Four legs good, two legs better

Walking past the guy stuck in traffic on his Vespa PX scooter, I could not but admire the solid steel, metallic brown, scooter. A vespa is not the coolest two wheeler out there but compared to others like a bicycle, the ridiculous segway or this hideous thing on kickstarter, it was worthy of admiration. As a commuter cyclist, the longest I have ever cycled is 30 km on my hybrid bicycle, across a number of towns, starting from a park then into the city, uphill, downhill, on rail tracks and eventually on the highway. As a result, I am all for the safety of those on two wheels and take great interest most especially in the cycling infrastructure of cities, hence my excitement at the recent publishing of the

You’ve Got It Coming

The Times Higher Education’s April fools’ day prank was an article with the headline “Social media data to be included in new World University Rankings indicator”. While it’s hard to tell what the outcome of such rankings will be, there is one resounding opinion in higher education: Asian universities are gaining in reputation. I have witnessed this myself from the numerous research publications from that region, I have also heard of the immense pressure Asian academics are under to deliver high research outputs. When it comes to ranking universities, the Times Higher Education (THE) is my ranking of choice as it judges them using 13 indicators across teaching, international outlook, knowledge transfer and

Friend or Foe ?

Watching Star Wars; “A New Hope” & “The Empire Strikes Back” on May 4th (Star Wars day) was thought-provoking as it involved aliens, droids and humans in peaceful coexistence. Most evidence and trace of aliens can only be found in Hollywood, science fiction, and conspiracy theories while science research hangs on to shreds of evidence which suggest we rethink our long held expectations of aliens. Humanoid robots, on the other hand are fascinating, high tech, intelligent creatures which are already part of many societies and in some cases have already become man’s other best friend going by their mutually