Discrimination against Malaysian natives is proven beyond doubt!

http://www.ukm.my/news/index.php/en/extras/1464-discrimination-against-hiring-of-malay-graduates-.html

By Shahfizal Musa

Pix Shahiddan Saidi

BANGI, 4 June 2013 - Race more than résumé quality is the main consideration for getting an interview for jobs in Chinese controlled and International companies in this country.

This was the finding of two senior lecturers from the University of Malaya, Dr Lee Hwok Aun from the Department of Development Studies and Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid in a six month experiment they undertook to find out whether response to applications for jobs are based on ethnicity of the applicants.

Dr Lee presented the findings at a seminar on “Degrees of Discrimination: Race and Graduate Hiring in Malaysia”  organised by Institute of Malaysian and International Studies of The National University of Malaysia (UKM) here today.

The findings are based on a field experiment conducted by them through the sending out of fictitious Malay and Chinese résumés of varying qualities to job advertisements, then analysing differentials in callbacks for interview.

Overall 22.1% of the Chinese applicants receive call backs from prospective employers with the Malay applicants receiving only 4.2% call backs.

Dr Lee said they took great pains and care to ensure that the resumes they sent out to employers have very little differences in achievements. "Resumes that were sent to employers are comparable in quality so that differences in treatment be more objectively attributed to racial identity”.

He cautioned the media that their study was only about the employment situation for fresh graduates. It was not done to find out why ethnic Chinese are preferred.

Analysis of the results was extensive with the figures clearly showing that there is discrimination against Malay graduates even in Malay controlled companies where the number of call backs received by Chinese candidates was 6.8% against 4.8% for Malay applicants.

Dr Lee did not state whether this showed that the Malays do not discriminate against the Chinese.

As for the Chinese controlled companies out of the total resumes sent 24% of the Chinese applicants received call backs for interviews but only 6.8% Malay applications received call backs.

For foreign controlled companies the numbers are 22.9% for Chinese applicants with none of the Malay applicants getting any call back.

The field study did not include resumes of graduates studying abroad but includes resume from both the private and public institutions of higher learning. The result showed employers prefer graduates from established public universities than from private universities.

Dr Lee, however, cautioned that the study should not be taken out of context. It shows that there is discrimination against Malay graduates when it comes to call backs for interviews but to ascertain the reasons for that, more research needed to be done to discover the truth.

He also cautioned against using the findings to accuse Chinese employers of being bigots. This would be unfair even if there was discrimination considering the Malays represent the largest segment of the population.

He did conceed that it is impossible to know what is in the minds of the decision makers when selecting their candidates. There definitely is a problem and needed to be addressed but it would be difficult if the study is used as a weapon to further certain agendas.

There will also be those who disagree with the findings and will try to discredit it. But, Dr Lee stressed that the problem needed to be solved.

There is no quick fix to the complex problem but it warrants a discussion at the national level with sincere intention to reach a just solution, Dr Lee said.

Present at the Seminar was Deputy Director of IKMAS, Prof Dr Tham Siew Yean, academicians and members of the media.

explanations on how global warming occurs

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/12/16/251437395/global-warming-explained-in-about-a-minute

Climate change denial propaganda

http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/global-warming-2014-may-be-apocalyptic/

It may be true that the Polar ice cap has not become less in 2013, in fact increased  by 50% compared to the lowest in 2012, but this is still low compared to its highest level.

Global warming trend does not mean that it will keep on getting warmer year by year. There will surely be fluctuations in temperature. What is important is the trend.

The temperature trend appear to be very little change in global temperature for the past 17 years and yet the Ice cap keeps on getting less and less year by year, until 2013, when it suddenly increase by 50%.

It could be due to efforts in conserving the environments by using Electric and hybrid cars in the USA and Canada. In China, it is a different story and yet, even in China, environmental awareness has increased.

These climate change denials are just nonsense. They don't seem to understand anything about statistics. They pick on exceptions instead of the general trends. They even ignore all the efforts to reduce global warming so far and the very clear and obvious eveidences of global warming such as the continual reduction in the polar ice caps for the past decade, and yet dismiss all those years, just because in 2013, the polar ice cap has increased in size.

That is good news, but it still has a long way to go back to the original levels of ice caps.

climate change denial effort

Not just the Koch brothers: New study reveals funders behind the climate change denial effort

Dr. Robert J. Brulle is a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Credit: CASBS

A new study conducted by Drexel University's environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.

Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are "dark money," or concealed funding.
The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding countermovement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to countermovement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.
Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The study was published today in Climatic Change, one of the top 10 climate science journals in the world.

The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.
"The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming," said Brulle. "Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."

To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010.
Key findings include:
Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.
Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.
Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.
Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.
"The real issue here is one of democracy. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible," said Brulle. "Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square. Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts."
This study is part one of a three-part project by Brulle to examine the climate movement in the U.S. at the national level. The next step in the project is to examine the environmental movement or the climate change movement. Brulle will then compare the whole funding flow to the entire range of organizations on both sides of the debate. 

 http://www.prpick.com/space-23/not-just-the-koch-brothers-new-study-reveals-funders-behind-the-climate-change-denial-effort-2643.html

Textbook 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is WRONG

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/capchg.html
zero energy travel

Initially I thought the  2nd Law of Thermodynamics is just too accurate and not scientific but just a few days ago realised that it is actually completely wrong.

My lecturer at City University London, in 1980 in a course on Thermodynamics in a BSc in Electronic Engineering, only showed the Carnot's equation to show the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. He mentioned briefly and without compassion that some people use it as a universal law to prove that we cannot convert one form of energy to another completely. However the equation certainly does not show it.

Only recently that I realised that my understanding of the textbook 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is wrong. I was surprised that all my colleagues believe that we cannot convert completely from one form of energy to another because of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics so I decided to visit my textbooks. I read 4 textbooks including the most recent textbook, Engineering Thermodynamics.

Carnot's engine is just a derivation of the energy conversion equation from heat to mechanical energy and it is an example of a reversible engine. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics includes reversibles ( shouldn't it be, irreversibles) or commonly called losses such as friction and electrical resistance. Strangely, I can't find the definition of revesibles in the internet.

The textbooks also mention that it is assumed that these reversibles cannot become zero because of our common experiences that losses in inevitable and occur widely in our environment. I notice that this is actually nonsense. It reminds me of the days when learned people believe that the Earth is Flat because their environments appear flat.

I still do not question the validity of the textbook definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics but I found that it is very strange that it is the only equation on energy conversion that includes losses. All others, usually do not include losses in their treatment such as Newton's laws of motion, F=ma, Einstein's E=mc^2 and Faraday's law for the electrical to mechanical energy conversion. However, by including losses, it makes the textbook description of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics much more accurate but not practical. Now I realise that it is completely wrong.

The required precision of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is an infinite number of decimal places. This is similar to requiring that the voltage must be accurate to an infinite decimal places for a capacitor to be fully charged as shown in the link above.  http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/capchg.html

The textbooks note also that the lower limit of the reversibles(losses such as friction) is still unknown because they keep on dropping. Actually, given infinite resources such as time and materials, we can get zero losses. With that, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is incorrect.

It is similar  to saying that a capacitor will never be fully charged because it will take an infinite time to be fully charged. It is only asymptotically approaching to be fully charged. It also occurs in many other engineering circumstances.

It is wrong to say that a capacitor cannot be fully charged. We consider a capacitor to be fully charged when the capacitor voltage is equal to the charging voltage value to within our required precision.

Similarly for energy conversions. We consider the conversion to occur fully when the conversion efficiency reaches a certain practical precision. It can be 99.9% or even 90%. It all depends on how much money you are willing to spend.

The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics also breaks a few other laws and conventions. The textbooks note that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not agree with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, the conservation of energy. The 1st Law of Thermodynamics allow full conversion of energy. Textbooks explained it as a different case. Anything that breaks the most fundamental of laws such as the Law of the Conservation of Energy, must be scrutinised closely.

The assumption, that our environment is mostly lossy is completely false. The lossless environment occurs in full vacuum and at absolute zero temperature. This environment is billions of times more common than our atmospheric environment. It is called Outer Space.

If you want to know about it, and myself, you may refer to my pre publication at Arxiv called Zero Energy Travel. I had patented at WIPO an invention called Zero Energy Transportation System. My current employer, Universiti Malaysis Sabah refused to finance its patenting so I patented it as an individual. The Japanese Patent Office, had allowed the name and deemed the invention novel but not fully inventive. However, JPO made a lot of wrong comments about my invention. I shall file an informal comment to defend my invention.

I am looking for financiers to finance the patenting and commercialising of this invention and the coming, Zero Aerodynamic Drag vehicles. I don't think UMS is willing to finance it. They are so brainwashed by these textbooks.

I shall write ebooks explaining in details these concepts and my inventions. Still waiting for EIN from the US Government. It has to be self publication. I don't think the established textbook publishers want to publish anything that proves that their textbooks are wrong.
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/sell-ebooks/ is a start. Already learning about smashwords

There is nothing wrong with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as long as it sticks to science. Science is mathematical and simple. If it sticks with simple Energy Conversion from Heat to Mechanical, there is nothing wrong with it.

Dumb dumbell performance based assessment

Telekom Malaysia introduced the dumbbell performance based criteria in 2004 when Wahid took over as CEO. I thought it was uniquely Malaysian management practise until yesterday when an NUS professor revealed that they used the same performance criteria since year 2000 and in an even more extreme case where 50% of the assessed will not get any salary increment and bonus.

Telekom Malaysia only make around 10% of the staff without any increment or bonus. I suffered this fate so for the next five years, I was put into the floating pool without any real job placed under the management of a junior human resource manager. It was actually heaven but I don't think it is sustainable. It is better that I be placed in this non-performing pool compared to others who may not be able to survive and I don't mind because we have other means of earning a living. I teach part time at various institutes as well as learn other skills.

At that time I thought it was all due to dishonesty and corruption that led Wahid to implement these dumbbell curved performance based criteria because it is so obviously wrong and stupid, but when I heard about it from an Electrical Engineering educated Professor, now I realise it is just another case of mass idiocy, similar to Malaysians celebrating the formation.independence of Malaysian on the 31st of August 1957 or the people thinking that the earth is flat.

This dumbbell curve is a mathematical formula called normal probability distribution that shows a graph that is shaped like a dumbbell so it is just a simpler name for it. The word normal does not mean that it is the standard way or practise, it is just a name. There are other formulas, that can be used to describe probability distribution which is just a chance of an event in happening. Given a number of people with various performance levels, usually nature tends to follow this normal distribution but the mean, that is the highest part of the curve tends to vary for various circumstances.

For example, in IQ tests, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient, if the whole world is tabulated into a graph, the median(central part or mean) is 100.http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx. If your IQ is above 134, you shall be the top 1% of the total population.

What happens if you are in a group of people with an IQ of above 134? The distribution will still follow the dumbbell curve, except that the median level will be higher depending on the people who are in the sample. The majority will be at the median level, because that is how median is defined, and very few people will be above the median level. This is just nature and we cannot argue against this.

The problem comes when you apply a forced ranking such as anyone below the median will not get any salary increment or bonus whatsoever. This is despite you being the top 1% of the population in that group. In a team where everyone is excellent, with the nobel prize calibre, 50% of them will still be assessed as having no growth contribution. NUS claimed to have an exception, so does Telekom Malaysia. Everyone claims to have an exception, but it will never be implemented in practise.

When you find it necessary to have an exception, you should know that the system itself is fundamentally wrong. It has to be corrected. But this dumbbell performance criteria is not only wrong, it encourages the opposite of the aim. It encourages the reduction of performance instead of encouraging more performance in whatever worthwhile criteria.

In NUS, every lecturer is a PhD holder and must graduate with First Class Honours. If 50% of them cannot contribute anything to NUS, maybe they should certainly contribute better in other Universities. NUS and Telekom Malaysia solves this problem by promising rotations. That professor justifies it by saying that research results come in cycles. So the performance measurement is based on luck instead of performance potential.

If you study the results of the performance assessments, you should notice a pattern of rotations which tend to be evenly distributed so it no longer follows the dumbbell curve distribution which is the nature of things. So you are not following the dumbbell criteria anymore.

Worst, you discriminate against the highest performing worker who should be getting the highest reward for the talent and results that they had contributed. It is just the nature of things that once you are good, you are always good. That is the reality in life. Even in a group of excellent people, some will be consistently better than others. If the results shows otherwise, it shows that the performance measurement is faulty because it goes against the nature of things.

The greatest beneficiary of the rotation system will the be the weakest in the group who will still get the chance for a reward instead of NONE at all if the dumbbell curve is to be followed strictly. The point is, this system encourages less performance instead of more performance.

It is just a mathematial truth that the greatest benefit for the workers is when they all perform to the least of their abilities. They can get the maximum result for the least effort by not performing at all. Companies can introduce overall measurements such as an amount of bonus linked to the overall performance, but when the chance of getting the bonus is so low, maximum effort, especially from the best workers, will not be worthwhile. Human nature is such that, they will still work normally so they will expand their energy somewhere else, instead of the company which does not value their talent and effort. It is certainly advantageous to the worst workers.

The worst thing is that, it destroys team spirits. Do you want to introduce workers who will take your salary increment and bonus? You must be an idiot to do this. If you really have any intelligence and really want to improve, you'd better prepare yourself to leave this institution all the time because all humans want to get to know excellent workers so that we all can improve together, instead of being penalised.

People do improve among excellent people. I have personal experiences with this in my primary and secondary schools with clear results, as well as in Telekom Malaysia but with unclear outcomes. The dumbbell curve is the truth but it is not static. The median level can improve but not its distribution.

The true performance based criteria is still the seniority based criteria because it is certain that humans improve with more experience. Any performance criteria that denies this performance improvement is therefore certainly wrong. It is as clear as daylight and proven for generations and yet people prefer to ignore them.

Hiqh EQ shows a desctructive environment

IQ is well known as the ability to solve problems, provided the facts are readily available and normal rules apply.
EQ is the ability to be successful other than IQ, i.e. not due to problem solving skills but other skills, such as negotiating skills, empathy and networking.

This gives you an idea where a person is has high IQ can be successful where facts are respected and therefore problems are actually solved, whereas EQ is required when problem solving using hard facts are not available. EQ is introduced in order to resolve issues where people with apparent high IQ failed to be successful but you notice that this is an environment where facts are not respected. This is not a conducive environment for real progress and facts point this out very clearly.

Developing nations put up social leaders that are high in EQ but low in IQ whereas advanced nations such as Germany, emphasise more on hard scientific skills such as IQ. Spain and Greece ma appear like a developed nation but in these nations, there are more marketing people than technical people to the extent that despite high unemployment rate, it is still very difficult to get workers who are skill in hard technical skills in hospitals, so hospitals don't have enough workers. Whereas in Germany, even small villages are capable of producing advanced machines for themselves instead of relying on outsourcing.

Engineering is well know as requiring high IQ whereas marketing requires EQ skills, but in countries that reqire high EQ skills such as in Malaysia such as the ability to bribe, lie, cheat and cronyistic, will make you more successful than those who have such high IQ who can actually solve problems.  A successful German worker will not survive in environments that require high EQ such as marketing such as in Spain and Malaysia whereas a worker who is highly successful in Spain and Malaysia, mostly in marketing skills, will not survive in Germany that requires more on hard technical skills.

However which nations are more successful? Germany or Spain? Germany of course. Despite having less requirement for having EQ and more requirements for IQ, German economy remains strong. There is no fear of the China competition because even China buys from Germany.

The conclusion is simple, environments that favour IQ over EQ means that the environment will lead to success, whereas, environments where EQ is required in order to be successful, means that the environment will lead to destruction sooner or later, because because problem solving is not based on facts but rather on emotions. How can a nation where deception and corruption is a necessity in order to survive, can ever be successful?