The Malaysian Nature Society is organizing a birdwatching for newbie event this coming Sunday at 8 o’clock in the morning. It will be held at Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), not far from Kuala Lumpur.
Come and join us!
Heh. Now I gotta figure out on how to get there. We totally need MapQuest for Malaysia.
Moral and fashion police from PAS introduces a uniform for women.
Can you say Islamofascist?
An interesting case is currently being heard at the US Supreme Court this week. It concerns racial integration or diversity. At the NYT:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 — By the time the Supreme Court finished hearing arguments on Monday on the student-assignment plans that two urban school systems use to maintain racial integration, the only question was how far the court would go in ruling such plans unconstitutional.
There seemed little prospect that either the Louisville, Ky., or Seattle plans would survive the hostile scrutiny of the court’s new majority. In each system, students are offered a choice of schools but can be denied admission based on their race if enrolling at a particular school would upset the racial balance.
At its most profound, the debate among the justices was over whether measures designed to maintain or achieve integration should be subjected to the same harsh scrutiny to which Brown v. Board of Education subjected the regime of official segregation. In the view of the conservative majority, the answer was yes.
The Wall Street Journal summarized the camps in the case:
The fundamental dispute is whether antidiscrimination laws–the 14th Amendment and, by implication, the Civil Rights Act of 1964–ban discrimination altogether, or only in the pursuit of invidious ends. Broadly stated, the “conservative” position is that these laws protect individuals from discrimination, whereas the “liberal” position is that discrimination is fine in the pursuit of “diversity” or integration but not of white supremacy.
It’s becoming tougher for me to decide which is right and which is wrong. The black and white are merging.
Regardless, this case is almost similar to the Michigan case.
If a person is a member of the Malaysian Nature Society — any green for that matter — this piece of news is especially depressing:
SHAH ALAM: A tapir was killed and two cars were badly damaged in an accident in Puncak Alam early yesterday.
The adult female tapir was crossing the road about 6am when it was hit by a Proton Wira driven by an army personnel.
The impact caused the animal to be flung to the opposite side of the road where it was hit by another car.
Below is the tapir in question:
The Malayan tapir is the icon of MNS.
Construction of highways across biologically diverse ecologies disrupts wildlife movement. It effectively divides a single ecology into two, much like how the Berlin Wall once divided Germany into two. The division is unnatural and adversely affects wildlife. For any pragmatic nature lover that seeks to conform to both modernity and conservation, any freeway crossing through natural wildlife habitat should have barriers to prevent “jaywalking” and special underpasses or over-crossings specially built to allow animals to cross such highway safely.
The idea of constructing crossings for animals in the wild is not new. It has been tested in North America. An MSNBC article, “More wildlife getting helped across the highway“, shows how such crossings enables the free flow of human and wildlife alike, while guaranteeing the safety of both. Below is a visual example of such crossings:
As mentioned in the MSNBC article, the picture was taken at Banff National Park, Canada.
It’s time we incorporate green designs into our highways and prevent future accident, in memory of the tapir. Life, regardless of species, is too precious to waste.
My current office, well, one of my two current offices, is located at the top floor of a building in Kuala Lumpur. The view is lovely. I could see the Parliament, the Tugu Negara, Bangsar, Genting Highlands and the city itself, among other things, from the office.
The sun was setting when I took the shot.