A Question to Indonesian Academic Culture: With or Without Skripsi?

On January 27th, 2012, the Ministry of Education and Culture (Kemendikbud) through Directorate General of High Education (DITJEN DIKTI) under the tenure of Mr. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono issued a regulation in Letter of DITJEN DIKTI No. 152/E/T/2012 that undergraduate students had to have paper publication in scientific journal. This regulation was proposed and thus constituted because the scientific paper publication in and from Indonesia was very few in number.

Compared to other countries in South East Asia like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, Indonesia is left behind. According to SCImago Journal and Country Rank (www.scimagojr.com) Indonesia is now ranked 57 out of 239 countries; meanwhile Singapore is 32, Malaysia 36, and Thailand 43. This rank is determined by the number of documents published and the citable documents from 1996-2014. Indonesia has the total number of 32.355 documents and 30.770 citable documents.

How Movie’s Message Shapes Our Children Today

In spite of its cute animated appearance and the fact that most of the audiences are children, some of my friends argue that Inside Out is not movie rated for children. One of them has told me that the movie may even “slap” children waking them up to realize that life is full of sadness, not only wonderful days.

In the movie, Joy keeps trying to make Riley happy everyday, allowing her to only have good memories and cheerful personality. The experiences Riley gets through everyday are represented in memory balls. Little Riley mostly has yellow, the color of Joy, memory balls everyday because Joy rarely lets other emotions take control over Riley.

It is until Riley is 11 and her family must move to San Francisco due to her father’s job, everything changes. No matter how much Joy tries to bring up good past memories to her, one way or another keeps leading Riley to other emotions like Disgust, Fear, and Anger. The unexpected peak of this tragedy is when Sadness keeps touching various memory balls and the core of memory when Riley is at new school for the first time, and she eventually cries in the middle of her introduction as she misses her good times in Minnesota.

#12 no title

"If time could be turned back, I would have stayed and never left."

Religiosity Before The Eyes of Cosmic Era

For a couple of centuries humankind used to be wondering what might lay beyond the skies. It was mysteries to them for what stars and moon truly were and what might hide behind them. On July 14, 2015, though, humanity has successfully reached the nearest distance ever to Pluto using New Horizons spacecraft. It’s no longer a secret that stars are burning plasma and moon is satellite. To make it easier, Google has been created to find such common knowledge.

Using Hubble Telescope launched since 1990 to observe the characteristic of our Universe, and using Kepler spacecraft launched since 2003 to find extrasolar habitable planet in Milky Way, we’ve developed more understanding about the world where we live than our ancestors.

Chronicle of Human Rights in Tibet

On July 6, 2015, His Holiness 14th Dalai Lama had his 80th birthday. It was celebrated for 3 days in California, billed as a Global Compassion Summit.

H.H. Dalai Lama has been living in Dharamsala, India, his exile from Tibet due to the China’s claim over Tibet and accusation towards H.H. Dalai Lama for trying to split Tibet from the rest of China. This conflict has been ongoing since 1949/50, recorded as the first time of invasion by People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Originally, there were two spiritual leaders of Tibetan Buddhism, Dalai Lama (reckoned as the manifestation of Avalokitesvara Boddhisatva) and Panchen Lama (reckoned as the manifestation of Amithaba Buddha). Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a kid who was born in 1989 and then was divinely recognized as the 11th Panchen Lama by Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders, however, has been kidnapped and hidden by China’s government since May 17, 1995 when he was 6 years old.

Objektivitas dan Independensi

Dalam dunia finansial, menjadi objektif dan bias sangat diperlukan dalam membuat suatu laporan riset yang akhirnya akan dibaca oleh investor-investor yang menggunakan laporan tersebut sebagai salah satu sumber untuk pengambilan keputusan investasinya. Laporan riset yang disiapkan oleh analis berupa dokumen sebagai bagian dari tim riset investasi didalam broker saham atau bank investasi.

Pada umumnya, ketika investor sudah menanam kepercayaan kepada suatu perusahaan penulis laporan riset ― atau bahkan individu analis tertentu ― mereka dapat terkesan lengah dan cenderung menaruh kepercayaan berlebihan kepada apa yang ditulis di dalam laporan riset tersebut. Namun pada praktiknya, tidak sedikit laporan yang ditulis oleh analis yang mungkin tidak sepenuhnya objektif atau bahkan menjadi menyimpang dari tujuan laporan yang seharusnya mempresentasikan objektivitas.