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
Art, museums and Biebs
The Louvre in France is once again the most visited museum in the world for the fifth consecutive year, 9.7 million visits last year; that’s a lot. Pickpockets managed to close it down anyway which is very funny. Also in the news is the Anne Frank museum, not many people have visited the Anne Frank House and some, especially youngsters may not even know who she was but thanks to Justin Bieber, some Beliebers probably do now. The museum isn’t one of the most visited in the world but with over a million visits yearly it ranks second to Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands which is quite impressive considering the fact that it is a non-art, local history museum. More impressive is the story of
The slippery slope fallacy
I’ve been pondering over the slippery slope argument and how it relates to marriage equality for a while now, never knew it was one of the many logical fallacies in philosophy/ethics neither did I know well reasoned arguments have been made for and against it by those who feel strongly about the matter which made me a little disappointed but that’s okay after all, I’m no philosopher or lawyer. In this context, it simply means; if you open the gate for one, all will flood in. Now that’s a scary thought but never mind, if you’re feeling worried, all you need to do is find reasoned arguments made in favour of marriage equality in the context of the slippery slope fallacy and you’ll be fine. If you go on to seek reasoned opposing arguments, then you might end up getting confused but better
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