“Massive funding for Pakistan’s ailing universities holds many lessons for other developing nations”, states the editorial of this week’s edition of Nature, published today. Nature, which is one of the most respected scientific journal, highlights the successes of Pakistan’s higher education reforms initiated in 2002, citing the free national digital library, high-speed internet access for universities and the foreign scholarship program as examples of successes.

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The cold god of the future

The original “Think Tank”. Visiting the Californian RAND Corporation.

Natalie Crawford might be a regular American housewife, who is enjoying the latter half of her career in California, after raising her children. Her hair is kept short, her outfit is discreet, lips are red, the voice friendly, if resolute. In Natalie Crawford’s office there are no family pictures, but instead, pictures of fighter jets, certificates, tokens of friendships from pilots - and repeatedly herself: In this or that bomber, in battle dress uniform with the boys of the US Air Force - “I fought hard to obtain their acceptance.” As an engineer in the mid-60’s, she developed a new weapon for the Air Force. Today Natalie Crawford is the director of Project Air Force, the true heart of the RAND Corporation.

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By Dr. Athar Osama

Published by Technology and Foresight Project of Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars

Wilson Center Press Release:

Renewed interest in federal support for high-risk, high-reward research and development requires a re-evaluation of federal venture capital programs, concludes a new white paper released today by the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

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By: Athar Osama

Published by Pardee Center for the Study of Long Range Global Policy, Boston University

Boston University Press Release:

This policy brief reviews the state of research collaborations between and amongst developing country scholars – South-South research collaborations and develops a rationale for a more systematic and multilateral approach to such endeavors.

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Around 5:30 pm GMT on 30 December 2007, I said my goodbyes to Venice - hoping to return some other day - and began my journey to Florence onboard a Eurostar train. By now I had begun to expect a fairly quick service at the Eurostar. This, however, was an unusually slow ride. The train did not stop unusually in between but it stopped on too many stations, some quite small ones. Later, as I read Bill Bryson’s account of his journey to Florence, I found myself nodding at his description of how slow this all was - by Eurostar standards - although I thought some of the superlatives he used were somewhat exaggerated.

The perception of the length of my journey was, however, elongated by another distraction. I was sitting infront of a young Italian couple that tended to spoke perfect accent-free English and equally perfect accent-free Italian.  Although there was nothing particularly striking to about the couple, their quite public expression of love for each other was proving to be quite a distraction for people in the carriage. Bryson seems to think that the Italians have devised a way to have have sex without taking their clothes off.

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I am on my way out of Venice, described sometimes as the most unusual and the most unique city in the whole world. This several thousand year old city is built, literally, on canals. Several times during the life of the city the canals have suffered flooding and the city buildings have received considerable damage. Yet, the persistance of Venetians to live this ambibious existence, come what may, has always survived the floodings. Venetians, as I’ll talk about later are a remarkably creative and artistic people and roaming around this city and admiring their colorful and artistic spirit one tends to wonder what would these people do if they weren’t subjected to such a precarious existence. Perhaps, it is these vulnerabilities of the Venetians that find expression in another realm. Doctors, I’ve always thought, were pretty good at performing arts - singing, playing an instrument - because they dealt with vulnerabilities, death, and disease all the time and if they don’t vent it out somewhere they will just drown in the depressing reality of our existence. So do Venentians, perhaps…

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I am currently sitting in a Eurostar train - one of those trains that run all through Europe and provide fairly fast - although not the fastest service - between cities. I’ve just left Milan which was the third stop on my European journey and I wanted to write about it. The train journey from Lausanne to Milano was quite uneventful. The train was really pathetic and reminded me of our own trains in Pakistan. Because I was travelling at night, there was hardly any scenery to enjoy either. Even the train stations appeared quite dilapidated and deserted at night–much like Lala Musa, Cheechoon ki Malyaan, and Mian Channoo do if one passes through these on a journey through Pakistan. Perhaps the effect of the train itself was taking its toll on my aesthetics. For most of the travel, I shared the 6-seat compartment with a young woman from Switzerland who was going to Milano to see a friend. There was nothing even remotely remarkable about the woman and she didn’t speak much English to enable me to strike a conversation either…

I arrived in Milan quite late at night - around 11pm and anticipating that I had booked a room at a hotel right across the street from the Station.

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Hotel Bellerive (pronounced as Belle-Gheeve) where I had planned my stay in Lausanne was a 10 minute bus ride from the train station in Lausanne. As you come out of the station, you see a big sign that says “City of the Olympics”. I am just learning that Lausanne hosts the offices of the International Olympic Committee. I don’t yet know why but then there is no reason why Geneva should have so many offices of international organizations. This is probably one of those ways in which the Swiss legendary industriousness have found expression. This small country — with a very unfortunate terrain — is one of the richest countries in the World. Swiss per capita GDP which five years ago (the last time I checked) was $35,000 and was more than the United States and every other industrialized country in the world. Only recently has Qatar, at $65,000 per capita, has overtaken the Swiss to become the world’s richest country — but then Qatar is probably a bubble - an anomaly.

In a way the Swiss are an anomaly as well, but that of a different kind. They are tremendously industrious people. Swiss work like crazy. This is a country which, in early 1990s, voted against giving itself a shorter work week at a time when the rest of the Europe was reduce the length of their work weeks. The Swiss, Bill Bryson writes in his European travelogue are “a boring people as well”.

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The Night Before in Hotel Moderne

The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the airport in Geneva was that there were not HSBC posters any more! For those who have travelled through London often will know the feeling. Instead, there were posters of lots of other banks, and watch makers. As I came out of the airport, it was already 11pm. After fumbling for a few minutes with the ticket dispensing machines at the rail-station to get a train to downtown Geneva, I gave up and headed to a taxi instead. Told the driver to take me to Hotel Moderne in Geneva. “Its on Rue de Berne”. “Oh Ghrooooo de Berne”, he nodded in his thick french accent. I nodded back making note to pronounce all my R’s as Ghrrrrrrrssssss in the future. It took about 10 minutes and 35 Euros to get to the hotel. On the whole it took me about 80 pounds to travel from home to Airport and Airport to hotel (a distance of 40 miles) and an equal amount to travel from London to Switzerland (as distance of around 900 miles!).

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