is the Executive Director of Penang Institute. His recent books include The Eurasian Core and its Edges: Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the History of the World (ISEAS 2016).
This month’s cover is about Malaysia’s brain drain; and what is fascinating is how old – and yet how current – the story reads.Indee...
The morning was soft and cloudy – but only for a while. By 10am, the sun was blazing and having its usual relentless way with Penangites. Perhaps as man...
This month’s article about the endless hunt for energy to power modern man’s countless machines leads me to think about the psychological conseque...
Do you know that we start rotting as soon as we have breathed our last breath? This is a fascinating reminder that decay is the default situation for the human...
It’s always a bit disconcerting when a notion forms in your mind and you cannot find a good word for it. Memory going bad? Mental energy running out? Ba...
We have just entered a new year, so allow me to kick off this magazine’s fifth year in its present form with some observations about the central importa...
Today, when we talk about the rise of China and India, we lazily think of them as similar items – ancient and rich civilisations coming into their own i...
All things change. We can all agree on that. But what the density and swiftness of change in modern living have taught us is that there are harsh limits.We ar...
Since our cover story for the month is about the future of education in Malaysia, I would like to take up the issue of exposure as a necessary element in the...
When we were cavemen, we lived in caves.And in the thousands of years since then, we have lived in everything else – from lean-tos to tents to log cab...
An important issue that should surface during coming debates about the impending Goods and Services Tax (GST) is how it affects the basic relation between the...
The basis for human liberty as we understand it today was laid with the advent of universal literacy. When reading and writing stopped being the sole right...