Merit and Ethics, the IIMC way

A big stand by IIMC. The big business schools would do well to create a system where the degree of an alumnus could be recalled or nullified for significant ethical infractions. It should be made clear that an alumnus can use a degree but can also lose it, and has a responsibility to uphold the integrity of the institution.

IIMC denies awards to 8 for indiscipline - The Times of India: "KOLKATA: When state institutes are finding it tough to implement discipline on campuses, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) has set a precedent by deciding against honouring eight students, all within top 20, with awards they would have ideally bagged had it not been for their indicipline.
The board of governors (BoG), which met on Saturday before the 46th annual convocation, debated long before finally pronouncing the "exemplary punishment" for the students on disciplinary grounds such as short attendance (less than 75%) and proxy presence. Even the topper of 2009-11 batch failed to find his name in the Director's merit list.

"We met to ratify the results, which were then put forward before the BOG by the faculty council. After discussing various aspects, we decided to implement the punishment because an institute like IIMC not only imparts education of the highest order but also aims at churning out responsible employees," said principal secretary of higher education and BoG member Satish Tiwary.

Initially, the faculty had decided not only to deny students the awards but also prohibit them from taking up jobs. "However, we didn't want be so harsh in delivering punishment for the very first time. We decided to set an example by denying them their awards," added a faculty member.

IIM has done what no state- run college has been able to do implement discipline on campus despite students failing to achieve the required attendance. At institutes like Gokhale Memorial Girls' College, Jogomaya Devi College and Basanti Devi College, authorities have been heckled and traffic disrupted over students refusing to accept Calcutta University's guideline of meeting 75% attendance to appear in the university exam.

"IIMC students find takers from some of the biggest companies in the corporate world. We want to be known to our recruiters as an institute where discipline is ingrained in students. Moral standards are very important and play a crucial role in building up careers. We wanted to give out the message, loud and clear, that only merit cannot bring them honour, it is important to understand social ethics too," said a senior PGP faculty member. ..."

Norway-Guyana - the Green Way forward

A truly remarkable partnership for growth appears to be taking seed...

A historic move in the battle to save tropical rainforests | Tony Juniper | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "Guyana and Norway's leadership is seen in the second stage of a ground-breaking deal through which one (Norway) makes annual payments to the other (Guyana) to keep its forests. The amount of money to change hands is calculated on the basis of how well Guyana has done in holding back deforestation, and the value of that in terms of avoided carbon dioxide emissions. A complex calculation is made to determine how well the recipient country has done but this year $40m is being transferred.

Guyana spends the money paid by Norway - a total of $250m spread over a period of years - on projects that will help with environmentally sound development, for example through funding solar panels on all the houses belonging to the indigenous people. In remote rainforests these are no fashion accessories. They are the means for children to read books at night and mark the end of the kerosene lamps and candles which cause indoor air pollution and fire hazards.

There is also money to connect remote settlements to the internet, again powered with solar electricity. There is money to pay for the costly job of legally demarking Amerindian lands and there are plans for health, education and business support. The overall strategy is geared to keeping the forest intact, and thus the priceless services they provide for the entire world. Any rational economic calculation must conclude the world is getting the bargain of the century.

Without this kind of support from Norway, the pressures on the forests might become irresistible. Guyana is poor. The country needs jobs, foreign exchange and tax revenues. And there are plenty of takers for the natural resources that await plunder in delivering these benefits. Since Brazil has cracked down on deforestation, the loggers, ranchers and soya farmers there have been looking for other places to expand their industries. Guyana is next door, connected by a new road and a prime target. I wrote about this in 2009, but fortunately there has so far been no major incursion. Part of the reason is because Guyana's President Jagdeo has been able to hold the line politically, in part because Norway has delivered money on a different basis.

But even with the best will, Guyana needs to undertake some forest clearance. There are plans for a new hydropower dam that will flood 45 square kilometres of forest. It will lead to the loss of 0.05% of the country's forest and is by any standard a major project. There has also been forest loss to gold mining. In the last year forest clearance has nearly tripled, mainly because of an expansion of this industry, from about 40 square kilometres to about 110. It is important, however, to put this change into the context of a tiny original deforestation rate – at six hundredths of 1% per annum, Guyana's present rate of forest loss is about 95% below the global average. With forest nearly the size of England and Scotland combined, the total loss from the dam and mining will lead to the equivalent of 10% of Norfolk being deforested. And the very fact that we know this is a major step forward. Both the low deforestation rate and the rapid rate of change were revealed by satellite monitoring funded from the first tranche of Norwegian money paid last year.

Guyana has sent a signal – and it is being heard. One consequence is seen in the fact that land-hungry natural resource companies looking for space in which to expand agriculture and logging are heading toward neighbouring Surinam. That country has no such deal with Norway, or anyone else for that matter, and unfortunately business as usual prevails there...."

Parsons and Cheney- Biggest cowards in the world

Yet another story of an American with too much time on his hands and not having much to do, showing his cowardice by shooting an animal. If these "hunters" have any guts, they would try to hunt the animals without weapons, the way the animals defend themselves.

GoDaddy’s Bob Parsons OK With Causing A Media Stampede (Again) | Epicenter | Wired.com: "“Big Daddy” Bob Parsons of the web hosting company GoDaddy is in the news again, and boy, is he kicking up a storm.
No, it’s not because he’s recruited another sexy (Go) Daddy Girl for an advertising campaign or because one of his new provocative commercials was voted ‘most-watched’ in the Super Bowl. It’s because he shot a male elephant in Zimbabwe — and posted the explicit video online for the world to see."

Risks of the Southwest Model

Southwest Grounds 79 Planes After In-Flight Scare - NYTimes.com: "Southwest Airlines grounded 79 airplanes on Saturday after a piece of the fuselage on one of its Boeing 737s ripped open during a flight the day before, leaving a hole in the cabin ceiling and rapidly depressurizing the aircraft.

“We’re taking them out of service to inspect them over the next few days,” Whitney Eichinger, a Southwest spokeswoman, said Saturday. She said they would be “looking for the same type of aircraft skin fatigue.”

In a news release, Southwest announced that it would cancel about 300 flights on Saturday because of inspections, and that customers should expect delays of up to two hours.

“The safety of our customers and employees is our primary concern,” Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “We are working closely with Boeing to conduct these proactive inspections and support the investigation.”

The Southwest plane, a 15-year old Boeing 737-300, was cruising at 35,000 feet on its way to Sacramento from Phoenix on Friday afternoon when passengers heard an explosion. The Associated Press reported that one woman described it as “gunshotlike.”

...

Regarding the Southwest incident, James E. Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the airline had “a good safety program,” but that company worked its airplanes hard, scheduling flights with very quick turnarounds. “They pound their airplanes daily,” Mr. Hall said.

“The skin of the aircraft is like human skin,” he said. “Any type of puncture is serious.”

Two years ago, Southwest faced a similar episode when a hole ripped open in a plane’s fuselage and forced an emergency landing on a flight bound from Nashville to Baltimore. Earlier that year, Southwest was fined $7.5 million for safety violations by the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 1988, a flight attendant was killed and scores of passengers were injured when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a 20-foot rupture in its fuselage during a flight in Hawaii. The flight, carrying 89 passengers and a crew of five from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, was at traveling at 24,000 feet when the tear occurred...."