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Truly Malaysian Driving Philosophy
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Your traffic light turns green already, yet you see a pedestrian crossing the road. You should?
On 8 August 1967, five leaders – the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – sat down together in the main hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Bangkok, Thailand and signed a document. By virtue of that document, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was born. The five Foreign Ministers who signed it – Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso R. Ramos of the Philippines, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, S. Rajaratnam of Singapore, and Thanat Khoman of Thailand – would subsequently be hailed as the Founding Fathers of probably the most successful inter-governmental organization in the developing world today. And the document that they signed would be known as the ASEAN Declaration. It was a short, simply-worded document containing just five articles. It declared the establishment of an Association for Regional Cooperation among the Countries of Southeast Asia to be known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and spelled out the aims and purposes of that Association. These aims and purposes were about cooperation in the economic, social, cultural, technical, educational and other fields, and in the promotion of regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law and adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter. It stipulated that the Association would be open for participation by all States in the Southeast Asian region subscribing to its aims, principles and purposes. It proclaimed ASEAN as representing “the collective will of the nations of Southeast Asia to bind themselves together in friendship and cooperation and, through joint efforts and sacrifices, secure for their peoples and for posterity the blessings of peace, freedom and prosperity.” It was while Thailand was brokering reconciliation among Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia over certain disputes that it dawned on the four countries that the moment for regional cooperation had come or the future of the region would remain uncertain. Recalls one of the two surviving protagonists of that historic process, Thanat Khoman of Thailand: “At the banquet marking the reconciliation between the three disputants, I broached the idea of forming another organization for regional cooperation with Adam Malik. Malik agreed without hesitation but asked for time to talk with his government and also to normalize relations with Malaysia now that the confrontation was over. Meanwhile, the Thai Foreign Office prepared a draft charter of the new institution. Within a few months, everything was ready. I therefore invited the two former members of the Association for Southeast Asia (ASA), Malaysia and the Philippines, and Indonesia, a key member, to a meeting in Bangkok. In addition, Singapore sent S. Rajaratnam, then Foreign Minister, to see me about joining the new set-up. Although the new organization was planned to comprise only the ASA members plus Indonesia, Singapore’s request was favorably considered.” And so in early August 1967, the five Foreign Ministers spent four days in the relative isolation of a beach resort in Bang Saen, a coastal town less than a hundred kilometers southeast of Bangkok. There they negotiated over that document in a decidedly informal manner which they would later delight in describing as “sports-shirt diplomacy.” Yet it was by no means an easy process: each man brought into the deliberations a historical and political perspective that had no resemblance to that of any of the others. But with goodwill and good humor, as often as they huddled at the negotiating table, they finessed their way through their differences as they lined up their shots on the golf course and traded wisecracks on one another’s game, a style of deliberation which would eventually become the ASEAN ministerial tradition. Now, with the rigors of negotiations and the informalities of Bang Saen behind them, with their signatures neatly attached to the ASEAN Declaration, also known as the Bangkok Declaration, it was time for some formalities. The first to speak was the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Narciso Ramos, a one-time journalist and long-time legislator who had given up a chance to be Speaker of the Philippine Congress to serve as one of his country’s first diplomats. He was then 66 years old and his only son, the future President Fidel V. Ramos, was serving with the Philippine Civic Action Group in embattled Vietnam. He recalled the tediousness of the negotiations that preceded the signing of the Declaration that “truly taxed the goodwill, the imagination, the patience and understanding of the five participating Ministers.” That ASEAN was established at all in spite of these difficulties, he said, meant that its foundations had been solidly laid. And he impressed it on the audience of diplomats, officials and media people who had witnessed the signing ceremony that a great sense of urgency had prompted the Ministers to go through all that trouble. He spoke darkly of the forces that were arrayed against the survival of the countries of Southeast Asia in those uncertain and critical times. “The fragmented economies of Southeast Asia,” he said, “(with) each country pursuing its own limited objectives and dissipating its meager resources in the overlapping or even conflicting endeavors of sister states carry the seeds of weakness in their incapacity for growth and their self-perpetuating dependence on the advanced, industrial nations. ASEAN, therefore, could marshal the still untapped potentials of this rich region through more substantial united actionTruly Regal Celebration Event A Truly Beautiful MindAssessment that Truly Informs InstructionAre elections truly fair?Your health is truly important to us!Rain on the Roof and A Truly Beautiful MindSome Arctic Dinos Lived in Herds
By Sid Perkins
Just as interesting, however, is how this was discovered. Scientists didn’t look at a single fossil bone.
Instead, they analyzed a large number of preserved footprints on a mountainside located toward the
southern end of central Alaska.
Anthony Fiorillo works at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas. As a vertebrate
paleontologist, he studies the fossils of creatures with backbones. In 2007, he was part of a research
team exploring Denali National Park. “We rounded the corner and there they were,” he recalls.
Thousands of footprints had been preserved in stone. “It was amazing.”
Dinosaurs died out more than 65 million years ago (not
counting birds, their modern-day relatives). So, it’s a bit
surprising that scientists know so much about these
ancient creatures. Now, a new study reveals that a certain
type of duckbilled dinosaur lived in the Arctic year-round.
These animals also traveled in herds that included many
age groups, they find. The creatures even appear to have
gone through a “teenage growth spurt.”
Those tracks pepper a steep patch of exposed rock about twice as
long as a football field and up to 60 meters (roughly 200 feet) wide.
They sit at least 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of the Gulf of Alaska.
Between 69 million and 72 million years ago, that now-rocky material
was muddy sediment on a floodplain near a seacoast, Fiorillo explains.
The hadrosaurs walked across the squishy mud. Later, the footprints
they left turned to stone.
Previous studies suggested adult duckbills took care of their young,
says Fiorillo. The new evidence that these dinosaurs truly traveled in
herds with multiple age groups confirms that parents cared for their
young well beyond the time they left the nest, his team concludes. The
researchers published their findings June 30 in Geology.
© Science News for Students
Thousands of tracks cover this
rocky mountainside in Alaska’s
Denali National Park. They
provide a wealth of information
about the size, age and lifestyle
of certain dinosaurs.
COURTESY OF PEROT MUSEUM OF
NATURE AND SCIENCE
EVIDENCE FOR HERDS O F DINOSAURS
Small meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods had left behind a few of the tracks that Fiorillo’s team
found in Denali. Birds had left some others. But the vast majority came from creatures called
hadrosaurs. These large plant-eating duckbilled dinosaurs had been quite common during the
Cretaceous Period. That helps explain one of their nicknames: “cattle of the Cretaceous.”
For the new study, the researchers focused only on the hadrosaur tracks. More than half of the
footprints were preserved so well that they had clear impressions of the skin on the dinosaurs’ feet.
Most tracks had a similar level of preservation. That suggests all were probably left within a short
period. Other fossils in the nearby rocks, including insect burrows, suggest these hadrosaurs had left
their footprints during the summer. These are trace fossils — evidence of ancient life other than a
preserved carcass or bone.
At the time these dinosaurs lived, Fiorillio says, the average temperature in the warmest months was
between 10° and 12° Celsius (50° and 54° Fahrenheit). That’s about what conditions are like today
along the border between Canada and the lower 48 U.S. states, he notes.
The team measured a large sample of the duckbills’ footprints. They fell into four distinct size ranges.
The largest tracks, presumably made by adults, measured about 64 centimeters (25 inches) across. The
smallest tracks, 8 centimeters (3 inches) wide, were likely left by young duckbills. They would have
been no more than a year old. Tracks of two other size groups were probably made by juveniles and
near-adults.
These data suggest the community of hadrosaurs included four different age groups.
© Science News for Students
A hadrosaur footprint made
roughly 70 million years ago. For
scale, the long blue bar at right is
10 centimeters long; each small
blue or white bar measures 1
centimeter.
COURTESY OF PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE
AND SCIENCE
© Science News for Students
THESE DINOSAURS DIDN’T MIGRATE
About 84 percent of the tracks sampled for the new study had been left by older hadrosaurs — adults or
near-adults. Roughly 13 percent came from the youngest members of the herd. And a mere 3 percent
came from herd members considered to be juveniles, says Fiorillo. The rarity of tracks by these tweens
suggests that the young of this species had a rapid growth spurt. If true, they would have spent relatively
little time at this vulnerable size — and therefore left very few tracks.
“What’s really neat is how many small tracks there are,” notes Anthony Martin. An ichnologist — or
expert in trace fossils — he works at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.
Other scientists had analyzed fossil bones from duckbills. These studies had hinted that the equivalent of
adolescent hadrosaurs would have experienced growth spurts. But the new findings are “the best
evidence that I’ve seen,” says Eric Snively. He’s a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse. “This is a great study,” he adds, “and further evidence that juvenile hadrosaurs grew up in an
eye-blink.”
Also previously, researchers had proposed that Arctic dinosaurs migrated farther south for the winter.
That’s because even if the region was much warmer than it is today, nights in the high Arctic would have
been 24 hours long. So, with no sunshine for several months, Alaska would have had long periods of very
bleak, chilly weather.
But finding juveniles in the herd
strongly suggests that these
dinosaurs remained in the Arctic all
year. That’s because adolescents and
preadolescents wouldn’t have had
the strength or stamina to make
those long treks, Fiorillo maintains.
Field work is often harsh. Paleontologists studying the dinosaur
footprints here on an Alaskan mountainside sometimes worked
in cold and fog.
COURTESY OF PEROT MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE
© Science News for Students
The presence of very young dinosaurs might have been expected, he notes: If this were a nesting region,
the babies would have hatched sometime just before summer. And remember, that’s when these tracks
were left. But that wouldn’t explain the juveniles, he says.
The team’s findings “suggest that these dinosaurs were overwintering in Alaska somehow,” says Snively.
At the time, the average temperature in the region remained above freezing even during the winter, he
notes. But, he adds, “this study raises interesting issues about how the dinosaurs could live in the region
when it was pretty dark for several months at a time.”