward or dimly sense.

Happy 100th, Professor.

Crysis

2007-11-25T19:31:00.000+08:00

Crysis

Well, I'm done with that, or rather, the three of us (mostly the two of them) made short work of it in slightly over 12 hours yesterday. It ran slowly (~20 fps) on my two-year old rig, and bugs made life annoying on occasions -- especially right at the end, when I couldn't fire the damn TAC cannon. Gorgeous visuals (even at Medium), and extremely challenging (even on Normal) for someone used to Half-Life 2 (I finished Episode 2 a week or two ago).

Update

2007-11-19T19:51:00.000+08:00

Update

I am probably going to get braces. Please don't laugh. According to Wikipedia, adults who've worn braces include Tom Cruise, Cristiano Ronaldo, Prince Harry, and the Williams sisters.

Spent a lot of money on books today, including David Copperfield and a forbidding tome on Southeast Asian political economy. Still haven't spent all $1000.

The Israel Lobby

2007-10-30T18:17:00.000+08:00

The Israel Lobby

I rarely venture into books on contemporary politics, but I enjoyed Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power Politics (even if I disagreed with a lot of it) , had some time on my hands, and decided that the furore surrounding the original article and book was too great to ignore.

Well, I have just finished the book, and am pleased to report that I learned much from it, including the extent of America's economic and military support for Israel, stuff about Israel's founding and wars against its neighbours that I didn't know about (but which historians like Benny Morris have re-examined), and the peculiar phenomenon that is Christian Zionism (whose origins I had begun to read about in Michael Oren's Power, Faith, and Fantasy -- alas, I've never gotten around to completing it). The core of the book, of course, is that the eponymous lobby's influence on US attitudes towards Israel is 1) bad for America, 2) bad for Israel, and 3) bad for the Palestinians. The authors are clear, concise, and thoroughly reasonable: they anticipate and tackle objections (including accusations of anti-Semitism), clarify important points, and avoid ideological and rhetorical extremes without compromising the overall force of their argument. I especially like how they implicate the lobby by using its own words against it (cue accusations of Dowdifying the evidence or relying excessively on secondary sources, which, given the nature of the topic, are pretty much all that's available). Attempts to silence the authors' arguments about the lobby and free speech ought simply to strengthen these arguments.

The one criticism I have is obviously from the perspective of a non-specialist: I'd like a longer and more prescriptive conclusion. Historians aren't supposed to be prescriptive, but political scientists can and should be. Unfortunately, Mearsheimer and Walt, while agreeing that the lobby's influence needs to be mitigated, are rather vague on how this might come about. For instance, they write that:

To foster a more open discussion, Americans of all backgrounds must reject the silencing tactics that some groups and individuals in the lobby continue to employ. Stifling debate and smearing opponents is [sic] inconsistent with the principles of vigorous and open dialogue on which democracy depends, and continued reliance on this undemocratic tactic runs the risk of generating a hostile backlash at some point in the future.

America needs a more open debate on its support for Israel, and a more even-handed relationship with the country, but given the strength of the lobby, what concrete steps are needed to make this happen? The authors urge the government to use its "considerable leverage" to sway Israeli policy-makers, apparently forgetting the lobby has its own "considerable leverage."

Legitimate criticisms of their book, like this one by Martin Kramer (whom the authors identify as part of the lobby but not a neoconservative) should focus on the extent to which Israel is a strategic asset or liability and offer more than the usual talking points on Israel's moral and democratic credentials. Bad criticism leans towards accusing the authors of anti-Semitism, which the right uses to bash the left in pretty much the same way that the left uses "racism" to bash the right. Consider this laughably simplistic piece by George Shultz. It's not quite as vicious as something by Alan Dershowitz or Marty Peretz, but it's still utterly unencumbered by knowledge of the book. It's always a good idea to read a book before "reviewing" it; every single accusation or veiled accusation the former Secretary of State makes is demolished in the book. Let me cite just a few examples:

"Jewish groups are influential. They also largely agree that the United States should support Israel. But the notion that they have anything like a uniform agenda and that U.S. policy in Israel and the Middle East is the result of this influence is simply wrong."Quite so, and this is in fact exactly what the authors write: the Israel lobby is not exclusively a Jewish lobby.

"Anyone who thinks that Jewish groups constitute a homogeneous "lobby" ought to spend some time dealing with them." Again, the authors make this point very clear in their book: left-leaning Jewish groups critical of Israel's policies and the extent of US support for Israel exist, but their influence isn't quite as great as the more right-wing groups.

"The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just." For goodness sake George, have you even read the book that you're criticising? And I really don't see how someone who supported the Nicaraguan contras can talk about morality as a justification for foreign policy. It is "morally just" to support Israel's right to exist, but this isn't what the authors are interested in.

Thank you, that's all for now.

Term's over

2007-10-26T21:06:00.000+08:00

Term's over

For the students that is. I still have remedials, a 5-day student development workshop, a staff conference, and THIMUN, all of which will consume November. Only then do I get my holiday, which I'll probably spend reading a lot of History in preparation for next year. Besides regular H2, I also have to read up on the H3 topics that the students have chosen.

H3 numbers are multiplying -- although it remains to be seen whether the admin will let all of them take it. I'm a little concerned that some of the new applicants don't really know what they're getting themselves into, particularly those who applied to do ancient and medieval history whose research I'll probably end up supervising. If the past is a foreign country, medieval Europe for Singaporeans is quite possibly the equivalent of North Korea.

Research topics

2007-10-23T08:01:00.000+08:00

Potential research topics

From Maya Jasanoff's review of Piers Brendon's Decline and Fall of the British Empire:

This touches on the chief casualty of Brendon's descriptive approach: the relative absence of explanation and analysis. After so much rich narrative, one is left craving synthesis - particularly comparison across regions, for such interconnections help make an empire what it is. How, for example, did the use of partition in Ireland in 1921 influence its subsequent application in Palestine and south Asia? How might British counter-insurgency tactics developed in one domain - South Africa or Ireland, Palestine or Malaya - have been replayed in others? (To say nothing of their influence on the Americans in Vietnam, or the French in Algeria.) To what extent did imperial personnel carry policies from region to region? What kinds of networks of influence existed among anti-colonial leaders, such as the black nationalists inspired by Gandhi, or advocates of non-alignment? Brendon nods in these directions, but readers looking for deep answers will want to turn elsewhere.

Marking's done!

2007-10-16T21:02:00.000+08:00

Marking's done!

Well, that was pleasant. 42 scripts last Thursday was quite a feat. I managed about 17 in school and 25 at home, accelerating towards the end to finish at around 11 pm. Now I just need to get the debriefs done by next Monday. I won't have time to go through all the questions in great detail, given the administration's ruling that teachers cannot mention the promos at all in the two weeks before the scripts are returned. How silly.

I'm more than halfway through Bayly and Harper's Forgotten Wars, the sequel to Forgotten Armies (which I haven't finished). It's an absolutely thrilling read, and I plan on incorporating chunks of it into my teaching of decolonisation next year; it really does explode the claim the British were quite happy to let go of Burma and Malaya. They really weren't, and the only reason that I've been promulgating this claim is to artificially "balance" the topic with the A-Levels in mind. As I will explain next week, dear students, it's about relative reluctance: you've got to draw a distinction between the Dutch and the French on the one hand, and the British and the Americans on the other. I hope I'm not causing you undue mental stress by revealing this.

The two Barzun books arrived via vPost today, and, taking a break from Bayly and Harper, I am halfway through The Modern Researcher already. Another book which I should get around to finishing, and which will also be directly useful next year, is Indonesian Destinies, by Theodore Friend, which is a history of independent Indonesia from someone who was there during the height of Suharto's New Order.

Forgotten Wars, Indonesian Destinies, and The King Never Smiles (banned in Thailand for lese majeste -- all the more reason to read it) should put at end to the belief that Southeast Asian history is boring. Don't let the constraints of time and syllabus get in the way of learning and intellectual pleasure.

On a rather sour note, I was involved in a car accident today. No fault of mine, as you might expect. A stupid taxi -- why is it always taxis? -- cut abruptly into my lane two cars ahead of me, forcing the guy in front of me to apply the emergency brake. I did the same thing, but couldn't avoid slamming into him. Said taxi scooted away hastily -- the cretin! Luckily, someone got his license plate number down. This is going to end up costing quite a bit; it looked as if the coolant was leaking. In the meantime, I hope the traffic police nail the bastard and the insurance people are kind and understanding.

75% done

2007-10-08T19:32:00.000+08:00

75% done

I have about 70 scripts left, to be completed by this Friday, or latest by next Monday.

I'm going to fail this quiz

2007-09-29T23:00:00.000+08:00

I'm going to fail this quiz

1) Aung San Suu Kyi

2) Cold War

3) ???

3) [There are two 3s] Footwear controversy

4) Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos

5) ????

6) Erh, floating mass?

6) [There are two 6s] Glasnost? Perestroika?

7) Erhhh, Guided Democracy??

8) National unity in Thailand (umbrella), maintained by Buddhism, the military, and the monarchy.

The Lee Bollinger Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Despotism

2007-09-25T19:57:00.000+08:00

The Bollinger Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Despotism

I haven't read the transcript or watched a video of A-jad's performance yet, but all indications seem to be that he made Bollinger look like a fool, and a bad host to boot. As for the full and frank exchange of ideas that Bolly, Coatsworth, and co. hoped would take place, well, it didn't. Ross Douthat nails it: "There are no controversial ideas here; there are, in fact, no ideas at all." Net result: A-jad's reputation remains largely intact and possibly even goes up in the eyes of some leftists. Bolly and Columbia's image, hardly sterling to begin with -- particularly on matters Middle Eastern -- plummets even further. It's notable that the Business and Law School Deans opposed the move. This will do wonders for intra-faculty relations in the future.

Here's a thought. In the name of free speech and "listen[ing] to ideas we deplore" (Bolly's words), Columbia should go the distance and set up a forum for the world's worst dictators to share their views. We could have Kim Jong-il dilate on Keeping Stalinism Kicking: How to Sustain Your Very Own Cult of Personality. Omar al-Bashir of Sudan could drop in to discuss the Logistics of Genocide. Heck, I'm sure Osama's willing to talk about the History of Islam via video link from his cave in Pakistan. Or he and Bashir could share a panel on Persecuting the Faithless. The possibilities are endless!

It's coming!

2007-09-25T19:11:00.001+08:00

It's coming!

The students, predictably, are not looking forward to History on Friday. Three hours, four essays. Precious little room for faffing -- get in, dissect question in 5 min or less, then write for 40 min for 3-4 pages. Stop, rinse, repeat -- that is, if the finger cramps don't get to you first. From what I recall, the cramps go away after a while. Make sure to warm up before hand.

The good news is that it's nigh impossible to fail History if you've put in the requisite amount of work -- which, to be fair, is quite a lot -- and interpret the question correctly. Simply regurgitating previously learnt material on the essay topic (as opposed to the question), for instance, usually gets you 14-15. Four 15s will get you a 60, which is a B. To fail, you'll need to score 10s and 11s. That's really, really hard.

Friday is also when the marking starts. I have just about two weeks to get through 300 or so essays. Time to get those red pen refills. I reckon five refills ought to last the course.

Notes from seven hours spent in Borders today

2007-09-04T22:13:00.000+08:00

Notes from seven hours spent in Borders today

Spent quality time today in Borders with one of the most brilliant people I know. The following talking points surfaced over the course of seven hours (you should have seen my parking bill afterwards):

Singapore needs a libertarian, centre-right political party, and not a centre-left one, to effectively challenge the PAP's hegemony. It would take a leaf (several leaves) out of the PAP's book, but champion political liberties instead of "soft authoritarianism" (a concept, dear students, which we'll be looking at shortly). We think it should be called the Singapore Liberal Party, and that neither of us will have anything to do with it (because he's a foreigner and I despise politicking).

Human beings survive existentially by ordering, limiting, and therefore simplifying experience; and (a proper) education assists us in this regard by supplying the ideas, categories, and facts which help us understand ourselves, the world, and our relationship with the world. Far too many people, however -- especially the so-called educated -- do not and cannot move beyond fixed and narrow ways of perceiving experience, and in doing so miss out on what the poet Louis MacNeice calls "the drunkenness of things being various." (The poem is "Snow," for those of you who may be interested.)

Martin Luther was not a very nice guy at all (kill the disobedient peasants!) and John Calvin was a religious totalitarian.

Far too many Christians are ignorant of their religion's long and complicated history.

Religion can both constrain and amplify immoral behaviour. Atheists and secular humanists are perfectly capable of behaving morally.

The argument, frequently employed by theists and Christians in particular to defend religion, that 20th century secular tyrants (Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao) were responsible for murdering more people than religious zealots were, while strictly true, is considerably weakened by the following propositions: 1) secular ideologies like Communism and Fascism had all the trademarks of fundamentalist religions (see Calvin's Geneva); 2) religious leaders and institutions -- the Catholic Church in particular -- were frequently complicit in the crimes of these secular tyrants.

Now, I should really get back to those lecture notes...

Thank you again, Tim Burke

2007-09-02T21:46:00.000+08:00

Thank you again, Tim Burke

For more excellent advice on applying to graduate school. His first post on the topic can be found here.

Things to do over the holidays

2007-08-31T17:39:00.000+08:00

Things to do over the holidays

Revision materials (including the History Game)
Malaysia / Singapore lecture notes
Term assignment debrief notes
Finish marking (sorry 08A01D!)
Read some non-school related books
Watch Liverpool crush Derby
Play some Oblivion / DotA
Find some time to hang out with friends

Teacher's Day

2007-08-31T17:14:00.000+08:00

Teacher's Day

Ended up with a load of cards, chocolates, and gifts from today's and last night's Teacher's Day festivities. To all my students reading this: a big thanks. Special kudos must go to the J1 Humanz kids for their Thursday night "Tea for Teachers," which had me and all the others in absolute stitches throughout. I never realised how I walked until Aaron impersonated me. Though I am quite aware of how I talk. Which is not how I write. And I do not fabricate neologisms. Every single word I use can be found in the OED.

Things that make me angry

2007-08-09T14:28:00.000+08:00

Things that make me angry

Browsing the Straits Times can be unbearable at times. I'm one of maybe ten people on this island who considers the state of prose -- no pun intended -- to be an important barometer of the nation's health and who gets upset by bad writing. Consider this latest egregious specimen, culled from today's Forum page:

As global uncertainties are now greater than ever, I contend that the long-term security and prosperity of Singapore require a shift in paradigm to one in which we cultivate a broad-based pool of highly critical and creative thinkers from multiple disciplines [italics mine].

The author isn't a government official, but he sure does his clichés like our ministries' finest press secretaries. There are six of them in the small sentence above, each a sin against the English language and clear thought. Since I'm in a particularly vicious mood right now -- it is Imagined Community and Manufactured Enthusiasm Day, after all -- I'm actually going to explain what any avid reader of good literature will tell you is self-evident: I'm going to devote time and space to analysing that sentence.

So, "global uncertainties are now greater than ever." Than ever? Ever? Even greater than during the Great Depression, Second World War, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1970s oil crisis, Asian Financial Crisis, general crisis of the 14th century? Every generation takes perverse comfort in reassuring itself that the world is going to hell in a handbasket (a uniquely American term, apparently; I first heard it from Bill Spengemann), but is never able to demonstrate even the slightest ounce of historical judgement required to validate such sweeping, inelegant claims.

Why always talk about "long-term security and prosperity"? Why not just say "future"? More matter with less art.

No no no no no no. Do not ever use paradigm shift unless you have read Thomas Kuhn (I haven't) and know precisely what it means. Even then, it's intellectual pretentious. All that the author is saying is that we ought to think differently. Which is ironic, since he's not doing that at all.

"[B]road-based pool" just doesn't make sense at all. It's an awful metaphor.

Ah, "critical and creative thinkers." And not ordinary ones, but "highly" to boot! (Maybe it's just me, but "highly critical" brings to mind crabby Chinese teachers.) We've abused this catchphrase so much that we no longer have any clear idea what it means, except that it is a Very Good Thing (rather like Democracy in some other places). Seriously now. You can neither legislate morality nor marshal intelligence and intellect to serve the ends of nation-building.

What does the author mean by"multiple disciplines"? Are we talking about scholarly disciplines like Anthropology, Physics, History, Art, and Music here, or pseudo-subjects like Hotel Administration, Event Planning, and Motivational Speaking? Because you aren't going to find very many "highly critical and creative" artists, physicists, musicians, and anthropologists who are willing to hang around in this place. Certainly not when they are only supposed to be contributing to "long-term security and [material] prosperity."

The ideas underpinning the sentence aren't only bad and lacking in analytical rigour; they're also markedly unoriginal: we need more intelligent people to ensure our nation's future. It's common sense (which, as one begins increasingly to realise, isn't very common at all), and the government has been saying it for years. Why has our author cottoned on to this only now?

Sadly, what limited experience (which, "though noon auctoritee / Were in this world, is right ynogh for me") I do have of Singaporean prose suggests that sentences like the above are the norm rather than the exception. I've no way of proving this, of course, to any satisfactory degree, except to say that I don't recall ever reading anything in the local print media that's struck me as really well-written. The best Singaporean prose stylist, as far as I can tell, is Xenoboy, but while the quality of online writing is on the whole much higher, we still have a long way to go before we can match up to the likes of this guy.

Just a sobering thought, this Imagined Community and Manufactured Enthusiasm Day.

Required reading

2007-07-30T20:48:00.000+08:00

Required reading

I can't believe I didn't come across PhDinHistory earlier.

Oh, and free JSTOR access (at the moment, only from work) is bliss.

King Lear

2007-07-22T20:24:00.000+08:00

King Lear

Watched King Lear with Ian McKellen last night. It was predictably superb, even if the (very expensive) seat that I had paid for did not always give me a clear view of the stage, particularly when there were a lot of people on it. Besides Sir Ian, I thought that the guy who played Edmund was also excellent. Although you have to admit that Edmund, like Richard III, does get to play to the audience a great deal. Am warming to Edmund as a villain, but still prefer Iago.

It's been five years since I read King Lear for Saccio's English 24; I did give it a shot earlier this year after buying tickets to the play, but never finished it. I should finish it. But really, lecture notes come first!

I've been discovered!

2007-07-17T17:48:00.000+08:00

I've been discovered!

08A13B, allow me to congratulate you for being the first class (as far as I know) to uncover this and my other blog.

Similarly intrepid work on your class presentations and term assignments will be much appreciated!

Computers and writing

2007-07-14T18:18:00.000+08:00

Computers and writing

This James Fallows piece from the July 1982 edition of The Atlantic (linked to by Andrew Sullivan) got me thinking about how my own prose style has been shaped by the machine I use to write. Now you'd think that a computer ought to speed up the writing process. For me it's the opposite: I write slower because of MS Word -- much, much slower. While I type faster than I write, it takes me longer to churn out a piece of work on the computer than I'd take if I simply wrote it out by hand. And the word-processed article would be much, much better. This, I realise, isn't only because I'm something of a perfectionist when it comes to my own writing (and frequently, other people's as well), but because Word allows me to indulge my perfectionist habits without having to waste pages and pages of paper.

I am far less finicky when it comes to handwritten work, because I can't bear cancelling and editing my own prose and seeing a page full of cancellations and arrows. That said, my handwritten stuff isn't bad either -- although it tends to be full of semicolons -- because of the many, many exams that I've sat for, and because paying attention to one's typewritten work has spillover effects. I guess being a sensitive (to language) literary type helps as well.

Right, back to next week's work then.

History lectures

2007-06-19T23:45:00.000+08:00

History lectures

I'm preparing my History lectures as I write this. They're coming along really...slowly. I've started work on the introductory lecture, which provides a broad overview of postcolonial Southeast Asian political history in accordance with the themes emphasised in the syllabus, but have decided to do more work on individual countries first before returning to it. Right now, the country I'm focusing on is Indonesia, whose post-independence history, particularly during the period 1956-1965, is far more complex than my initial, generalised readings (Tarling, Steinberg, SarDesai) suggested. What the readings, especially the biography of Sukarno by J. D. Legge that I'm pouring through, have driven home is the centrality of narrative in making sense of the past. There are no superior historiographical forms.

Alas, my lectures will not be in narrative form, because the MOE wants us to focus on themes and the exams require comparative analysis of these themes across countries in the region. Narrative is too old-fashioned for the presentist, cutting-edge new syllabus. For the political history of postcolonial Southeast Asia, the themes are 1) different forms of government (democracy vs. authoritarianism), 2) the role of the military, and 3) the role of the Communist parties. Indonesia is the first country I am discussing because all three of them manifest themselves fully in its history from Sukarno to Suharto. Unfortunately, the themes overlap, particularly during the period of Guided Democracy, which saw Sukarno play an ultimately fatal balancing act between the resurgent Communists and the military. I cannot, intellectually and therefore pedagogically, separate them; only a narrative adequately captures the fluidity of the period. But if I persist with a narrative framework, my students will accuse me of not directly addressing the requirements of the syllabus. Some compromise between the two will be necessary, and finding that compromise has been my burden over the past few days.

Which leads me to my next point: students. Or to be more specific -- since historians are always wary of over-generalising -- RJC History students in 2007. Whether or not they're more intelligent than my generation is irrelevant and ultimately unknowable. But they're certainly better off. I've sat in on their lectures and tutorials and seen their lecture notes, and still cannot believe how much better the teaching of History at RJC is these days. Students get proper lecture notes, for starters. Their assignments and exams come with actual post-mortems. Tutorials do more than just work out essay outlines. And the teachers certainly care much more about their students, as both their tutorials and the unbelievably detailed comments on students' essays suggest. I say all of this to underscore the enormity of the task that lies ahead. As much as I believe in teaching intellectual self-sufficiency -- something I partially learned while in JC -- it looks like I'll have to spoonfeed them more than I would like to, and perhaps more than the students deserve.

Ultimately, it'll be good for me though, given my future career plans. I already feel that I know Indonesian history under Sukarno better than anything since Prester John three years ago.

(By the way, I'd rather that this post, even if it is good enough, not be featured on the Intelligent Singaporean. Sooner or later students will find this blog of mine -- maybe they already have -- but until then, I'd rather it remain discreetly tucked away. If I do write something that I think the rest of the Singapore blogosphere should read, you can be sure that I'll say just that.)

Star Wars

2007-06-02T20:52:00.001+08:00

Star Wars

All six episodes are on TV today. Episode IV just ended. I still can't believe how bad the new movies are. This site has much, much more on how much I-III suck.

Looking forward

2007-06-01T18:55:00.000+08:00

Looking forward

Like Thomas Kuhn ("Paradigm Shift"), Francis Fukuyama ("End of History"), and C. P. Snow ("Two Cultures"), Benedict Anderson is destined to be remembered solely for coining a catchphrase which everyone (including myself) quotes without really understanding. Well, I'm nearly done with Imagined Communities and can happily report (and feel smug about it at the same time) that nations are not just imagined communities, but imagined, limited, and sovereign communities. It's a dense read -- Anderson really likes quoting Dutch, Indonesian, French, German, Tagalog, and Spanish sources without translating them (my feeble French gets me by sometimes). That said, his erudition, wit, and historical-mindedness are a pleasure to behold and imbibe. But more on him and the book in the future, if ever.

Moving on. I am free until Monday, when my &^%*$! "Enrichment Programme" at NIE starts. Visits to ITE (why?) and Tuas Naval Base (why??). Talks on financial literacy and giving money to NTU (are they kidding?). Why can't they just give us time off -- to prepare our lessons, to go on holiday, to idle? Or at the very least, they could limit the "Enrichment" to a handful of days, instead of two freakin' weeks. Anyway, I will be there in person, but absent in spirit: an iPod, laptop, DVDs (time to watch Lord of the Rings again?), and books should help me pass the hours. Or I could just not turn up, in a stunning act of civil disobedience.

A future student

2007-05-30T16:00:00.000+08:00

A future student

One of the Foreign Minister's sons will be a student of mine at RJC. I actually like him -- the Minister, that is, since I don't know the son yet -- more than some of his colleagues, and I can't say I have any major quarrels with how our foreign policy is conducted.

"Confucius, he say, name go in book"

2007-05-26T22:56:00.000+08:00

"Confucius, he say, name go in book"

This is brilliant.

How flattering

2007-05-15T18:31:00.000+08:00

How flattering

Instapundit, reacting to the news that Mike "Nurse" Bloomberg is contemplating a run for the American presidency, suggests that he adopt the campaign slogan "Making America like Singapore, only more so."

He'll have to be pretty awful, then.

Ugh...back to NIE

2007-05-15T18:25:00.000+08:00

Ugh...back to NIE

I'm back in NIE for the next couple of weeks, and was reminded today why I hate that sorry excuse for an institution of higher learning and can't wait to leave it. We had a Civics and Moral Education (CME) workshop in the afternoon for three hours conducted by some random MOE pod person. I had been prepared to wisecrack my way through it, but after half an hour or so I lost all patience and made a beeline for my tutor's office to gripe about life.

There's only so much condescension I can take. I'm in my mid-20s and university-educated. I don't appreciate being spoken to or treated as if I were a little kid -- which is precisely what the MOE minion did. We did a collage using scissors, glue, postcards, and fashion magazines -- primary school art class, anyone? We were organised into groups based on actions ("swim," "dance," etc.) written on little slips of paper that we had to perform. She had this...this rattle or buzzer which she used to signal the end of an activity. And, to top things off, she had this green card which she said she'd use to eject recalcitrant students from the class. I asked her for it immediately, but she wasn't willing to play along. Ah, that famous MOE sense of humour again. It was then that I decided to take my leave and seek refuge elsewhere.

Hell is other people, as Sartre once said.

RJC

2007-05-08T17:28:00.000+08:00

RJC

Finally, what I've been waiting almost a year for: confirmation that I'll be going to RJC -- eight years after graduating from there. The letter arrived this afternoon, surreptitiously, while I was asleep, and much earlier than I expected.

The hard work starts now, I suppose. (Ok, I laboured at Queensway, but admittedly not that much after I had finished my observations.) The new school (or old school) has been in touch, and I am heading up there tomorrow afternoon for a benchmarking meeting, at which I will discuss four 2,000-word essays that I've marked and be given 30 more to critique. If you think that's a lot, well, I'll be marking 120 mid-year exam papers come July, on top of having to prepare for lectures and tutorials.

I won't mind it though. I've started delving into postwar Southeast Asian history and though not as compelling as, say, the fall of Rome, it has its historiographically interesting parts. For instance, I'm intrigued by the question over whether or not the end of colonial rule in Southeast Asia after World War II was inevitable. It looks so at first given how badly hit the European powers were by the war. But as my handy Cambridge History points out, their wartime losses made them redouble their efforts to reimpose their rule on countries whose nationalist movements had also been severely affected by the Japanese Occupation. For some reason, Herbert Butterfield comes to mind here, and I think I will make use of him in my first lecture. I might actually have to read The Whig Interpretation of History first though.

One more week

2007-04-27T20:02:00.000+08:00

One more week

And not a full week at that, since Tuesday's a holiday and I've invigilation duties on Friday. So I won't be seeing my Sec 2 classes, which is a relief, since they're both horrible.

Two weeks more

2007-04-21T22:43:00.000+08:00

Two weeks more, two weeks more...

The end is near

2007-04-15T13:30:00.000+08:00

The end is near

Three weeks more. The coming week's a full week, the one after that's punctuated by the language mid-year exams, and the last week features Labour Day on Tuesday and the start of the rest of the exams.

The clock is ticking

2007-04-06T01:31:00.000+08:00

The clock is ticking

Ooh, three-day weekend! And four weeks left! Onward!

Two weeks down

2007-04-01T13:03:00.000+08:00

Two weeks down

Five (or four and a half) to go. And four days next week.

I just

2007-04-01T12:39:00.000+08:00

I just

forked out $250 to watch Ian McKellen play King Lear in Singapore on 21 July at the Esplanade. Expensive, but well worth it. Note to self: must re-read the text (which I first read for Saccio's English 24) before watching the play.

One week down

2007-03-25T17:18:00.000+08:00

One week down

Six (or five and a half) to go. Hang in there.

Publications I subscribe to

2007-03-17T18:19:00.000+08:00

Publications I subscribe to

These are the journals and magazines that I subscribe to and get delivered to both my real and virtual mailboxes.

Journal of Modern History -- Published quarterly, the JMH covers European history from the early modern period to the present and helps me stay in touch (barely) with trends and developments in historical scholarship.

Newsweek -- Mostly read by my dad. We used to subscribe to Time, but found Newsweek to be meatier. Fareed Zakaria is always worth a read.

The American Scholar -- To be honest, I preferred the Scholar under Anne Fadiman, who kept the journal out of partisan politics and focused on publishing essays. The new man at the helm, Robert Wilson, has expanded its focus to include political pieces resembling those in the Atlantic and New Republic. Most of these pieces are very good, but I can get them elsewhere.

The Atlantic Monthly -- I love its unpredictability and eclecticism: Vatican politics, Iraq, computer games, food. Christopher Hitchens and James Fallows are superb.

The Economist -- Unmatched in breadth, it helps me keep abreast of political affairs throughout the world. I don't read the stuff on business and finance though.

The New Criterion -- Conservative cultural review whose format hasn't changed at all since its founding. Though predictably dogmatic on a number of issues (like postmodernism), its authors write superbly and aren't afraid to flaunt their erudition. I also get this for free.

The New Republic -- The publication whose political position I agree with the most at the present time. Although more political than the Atlantic, its cultural and literary sections are equally as good.

Just a quick note about a website you shouldn't take seriously

2007-03-13T22:02:00.000+08:00

Just a quick note about a website you shouldn't take seriously

Commenting on something I scribbled in January, Dr Dee (who sterling contributions to this thread are to be applauded) asks me for my views on the Jews and the origins of the Second World War. Unfortunately, the article on Kristallnacht he links to, and from which he derives his question, comes from the Institute of Historical Review, which automatically makes it useless. (I know, I'm guilty of the genetic fallacy.) The IHR (not to be confused with the Institute for Historical Research) is the world's leading Holocaust denial organisation, frequented by the world's leading anti-Semitic crackpots masquerading as "scholars" in search of "real history."

Richard Evans, the historian whose history of the Third Reich I mentioned in the earlier post, has in fact written a book demolishing the claims of the IHR's foremost contributor, David Irving, who shot to fame in 2000 following a hugely publicised libel case in Britain. For those of you not familiar with the Irving trial, let me summarise: Irving, a writer with no academic credentials but plenty of books to his name, sued academic historian Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier in one of her books. Since the case was heard in Britain, where libel laws favour the plaintiff, the burden of proof was on Lipstadt, who had to show that her accusation was accurate. Evans, a professor of History at Cambridge and a leading historian of 19th and 20th century Germany, became one of Lipstadt's expert witnesses; he was tasked with assembling the evidence required to prove Lipstadt's accusation. His involvement in the trial is detailed in Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, which is a superb, meticulously argued piece of work. Oh, and needless to say, Irving lost.

Let's glance at the article Dr Dee mentioned. Don't be fooled by the footnotes. Look closer, and you'll notice that the author of the piece gets just about everything wrong. She cites almost no secondary literature whatsoever; even if you're going to say something radically different from what everyone else is saying, you've still got to respect everyone else. That's why real scholarly articles almost always begin with a literature review. The IHR article is equally lacking in primary sources to substantiate the author's claim that "I found many facts which do not agree with the generally accepted thesis" -- which, by the way, is the sort of statement that you'll never catch respectable historians saying. Facts? As the late US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Ingrid Weckert is both making up her own "facts" and ignoring established ones. For instance, she writes that the Final Solution "did not mean physical extermination -- it meant only emigration of the Jews from Germany," but supplies no evidence for this ridiculous claim. I could go on, but I won't. I don't like reading dishonest, ideologically-motivated, anti-Semitic claptrap, even if it does show you the way history shouldn't be written.

By the way, Dr Dee, I'm not blaming you for citing the piece. I'm pretty sure you're not an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier, just someone who's fallen for the IHR's dishonesty. It's easy to fall prey to internet hoaxes, as I myself will personally testify.

Nota Bene

2007-03-04T16:41:00.000+08:00

Nota Bene

I said it before and I'll say it again, now that the A-Level results have been released: think really hard about why you want that government scholarship. If you go for one, make sure that your reasons are clear and honest, and that you've considered all possible consequences. This last bit I emphasise because a lot happens in university that can change the way you see yourself and your country. I speak from experience here. If you need more details, find out what happened to Elia Diodati, or AcidFlask.

You may also want to check out this post at Fearfully Opinionated, which links to several articles on scholarships, including the one I wrote a few months ago. See also the tireless Aaron Ng, here.

Here we go

2007-03-01T22:20:00.000+08:00

Here we go

Nine weeks. Nineteen periods and ten lesson plans per week. Classes spanning Sec 1 to 4, Express to Normal (Technical). Social Studies. A trashy feelgood kid's book.

But great colleagues and fellow teacher trainees. Banana chocolate smoothies in the canteen. Animal Farm, Macbeth. Some promising students as well.

Should I blog more?

2007-02-22T23:13:00.000+08:00

Should I blog more?

One of the most brilliant people I know has been telling me for some time that I should blog more often, since I obviously have lots of interesting things to say about, well, the sort of stuff that's featured on the Intelligent Singaporean daily. Actually, believe it or not, I don't. Oh, I have political opinions all right. I just don't think they're particularly blog-worthy most of the time. Most of my views tend to toe the left-liberal line, at least when it comes to local politics -- and there plenty of diligent and smart Singaporean libertarians out there that you can and should read first. I'll venture into politics when I think I do have something to say. In the meantime, I'll limit my commentary to stuff that I care and know about, like literature and history and education. (As for my personal life -- well, it's not that happening. In case you're wondering, I'm single and available. If you enjoy talking about European history, Liverpool Football Club, The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, and T. S. Eliot's poetry, drop me a line.)

Two other obstacles stand in the way of my blogging. One is time. I just don't have much of it these days. My Practicum starts on Monday, and I'll be knee-deep in lesson plans before very long. When I do have free time, I'll probably be reading Jacques Barzun to keep me sane. Reading is always ahead of blogging in my list of priorities.

Second, I'm a really, really slow writer. A lot of people think that I write well and therefore assume that I write quickly, but if I do write well, it's because I'm a verbal perfectionist who agonises over every word, sentence, and paragraph and loathes having to rewrite anything. In the spirit of the essay, I also write in order to figure out something that I think I know, to test and straighten out half-formed thoughts and not to verbalise fully-formed ones. That invariably entails a lot of backtracking and revising. Very often I abandon posts halfway because I don't think I'm getting anywhere, or because I realise that I don't really know much about the topic and need to spend more time reading about it first.

Apropos of writing, I have some thoughts on writing that I should look to turn into a blog post sooner or later. Don't hold your breath about it though.

All's well that ends well

2007-02-16T14:36:00.000+08:00

All's well that ends well

I'm not sure how this Guardian columnist can call the ending to The Lord of the Rings a happy one, let alone the trilogy one of the top ten books with a happy ending. This is what she writes:

Forget the films, read the book. It's too reductive to call it an allegory but you'll feel like you've survived a world war - which is how the author must have felt when he'd finished writing this giant epic. After the advancing armies of Sauron and his allies have been defeated at last, there's nothing happier than a cosy cup of tea back in the green and pleasant Shire. This is one of those books which reminds you to be really happy that England exists.

Did she actually finish reading The Return of the King? It doesn't end with tea and crumpets, or the defeat of Sauron, but with Frodo, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the elves departing Middle-earth for the Grey Havens in a partly symbolic act which marks the closing of the Third Age. Like Samwise, I've never understood why this had to take place. It comes so suddenly, and seems so unnecessary. It certainly isn't a happy ending, comparable to the others which she mentions (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Pride and Prejudice, etc.):

But to Sam the evening deepened to darkness as he stood at the Haven; and as he looked at the grey sea he saw only a shadow on the waters that was soon lost in the West. There still he stood far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart. Beside him stood Merry and Pippin, and they were silent.

I know that Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to the Shire after this, and that Sam (and Legolas and Gimli, according to the Appendices) actually ends up in the Grey Havens many years later, but the overwhelming sensation that one feels at this point is loss: things can't just go back to the way they once were, before the rise of Sauron, before the loss of innocence that the journey to Mordor and back entailed.

Two books that immediately come to mind when I think about happy endings are Lucky Jim and The Divine Comedy. The first time I read Lucky Jim, I focused too much on its depiction of academia -- I was writing my thesis at the time and contemplating a professional career in History (I still am); only the second time around, while in transit through Hungary on the way home from a summer holiday in Croatia, did I pay attention to its plot, and the character of Christine. As for Dante, well, if you accept the premises of the Comedy, what greater happiness can there be than having a divinely-inspired orgasm (and knowing that the horrifically boring Paradiso is finally at an end)?