On rationalism morality

"We grow into our rationality as caterpillars grow into butterflies. If the caterpillar eats enough leaves, it will (eventually) grow wings. And if the child gets enough experiences of turn taking, sharing, and playground justice, it will (eventually) become a moral creature, able to use its rational capacities to solve ever harder problems. Rationality is our nature, and good moral reasoning is the end point of development."

~The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

Cause we're all working mothers

"We are all working mothers. What unites us is our motherhood, which – despite the fact that it does involve so much work, work of hands and hearts and souls – is so much more than work."


Taken from an article called "The Work of The Heart" in a blog 'Her Bad Mother'
Link: http://herbadmother.com/2012/04/the-work-of-the-heart/

economic vs political institutions

"Each society functions with a set of economic and political rules created and enforced by the state and the citizens collectively. Economic institutions shape economic incentives: the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies, and so on. It is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under, and it is the political institutions that determine how this process work. ... This in turn determines whether politicians are agents of the citizens, albeit imperfect, or are able to abuse the power entrusted to them, or that they have usurped, to amass their own fortunes and to pursue their own agendas, ones detrimental to those of the citizens."

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty 

by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

In gossip we're in social order

This quote somehow has an additional link on how gossip could be not that bad

"Gossip gets a bad rap, but we're finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social order"

Gossip can have social and psychological benefits by EurekAlert!

Indonesian political economy of deforestation

"By combining detailed satellite imagery with data on competition between jurisdictions, elections and local resource rents we have shown that local political economy factors are critical to understanding the pattern of tropical deforestation in Indonesia, home to some of the largest tropical forest reserves in the world. We find that increases in the numbers of political jurisdictions are associated with increased deforestation. Illegal logging increases dramatically in the years leading up to local elections. And having access to rents from local oil and gas reserves dampens incentives to engage in illegal logging in the short but not the medium term."

Burgess, Hansen, Olken, Potapov, and Sieber (2011) The political economy of deforestation in the tropics NBER Working Paper 17417

trip rates by male vs female and by family size

"If you look at trip rates by male versus female, and look at that by size of family... the women's trip rates vary tremendously by size of family. Men's trip rates look as if they didn't even know they had a family. The men's trip rates are almost independent of family size. What it obviously says is the mother's the one doing all the hauling." (p.135)

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt (2009)

Education, not schooling, is compulsory.

"That every child has a right to an education is recognised in international instruments such as the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) (1948) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC) (1990) to which Australia is a signatory. The UDHR provides that '[e] ducation shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages' [and] that 'elementary education shall be compulsory...'; and that 'parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given their children' (Article 26(3)). CROC also provides that 'states parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members.' (CROC, Article 2(2))." 

Source: Glenda Jackson, Sonia Allan,International Journal of Elementary Education, Vol 2, Issue 3 (July 2010).

The quotation above is taken from: http://homeschoolaustralia.com/quickguide/legal.html (accessed: 12 January 2012) 

On Kartini, maternal death and Kuntilanak

"Even when the well-loved Kartini died of a haemorrhage after the birth of her child in 1904, her death constituted an everyday tragedy. It might even have been better not to mention it, because in many parts of Indonesia it is believed that women who die in childbirth reappear as evil spirits, or pontianak [well-known as Kuntilanak -ed], to take revenge on the living."

Source: Pontianak (1919) 'Pontianak' in 's-Gravenhage and M. Nijhoff  Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie III page 450-1 cited in Blackburn (2004) Women and the State in Modern Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, page: 145. 

In gossip we trust

"Gossip is often the best way to understand political processes in Indonesia." 

Source: Sen, K. (2009) 'Indonesian women at work: reframing the subject' in L. Edwards and M. Roces (eds) Women in Asia: Critical Concepts in Asia Studies, London: Routledge

Intro

I have been reading since the time I could walk and I have been enlightened by many sentences and paragraphs written in my readings. Rather than only sit in my mind and I forget about them, I decide to put them in a blog. The project starts today and I am hoping it is going to be a long term project. The source of quotation in this blog is from many kind of literatures, newspapers, blog, websites, or even Facebook statuses and Twitter time lines that I have been reading from. Since I am an Indonesian who is studying about Indonesia and lives in Indonesia and sometimes in some part of the world, my quotations would probably focus on Indonesia. I am also inviting my readers to post quotations from their own readings. Please quote it correctly and mention the sources including authors and date.