Entries from January 2009 ↓

What would you say to some entity which has been faithfully serving to you for 86 years?

Since 1924 grandfather YIPTONG gave up his activity of manufacturer of cigarettes to join in to be a distributor of British American Tobacco ( BAT). All through the years up to the present the family business is still the distributor of BAT cigarettes.

At the early start, YIPTONG distributorship was more about being a wholesales depot in the main city of Port Louis where retailers came to obtain their suppliers. Later in the early sixties with the transformation of retailing in Mauritius, BAT selected a restricted number of distributors who were assigned geographical regions to promote market and supervise the sales of their products.

Unlike many other products, cigarettes are sensitive products and cannot be handled like most other commodities. The distributors had to ensure that the storing of the stocks at the point of sales where optimum to guarantee of their conservation to freshness and contamination from damp and strong smells. The shell life of the locally produced cigarettes was limited to weeks. The role of the distributor was to ensure that stale products were tendered to the consumers and that a proper stock rotation was maintained. Systems were put in place to control the stock of each retailer and to run a just in time rotation. Credit was extended to the retailers to maximise sales.

It was a great opportunity for the family to acquire the knowledge and practice of retail distributorship. As cigarettes sales involved heavy financing and exchange of large amount of cash, the distributors also learnt the task of handling large amount of money. Most distributors, enriched with this BAT distribution experience ventured into distribution of other products.

All in all the association with BAT has been a win-win to both BAT and the distributors.

This morning one of my regular blog reader told me that I have been infected by the OBAMA MANIA fever. In a row my last  2 blogs mentioned the President of the United States. ‘Jamais deux sans trois’ goes the saying. Indeed the reader is right. I have been subdued by BARACK HUSSIEN OBAMA’s inaugural speech last night watching him live on TV on his swearing in ceremony. Unfailingly, I started my day on my PC, watching him again on the New York Times and reading the transcript of the speech.

Did you notice the twixt in his name?

Awesome! His entry before facing the nation, poised and relaxed yet concentrated, he appeared serious and serene. I am still attentively rereading the transcript of the speech to learn from the wordings and arrangements used to arouse such intense emotions in his audience. I surely put on my cap as a toastmasters learner to observe and elicit the speech craft learning’s. Where and what are the words that made the differences? He is definitely a great speaker. You will recall my love for his Berlin’s speech at the start of his campaign. For sure he has availed himself of the latest technology to enhance his 19 minutes long address with speech prompters. He is so natural, sincere and convincing. He is trustful and is trusted.

I shall be surprised that he has been  NLP trained or being coached by NLP experts who were the coaches of Bill Clinton. Lara Ewing from Colorado and Charles Faulkner from Chicago were NLP coaches who worked for the democrats. His gestures and body language were coherent with his speech and message. Humble yet determined Barack Hussein OBAMA is the man, who is most capable of bringing the change that the US needs at this juncture.

Up to now, his thinking and the delivery of his intent to his audience have been executed with brio. The next lap will be the real execution of his intent. We have yet to see his capacity to mobilise his party, the opposing Republican Party, the senate and the congress to move  the whole of the country in the direction to create a better America and a better world to live in. He is realistic: he humbly admits that the task is huge, it will take time, more importantly he has the determination to make it. Yes He can. May God bless him.

In today’s issue of Forbes Joel Kotkin writes on the family values of Obama as a model of proper parenting and spirituality for the next generation. In the same line of thoughts, since my last family meeting, both my family nucleus and the extended Yiptong family, I lived in December last, my quest is on the transmission of family values to my grand children.

What are family values?

What exactly makes up a strong family that possesses good family values? A strong family is one that sustains its members — that supports and nourishes the members throughout the span of that family.

I reproduce here an interview which was conducted this week.

Carl Anderson was in Mexico City last week to address the VI World Meeting of Families, which was attended by some 10,000 participants. His address Friday was titled “Solidarity and Family.”

Anderson took some time to speak with ZENIT about his address on the concept of solidarity, his impressions of the world encounter, and what he sees as the greatest challenge for the Christian family today.

Q: The topic of your conference was “Family and Solidarity.” Why solidarity?

Anderson: The short answer is that’s the topic they gave me. But this is such an important term for John Paul II. Obviously because of what happened in Poland and in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, but more especially I think as part of his vision of renewal for the Church and for society.

Understanding that solidarity in the Christian sense is really understood as a communion of being for others, and that was so central to John Paul II in terms of the theology of the body and his whole understanding of the human person as being connected to other people. So this is the idea of solidarity in the family, and then the family as a model for the greater society of witnessing communion and solidarity, and living a life for others: first in the family, but then outside in the community of larger society.

Q: You went from the idea of unity, drawing on the thought of John Paul II, and then spoke of solidarity, drawing on the thought of Benedict XVI. How did you come to that conclusion?

Anderson: Well, what’s so remarkable to me, although perhaps in the wisdom of Providence it’s just part of what ought to be, [is that] obviously John Paul II and Benedict XVI are two different individuals — they have two different specialties and interests — but there is such a parallel between their two ways of thinking. To see Benedict XVI compliment and build upon this whole idea that John Paul II introduced in terms of solidarity, and unity and communion of persons and what that means, and to see Benedict XVI advance it and broaden it and deepen it, just shows the continuity in Church teaching, and the tradition and life of the Church. So, it is a wonderful thing and I think we are very lucky to have these two great Popes in the history of the Church.

Q: The idea of solidarity in the family seems to be something that happens almost spontaneously. Do you see that solidarity as something that is natural in society, but nevertheless something that is disintegrating?

Anderson: I think that one of the most important insights of John Paul II is this idea that these are not just ideas, but it’s actually built into the very structure of human existence by the Creator as part of his design. If we look at the two great commandments — love of God and love of neighbor — love is built into the very vocation of the human person, at the very center. And therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that the structure of human existence is designed in such a way to lead us to that kind of relationship with each other. And that is one of the most important contributions I think that John Paul II made to the ongoing teaching of the tradition of the Church, and I think that it’s something that we’re only now beginning to see how important it is and what the broad implications are.

Q: What are the major challenges you see for the family in the United States today?

Anderson: Well, it’s hard to know where to begin. Certainly there are the obvious economic, social and cultural pressures. But I think the great challenge that the Christian family faces is to encounter what it means to be a Christian. What it means to say that Jesus is Lord. And to believe what we say in the Creed, and to live that life first within the family, and then outside in greater society. To be a true witness.

Forty years ago, Father Joseph Ratzinger, speaking to a group of students, said that what troubles so many Christians more than the question of whether God exists, is the question of whether Christianity makes a distinctive difference — whether there is something new in society that we look around and we can see, resulting from Christianity. And this kind of distinctive witness, I think, is a challenge that Christian families face, fundamentally.

Is there a difference between the secular society and the way Christians marry, beget their children, raise their children, educate their children, the way they work, the way they treat their employees, the way they treat their customers and the way they vote? Or is it indistinguishable from the secular society?

If it is indistinguishable, then we go back to Father Ratzinger’s great question, then what did Jesus Christ bring that was new? So I think that’s the challenge of Christian families.

Q: President-elect Barack Obama will be taking office Tuesday. Many in the United States see his inauguration as a turning point for the country. What do you see ahead for the United States in 2009?

Anderson: I think much of the press — present company excluded — swings back and forth to extremes. And I think the expectations now for President-elect Obama are very, very high. The challenges that the United States and the world faces are so great that it requires everyone to be committed to finding solutions and working together to find solutions that make sense.

But, from his campaign rhetoric, especially on family issues, on social issues, on pro-life issues, if he moves forward in that direction, it will present very great challenges to many believers who recognize the sanctity of life, whether they are Catholics or Protestants, or Jews — even nonbelievers, to some extent. So I think the expectations are tremendously high for the new president, and everybody wishes that he will find some way out of many of the economic and foreign policy issues.

Q: One last question. What should someone who is participating physically or spiritually in this event take away from the VI World Meeting of Families?

Anderson: The future of this society depends upon the family, the future of the family. This is the decisive place of encounter between the Church and culture today. Therefore the witness of Catholic families must be authentic, they must be very strong, and it must be one that its surrounding community can see.

And it must be one which reflects, and I think Pope Benedict has done this in a tremendous way, reflects the joy of being a follower of Jesus Christ, so that people who are not Christians can look at the Catholic family and say, that’s a way of living that I would like to have, that I would like to participate in. It’s not a series of no’s, it’s a series of yes’s, and it’s a joyful way of living, and it’s a fulfilling way of living. And I want to be a part of that.

Today will be remembered as the day of the first non white President of the United States. To reach this day after the session battles between the northern and the states of the southern belt, the discrimination the non whites, Asians and other non whites have suffered for decades is telling and is definitely a change that is a landmark in the history of the world.

Yet it takes longer for a deeper change of mentality. To wipe off the history of decades just by signing in a non white President is no easy task. There is hope for an improvement in racist behaviours yet there is still a long way to go. The question is not the signing in of a non white President, it is more accepting that the President of America can be a non white. The nomination of a person whatever his race or creed may be voted in to lead the most influential, most powerful nation.

Let us pray for Obama and believe that he would perform to the best of his capability.

Here is a wonderful summary (from the NY Times) of a book describing Obama charisma for transformation:

January 19, 2009

Books

From Books, New President Found Voice

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

WASHINGTON — In college, as he was getting involved in protests against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack Obama noticed, he has written, “that people had begun to listen to my opinions.” Words, the young Mr. Obama realized, had the power “to transform”: “with the right words everything could change -— South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.”

Much has been made of Mr. Obama’s eloquence — his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.

Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father” (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that throughout his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others — as a means of breaking out of the bubble of self-hood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame. He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritual-intellectual search to figure out what he truly believed.

As a boy growing up in Indonesia, Mr. Obama learned about the American civil rights movement through books his mother gave him. Later, as a fledgling community organizer in Chicago, he found inspiration in “Parting the Waters,” the first installment of Taylor Branch’s multivolume biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

More recently, books have supplied Mr. Obama with some concrete ideas about governance: it’s been widely reported that “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Abraham Lincoln’s decision to include former opponents in his cabinet, informed Mr. Obama’s decision to name his chief Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as Secretary of State. In other cases, books about F. D. R.’s first hundred days in office and Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars,“ about Afghanistan and the C.I.A., have provided useful background material on some of the myriad challenges Mr. Obama will face upon taking office.

Mr. Obama tends to take a magpie approach to reading — ruminating upon writers’ ideas and picking and choosing those that flesh out his vision of the world or open promising new avenues of inquiry.

His predecessor, George W. Bush, in contrast, tended to race through books in competitions with Karl Rove (who recently boasted that he beat the president by reading 110 books to Mr. Bush’s 95 in 2006), or passionately embrace an author’s thesis as an idée fixe. Mr. Bush and many of his aides favored prescriptive books — Natan Sharansky’s “Case for Democracy,” which pressed the case for promoting democracy around the world, say, or Eliot A. Cohen’s “Supreme Command,” which argued that political strategy should drive military strategy. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has tended to look to non-ideological histories and philosophical works that address complex problems without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhr’s writings, which emphasize the ambivalent nature of human beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility.

What’s more, Mr. Obama’s love of fiction and poetry — Shakespeare’s plays, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Marilynne Robinson‘s “Gilead“ are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson’s “Self Reliance“ — has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.

Mr. Obama has said that he wrote “very bad poetry” in college and his biographer David Mendell suggests that he once “harbored some thoughts of writing fiction as an avocation.” For that matter, “Dreams From My Father” evinces an instinctive storytelling talent (which would later serve the author well on the campaign trail) and that odd combination of empathy and detachment gifted novelists possess. In that memoir, Mr. Obama seamlessly managed to convey points of view different from his own (a harbinger, perhaps, of his promises to bridge partisan divides and his ability to channel voters’ hopes and dreams) while conjuring the many places he lived during his peripatetic childhood. He is at once the solitary outsider who learns to stop pressing his nose to the glass and the coolly omniscient observer providing us with a choral view of his past.

As Baldwin once observed, language is both “a political instrument, means, and proof of power,” and “the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.”

For Mr. Obama, whose improbable life story many voters regard as the embodiment of the American Dream, identity and the relationship between the personal and the public remain crucial issues. Indeed, “Dreams From My Father,” written before he entered politics, was both a searching bildungsroman and an autobiographical quest to understand his roots — a quest in which he cast himself as both a Telemachus in search of his father and an Odysseus in search of a home.

Like “Dreams From My Father,” many of the novels Mr. Obama reportedly admires deal with the question of identity: Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” concerns a man’s efforts to discover his origins and come to terms with his roots; Doris Lessing’s “Golden Notebook” recounts a woman’s struggles to articulate her own sense of self; and Ellison’s “Invisible Man” grapples with the difficulty of self-definition in a race-conscious America and the possibility of transcendence. The poems of Elizabeth Alexander, whom Mr. Obama chose as his inaugural poet, probe the intersection between the private and the political, time present and time past, while the verse of Derek Walcott (a copy of whose collected poems was recently glimpsed in Mr. Obama’s hands) explores what it means to be a “divided child,” caught on the margins of different cultures, dislocated and rootless perhaps, but free to invent a new self.

This notion of self-creation is a deeply American one — a founding principle of this country, and a trope addressed by such classic works as “The Great Gatsby” — and it seems to exert a strong hold on Mr. Obama’s imagination.

In a 2005 essay in Time magazine, he wrote of the humble beginnings that he and Lincoln shared, adding that the 16th president reminded him of “a larger, fundamental element of American life — the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.”

Though some critics have taken Mr. Obama to task for self-consciously italicizing parallels between himself and Lincoln, there are in fact a host of uncanny correspondences between these two former Illinois state legislators who had short stints in Congress under their belts before coming to national prominence with speeches showcasing their eloquence: two cool, self-contained men, who managed to stay calm and graceful under pressure; two stoics embracing the virtues of moderation and balance; two relatively new politicians who were initially criticized for their lack of experience and for questioning an invasion of a country that, in Lincoln’s words, was “in no way molesting, or menacing the U.S.”

As Fred Kaplan’s illuminating new biography (“Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer”) makes clear, Lincoln, like Mr. Obama, was a lifelong lover of books, indelibly shaped by his reading — most notably, in his case, the Bible and Shakespeare — which honed his poetic sense of language and his philosophical view of the world. Both men employ a densely allusive prose, richly embedded with the fruit of their reading, and both use language as a tool by which to explore and define themselves. Eventually in Lincoln’s case, Mr. Kaplan notes, “the tool, the toolmaker, and the tool user became inseparably one. He became what his language made him.”

The incandescent power of Lincoln’s language, its resonance and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears between the magisterial and the down-to-earth, has been a model for Mr. Obama — who has said he frequently rereads Lincoln for inspiration — and so, too, have been the uses to which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders, and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a new vision of reconciliation and hope.

Sunday, 18th January 2009
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
John 1:35-42

———————————————————————————

Today Sunday is a very special Sunday. What and why is so special?

1. Because I have decided that every day that I live to be special.

2. Because I am in awe with the blessings that God my creator bestows upon me every second of my life.

3. Because He has a calling for me each time that I take conscious that Jesus the Messiah has come and I am His follower, very much like Andrew, Simon Peter and the disciples.

4. Because I am entitled to His eternal love.

Usually, my Sunday ‘reflection’ is in French, today being yet another special day I decided to have an English edition. Unlike other Sundays, where I would go to mass and be with my brethren to pray together to worship Him to show our love and respect to Him, today with my current flu and the heavy pour down that I experienced a few minutes before the clock strike ten, I decided to stay home and meet Him in his Gospel.

‘Come and see’ he said. Do I ‘come and see’ My Lord, often enough? How can I vouch that He is my saviour and yet do not see Him enough? Do I want to live my life or rather live the life that He has decided for me? My wish is to remain with Him but I am too weak and a sinner. Give me some strength my Lord.

St Augustine’s reflection on today’s gospel:

“They stayed with him that day”

«John was there with two of his disciples». John was such a «friend of the Bridegroom» (Jn 3,29) that he did not seek his own glory; he merely gave testimony to the truth. Did he dream of restraining his disciples and preventing them from following the Lord? Not at all. He himself shows them whom to follow… He declares to them: «Why cling to me? I am not the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God… Behold him who takes away the sin of the world.»

At these words, the two disciples who were with John followed Jesus. «Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him: ‘Rabbi, where are you staying?’» At this point they were not definitively following him. As we know, they attached themselves to him when he called them to leave their boat…, when he said to them: «Come after me and I will make you fishers of men» (Mt 4,19). That was the moment when they attached themselves to him, nevermore to leave him. But for the moment they wanted to see where Jesus was staying and carry out those words of Scripture: «If you see a man of prudence, seek him out; let your feet wear away his doorstep! Lear from him the precepts of the Lord» (Si 6,36). So Jesus showed them where he was staying. They came and remained with him. What a happy day they spent together! What a blessed night! Who can tell us what they heard from the Lord’s mouth? But let us, too, build a dwelling in our hearts, raise up a house where Christ can come to instruct and converse with us.

Quel est le concept de plagiat avons-nous à l’ile Maurice ? Dans un article sur la tricherie à l’université au Québec le sujet est traité particulièrement avec en filigrane les aspects culturels anglo-saxon ou européen et asiatique. Notre société se trouvant dans la confluence des deux courants culturels et dans l’entre deux d’une économie tiers monadiste et d’une économie développée serait confrontée dans le dilemme ? Les techniques sont à l’avance de la réflexion et l’institution des règlements à Maurice. Souvenez-vous des scandales de Cambridge sur les exams de HSC qui étaient à la une au mois de décembre !

Tricher à l’université à l’ère du 2.0

MATHIAS MARCHAL, MÉTRO

14 janvier 2009 06:00

La tricherie universitaire prend parfois des formes insoupçonnées. Jona­than, un Québécois qui enseignait l’anglais en Thaïlande, peut en témoigner.

«Tout a commencé quand le directeur de l’école est venu me voir pour me demander si j’étais intéressé à rédiger des rapports sur des livres», raconte Jonathan. Son premier «travail» consiste alors à lire et à résumer un livre de gestion.

Après quelque temps, le jeune homme se rend compte que ses écrits allègent en fait les travaux de maîtrise de son directeur. Comme ce dernier l’a entre-temps recommandé à d’autres «étudiants», le portefeuille de clients de Jona­than lui permet de doubler son salaire d’enseignant de l’époque (1 000 $ par mois).

Plus accepté en Asie
«À un moment, je faisais même les travaux d’économétrie de la gou­ver­neure de la province, se rappelle le jeune enseignant de 32 ans. Son chauffeur venait me chercher le matin pour que je la coache afin qu’elle prépare des présentations pour des travaux qu’elle n’avait même pas préparés elle-même!»

«Au début, je m’appliquais, mais à la fin, j’allais juste sur Google pour faire du copier-coller», ajoute-t-il. Cela dit, Jonathan souhaite relativiser certains aspects de son activité passée. «En Asie, le con­cept de plagiat est considéré bien différemment d’ici. On juge plutôt les étudiants sur leur capacité à réunir des informations sur l’internet et sur leur façon de les présenter dans un travail cohérent.»

Le jeune enseignant fait d’ailleurs une analogie en­tre le plagiat à la thaïlan-daise et les logiciels libres. «Dans le mouvement open source, tu peux copier les lignes de code d’un programme, améliorer celui-ci en rajoutant tes propres lignes, avant de redonner le programme ainsi amélioré à la communauté du web.»

Sans vouloir faire la promotion de la tricherie, Jonathan croit qu’à l’heure de l’internet, nos écoles et nos universités auraient intérêt à revoir leur définition du plagiat, dont les limites sont bien trop floues, d’après lui. «Quand un professeur-chercheur s’approprie les travaux de ses étudiants, on est dans la même dynamique, et pourtant c’est accepté», conclut-il.

Que penser des logiciels antiplagiat?
Actuellement, plusieurs universités québécoises testent un logiciel anti-plagiat francophone : Compilatio.

Une fois installé, le logiciel analyse le contenu des travaux des étudiants et cherche des phrases équivalentes sur le web. Ce cyberpatrouilleur permet aussi de comparer les différents travaux entre eux, au cas où des petits malins auraient décidé de faire le travail à plusieurs.

Chaque document soumis à l’analyse du logiciel obtient un indice de plagiat. Au-delà de 35 %, la triche est manifeste. Compilatio fournit aussi au professeur les liens internet qui ont été utilisés et surligne les paragraphes plagiés.

Les tests préliminaires réalisés par une cinquantaine de professeurs et de chargés de cours à l’Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR) montrent L’efficacité du logiciel. «Un certain nombre d’entre eux ont trouvé qu’il y avait beaucoup de ressemblances entre les documents analysés et certains sites internet», confie Élisabeth Haghebaert, coordonnatrice du Centre d’aide à la réussite de l’UQAR.

«Selon une étude réalisée auprès de 1 200 étudiants dans de grandes écoles françaises, quatre étudiants sur cinq avouent avoir recours au copier-coller», précise Fré­déric Agnès, directeur associé de l’entreprise Six degrés, fabricant de Compi­latio. Le coût de revient du logiciel se situe entre 1,50 $ et 4,50 $ par an et par étudiant, selon la taille des universités qui l’acquièrent.

À McGill
Lors de son implantation officielle à l’Université McGill en 2006, le logiciel antiplagiat concurrent, Turnitin, a soulevé un tollé chez certains étudiants. Ces derniers invoquaient le respect de la vie privée et refusaient que leurs travaux servent à enrichir la base de données de Turnitin.

Deux ans après son implantation, les professeurs ont le choix ou non de recourir au logiciel. Ils doivent alors prévenir leurs étudiants en début de session.

Actuellement, 50 professeurs et chargés de cours ont montré un intérêt, indique Sylvia Franke, chef des services d’information. Cela semble peu, non ? «Ce n’est qu’un outil parmi toute une gamme d’éléments pour lutter contre le plagiat, tels que l’information et la sensibilisation», répond-elle.

La parole à David Boucher, conseiller en éthique à la Commission de l’éthique de la science et de la technologie

• Quelle est l’ampleur du plagiat à l’école?
• C’est difficile à quantifier, car le plagiat est illégal et répréhensible, alors les étudiants ne se vantent pas d’y recourir. Et aussi parce que beaucoup de ceux qui plagient n’ont pas l’impression de tricher. Pour la génération qui a grandi avec l’internet, quand c’est sur la Toile, c’est public, et on peut piger dedans. Selon un sondage français de 2005, trois étudiants interrogés sur quatre admettaient avoir recours au copier-coller. Une étude pancanadienne d’envergure publiée en 2006 indiquait que seulement 48 % des étudiants au baccalauréat pensaient que copier des phrases sans en citer l’auteur était grave.

• Qu’en est-il du phénomène de la revente de travaux?
• C’est dur à dire. Chose certaine, le milieu anglophone est bien servi, car la communauté est plus grande. Il y a beaucoup de sites internet consacrés à cette activité qui n’ont pas de difficulté à vivre et à engranger des profits. Le reportage de l’émission Enquête montre bien qu’en Grande-Bretagne, ce genre de site n’est pas inquiété par les autorités.

• Les universités prennent-elles le problème au sérieux?
• Dans le cadre de la Commission-Jeunesse mise en place en 2005, j’avais fait le tour de leurs sites internet sur cette question, et c’était très, très pauvre. Mais depuis deux ans, ça répond très fort, car la crédibilité des diplômes est en jeu. Par exemple, l’Université Laval et l’UQAM viennent de réformer leur règlement, McGill a une licence pour le logiciel antiplagiat Turnitin et l’UQAR étudie la possibilité d’utiliser le logiciel Compilatio.net. Des comités de discipline ont aussi été mis en place.

• Quelles ont été les recommandations de la Commission-Jeunesse?
• On suggérait notamment d’aller vers des méthodes différentes d’évaluation des acquis, en favorisant par exemple le travail de laboratoire et les exposés oraux. Il est important aussi de faire de la sensibilisation, car beaucoup de jeunes qui plagient n’ont pas l’impression de faire quelque chose de mal. D’ailleurs, plusieurs universités et cégeps mettent sur pied des sites expliquant ce qu’est le plagiat, pourquoi c’est grave, comment bien citer ses sources, etc. Il faudrait aussi revoir le barème de sanction en s’assurant que ces dernières sont appliquées. Les réformes en cours quant aux règlements des études vont dans ce sens.


Copier le travail de quelqu’un, c’est bien le plagiat, assembler les travaux d’une multitude de personnes et de le publier n’est il pas  de la recherche?

Our little island could well be a dream or wish for the Canadians who this week are living severe weather conditions. This is an extract of an article which appeared on the metro news in Toronto 2 days ago.

It’s not every day that you find yourself piloting a scooter through the corals of the south western Indian Ocean. However, this is exactly how I made my first exploration of the azure blue waters of Mauritius — on what claims to be the world’s only underwater “sub-scooter” safari.

While scooter and rider are submerged three metres under the surface, a transparent dome over your head is pumped with air for so you can breathe normally and chat with your co-driver as you navigate through shoals of brightly-coloured fish. (www.blue-safari.com, based in the resort of Grand Baie, $183 per couple).

Of course, this is just one way of enjoying the bath water-warm ocean around this exquisite volcanic island. Mauritius is famous for long stretches of soft white sandy beaches, as well as the ring of coral reef around it that creates protected lagoons full of exotic fish.

Should you get bored of sunbathing, you can wade into the water with a snorkel. You can usually see plenty of underwater activity within a few metres of the shore, and most hotels offer snorkelling trips where they’ll take you to the most fish-crowded areas of the reef. If you’re keen to see more, diving is spectacular here

If you prefer to be on top of the water, there’s surfing, kayaking, pedalo, sailing and even kite surfing, popular with a hip crowd on the western coast.

Another must is deep-sea fishing. Mauritius is one of the best places in the world to fish for marlin, a large and imposing dark blue fish with a pointed nose. Take a trip with JP Henry Charters, a family-run operation based at the Le Morne Angler’s Club on the western coast,  and they’ll send you out with local skippers who will take you to the best fishing spots, sailing past groups of curious dolphins. They’ll ensure that even amateurs hook a share of silver bonito and perhaps a bright yellow dorado, before you are strapped into the chair to put up a fight with a big one. Henry encourages a release policy. (www.blackriver-mauritius.com, from $565 for six people).

With most watersports available at your hotel, its no wonder many visitors to Mauritius never leave the grounds. In fact, with luxurious beachfront hotels, with gourmet restaurants, spas and limitless activities, along with fabulous weather and hospitality, it’s no wonder people come here for their honeymoons and never see the rest of the country.

However, that would be a shame, there is so much more to Mauritius than sea, beach and waving palm trees.

This tiny 2,040-square-kilometre country wasn’t ‘found’ until the 16th century, when it saw a succession of Dutch, then French and British colonisers, bringing with them first slaves from Africa, then Indian and Chinese labourers. The country became independent in 1968 and remains a stable, prosperous and highly literate nation, with a lively and harmonious mix of cultures and religions.

Away from the northern coast, where most of the hotels are based, there is plenty to discover. Take a day trip and you can fit in some of the major sites and get a flavour for Mauritius’ past and the present.

Head towards the capital of Port Louis, and you’ll find Pamplemousse — stop off and visit the botanical gardens here, with its collection of fabulous exotic plants including giant waterlilies given as a gift by Britain’s Queen Victoria.

Port Louis is a bustling harbour town, where you can visit the buzzing markets and browse for cheap clothing — until recently Mauritius was a major player in clothing manufacturing.

Heading south, you’ll come across Curepipe, the upmarket town where Mauritius’ high society resides. Here you’ll also find the Trou aux Cerfs, an extinct volcano, now lush with trees and birdlife, tucked away in the heart of a neighbourhood of 1960s and 1970s bungalows. Continue south and you’ll enter the backbone of verdant countryside, with its valleys, waterfalls including the Alexandra Falls and the Black River Gorge, and fields of sugar cane, Victoria pineapple and tea. Highlights here include the Hindu temple at Grand Bassin, with its sacred lake, and 33-metre high statue called the Mangal Mahadev guarded by families of monkeys (www.Gangatalao.org).

Further along your route you’ll drive through the Plaine Champagne, named after the tiny white flowers that pepper the route. Stop off to see the seven coloured earths of Chamarel, a landscape of blue, green, orange, purple and yellow.

The south is largely unspoiled by tourism, and well worth exploring. Start out at the dramatic Le Morne mountain in the southwest, which was used as a shelter by slaves in the 18th century and was recently named a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The most exclusive hotels might be on the eastern coast, but our favourite is Tamassa in the south. This spacious new four-star design hotel has an upbeat atmosphere and its bright, chic minimalist décor makes a refreshing change from the formal, colonial feel of many of the other hotels in Mauritius. With swimming pools, spa, kids club and watersports on tap it’s a popular choice with both honeymooners and families.

One of my old fellow colleagues of the FFSI network from Brazil, who had completed her MBA at INSEAD two years ago, told me how impressed she was by the lectures she attended on Strategies conducted by the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy. From my internet search I came across an article on the subject last night. In the present juncture of seemingly economic recession, and financial crisis the thoughts of the authors to explore new market spaces become more relevant than ever.

Blue Ocean Strategy

W. CHAN KIM & RENEE MAUBORGNE

For over 20 years, the key question of strategy has been: How to outpace rivals, how to out-compete? Today we can hardly speak of strategy without referencing competition or using a war analogy. Because land is limited, the only way to advance one’s territory or market share is at the expense of another—a zero-sum game.

Under this theory of strategy, the world and industry conditions are fixed. The structure is taken as given (environmental determinism). This is in-box or within industry boundaries thinking. Here structure determines strategy that leads to performance.

If we look at history, whom do we admire most? Those who out-compete and beat others? Yes, we admire winners. But even more we admire those who create new paradigms in art, music, thought; new businesses that open up new market spaces, create new demand, and improve our lives. That is what expands the pie of economic, intellectual and creative wealth.

How can we create these new market spaces? In economic terms, this is a non-zero-sum game that shifts the focus of strategy from win-lose to win-win. New market spaces (what we call blue oceans) create a win for companies, societies, employees, and sometimes even for the competition. That’s the essence of blue ocean strategy.

Blue ocean strategy goes beyond competing to creating by opening a bigger pie for all. It is a reconstructionist approach to strategy rooted in New Growth Theory. Here strategy determines structure that leads to performance. Under this strategy, even an unattractive industry can be made attractive by the efforts of companies to reconstruct market boundaries.

Consider the New York Public Library (NYPL). From 2002 to 2004, NYPL funding was cut by 20 percent. The competition was intensifying as the internet, super-size bookstores, and other media were capturing a larger share of the shrinking market. Libraries were seen as dull and lackluster. The NYPL was operating in a unattractive industry with a shrinking budget and new tough competitors. In the old view of strategy, the best the NYPL could have hoped for was to go head-to-head against new rivals to maximize its share of a declining market.

Yet in less than 10 months, from 2004 to 2005, with just two staff, a miniscule budget, and scant marketing, Paul Holdengräber, the Director of Public Programs, made the NYPL one of the hottest venues in town. All new demand was created as attendance climbed by 400 percent. Nearly every public program event is sold out.

Holdengräber did not accept market boundaries that defined what libraries can and cannot do. Nor did he focus on beating the competition. Instead he sought to create new demand by reconstructing the market the library operated in to offer the public a leap in value. As Director of Public Programs, Holdengräber was in charge of the traditional public lecture program. Most of these programs were dull book readings or one-way monologues. They rarely attracted more than small clusters of senior citizens.

Holdengräber changed all of that. He infused theater, glamour and the feeling of a French intellectual soiree into the events, newly baptized as LIVE. Holdengräber sought to create carefully thought-out cocktails of artists, poets, politicians, rock stars, and writers to host a dialogue on hot or controversial topics such as obsessions, music downloading, terrorism. He took from theater the idea of infusing the events with a bit of show-like music, dancers and opera singers to stimulate all the senses. And then he made the events two-way discourses between those on stage and the audience, also pushing the events from 6 to 7 p.m. when everyone was free after work. The result is an eclectic splicing of daytime talk show, theater, and French drawing room soiree, and price of the library speaker series. In short, Holdengräber created a blue ocean of new market space. With his strategic actions, he reconstructed the market, creating win-win performance consequences as scores of people who had never entered the library rapidly converted into enthusiastic attendees.

Every organization can break free of the head-to-head zero-sum competition and open up blue oceans of new market space. Our research looks at 150 strategic moves that created blue oceans in 30 industries, spanning back to Ford’s Model T, which created the first blue ocean in the auto industry, up until the strategic moves of Apple’s iPod and iTunes and Cirque du Soleil.

We wondered, Is there a pattern to the creation of blue oceans? If so, we can systematically pursue blue oceans. We found six paths to remaking market boundaries in an opportunity-maximizing, risk-minimizing way. None require special foresight about the future. All are based on looking at familiar data with new perspective.

These paths challenge the six assumptions that define how most organizations build their strategies—assumptions that keep them locked in the red ocean of bloody competition: define their industries similarly, look at their industries through the lens of the same strategic groups, focus on capturing more of existing customers, define the scope of their products and services similarly, accept the functional or emotional orientation of their industries, and focus on current competitive threats. The result is me-too strategies that lead to head-to-head competition.

To create new market space, you need to gain insight into all the factors you compete on that no longer add value (factors that can be eliminated or reduced for huge cost savings) and into factors you should create that your industry never before offered to unlock new demand and set yourself on a profitable growth trajectory.

As we move into the Chinese New Year period which this year will be on the 26^th January, the rejoicing and joyful parties continue on. Last week end, a great dinner party with the relatives was followed the next day by the Thanks giving dinner ( Van Shin ) of the Chan clan organised the Oy Kin Sa society. Monday evening was another great Peking Duck dinner with my wife’s relatives. I have to restraint my eating in the face of such rich and appetising dishes. More delicious dinners are on for the coming weeks!

I posted on my face book the dishes I had at the Van shin dinner which were typical Hakka dishes: Steam Chicken through Shark fins soup to dried vegetable stew belly pork. Some of my overseas friends on seeing the photos were dying for these dishes. As a dream the flavour and smell were oozing out of the slight blurred pictures and creating induced gastric stimulation of the stomach. From Norway: “all smells very good, but pictures are a little blurry.”From Montreal Canada: comment about your photo in the album “Chinese Hakka meal @ King Palace”:”ayo to faire moi gagne faim!”

Ram Charam interview with Business Week shown in this week’s issue is timely. I watched with pleasure the video. In this uncertain period: Cash is King. Take care not to be trapped in a cash crisis. Select and screen your customers to ensure that they do not drag you in a cash trap.

No wonder the theme of BW this week is Managing Through a Crisis.