Apr 19, 2021Great Power Elasticity in the Cold WarHow did the Berlin Wall come about in the Cold War, when the Soviets were against it and only East Germany wanted it? Do small states (as East Germany was) have special kind of power? Or was it just demand and supply? The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1961, was one of the…Small States3 min readSmall States3 min read
Dec 10, 2020Soft Power Means Getting People to See Your Point of ViewSoft power means, at a minimum, getting people to see your point of view. If you have soft power then not only should others like and admire you, but the narratives you weave should have your admirers standing up and cheering, and even your detractors saying, Gosh darn it, there…Soft Power2 min readSoft Power2 min read
Nov 28, 2020US hegemony was based on performance legitimacy. Malaysia and ASEAN navigating US-China Relations, PNB Forum in KL, Nov 2020Summary: In the spectacularly successful American Century, US global hegemony achieved legitimacy — consent of the governed — not through an international ballot box but through performance legitimacy. Never once throughout all these decades did the US ever ask nations to vote for it as the world’s leader through any…Us China Relations3 min readUs China Relations3 min read
Aug 10, 2020My Pandoc Markdown-PDF Workflow for Routine, Not Especially Technical Writingby Danny Quah Aug 2020 TL;DR: I write technical articles in LaTeX. But shorter, non-technical writings are easier to do in Markdown. How do I produce PDF from Markdown documents? Answer: provide YAML information in the Markdown; run Pandoc (typically through a Makefile or Atom’s Markdown Preview Enhanced). …Pandoc7 min readPandoc7 min read
Jun 5, 2020Pulse Secure Client on Ubuntu Linuxby Danny Quah June 2020 Pulse Secure Client is a VPN client that allows secure connection to a Pulse Connect Secure SSL VPN gateway. Many universities use that latter for faculty, staff, and student access to their computer systems. However, because Linux comes in many different flavors, the standard Pulse…Ubuntu4 min readUbuntu4 min read
May 18, 2020Keeping people from dying is good for businessOr, the Prevention Paradox in Public Health is an instance of Externalities in Economics (or more generally of Emergence in Complexity Analysis). by Danny Quah May 2020 Historical evidence on the 1918 Flu, analysed by Correia et al, shows those US cities that afterwards experienced sustained higher manufacturing employment growth…Covid 19 Crisis3 min readCovid 19 Crisis3 min read
May 11, 2020When was the world given official notice about the novel coronavirus’s human-to-human transmission and high infection rates?by Danny Quah May 2020 Wasn’t it already too late by 12 Mar 2020 when WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic? Did backroom geopoliticking lead WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to delay warning the world? Did this timing mean that WHO and Tedros were responsible for wrong-footing nations…Covid-195 min readCovid-195 min read
May 9, 2020Managing Gists Locallyby Danny Quah, May 2020 Through the Embed instruction or plugin, Gist snippets on GitHub can conveniently provide posts on Medium, WordPress, and elsewhere supplementary information (lines of code, images, Markdown-created tables, and so on). But while Gist snippets on GitHub can be managed directly via browser or through something…Github2 min readGithub2 min read
May 7, 2020WHO Did What When: The COVID-19 AngleIn Geneva on Fri 01 May 2020 Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of the World Health Organisation defended the timeliness of his agency’s information dissemination on the novel coronavirus ( ST-2020.05.03-WHO-Declaration-Enough-Time). …Covid-195 min readCovid-195 min read
Apr 25, 2020“We read the labels on the bottles we found in the janitor’s closet.”Rules for publishing in high-impact, top journals: Make your conclusions strong and powerful, and easily understandable without jargon. Have your research methodology pared-down, transparent, and quickly replicable. Work on something important and interesting. Originally published at http://www.dannyquah.com on April 25, 2020.Academia1 min readAcademia1 min read
