Neat Search Gadgets

Blogger seems now to have access to most (maybe all) the Google gadgets which can be added to an iGoogle personal homepage. There are tens of thousands of these handy tools. Since letting you do more net search easier and faster with better results is one main aim of this blog, I've put a small number of search-related gadgets at the bottom of this webpage.



Try them. They're easy to use. During your visit to Starting Points, you can do your own searches and customize them to a significant degree. The only exception is Breaking News which I pre-set to generate every few seconds self-refreshing current news on all the blog's subjects mentioned in its masthead. In Breaking News, you can click on any headline which appears to get the full story -- which will open in a new browser tab.

While I may change or add some other bottom-page gadgets as the blog evolves, here's a how-to on the other stuff there now as I write this.

TwitterSearch appears because I gradually became convinced Twitter could consistently yield useful results. Type in any searchword in any language and hit return. When the page is refreshed in your browser, or you return to the blog, the default search reverts to the last one carried out by any user of the gadget.

Easy Wikipedia Search lets you search nine different language versions of Wikipedia. Every version of Wikipedia has its own content. Non-English versions are not translations of the English version. Use the drop-down menu to choose a Wikipedia version other than the English one. The developer accidentally put French -- FR -- twice in the menu. Otherwise, the gadget seems to work well. Just remember to type your search keyword in the language of the Wikipedia you are using! For privacy and convenience reasons, your search keyword/s and results vanish after you leave the blog.

Google Mini Search lets you search three Google databases at once -- websites, videos, and blogs. Look for the three cute little boxes above each type of search result. By default, the first box brings just one result, the second brings up more, and the third brings up all Google's results for the search term/s. Again, your keywords and results are not saved on the blog page display after you leave it.

Search YouTube works simply. Type your search term/s and hit your keyboard's enter (return) key. You get a list of YouTube videos with image, filenames, and links. Just hit the image or link and you get taken directly to the video you select in a new tab. From that point on, you are operating on the very flexible YouTube site with its many options. Your YouTube searches vanish from this blogpage after you leave it. Others coming in at the same or later times will find the searchbox empty.

The English Patient

Seeing all the disasters now afflicting the world, a nice Friendster sent us some comic relief.

BOSS DAN PELAMAR

Boss : Nama saudara siapa?

Pelamar : Prawojo, pak.

Boss : Coba ceritakan tentang keluarga saudara!

Pelamar : Saya dua bersaudara, adik saya masih kuliah
di Jogya. Orang tua saya tinggal di Surabaya.
Kakek dan nenek dari Bapak tinggal di Solo. Kakek
dan nenek dari Ibu tinggal di Semarang. Paman dan
Pakde semua tinggal di Tegal.

Boss : Apakah saudara dapat berbahasa Inggris?

Pelamar : Yes, sir."

Boss : "Now tell me about your family in English!

Pelamar : "Sorry, sir. I don’t have family in
English. They’re all living in Indonesia."

TEACHER AND STUDENT (1)

Teacher : Where were you born?

Student : Singapore, sir.

Teacher : Which part?

Student : All of me, sir.

TEACHER AND STUDENT (2)

A teacher was asking her class: "What is the
difference between ‘unlawful’ and ‘illegal’ ?"

Only one hand shot up.

"Ok, answer, Joan," said the teacher.

"’Unlawful’ is when you do something the law doesn’t
allow and ‘ill-egal’ is a sick eagle, sir."

NUBRUK BULE

Seorang cewek yang bahasa Inggrisnya kacau-balau
suatu hari nubruk seorang bule ketika jalan-jalan di mall.

Cewek : I’m sorry.

Bule : I’m sorry, too.
Si cewek bingung. Doi ngerasa harus ngejawab tuh bule.

Cewek : I’m sorry, three.

Bule : What are you sorry for?

Cewek : I’m sorry, five.

PERPUSTAKAAN

Di tengah malam, telepon di rumah seorang petugas
perpustakaan bernama Bobi berdering.

"Selamat malam. Maaf mau tanya, perpustakaan buka jam berapa ya?" tanya suara seorang lelaki di telepon.

"Ya ampun, Anda menelepon tengah malam begini
hanya ingin tahu kapan perpustakaan buka?" tanya Bobi.

"Tapi ini sangat penting", kata penelepon.

"Jam sembilan pagi", kata Bobi.

"Jam sembilan? Tidak bisa lebih pagi lagi?" tanya si penelepon.

"Memangnya kenapa Anda ingin datang pagi-pagi?" tanya Bobi.

"Siapa bilang saya ingin datang? Saya ingin keluar dari perpustakaan ini."

Quo Vadis: Indonesian Studies on the Net

Once upon a time, I thought the net augured an imminent great leap forward for Indonesian studies. Chastened after laboring in these vineyards for over twenty years, I now know this hope was naive. The revolution never came. What happened instead was more visibility for the field, and incrementally greater access to, but far from optimal use of, much more primary documentation.

The problem starts with broad misunderstanding of who does this fuzzy thing called Indonesian studies. Knowledge workers do it -- these are people whose work is centered around creating, using, sharing and applying information. It is parochial thinking to consider Indonesian studies only, or even mainly, the pastime of academics, who are, it must be said, collectively very stingy in sharing their product on the public net in virtually any net place. They are still by and large secluded print people writing mainly for very narrow audiences with limited lifetimes.

Almost any Google advanced web search using keywords uniquely relevant to Indonesia and seeking pdf, doc, wpd, xls, ppt or even rtf files shows the relatively modest role of academics. Just compare search results from only the edu domain with those from all the public web. You have to use online library catalogs or Google Scholar, followed by hardly universally accessible licensed databases, to discover, then see, full-text published academic articles online relating to matters Indonesian. Surprisingly, major bookstore sites everywhere are are also underwhelming in their Indonesia holdings. These patterns hold for academic authors of all nationalities writing in any language.

Dirge

But isn't Indonesian studies beset, like most fields, by information overload, in print and in the net? Indeed, that is true. But not for all categories of information. And this leads to the most grating aspects of my lament, all of which are, in theory, fixable.

First, search skills among the online mob remain rudimentary. Second, selection of types of net places to search is in practice far too constrained. Third, pro-active individual and group creation of net knowledge is lethargic.

Google

Everybody Googles, that's good. But how, that's the rub. Minimally, you ought to be using a Google advanced websearch page, not the familiar spare default classic homepage. If you can't break away from the all too familiar, at least learn a few Google operators to use, special or simple.

Does all this seem too much? Go back to basic search guidance.

Yes, we can!

Not to be a pedant, no one really simply Googles. Google has many specialized searchable databases customized for types of content and users. Most will bring you far different Indonesia-related results than a general websearch. At least once try Googling blogs, books, catalogs, discussion groups, your own hard disk, your Gmails, a directory, planet earth, images, maps, news, news archives, products for sale, scholarly papers, videos, the US government's online holdings, operating systems documentation, and a host of other plain practical omissions from your repertoire.

A few more Googling admonitions. Use Google's (and others') tools for finding only material in specific other languages (including in Indonesian on AlltheWeb) while websearching. After searching in languages you don't normally read (maybe Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese), see if Google's language tools will render it into English or another language you prefer. FoxLingo is a magnificent source for translation sites and, optionally, a stunning Firefox add-on.

Read more about Indonesia faster. Try Google Reader to keep current effortlessly on new content (web feeds) posted to (not just blogs, but) any syndicated webpage (also called a webfeed). Reader has several simple built-in ways for finding content you want. You can even put your very own customized Indonesia Google News searches into Reader.

You can get quick-click button access to virtually all Google services by installing a Google Toolbar in your browser (choose the Firefox version, if possible, if not, use the Explorer version). You can integrate your entire net activity on Indonesia into your own almost magically made private personal website through iGoogle. Your iGoogle site makes a very satisfying browser startpage. Google Sites allows you to build quickly a nice public website for sharing your online Indonesia studies tools.

Beyond Google

Google deliberately does not (and cannot) index everything on the web for you. Try the jux2 search engine which places the results of Google,Yahoo, and MSN searches side-by-side (juxtaposition, hence the name). For example, it is a dirty little-known secret that Google is not exactly going to overwhelm you with competitor Yahoo! pages. Use jux2 to verify this by searching in it for two Yahoo! groups, indonesian-studies and east-timor-studies lists. How many years has Google hoodwinked you?

More zeal is needed by virtually everyone who has read this far to create new Indonesia-related search tools and content. For example, on Rollyo (for roll-your-own search engine), there are now a sizable number of Indonesia-related searchrolls. On Eurekster, there are modifiable search engines called swickis. Especially helpful are clustering search engines like Ask using Teoma search engine, and Clusty, using Vivisimo search engine. Try these pre-set websearches I created using just the keyword Indonesia on first, Ask (clusters on right side of search results), then Clusty (clusters on left side of search results) to see which one you prefer. I'm not terribly enthused about them but meta-search engines like Dogpile (simple), Mamma (subtle) and Zuula (whopping) comprise yet another search strategy. The learning curve for all the above (except searchrolls) is not steep.

Grow Collegiality

The full-range of possibilities in using the net for doing collaborative research on Indonesia go well beyond the scope of this brief essay. Some are straightforward -- use more personal blogs focused on Indonesia, team blogs, aggregator blogs (another example here) , phlogs (or here),
multiple-moderator lists, videos (or here), podcasting (or here), website columns, online libraries, and job boards. Help to flesh out Indonesia content on the multiple language Wikipedias.

Other options stray from beaten paths. Besides copious file-sharing and storage sites -- try here and here and here -- mashups and wikis (click here and here for some relevant lists) yield and incredible range of possibilities.

Instant messaging, now mostly free and increasingly multimedia like the spacehog but immensely popular Yahoo! Messenger, plus inexpensive internet telephony (like Skype , better than landline voice, now with very good video, or choose from Alexa's long list of permutations) , and social networking sites (like Facebook or Friendster or others mentioned in this Wikipedia list) create once unthinkable opportunities to discover and to work with potential Indonesian studies knowledge workers near and far.

Need to do advanced project management and collaboration? This, too, can now be done at places like Basecamp, WebOffice, and CentralDesktop.

Forgot something? In the field and worried you might need something stored only on your home or office PC? No problem anymore. Remote control software is here and implemented via broadband. You install the software in advance on both the near and remote computers. Think hard about security issues before you do it, but waiting for you are services like LogMeIn, and GoToMyPC. If the magic of remote access scares you, just carry your key programs with you on a flash drive using Portable Apps.

Will Timor-Leste Choose Its Past or Future? Two Films

Two enjoyable but very different full-length films on Timor-Leste (East Timor) have been revived on the net over the past year or so. Answered by Fire was originally a two-part mini-series which aired on Australian television. In the fiction-based-on-fact genre, it focuses on personal stories related to events surrounding Timor's vote for independence observed by UN personnel. It was shot entirely in Queensland. Its main stars play AFP (male, white) and a Canadian RCMP (female, white) officers and their Timorese translator (male, Timorese, nowadays best known as a Fretilin net activist). Viewers will come away with single-minded revengeful orientations toward the Indonesian military and state (even today) and, incidentally, not so flattering views of theUN in this period of history. The Timorese are victims, some saved, some not. The film is a thriller.



A Hero's Journey, a factual documentary now available on DVD, was produced almost entirely in Timor by a Singaporean. It is narrated throughout by Xanana Gusmao. The characters are almost all Timorese, some of whom Xanana encountered during the long years of Timorese resistance to Indonesian military occupation. While the film is not really Xanana's biography or autobiography, its time span covers most of his military and political life. Viewers will emerge with the view that while what happened can't be forgotten, Indonesians, civilian and military, must be forgiven in order for Timor to move on. Policies reflecting those views are in fact ones Xanana implemented first as President and now as Prime Minister. The film is a moving personal plea.

Revenge and forgiveness find totally convinced advocates in Timor today. Revenge centers in a certain segment of local civil society groups and some foreign activists (not including me). Forgiveness at least formally dominates the political class, including government and opposition. I could parse sentiment in a more complex way, but that seems to be the current big picture.

Watch the complete films on the YouTube links provided in this brief. See which side seems more convincing on what should be Timor's future path with regard to Indonesia, Indonesians, and, not least, the large Indonesian-educated slice of Timor's general population and educated elite.

Is UMNO Over?

In a highly critical (free, not fee) article in the March 2009 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review, Barry Wain, former editor of The Wall Street Journal Asia, seems to argue, no, but maybe it should be. He doesn't say this explicitly but that's how it sounds to me in his long article on Najib Razak's impending succession, through UMNO, as Malaysia's next Prime Minister. As I read it, I thought, like father (former PM Abdul Razak) like son. All the same behind-the-scenes power plays and dirty tricks through UMNO political secretaries. All the same fleeting gestures of tolerance to non-Malays while wielding the iron first in practice.

UMNO logo

The difference now is that UMNO in Tun Abdul Razak's time held overwhelming parliamentary control through UMNO, abetted later by the new Barisan Nasional coalition which replaced the original Alliance. But in the 2008 elections, the Barisan nearly lost power. Too, Tun Razak proved not adverse to invoking a state of emergency and widely abusing the ISA (Internal Security Act). The ISA is still with us, but in 1969 many (not including me) believed it necessary and arrests made under it justified. Now, the ISA is widely reviled and most Malaysians understand it is just a tool to repress any democratic opposition posing a threat to UMNO rule. Last, unlike the bad old days in which there was no obvious Malay politician who could hold the country together in an opposition coalition, in Anwar Ibrahim with his PKR, there is. And there is even the unacknowledged possibility, that Lim Kit Siang from DAP could become Deputy Prime Minister. While some may say, dream on, a new Pakatan government led by these two figures is now UMNO's nightmare, all the more so since the Barisan's many non-UMNO political party partners are, for all practical purposes, dead in the water.

Maybe ISA lightning and thunder are in the offing once again.

Background:
Far Eastern Economic Review
Wikipedia entry Politics of Malaysia
Wikipedia entry Malaysia General Election 2008
Anwar Ibrahim's blog
Lim Kit Siang's blog

Malay Language Chauvinism Breaks Out Again in KL

Sadly, Malay-language chauvinism never seems to die in Malaysia, even when it has been in the ascendancy for decades. Today, diehards held a large protest rally (much YouTubed) in Kuala Lumpur, calling for the end of a minor sensible policy concession proposed by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and implemented from January 2003 which mandated a gradual switch in instruction medium for science and mathematics from Malay to English from the first year in so-called national (Malay-medium) schools. Mahathir's rationale, widely considered to have merit, was to remedy serious decline in English competence (especially among Malay students), a handicap to future economic prospects. The policy change has improved this awkward situation somewhat in just the half-dozen years it has been in effect.



Well-organized segments of Malay teachers and Malay student leaders have always opposed any change to Malay as the main medium of instruction, even to the point of making it sole medium in the education system. Many in the raucous demonstration today (over 124 arrested by national police officers, according to The Star) were precisely these large factions of Malay teachers and other Malays vested in current language policies premised on the assumption that Article 152 of the Federal Constitution dictates those policies, an argument impossible to sustain rationally. Inspector-General of Police Musa Hassan proclaimed the procession illegal as he justified repeated use of tear gas and water cannons against more rowdy marchers. Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who will likely give way to Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak in just weeks, made his usual apologies for doing nothing by blaming the Ministry of Education for dilly-dallying in its consideration of the established policy and the current newly aroused highly politicized opposition to it. (This Ministry implements primary and secondary education policy, while tertiary education policy is guided by a new Ministry of Higher Education established in 2004.) It is possible the march was planned in part as a warning shot for Najib, who would likely not make any significant alteration to medium of instruction policy.

The huge crowd, estimated from "hundreds" (by the fairly cautious Singapore-based Channel News Asia) to "at least 5,000 ethnic Malays" (AFP) to "8,000" (Malaysiakini) to even higher numbers was physically led by opposition PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang, prominent Malay literary figure (Sasterawan Negara) A. Samad Said, 76, and former Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka director Hassan Ahmad. They worked under the formal demonstration sponsor, GNP, Gerakan Mansuhkan PPSMI (Movement to Abolish PPSMI), a coalition of 14 NGOs. PPSMI is the Malay acronym for Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran Sains dan Matematik, the policy protested today. A memorandum was successfully delivered to the State Palace (Istana Negara), official residence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (always a Malay), popularly known in English as 'king.' The march had begun at Masjid Negara, another potent symbols of Malay political hegemony.

Perhaps surprisingly to some, PKR Supreme Council member Badrul Hisham Shaharin in the opposition coalition Pakatan Rakyat, also participated, evidently in his private capacity. While PAS is regarded rightfully as the more conservative Malay Pakatan member, PKR is seen as its more open multi-racial though predominantly Malay component. There were no reports of participation by members of Pakatan's third partner, DAP, an outspoken proponent of multi-lingualism in medium of instruction and in official languages since its founding

Background:
Education in Malaysia
List of political parties in Malaysia

ISIM Closes Due to Lack of Funds

The International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World regrets to inform us all that ISIM has been closed from 1 January 2009, due to the lack of adequate funding. The institute is thus unable to continue the publication of the ISIM Review. We wish to express our great appreciation for its major contributions to the study of wider Muslim world.

All ISIM Review articles of the past ten years will remain digitally available for download below and from 2010 in the ISIM repository managed by the Leiden University Library.

From the ISIM site, this link looks like the easiest one from which to download all past ISIM Review issues.

Asian and ASEAN 'Tigers' Besieged

Two tough analytic comparative articles published today in the U.S. press nicely illustrate the worsening economic distress of the four Asian Tigers and key ASEAN hitherto thriving economies prior to the worsening global economic recession. Keith Bradsher reported his findings in The New York Times and Anthony Faiola in The Washington Post. Empowered in earlier years by strong export-oriented economies and stable profitable investments in industrialized countries, state sovereign wealth funds, state-owned corporations, private companies, and individual investors have suffered heavy losses almost across-the-board. Further anticipated drops in international trade will make matters worse in the ever-lengthening 'short-run.'

Outdated entries like Wikipedia's Economy of Singapore now read like very bad jokes. But ordinary Singaporeans are being officially reassured their government is on top of these so complex problems. Are you so confident as the Finance Minister ? Or do you feel more like the growing number of dubious expats? And what about this old lady who has no investments at all? I leave the abused maids, prostitutes, and beggars to your clicking fingers.

What Kind of Blog Is This?

It's a blog on contemporary affairs to make you think a bit. Hopefully, the countries and cultural areas covered will be of mutual interest. If not, thanks for visiting. Maybe we'll meet elsewhere.

I'll post some of my own viewpoints but nothing definitive. You will have to work a little to get better answers about sometimes complex and controversial issues. That's partly why a significant amount of possible interaction with me is built into the blog (screened comments on postings, my Gmail address (john.a.macdougall@gmail.com), my Facebook pages (you have to join or login if you're not already a member), with Google Talk (john.a.macdougall) and Skype (johnamacdougall) also possible but held in reserve because these tools can get too complex for many persons and disruptive to, ah, among others, me -- sorry about that. For related reasons, no land line or mobile calls. Many thanks.

Thrashing out issues is also why there are some old and new media search tools in the sidebar. Without ignoring print, the great variety of net resources is vastly underused.

That's also why there is, at the bottom of this main page, an always changing, breaking newsfeed, solely on the blog's topics, reflecting my main concerns. Clicking on any of those headlines will take you to the full story behind them. Thanks to Google for this gadget!

If you prefer to read in some other language than English, try using one or more of the translation aides on the net like Google Translate, Yahoo! Babel Fish, or the awesome FoxLingo add-on to the Firefox browser. Links to other translators are also neatly presented on the FoxLingo homepage.

Welcome to my world, all you good people. Together, let's make things happen. Yes, we can!

And how could I say hello without sending you a song, nay, a veritable concert by one of my younger friends. :-)