Friday, July 25, 2014
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Current Maxis Plan
Maxis Surf More 30
Notes:
- Rates apply only to local calls and SMS.
- Prevailing charges on overseas roaming applies.
- Each call is charged on a 30 second charging block.
Maxis Family Budget Plan 30
For RM30/month, Family Budget supplementary line allows the principal line to assign monthly spending limits that can be changed at anytime from the convenience of your mobile phone. On top of that, the principal will also get an SMS alert at RM10 prior to the limit so the subscriber can choose to allocate more if needed; an SMS alert will be sent at 100% limit usage as well.
As with the existing supplementary line from Maxis – Family Plus 30, the line comes with up to 15 hours of free talk time and 1,500 free SMS between family lines.
For existing Family Plus 30 users, I guess you should know that the call charges and SMS rates in Family Budget is also significantly cheaper than Family Plus 30, and comes with an optional subscription for lower call rates at RM5:
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Sunday, April 13, 2014
How the languages we speak can affect the way we think
Economist Keith Chen starts today’s talk with an observation: to say, “This is my uncle,” in Chinese, you have no choice but to encode more information about said uncle. The language requires that you denote the side the uncle is on, whether he’s related by marriage or birth and, if it’s your father’s brother, whether he’s older or younger.
Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?
“All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn’t let me ignore it,” says Chen. “In fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.”
This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? In particular, Chen wanted to know: does our language affect our economic decisions?
Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time.
While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages,” like Chinese, use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Using vast inventories of data and meticulous analysis, Chen found that huge economic differences accompany this linguistic discrepancy. Futureless language speakers are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year than futured language speakers. (This amounts to 25 percent more savings by retirement, if income is held constant.) Chen’s explanation: When we speak about the future as more distinct from the present, it feels more distant — and we’re less motivated to save money now in favor of monetary comfort years down the line.
But that’s only the beginning. There’s a wide field of research on the link between language and both psychology and behavior. Here, a few fascinating examples:
Navigation and Pormpuraawans
In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (and an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal.
About a third of the world’s languages discuss space in these kinds of absolute terms rather than the relative ones we use in English, according to Boroditsky. “As a result of this constant linguistic training,” she writes, “speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes.” On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and her colleague found that Pormpuraawans, who speak Kuuk Thaayorre, not only knew instinctively in which direction they were facing, but also always arranged pictures in a temporal progression from east to west.
Blame and English Speakers
In the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues.
Color among Zuñi and Russian Speakers
Our ability to distinguish between colors follows the terms in which we describe them, as Chen notes in the academic paper in which he presents his research (forthcoming in the American Economic Review). A 1954 study found that Zuñi speakers, who don’t differentiate between orange and yellow, have trouble telling them apart. Russian speakers, on the other hand, have separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). According to a 2007 study, they’re better than English speakers at picking out blues close to the goluboy/siniy threshold.
Gender in Finnish and Hebrew
In Hebrew, gender markers are all over the place, whereas Finnish doesn’t mark gender at all, Boroditsky writes in Scientific American. A study done in the 1980s found that, yup, thought follows suit: kids who spoke Hebrew knew their own genders a year earlier than those who grew up speaking Finnish. (Speakers of English, in which gender referents fall in the middle, were in between on that timeline, too.)
Keith Chen: Could your language affect your ability to save money?
“All of this information is obligatory. Chinese doesn’t let me ignore it,” says Chen. “In fact, if I want to speak correctly, Chinese forces me to constantly think about it.”
This got Chen wondering: Is there a connection between language and how we think and behave? In particular, Chen wanted to know: does our language affect our economic decisions?
Chen designed a study — which he describes in detail in this blog post — to look at how language might affect individual’s ability to save for the future. According to his results, it does — big time.
While “futured languages,” like English, distinguish between the past, present and future, “futureless languages,” like Chinese, use the same phrasing to describe the events of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Using vast inventories of data and meticulous analysis, Chen found that huge economic differences accompany this linguistic discrepancy. Futureless language speakers are 30 percent more likely to report having saved in any given year than futured language speakers. (This amounts to 25 percent more savings by retirement, if income is held constant.) Chen’s explanation: When we speak about the future as more distinct from the present, it feels more distant — and we’re less motivated to save money now in favor of monetary comfort years down the line.
But that’s only the beginning. There’s a wide field of research on the link between language and both psychology and behavior. Here, a few fascinating examples:
Navigation and Pormpuraawans
In Pormpuraaw, an Australian Aboriginal community, you wouldn’t refer to an object as on your “left” or “right,” but rather as “northeast” or “southwest,” writes Stanford psychology professor Lera Boroditsky (and an expert in linguistic-cultural connections) in the Wall Street Journal.
About a third of the world’s languages discuss space in these kinds of absolute terms rather than the relative ones we use in English, according to Boroditsky. “As a result of this constant linguistic training,” she writes, “speakers of such languages are remarkably good at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes.” On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and her colleague found that Pormpuraawans, who speak Kuuk Thaayorre, not only knew instinctively in which direction they were facing, but also always arranged pictures in a temporal progression from east to west.
Blame and English Speakers
In the same article, Boroditsky notes that in English, we’ll often say that someone broke a vase even if it was an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers tend to say that the vase broke itself. Boroditsky describes a study by her student Caitlin Fausey in which English speakers were much more likely to remember who accidentally popped balloons, broke eggs, or spilled drinks in a video than Spanish or Japanese speakers. (Guilt alert!) Not only that, but there’s a correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims, Boroditsky argues.
Color among Zuñi and Russian Speakers
Our ability to distinguish between colors follows the terms in which we describe them, as Chen notes in the academic paper in which he presents his research (forthcoming in the American Economic Review). A 1954 study found that Zuñi speakers, who don’t differentiate between orange and yellow, have trouble telling them apart. Russian speakers, on the other hand, have separate words for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). According to a 2007 study, they’re better than English speakers at picking out blues close to the goluboy/siniy threshold.
Gender in Finnish and Hebrew
In Hebrew, gender markers are all over the place, whereas Finnish doesn’t mark gender at all, Boroditsky writes in Scientific American. A study done in the 1980s found that, yup, thought follows suit: kids who spoke Hebrew knew their own genders a year earlier than those who grew up speaking Finnish. (Speakers of English, in which gender referents fall in the middle, were in between on that timeline, too.)
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
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Tuesday, March 25, 2014
西方应向中国取经
新加坡国立大学李光耀公共政策学院院长 马凯硕
尼尔•弗格森(Niall Ferguson)只说对了一半。美国在地缘政治上确实在逐步收缩，但收缩的不是地缘政治战线，而是西方的地缘政治智慧。
有人注意到了西方10年来一连串的地缘政治失败吗？尽管采取了大规模军事与金融干预，伊拉克和阿富汗仍在走向失败。三年前，美国宣布：“为了叙利亚人民的利益，叙利亚总统阿萨德(Assad)下台的时候到了。”可阿萨德仍在执政。而如今，西方几乎要把俄罗斯变成敌人，这无异于为中国送上一份地缘政治大礼。
这些失败的原因何在？原因简单得令人惊讶。在保持了两个世纪的成功之后，西方领导人想当然地认为，他们的角色就是维持西方势力的扩张。他们中没有一个人充分意识到一个不可否认的新现实：西方的真实挑战在于应对衰落。
美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)简单的一句话充分体现了这一错误心态。他宣称，俄罗斯站在“历史的错误一边”，言外之意是，西方站在历史的正确一边。但果真如此吗？未来几十年，有些趋势将变得不可逆转。西方在全球人口、经济体量中的比重会下降，这必然会导致其政治和军事实力在全球的地位下降。近期新兴市场遭遇的挫折，令某些人一厢情愿地认为，西方又回来了。没错，一两年内或许是这样。但这次短暂的亮眼表现之后，西方衰退长期趋势的逻辑将延续下去。
所以，西方应当如何应对自身的衰落呢？三个简单步骤就能产生很大效果。第一，停止推广民主的意识形态“十字军东征”。实际上，西方在乌克兰的惨败，直接源于西方鼓动乌克兰民众上街抗议、而非鼓励对立阵营政治妥协。西方鲁莽的地缘政治做法，直接源于这样一种信念——借用尼基塔•赫鲁晓夫(Nikita Khrushchev)的说法——“历史站在我们这一边”。事实上，正如实用主义者、美国前国务卿亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)最近明智又敏锐地指出的那样，忽视俄罗斯在乌克兰的关键利益是不明智的。
如果西方停止推广民主，民主会停止扩张步伐吗？当然不会。民主将会自然地兴起，因此也将自然地具有可持续性。看一看全球人口最多的伊斯兰国家印尼便知。1999年，印尼濒临崩溃。15年之后，该国即将选举佐科•维多多(Joko Widodo)——他更为人熟知的名字是佐科维(Jokowi)——上台了。他是当今世界上最有能力的领导人之一。这是如何发生的？答案是，西方的忽略做了件好事。奥巴马三次取消对印尼的访问，让这个他童年时待过的国家失望。但印尼继续朝着积极方向前进。
第二，接纳俄罗斯，并且是有意识地这样做。西方媒体已对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)和俄罗斯进行了铺天盖地的谩骂。但几乎没哪家媒体指出，是西方把普京逼到了墙角，不给他任何出路。西方领导人曾多次向苏联总统米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)保证，北约(Nato)不会东扩。可他们后来食言了。现在，西方再次保证，如果俄罗斯退后一步，北约将不会在克里米亚建立海军基地，还能有哪个俄罗斯领导人会相信呢？
北约不明智的扩张并未加强西方的安全，只不过把俄罗斯变成了自己的敌人。但当西方最终醒悟过来，要对付一个崛起的中国时，俄罗斯恰恰可能是平衡中国力量的必要地缘政治砝码。现在，西方把俄罗斯推向中国一边，直接损害了自身的长期地缘政治利益。西方无法自已地对俄罗斯施加了制裁。这种损害自身利益的冲动做法充分表明，西方的地缘政治智慧在衰减。
现在妥协还不太晚。但西方将不得不放弃道德制高点。一个简单的观察结论可能帮助西方这么做。西方国家里有没有人注意到，很少有人支持西方对乌克兰的“十字军东征”？事实上，有谁能说出一个支持西方这样做的非西方大国？全球最大的民主国家是印度。印度人跟世界其他地区的许多人一样，以怀疑眼光看着西方，不明白他们怎能做出如此损害自身利益的事。
第三，西方应当研究和学习中国。中国没有动摇世界秩序便成为了世界第二号大国，这几乎是一个地缘政治奇迹。中国是怎么办到的？中国采取了战略克制。尽管在南中国海(South China Sea)、东中国海(East China Sea)和中印边境上出现了一些小摩擦，中国仍维持了和平。更神奇的是，中国悄然平息了世界几大引爆点之一台湾海峡的局势。
具有讽刺意味的是，更有必要采取战略克制的是衰落中的强国，而不是扩张中的强国。如果西方能够效仿中国、采取战略克制，就有可能最终为其10年来的地缘政治失败划上句号。
本文作者是新加坡国立大学李光耀公共政策学院(School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore)院长，著有《大融合：东方、西方与世界的逻辑》(The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World)一书
尼尔•弗格森(Niall Ferguson)只说对了一半。美国在地缘政治上确实在逐步收缩，但收缩的不是地缘政治战线，而是西方的地缘政治智慧。
有人注意到了西方10年来一连串的地缘政治失败吗？尽管采取了大规模军事与金融干预，伊拉克和阿富汗仍在走向失败。三年前，美国宣布：“为了叙利亚人民的利益，叙利亚总统阿萨德(Assad)下台的时候到了。”可阿萨德仍在执政。而如今，西方几乎要把俄罗斯变成敌人，这无异于为中国送上一份地缘政治大礼。
这些失败的原因何在？原因简单得令人惊讶。在保持了两个世纪的成功之后，西方领导人想当然地认为，他们的角色就是维持西方势力的扩张。他们中没有一个人充分意识到一个不可否认的新现实：西方的真实挑战在于应对衰落。
美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)简单的一句话充分体现了这一错误心态。他宣称，俄罗斯站在“历史的错误一边”，言外之意是，西方站在历史的正确一边。但果真如此吗？未来几十年，有些趋势将变得不可逆转。西方在全球人口、经济体量中的比重会下降，这必然会导致其政治和军事实力在全球的地位下降。近期新兴市场遭遇的挫折，令某些人一厢情愿地认为，西方又回来了。没错，一两年内或许是这样。但这次短暂的亮眼表现之后，西方衰退长期趋势的逻辑将延续下去。
所以，西方应当如何应对自身的衰落呢？三个简单步骤就能产生很大效果。第一，停止推广民主的意识形态“十字军东征”。实际上，西方在乌克兰的惨败，直接源于西方鼓动乌克兰民众上街抗议、而非鼓励对立阵营政治妥协。西方鲁莽的地缘政治做法，直接源于这样一种信念——借用尼基塔•赫鲁晓夫(Nikita Khrushchev)的说法——“历史站在我们这一边”。事实上，正如实用主义者、美国前国务卿亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)最近明智又敏锐地指出的那样，忽视俄罗斯在乌克兰的关键利益是不明智的。
如果西方停止推广民主，民主会停止扩张步伐吗？当然不会。民主将会自然地兴起，因此也将自然地具有可持续性。看一看全球人口最多的伊斯兰国家印尼便知。1999年，印尼濒临崩溃。15年之后，该国即将选举佐科•维多多(Joko Widodo)——他更为人熟知的名字是佐科维(Jokowi)——上台了。他是当今世界上最有能力的领导人之一。这是如何发生的？答案是，西方的忽略做了件好事。奥巴马三次取消对印尼的访问，让这个他童年时待过的国家失望。但印尼继续朝着积极方向前进。
第二，接纳俄罗斯，并且是有意识地这样做。西方媒体已对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)和俄罗斯进行了铺天盖地的谩骂。但几乎没哪家媒体指出，是西方把普京逼到了墙角，不给他任何出路。西方领导人曾多次向苏联总统米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫(Mikhail Gorbachev)保证，北约(Nato)不会东扩。可他们后来食言了。现在，西方再次保证，如果俄罗斯退后一步，北约将不会在克里米亚建立海军基地，还能有哪个俄罗斯领导人会相信呢？
北约不明智的扩张并未加强西方的安全，只不过把俄罗斯变成了自己的敌人。但当西方最终醒悟过来，要对付一个崛起的中国时，俄罗斯恰恰可能是平衡中国力量的必要地缘政治砝码。现在，西方把俄罗斯推向中国一边，直接损害了自身的长期地缘政治利益。西方无法自已地对俄罗斯施加了制裁。这种损害自身利益的冲动做法充分表明，西方的地缘政治智慧在衰减。
现在妥协还不太晚。但西方将不得不放弃道德制高点。一个简单的观察结论可能帮助西方这么做。西方国家里有没有人注意到，很少有人支持西方对乌克兰的“十字军东征”？事实上，有谁能说出一个支持西方这样做的非西方大国？全球最大的民主国家是印度。印度人跟世界其他地区的许多人一样，以怀疑眼光看着西方，不明白他们怎能做出如此损害自身利益的事。
第三，西方应当研究和学习中国。中国没有动摇世界秩序便成为了世界第二号大国，这几乎是一个地缘政治奇迹。中国是怎么办到的？中国采取了战略克制。尽管在南中国海(South China Sea)、东中国海(East China Sea)和中印边境上出现了一些小摩擦，中国仍维持了和平。更神奇的是，中国悄然平息了世界几大引爆点之一台湾海峡的局势。
具有讽刺意味的是，更有必要采取战略克制的是衰落中的强国，而不是扩张中的强国。如果西方能够效仿中国、采取战略克制，就有可能最终为其10年来的地缘政治失败划上句号。
本文作者是新加坡国立大学李光耀公共政策学院(School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore)院长，著有《大融合：东方、西方与世界的逻辑》(The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World)一书
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