Comments on a Saturday

Boracay Mansion

The pictures in the blurbs of the Erap Estrada's so called "Boracay Mansion" reminds me of the pictures of and my quick visit in 1995 to Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli just outside Rome. Tsk tsk. How the mighty have fallen!

The Villa was considered to be the epitome of Imperial taste that the popes and cardinals plundered the site for statuary to grace their palaces. In Erap's villa the roof was plundered and also steel railings and the legendary gold faucets.

By the plunder we shall know the plunderer.

Plunder begets more plunder!

A lowdown in UP education

I asked my undergrads and not a few freshies about the recent hazing death by a well known frat. The students said that the tuition fee increases are a more important issue than the hazing death.

Since when has a wasted human life been less important than a tuition fee increase?

I think the professors and administrators of the University of Philippines should reflect on the moral dimensions of UP's vaunted liberal education. A liberal education cut off from its moral moorings does not liberate but enslave.

Something to think about as the university gears up for its centennial next year.

Comments

Simoun's lamp has been lit, finally.. not by one but by the many!

"So often have we been haunted by the spectre of subversion which, with some fostering, has come to be a positive and real being, whose very name steals our serenity and makes us commit the greatest blunders... If before the reality, instead of changing the fear of one is increased, and the confusion of the other is exacerbated, then they must be left in the hands of time..." Dr Jose Rizal "To the Filipino People and their Government" Jose Rizal dominates the Luneta, which is sacred to the Philippine nation as a place of martyrdom. And many perhaps all of those executed in the Luneta, with the exception of the three Filipino secular priests martyred in 1872, have read Rizal's El Filibusterismo . Dr Rizal's second novel is a darker and more sinister one that its prequel but has much significance across the century and more after it was published for it preaches the need for revolution with caveats, which are when the time is right and who will in...

Leonard Co (1953-2010), Filipino botanist

With much sadness and shock I learned from WWF chair Lory Tan that internationally renowned botanist Leonard Co was killed together with a guide and a forest ranger last Monday, 15 November in a firefight in Leyte between Armed Forces of the Philippines soldiers and Communist guerrillas. As the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports it , Co and his researchers were surveying a forest plot of the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) for native Philippine trees and plants especially those that are in danger of extinction, like this Rafflesia flower (the picture I got from Dr Julie Barcelona's blog . Thank you Julie) The 41 year old Communist insurgency has again claimed another life of the best and brightest of the Philippines. In Leonard Co's case, a bright life that cannot be replaced. For he was one of if not the last of the classically trained botanists in plant taxonomy and systematics in the Philippines. While one can learn the basics of these disciplines i...

How should we remember General Antonio Luna?

Well it seems with that proposal to rename Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Antonio Luna in time for National Heroes Day has generated a lot of social media buzz. We really have to really understand our national heroes. Antonio Luna was a remarkable personality but like all of us was flawed. He likely would be an academic had the revolution not intervened. He would have been the first Dean of a College of Science of the Philippine University had the nation made the transition to indepe ndence in a peaceful manner. That was recognized by the American College of Pharmacy when they feted Dr Luna on what would have been his 60th birthday noting his work in combating malaria. But that was not to be. He became a soldier. General Luna was for a professional military within the bounds of the constitution. Perhaps that is the biggest sign of contradiction for today. Please answer the question: Would President Duterte (or a President Aquino, Marcos, Arroyo, Quezon etc) have a General Luna as his c...

blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

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