on being unproductive

I feel that in these several recent days I've done nothing meaningful. Stuck in something and made no progress. Just feel horrible somehow.

If this situation would be continuously going on, I think I just merely waste my precious time of the most productive period of my life.

Instead of insisting to move forward, and get stuck, I must step backward, strengthen the foundation and then make a leap jump. Reading some 'ancient' seminal papers is a really good idea. Last time I learnt about a shocking vulnerability exploit. Though it is merely a simple problem on the surface, a deep observation led me to broad fields in computer science. From assembly, memory structure, into security policy. It refreshed and also taught me about the basic knowledge a computer engineer should have.

on being present

It is very common that people plan to do something big if they were having secure income or certain wealthiness. They think that money is the panacea.

In fact the existence of this intermediation is undermine their own real power. Economically speaking, man in the middle always takes an amount of profit in every transaction. Therefore they undermine the immediate value in their skill, knowledge, and wisdom. They undermine their presence!

I think people should value their presence more than anything else. There's no substitution for being present.

In today technology age, presence doesn't always mean physically at the same place though.

education

Another entry about this. Inspired by last speech of BKPM chief in our embassy. Quite glad to know a high level officer who has a far vision on education. In fact he found a foundation on this vision as well.

I hope similar vision can flourish across my country, meanwhile a very bleak view of pseudo-educated people is so apparent, people who have only diplome without outstanding skill or knowledge.

And Rendra's poem "menghisap sebatang lisong (1978)" suddenly strucks my mind.

Is Hawking right?

Following his latest book, Stephen Hawking faces many protests and event condemnation from religious groups. Basically he stated that the universe is created from nothing, not by any trancendental power as religious believe.

In my opinion these religious people are just too reactive. Sometimes it even worst, they challenge Hawking's knowledge with their ignorance and conspiracious statement. This kind of action will only makes people laugh due to its baseless supports and then raises doubtful feeling about religion, particularly among young thinker. This is definitely dangerous!

Therefore I suggest a proporsional and less reactive counter to Hawking's knowledge. A preacher who doesn't even know Newton law in physics, should not give any 'scientific' counter argument. Just revisit the foundation of faith, that there is some trancendental matter that cannot be reasoned.

But, is actually Hawking statement based on solid theory? I don't know, the reporter might be spun, or misinterpreted his intention.

Furthermore does the solid theory violates religious values? I don't think so, though it clearly againsts certain interpretation. For example in the holy Quran, God only said (yes, I'm a devout religious) that human was created from soil or universe were created by Him. There's no further explicit explanation on how it was done. Therefore any theory can emerge in between, including Hawking's one.

How about Hawking's theory? According to other theory there are still loopholes in his theory. Moreover even if it's correct, it won't negate the existence of God.

We should not think of being so important, so God created human in a way such as a child creates a clay statue. Instead it would like process where an engineer creates a CNC machine to shape the raw clay, but God must be better than that. Instead, He created an advanced mechanism to create human by creating the source of the caused of these entire creations. For example, for creating human, God merely creating this universe with its complete rules of interaction among its elements, where at certain point this interaction will create living element and so on and so forth so finally human is created. But the probability is so small! Don't be so naive, do you think just because we think the system is very complex so God cannot ensure a 100 percent accuracy?

What about the universe? I think similarly. Clearly, it is ridiculous to think that that the planets and sun are created in the way we make meat ball or dumpling. Since clearly I'm not smarter than Hawking, instead of proposing my own speculation, I think it is better to use his. The way God created the universe (or multiverse) might coincide with Hawking's theory. But instead of it started from the big-bang, God provided a sufficient condition to make it happened. Definitely He even created an earlier phase of all these thing, e.g. the cause of cause of the caused ... of the cause of the cause of big bang. With His 100 percent accuracy, voila here we are.

Socialism and religion

20th century was the bloodiest witness of the emerge of socialism, and also its conflicts against other ideology. As a new ideology, socialism values often conflict with old values, particularly corrupted religious values. We have to emphasize the word corrupted because many opinions say that pure religious values should not violate pure socialism values, so does my opinion.

Socialism values will change society class structure. The ones who are on the top clearly will not let this change happen. They use people religious sentiment to provoke hatred about socialism in society. The most lethal provocation is the accusacion that socialists are atheist and anti-religion. Unfortunately this provocation was taken by communists under Commintern organization, though in its 192x congress Tan Malaka gave opposite statement. Commintern's stance to bring religion as enemy put socialism in religious part of the world in danger. Indonesia is an imminent example of atrocity against socialism, particularly communism. Guevara's war in bolivia was also got obstacles from accusation that communism in Cuba annihilated church and catholics institution. A Bolivian soldier, who was apparently a devout religious, ask him about the existence of religion in Cuba when Che platoon captured by Bolivian army. It showed how useful this religious propaganda for tackling socialism.

However in many places, socialism in its political form, communism, promoted bloody movements against religion as well. These actions were lethal suicide for socialism itself. Even a small incident got an enormous amplification due to religious sentimentalism, that turned out to be used to accuse any socialist. Many pure socialist movements became victims of this generalisation of accusation. Even sometimes a non-socialist movement which is merely related to socialist one might get the accusation as well. The fall of Spain second republic maybe a good example of this case. How Franco's fascist power with the assistance of Hitler's Nazi exterminated the Republicans was directly or indirectly fueled by the same sentiment. Some communist promoted atrocities in many ways, from executing jesuit priest, burning churches and even trying to destroy Gaudi's sagrada familia in Barcelona. The impact was horrible. Any communist or accused as communist was shot dead across Spain, regardless their religious view, some fled abroad. Unfortunately those people were knowledgeable persons. This might be a good explanation for Spain retardation for the next several dozen of years. Yes if we turn to far east we'll find the similar case in Indonesia. Unfortunately there's no such kind of european union to accelerate the development of Indonesia just the way it happened in Spain for this last 15 years.

It is such a contradictory that a country which has "keadilan SOSIAL bagi seluruh rakyat Indonesia" in its nation philosophy became so anti-socialist.

For the first time, I emerged the kernel of this opinion in room 9009 around 2003-2004.

India

This country is really incredible! Behind a such kind of a country there must be incredible people.
Anywhere you go visiting education or research center, very probably you'll find Indian. This achievement is impossible unless they have a top notch education system.
Amid the very diverse culture, religion and civilization, India steadily grows and overcomes her problem. Having billions of population, one can argue this number of smart people might be merely a matter of probability. Moreover there are uncountable problems there. However this statistics is somewhat too good to be compared against other developing countries.
India has many good universities, which are scattered in various states. Then each year many of their alum go to university abroad, and some of them are the best university. Still this is not the picture of India education in general, which is pretty bleak actually. However they already have many university graduates as locomotives.
Despite bleak education quality, India succesfully educate her people about equality, and merit system. The result can be seen on goverment cabinet composition, which is full of professional with various race and religion background. Apparently these people are the ones who drive India to the bright path. Unlike the case of less mature developing countries, India elites succesfully ditch their personal greedy interest and put their people and future interest on the first place. I argue that this implies the people who vote them as well. Instead of vote and install political clowns, they pick up professionals graduated from famous major university around the world. Democracy and education must go in parallel to get this effect. Without education, democracy will only be a stimulator for destruction, because it will only give opportunity to cunning politician to represent and rule people who do not have any idea how important their votes are.

frankness

When everybody tends to be javanese, saying yes for maybe, saying maybe for no, and saying no when you were already backstabbed, these conversations will refresh our manner of frankness. I found something nice about frankness while reading a series of opinions on Kompas about Tan Malaka which was presented in this chronology:
1. Tan Malaka dan Kebangkitan Nasional by Zulhasrul Nasir
2. Tentang Tan Malaka by Sabam Siagian
3. Darurat Perang Jenderal Sudirman by Zulhasrul Nasir

Read these phrases which are written by Sabam Siagian as corrections for Zulhasrul Nasir's opinion:
"Pertama, kutipan berikut mencerminkan bias penulis dan juga kurang menguasai fakta."
"Dalam konteks uraian historis ini, kalimat '... Maka amat disayangkan TKR saat itu lalu membunuhnya
(!? SSg) di sebuah desa di Kediri...' amat tendensius." [SSg=Sabam Siagian]
"Agaknya penulis mendukung sikap politik demikian tanpa meneliti lebih dulu pemikiran geopolitik ..."

SSg's counter opinion is truly nice, depicting his vast knowledge and understanding about the topic. It was undenied on second Zulhasri Nasir's writing, he merely wrote "ada hal-hal yang ingin dikesankan mantan Dubes RI untuk Australia itu".

To be frankly . . . On the beginning I planned to wrote something about Tan Malaka, but I felt unconfident after reading SSg's opinion ;^(, maybe next time after I read my Harry A. Poze books, which are Indonesian version obviously. I think it is necessary to learn dutch for deciphering Indonesian history.

Sweet song for 2009

Nice opinion from Endy Mouzardi Bayuni

It is all about subsidy. How incumbent candidates burden national budget to embrace people supports. Megawati did it before 2004 election, she postponed fuel price hike, but she failed to embrace people support.

Now SBY do the same..Let's see whether he succeed or not!
A really advantage of being an incumbent candidate.

For economics criminals, it is really a great opportunity to make a speculation and keep the commodities for anticipating inevitable fuel hike after election.

bacaan waktu senggang

Setelah saya coba-coba mencari artikel yg rasanya pernah saya baca di Kompas, rasanya ada beberapa stereotype tentang artikel menarik yang layak (sangat layak) dibaca di kala senggang.

Ingin bacaan lucu, baca tulisan Rudy Badil, oknum wartawan ini termasuk gerombolan Soe Hok Gie, fotonya pun ada di "catatan harian seorang demonstran", pas merasa masih ganteng kali, makanya dipasang disana, sekarang udah tua mungkin gak pede masang foto lagi, cuma kasih illustrator, piss. Meskipun tulisan lawas, tulisannya sangat enak dibaca, bikin senyum bahkan ketawa. Kalo istilah korannya bukan hard news. Saya namakan aja Mati Ketawa cara Rudy Badil.

Bacaan rada lucu, kadang lucu, kadang berusaha lucu tapi gak lucu, mungkin karena si penulis terlalu cerdas kali dan saya ndak ngerti, baca Budiarto Shambazy. Belum sekaliber Rudy Badil sih, tapi sudut pandangnya beda.


Yang terakhir spesialis In Memoriam, Rosihan Anwar. Saya suka sekali tulisan wartawan super senior ini, meskipun mungkin subyektif, toh bisa di peer-review* dari sumber lainnya. Semoga panjang umur ya Pak!

*) peer review: kayaknya saya pernah dengar tapi apa artinya sih sebenarnya entahlah, yg penting kereen, semoga gk salah pake. Tapi masalahnya "musuh-musuhnya"(B.M Diah, Mochtar Lubis, S. Tasrif) jaman masih sama-sama jadi redaktur 4 harian paling berpengaruh di Jakarta pada jaman dulu sudah pada mendahului, jadi bakal sulit mencari peer-reviewer yang layak ditandingkah.

Pertarungan antar Master

Sabam Siagian, hebat betul tulisan Bapak tua ini, meskipun kelakuan bikin hati panas tapi dengan berat hati harus saya akui kehebatannya. Membaca bantahannya atas tulisan Emil Salim di kompas, "Tawanan dalam Gelanggang", membuat saya semakin mengaguminya. From my deepest heart: Salut Pak!

Hal semacam ini rasanya sudah semakin langka di dunia pers Indonesia, tulisan balas tulisan, mungkin kelamaan dididik gaya street justice orba. Ya Bapak Tua ini jelas didikan Belanda sih, kasar, sarkastis, tegas; jadi ingat perbincangan dosen2 mesin di PSTK tentang dosen-dosennya dulu yang didikan belanda, betapa beratnya menjadi mahasiswa. Kalau sekarang jangankan jadi mahasiswa, lulus pun gampang! Trade off nya nyari kerja susah. Yah untung aja HRD gak sebodoh pencari kerja kerjanya, tahu aja mereka bibit-bibit unggul.

Balik ke Sabam, [punten abdi copy paste]
Bagaimana tulisan tentang superioritas ilmu ekonomi diatas ilmu politik dibantah dengan taktis dan manis.

Sebagai ekonom terkemuka, dapat dipahami jika Prof Emil Salim seperti menyindir daya mampu dan kegunaan ilmu politik. Tulisnya, ”Ilmu ekonomi menggunakan perhitungan rasional yang terukur dalam nilai ekonomi dan harga pasar sehingga bisa direncanakan kebijakan memecahkan masalah sebelum (exante) masalah tumbuh lebih besar. Ilmu politik sebaliknya bersifat kualitatif dan sulit diukur secara kuantitatif sehingga sulit membuat ramalan dan prediksi.” Taruhlah secara umum kita setuju pendapat Bung Emil ini, tetapi ada kecualian yang penting dalam hal seorang sarjana ilmu politik dan kaitan teorinya dengan situasi Indonesia. Profesor Samuel Huntington dari Universitas Harvard yang mempelajari pertumbuhan lembaga-lembaga politik di negara-negara berkembang tahun 1968 menerbitkan karya yang menjadi klasik, Political Order In Changing Societies (Yale University Press). Pada Bab 1 yang bertema Political Order and Political Decay dikemukakan teori, kesulitan yang dihadapi negara-negara berkembang di bidang pembangunan politik justru meningkat setelah mereka relatif berhasil mencapai sukses awal dalam pembangunan ekonominya. Tulisnya, antara lain, jika lembaga-lembaga sosial politik di negara-negara itu tidak ikut berkembang dan tidak mampu menampung serta menyalurkan aspirasi-aspirasi baru, yang timbul justru karena keberhasilan ekonomi mereka, terjadilah political decay, kerapuhan politik, bukan political development, pembangunan politik.

Taktis dan pas banget dengan kondisi Indonesia. Kalau mau pinter emang musti sering baca ya Pak? Hebat deh... dulu sekolahnya apa ya?

Presiden Soeharto terpaksa mengundurkan diri pada Mei 1998 karena di papan percaturan kompetisi kekuasaan, ia sudah tersudut. Semua pion telah tumbang. Agaknya terlalu simplistis untuk menghakimi Harmoko, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, BJ Habibie, dan Jenderal Wiranto sebagai Brutus yang mengkhianati Cesar tua.

Ia mundur secara mendadak pada 21 Mei 1998 bukan ”guna menghindari pertikaian lebih besar antaranak bangsa” seperti ditulis Bung Emil. Justru sebagai sikap ngambek, seperti kata orang Betawi (Jakarta) rasain lu dengan Habibie yang cenderung labil itu sebagai presiden. Seyogianya Soeharto menyiapkan proses suksesi jauh sebelumnya secara teratur dan rapi.

Bagus juga tulisan yang ini, ya meskipun kurang original, tapi masih berjiwa muda...

coño!

Istiqlal

Istiqlal, masjid yang aneh

Keanehan2nya:
1. Tidak ada kantin, bahkan toko kecil sekalipun. Semua kebutuhan jamaah disediakan oleh pedagang asongan. Payah... Mau melindungi ekonomi rakyat kecil(pedagang asongan)? Walah,.. kasih tempat dagang yang layak sekalian napa? Gimana bisa jadi contoh penggerak ekonomi kerakyatan?
2. Jalan masuk ditutup-tutup, bahkan untuk pejalan kaki sekalipun. Kalo dari gambir mau masuk istiqlal musti muter sampai jalan masuk juanda, jauh kan... Apalagi yang namanya halte Istiqlal ada di bilangan gambir, depan pertamina. Pas turun situ pintu dikunci...
3. Barusan renovasi pintu gerbang, buat apa gitu? buang2 duwit aja. Jadi berpikir ulang buat infak di mesjid ini, eh gak jadi ding malah.
4. Penjaga sandalnya gak ramah, sering minta uang, mending kasih tulisan nitip alas kaki sekian ribu rupiah. Padahal di depannya ada kotak infak, kalo kita mau masukin ke kotak dia akan minta kasih ke dia aja. hahaha.
5. Mesjid ini dilewati kali yang baunya minta ampun, warnanya item pekat.... Ealah gk ada inisiatifnya takmir mesjid ini buat membersihkan ini kali. Begitu angin berhembus, bukannya angin segar, tapi angin bauuuuu. Gimana bisa khusyu' berada di mesjid ini.

Yahh apakah memang harus selalu berantakan gini sesuatu yg dikelola pemerintah?

Seems a convincing article, but...

Merry Christmas to All, including Muslims, The Jakarta Post article written by Mohammad Nafik, seems a convincing article. It is questioning MUI at Buya Hamka's era decree. Considering Buya Hamka's knowledge I think it would be better to agree to Hamka, than to agree to Nafik's opinion, yes opinion. Even because of this decree Hamka had to resign from MUI, it was a great pressure from Soeharto's Government to lift up the decree, but he insist not to do it.


Here are my opinion why I do not agree to this article:
A. Commenting "If we are consistent in our faith, recognizing Jesus as a prophet in Islam, we should not hesitate to join his birthday celebrations. Whether our own celebrations are held in a different manner to Christians' is not an issue"

1. Christmas, which is celebrated on Jesus' birthday is not a celebration in Islam. There's no single evidence that this matter is taugh in Islam, even Prophet Muhammad's S.A.W birthday celebration (Mauludan) is still questionable.
2. There is some evidence that 25th December is not Jesus' Birthday. Perhaps it is a glimpse from The Da Vinci Code, but it is not, there is a Christian sect that celebrate Jesus' birthday on a day in January.
3. Further more Christmas was banned during puritan clerics ruled England, even it was also prohibited in particular England colony in America.
   

B. Commenting on "While Jews accused Jesus' mother Maria (Maryam, Mary) of adultery and rejected his presence on earth, Islam considered him one of the Ulul Azmi (five supreme prophets) comprising Muhammad, Abraham (Ibrahim), Moses (Musa), Noah (Nuh) and Isa (Jesus)."
I'm sure this journalist has a vast knowledge in Islam. But according to A., there's nothing related to christmas

C. Commenting "For example, when Indonesian Moslems observed Idul Fitri on Oct. 13-14, many Christians sincerely greeted them. These wishes were conveyed by leaders on television, through newspaper advertisements and other media facilities."
So, logically in respect we are muslim must greet other religion related to their religious rites? No. There is nothing can be logically inferred from this.


So, I think I must convince myself that this article is not convincing, and agree to 1981 MUI decree that banning Muslim to greet Christian on Christmas. It just Christmas why bother, there are many more things to be done together education, poverty, equality before the law, corruption, and many more. Want to flame? Want to make something hot, cabeeeee deh....

May God bless you, buya Hamka.