Spending public money to help a foreign university

Now in its second year, Carnegie Mellon University’s branch campus in the South Australian city of Adelaide is facing renewed scrutiny.

Recent media reports in Australia revealed that the government in Australia has now spent $227,000 for every student enrolled at the nominally private institution, compared to around $14,500 for each student enrolled at any of the city’s other three established universities, with relatively little yet to show for the infusion of public funds.

Carnegie Mellon became Australia’s 40th university when it opened in May 2006 amid promises that its graduate-level programs in information technology, public policy and entertainment technology would improve the prospects of the country’s least-populous state refashioning itself as a regional higher-education hub in the spirit of a Singapore or Dubai. [...] [T]he state government contributed around $25 million to the operation’s start-up costs, including its new buildings in the city’s downtown area.

The full report is here.

Links ...

Aurelie Thiele on the salaries of French researchers.

ABC News: Why do women leave science careers?

Are the gender differences all that significant? Daisy Grewal has a post on the Gender Similarities Model:

... [G]ender differences in math and verbal ability overall are quite small. Moreover, gender differences in traits like assertiveness, self-esteem, and even height are also quite small.

The question is then, why do most of us believe so strongly in gender differences despite the evidence that shows they are minimal for most things? For one, overinflated claims of gender differences appeal more to our intuitions. They sell more magazines and newspapers. They make for interesting non-fiction book titles, and they allow researchers to publish papers that gain them scientific recognition. Perhaps we start out believing in gender differences and therefore see them wherever we look.

Book reviews ...

Guru on M.N. Srinivas's Religion and society among the Coorgs of South India.

Janet Stemwedel on Ethics for the real world: Creating a personal code to guide decisions in work and life by Ronald A. Howard and Clinton D. Korver.

Chandrahas on Mukul Kesavan's The ugliness of the Indian male and other propositions

Links ...

Glad to get some blogging time after a five-day visit to NIT-Trichy. But I have nothing substantial to write, so here are some links that have been sitting around on my browser.

• Siva Vaidhyanathan on American patriotism from the point of view of a second generation immigrant.

• Jason Kottke: Kids make for unhappy parents?

• Neil Creek: A guide to commenting on other people's photos

• Dani Rodrik: Death of globalization consensus

• Charles Duhigg: Warning: Habits may be good for you

• Some news on the South Asian University, coming up in Mehrauli, near New Delhi. It's expected to start its academic session in 2010.

Good news of the day: This blog does not pose a danger to your computer!

This blog has been liberated. It is no longer being flagged as an "attack site." Yay!

Thank you for all the helpful comments, folks.

As I said yesterday, I removed a couple of visitor stats scripts from the template. I forgot to mention that I had also requested the Google gods -- through their Webmaster tools -- to please, please, reconsider their adverse verdict. Yes, I was, like, totally abject.

Et Voilà! This blog is no longer dangerous in their eyes.

Aside from the pieces of code I removed (I still don't know if they really caused this problem), people have suggested two other possible causes: some of the sites I this blog links to may be dishing out malware (sometime ago, ToI was thought to be one of them), or some reader might have filed a complaint. As I said, I still don't know why this problem cropped up, but I am certainly glad that it has gone away without my having to spend too much of my time.

Enough about my blogging travails. It's time to get back to real life ...

International Business Partnership!

Internet sites such as RentACoder and Kasamba provide an international marketplace connecting businesses in need of computer programming help with low-cost coders around the world.

But dishonest students have already seized on the outsourcing trend to avoid doing homework.

Typically, assignments are put out to tender on the internet sites and coders bid to complete them.

Students can pay anywhere from under $100 to several hundred dollars, depending on the amount of work required.

That's from Australia's The Age.

America's joyous future?

Supriya Raman catches a church notice that you all must check out ...

Trouble in Nanopolis! I need help ...

At least three people have alerted me (see the comments by Kartik and Subrahmanya) that Firefox 3.0 is flagging this blog as an 'attack site' -- you can use this site to check. My current browser (Firefox 2.0 running on linux), however, doesn't warn me about this problem, so this may be a special feature of Firefox 3.0.

This Google page is not particularly helpful in telling me where the real problem is, and what I can do to solve it.

What puzzles me is the timing: Why now? After all, I haven't touched my blog's template in a long time! So, why now?

In any case, I have taken some steps: I do have a bunch of javascript thingies in my blog's template, and all of them are related to this blog's visitor stats. Since I don't need so many of them, I have removed the pieces of code from 'Site Meter' and 'MyBlogLog'. I don't know if they were the culprit, but I don't think I'll miss them.

What remain are the javascript pieces from Google Analytics and FeedBurner, and since both of them are from the Google stable, I just hope that this problem will go away.

Needless to say, if you know of a more effective solution to this problem, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you -- either by e-mail or through your comments.

Many thanks in advance!

Leadership is ...

... so passé! At least, writing management tomes about it seems to be.

The new, new thing in pop management is Followership -- yes, with a big F! A recent book on this Important Topic leads to these Big, Potentially Life-Transforming Questions on Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge site:

... As a follower, what advice would you give to other followers wishing to have an impact on their jobs and organizations? As a leader, what do you do to foster good followership? Why isn't followership addressed by business school curricula along with leadership? Does it belong in a course of study? Or does this just run the risk of deteriorating into a discussion of how to manipulate your boss? What do you think?

Quick links ...

... to short, punchy posts.

Tabula Rasa on the amazing (and real) diversity in an American graduate school. While there, check out his advice on helmets.

Vinod Khare on IIT-K's nutty explanation for student suicides.

Prashant on his really cool great grandfather.

Amongla Imsong on what her students knew about the question: "Where Nagaland?"

Phrase of the Day: "The Turban Effect"

A Muslim-style turban is perceived as a threat, according to a new study, even by people who don't realize they hold the prejudice, dubbed "the turban effect" by researchers.

Research volunteers played a computer game that showed apartment balconies on which different figures appeared, some wearing Muslim-style turbans or hijabs and others bare-headed. They were told to shoot at the targets carrying guns and spare those who were unarmed, with points awarded accordingly.

People were much more likely to shoot Muslim-looking characters - men or women - even if they were carrying an innocent item instead of a weapon, the researchers found.

More here. Many thanks to The Situationist for the pointer:

Freedom of the Press in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh

Two cases, and in one, the victim has managed to get comprehensive protection with the help of the Supreme Court:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday restrained the Narendra Modi government from arresting political analyst Ashis Nandy pursuant to registration of a case against him for writing an article, “Blame the middle class,” in a national newspaper.

A vacation Bench consisting of Justices Altamas Kabir and G.S. Singhvi also cancelled the summons issued by the inspector of the Satellite Police Station, Ahmedabad, seeking his appearance for interrogation on July 8. “Any further summons issued against Mr. Nandy in future relating to the case will stand quashed.”

In the other case, the government has used a law with a noble purpose (of preventing atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis) to gag journalists whose 'crime' appears to be one of airing their (negative) opinion of a political leader who happens to be a Dalit. The journalists are out on bail, but the case against them has not been withdrawn. In a must read post, Vivek Reddy summarizes the case, and shows how these arrests are illegal -- from not not just one, but four legal angles. Here's the first:

First, the State Government cannot invoke the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act merely because a member of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe is insulted or humiliated. It can only be invoked when a member of Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe has been insulted or humiliated only on account of he being a member of Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe. If he is insulted or humiliated for any other reason, then this Act is inapplicable. This is the settled legal position and any other contrary view would imply that members of Scheduled Castes are immune from all criticism and insult, even if it is justifiable. To illustrate, if the effigy of Chief Minister Mayawati (who is a member of Scheduled Caste) is burnt in protest against some action taken by her or speech given by her, the provisions of this Act cannot be invoked because she is not being insulted on account of her being a member of Scheduled Caste. In the present case, the effigy of Krishna Madiga was being burnt not on account of he being a member of Scheduled Caste, but rather in protest against attack on the newspaper offices by the organization headed by Krishna Madiga. The State Government’s action goes against the purpose of the Act.

Diversity in American universities: Fact and fiction

First the fiction. Sometime ago, Onion published a 'story' titled Black Guy Photoshopped In:

In the spirit of celebrating diversity at Iowa State University, a black guy was digitally added to the cover of the school's 2001 spring-semester course catalog, school officials announced Monday.

And, here's a fact:

... Black students made up an average of 7.9 percent of students at the colleges studied, but 12.4 percent of those in viewbooks. Asian students are also more likely to be found in viewbooks than on campus, making up 3.3 percent of real students on average and 5.1 percent of portrayed students. [...]

Worms

Two stories in the NYTimes this past week, and both highlight the potential benefits of parasitic worms: their presence in the guts somehow seems to help people fight allergies -- including asthma. "Worm therapy" may take some time to get official approval, but the promising results from studies are already gaining attention:

Trial participants raved about their allergy symptoms disappearing. Word about the study soon appeared online among chronic allergy sufferers, and a Yahoo group on “helminthic therapy” sprung up. [...]

Now [Dr. David Pritchard] is recruiting patients for a larger-scale trial of the therapy, and he said he hoped to publish his results within the next year.

Some allergy sufferers cannot wait. The moderator of the Yahoo group, Jasper Lawrence, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has started a clinic in Mexico, to offer the unproven therapy (a basic worm “inoculation” costs $3,900).

Indian media pwned

I saw this on Rahul's blog yesterday, and he has all the links. The gullibility is quite amazing.

The people behind this prank call themselves the Pen Pricks. They plan to reveal more. So keep a watch on that blog.

Here's an excerpt from Siddharth Varadarajan's op-ed in the Hindu today:

The Telegraph ran the story on Monday under the headline “Goa piano ‘thief’ found to be Nazi war fugitive.” It quoted “Intelligence Bureau officials” saying that Mr. Bach had come to India via Argentina, Bulgaria and Canada. The story was accompanied by a world map showing how Mr. Bach crisscrossed the world before ending up in Goa. The word ‘unconfirmed’ was inserted parenthetically next to Yemen, suggesting that the newspaper had confirmed all other aspects of the story.

The Telegraph story -- along with the infographic! -- in question is NOT here. Since the story has been taken off the newspaper's website, I'll just have to redirect you to Churumuri, where you can feast your eyes on the infographic.