Edmund Gall's blog
I really have to wonder. A private organisation, Motivational Speaking International Limited, is hosting a "conference" entitled Psychology and You, at the Point Fortin East Secondary School, on March 13, 20 and 27. From the brief info published in the Trinidad Guardian, the conference runs from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. and the topics to be discussed are:
- What is Psychology?
- Types of psychologists and their work
- Everyday applications for psychology
- Becoming psychologically wise.
I have several concerns. First off, I'm wondering how anything that takes two hours to complete can be called a conference. Call it a seminar, or even a workshop, but conference? Given the agenda, I think this is nothing more than a presentation.
Which brings me to the lack of clarity. For my application fee, am I expected to attend just one day or all three days? If it's all three days, then the amount of topics seems dreadfully low. The first three topics can be covered within one hour - what are you going to talk about for the next five? "Becoming psychologically wise" seems like dumbed-down populist lingo that has no place in a proper psychologist's vocabulary.
Best of all, they charge attendees $800 for the experience. Wait: $800 for a two hour presentation? $400 per hour to give something attendees can get for free on the Internet, on radio/tv or some magazines? Well, at that price, the attendees may as well visit the presenting psychologist(s) privately for a one-to-one session. {Read more}
I just watched one of the most enlightening discussions on the concerns about UDeCOTT on C TV with Afra Raymond. I wish C TV posted clips of its First Up breakfast show online. Here were the key points from the interview.
All special purpose state bodies are supposed to publish annual financial accounts. UDeCOTT's last published accounts were for 2006.
When determining whether to proceed with commercial property projects, developers usually do a feasibility study to examine, for e.g., what's the expected return on investment and break-even rents. Raymond asked Calder Hart if this was done for any UDeCOTT projects and he replied it was done for only one commercial project - the International Waterfront Complex (IWC). Note: Raymond didn't expect such benchmarks to apply for projects involving public goods, e.g. NAPA, schools, health centres.
When asked what was the IWC's break-even rent, Hart replied approx. TT$20 per sqft. Break-even rent is calculated based on UDeCOTT's monthly bank loan repayments. Raymond indicated that this raised questions immediately since at the time the market rental for commercial properties in Port of Spain was TT$15 per sqft, i.e. if you placed a property on the market you could not expect more than TT$15 per sqft. In other words, the total earned from a fully-rented IWC would still be below the expected loan repayment figure - the gap would have to be funded from somewhere. So how could UDeCOTT say the project was feasible when the break-even rent was above the expected market rental rates?
Further, when Raymond asked what was the value attributed to the land on which the IWC was built, as used for its feasibility study, Hart replied: "Nil." That can't be right, and if it was included, then the break-even rent would be higher than TT$20 per sqft. {Read more}
Ever since attending primary school, I've been aware that copying someone's work was wrong. At college - high school in North American parlance - I learnt about plagiarism. I was reminded about it in university when compiling research and some months ago it was played out in T&T's political and press arenas with the accusation of plagiarism by a newpaper columnist / priest / potential Integrity Commission member.
Related to this, I learnt about attribution - if you're going to use someone's work in yours, then you need to highlight what you used, where you got it from and whose work it was. In research, this is done through referencing. In websites, you may use a copyright signature and embed a link to the original work.
I'm wondering what's the standard in T&T's media houses. Sometimes, articles would have the writer's name in the byline, and sometimes they won't. I always presumed that if no name was attached to an article, then it was written by some junior member of the media house's staff. However, if an article was copied from another media house, then appropriate attribution was expected.
Today I offer two curious examples from T&T's daily papers' websites, both involving cricket. {Read more}
I wish to thank the Hon. Minister of Works and Transport, Colm Imbert, for correcting me by way of his Letter to the Editor (Trinidad Guardian, 02 Mar 2010, http://guardian.co.tt/commentary/letters/2010/03/02/ambiguity-law-being-corrected). He responded to issues I raised in How to comply with the law - Part 1, and advised that: {Read more}
- The Motor Vehicle and Road Traffic Act Ch 48:50 (MVRTA) does NOT state the President of the Republic of T&T is allowed to use the national Coat of Arms (CoA) on his vehicles' licence plates
- The MVRTA makes no reference to the CoA at all
- The currently proposed bill, 9/2010 The Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, 2010, only deals with updating regulations and does not address the use of the CoA on the Prime Minister's vehicles.
I'd like to thank Parliament for reminding us that there are really two ways to comply with the laws of T&T: either change your behaviour, or change the law.
The old Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, under Chapter 48:50, says that only the President has the authority to use the coat of arms on official vehicles. The coat of arms appeared on the Prime Minister's vehicle, PBM 1, in late 2008, over one year ago. The Prime Minister is not the President. So it appeared to common thinking that those responsible for the Prime Minister's fleet of vehicles contravened the law, and the Prime Minister appeared happy to be transported in that vehicle despite the questions over its legality.
{Read more}
A few weeks ago, the T&T government decided to award sole rights to distribute coverage of major Carnival 2010 events to its own media house: the Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG). On the face of it, this seemed sensible: award management of the distribution to a trusted partner. However, though CNMG has been streaming its own programmes on the Internet for over a year at www.ctntworld.com, it proved to be completely unable to handle streaming of T&T Carnival.
First, we have to question whether the decision to manage radio, video and Internet coverage of Carnival 2010 was borne out of a wish by the government, through its Ministry of Culture, to really make the most of this tremendous marketing opportunity. According to local photojournalist, Mark Lyndersay, it appears that the motivation was control rather than optimisation: see his extremely enlightening BitDepth article on the matter.
Second, the expected first step for CNMG would be re-licensing of other providers to share in the distribution of the events for a fee. It did this with the radio feeds, since Internet users can listen to coverage of events via non-CNMG stations. However, CNMG decided not to share Internet streaming with other distributors, as described in this When Steel Talks (WST) article on the exclusion of T&T culture media house WACK. Given government's history of planned failure, folks involved in culture rightly became worried by this imposed single point of failure for video coverage. {Read more}
The Indo-Trinbago Equality Council's (ITEC's) Devant Maharaj, via his Letter to the Editor, called upon the Chief Justice and Law Association to investigate Justice Herbert Volney's concern about the risk of racial bias in jury trials. I have two concerns with this letter.
Secondly, when making public statements, we need to take due care such statements have a sound basis, even those that appear to be cliches. This is why I wish to highlight ITEC's use of the following statement in its letter: "Given the disproportionate number of Indo-Trinidadians who are the victims of crime, the idea that racial considerations can influence and inform the deliberation of criminal juries is one which can spread panic and fear and lead to a loss of confidence in the criminal justice system."
Can ITEC please publish the reference(s) to the research it used to determine that a "disproportionate number of Indo-Trinidadians ... are the victims of crime ..."?
{Read more}
How do the creatures - I hesitate to call them human - who do this to people sleep at night?
To the state representatives responsible for delivery of such housing, you may not have done such poor work directly, but if you fail to get it repaired and penalise the contractors who did, then you will be equally guilty. It's despicable.
In response, Housing Minister Tina Gronlund-Nunez, stated that the new tenants have only six months to identify all problems they had with HDC homes. Why? For insurance purposes, buildings are ascribed a life of several decades. If over the course of these years a fault develops that can be attributed to poor workmanship by the builders, then they should be liable for it. Is she saying that a state house has a shorter warranty - six months - than the appliances that their tenants would buy? Surely not!
{Read more}
UNC MP Vasant Bharath and ex-Chairman of the Membership Committee Kelvin Ramnath hosted a news conference yesterday to give further details on the alleged discovery of boxes containing "thousands" of undistributed UNC membership cards at Rienzi Complex, home of the UNC's administrative offices. It was carried live by media houses on the Internet and reported in today's papers, such as Anna Ramdass's article in the Trinidad Express.
I looked at the news conference via C News' live Internet broadcast Internet yesterday and was left a bit confused. The feed continued for a few seconds after the end of the news conference. It was during this time, I heard Mr Ramnath say that his own card may have been in the pile, and Mr Bharath replied that he found his in the pile. Unless I misheard, if the non-issuance of the cards leads to persons being omitted from the voters list, how come these two gentlemen were able to vote? Mr Ramnath admitted that the preliminary membership list was circulated to all candidates and constituency offices and apart from a handful of requests from Mr Jack Warner, no requests for changes were made.
They complained about poor office administration, lack of support for Mr Ramnath and said their intention was not to question the election results but rather to inform the public of a suspicious discovery in the offices by staff preparing for the handover to the new executive. At the end of it, I quite frankly was left with the feeling that here was a bunch of poor-me-ones trying to deflect public attention from the winds of change by claiming some fraud occurred. Their hinting of the possibility of some member of the public seeking court-room clarification on this discovery was puzzling: clarification of what? {Read more}
This article in today's Trinidad Express suggested that the T&T government has mandated that all T&T organisations collecting money and supplies for relief efforts in Haiti must handover their collections to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM). To quote the article:
"The decision to have the ODPM take over the entire process ... was made by the Government, who mandated that they coordinate and manage the delivery of cash, goods and services to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) in Barbados and the Caribbean Disaster Relief Unit (CDRU) in Jamaica. ...
To facilitate the collection of the donated goods within Trinidad and Tobago, the ODPM will coordinate the establishment of a number of collection outlets to be managed by the Adventist Disaster Relief Agency (ADRA), United Way of Trinidad and Tobago, Chamber of Industry and Commerce (TTCIC) and ODPM offices across the country.
While ODPM will be in charge of collecting goods and money from Government, ADRA will collect from all the faith-based organisations, TTCIC from all corporate entities and United Way from all non-governmental organisations. Everything will then be dropped off at one of ODPM’s warehouses in San Juan, then be taken to CDEMA and CDRU, who will then take it to Haiti." {Read more}
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