blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I recently started blogging at Filipino Voices where my contribution on the state of the University of the Philippines has generated a lot of comments. Some of the comments dealt with eccentric professors and how they gave grades. Alums fondly recalled these These are some ways how the profs gave grades 1) by using a dartboard 2) or an umbrella 3) or a big circle on the floor 4) or by not showing up for class! Anyway the recollections are sure never to make it to the official Centennial commemorative history "100 Kwentong Peyups"

Rowan Williams made history as the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to pray and preach at Lourdes. Lourdes is where the Virgin Mary is believed to appeared before Bernadette Sobirous, an unlettered peasant girl. Bernadette's visions since then have been officially declared worthy of belief and so Lourdes has become the best known Roman Catholic shrine in the world. Rowan Cantuar preached "When Mary came to Bernardette, she came at first as an anonymous figure, a beautiful lady, a mysterious 'thing', not yet identified as the Lord's spotless Mother. And Bernardette – uneducated, uninstructed in doctrine – leapt with joy, recognising that here was life, here was healing. " By doing so, he for all intents and purposes accepted two Catholic dogmas proclaimed infallibly by the Popes, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Virgin. These dogma are explicitly rejected by Protestants and constitute as the ecumenical stumbling blocks. The Eastern Or...

Last week I gave a lecture at the Archaeological Studies Program (ASP) in UP's Palma Hall basement. My lecture was on ecological history. The ASP is housed in a basement and archaeologists partitioned the basement into two. A crowded libraryis on the upper section and the archaeology lab on the lower section. With its throng of students and the ambiance of the lab, it was as if it were a scence from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, except no one wore fedoras. Contrary to popular belief, the ASP is not with the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) but is a separate degree granting unit. Victor Paz is the director of the ASP. A Cambridge educated archaelogist, he specializes in past environments. The major research done is on archaeological sites in Palawan, where they documented fossil remains of tigers. Also in northern Luzon, research has focused on definitely establishing the presence of Homo erectus there. When I was there Vic was being interviewed by a student...

Mao Zedong had an idea where the capitalist roaders in the Party would bring Chinese society. But in the end, Mao couldn't prevent the trip down the capitalist road. So we had the Bird's Nest stadium and now have the melamine in the baby formula scandal! The phrase was coined just before the Cultural Revolution and has been a staple in Mao Zedong thought. But US treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve chief, Ben Bernanke have been labelled as "socialists" by the American intellectual establishment. If they convince Congress about the necessity of their 700 billion dollar bailout of sinking banks, then the US government would have nationalized a big chunk of the US financial system. But what scares the American public and their senators is neither Paulson and Bernanke can't say where all this would lead to! President George W Bush has gone public almost pleading to pass the bailout plan. The plan can be called the Paulson-Bernanke Thought. Thus the US h...

While we environmental scientists are interested mainly on the natural science aspects of the environment, we work with people and local communities. Since we wanted to know how people view this alien fish in their river, we asked them what they thought and knew about it. Residents of Marikina City a.k.a Marikeños are proud that their river still has fish in it. However it is a fish species they don't want. The older citizens (those born before and during the 1950s) still remember a clear fast flowing stream with a sandy silty bottom covered with submerged plants. Amongst these plants were eels "palos", mudfish "dalag" and native catfish "hito" and the now extirpated Therapon "ayungin". Today the only food fish most people could catch is the introduced Tilapia, that is if they are lucky. Marikina is probably the only city in Metro Manila that still has an inland fishery. One can observe fishermen casting their nets and recreational fishers wi...

My newest environmental science research project is to determine the evolutionary biology of invasion by the "janitor fish" in Marikina River. Today we made our first survey and collections. Marikina River is the"greenest"in Metro Manila but that is just on the surface. One master's student is doing her thesis on biotic integrity and a volunteer MD is working on the project too. The "janitor fish (Pterygoplichthys sp) is the dominant fish now in the river,displacing traditional Marikina food fishes such as dalag and hito. The fish are collected and left to rot on the riverbanks. Despite this, there is still some subsistence fishing on the river. The highest densities of the fish are observed near sewage outfalls where they find food to eat. It is likely that the fish can be controlled if we can clean up the river! BTW the name "janitor fish" insults janitors. The fish thrive in dirty rivers and don't clean them up. Janitors on the other hand, ...

As one of the initiatives of Kevin Rudd's labor government, AusAid has embarked on a global survey of the impact of Australian scholarship programmes in particular and Australian education in general. Australia considers its programme as a good but costly investment. Last Wednesday and Thursday, AusAid representatives and its consultants held a series of focused group discussions (FGD) . AusAid is looking at the possibility of setting up a network of scholarship grantees in all countries. Australia has been providing scholarships to citizens of more than 50 countries. For the FGD, AusAid invited Pinoy scholars. Australia's scholarship programme for the Philippines once included a private (merit) category and a public (government) scholarship component. I got my PhD scholarship in the merit category. Many of the ex-scholars are now with private business concerns. Since the government category is larger, many ex-scholars are with the government departments. Australian educationa...

Dean Jorge Bocobo in his blog says that America has taken on socialism and a planned market. The Federal Reserve's 85 billion dollar or more intervention to save the underwriters is unprecendented in history. Welcome to the USSA or the United Socialist States of America! Remember Croissant Commie and bridge player Deng Xiao Ping? His most famous line is "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice!" With that he launched China's "socialism with Chinese characteristics". And the crowning glory of all that market reform is the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing. Of course the reform has its dark side. Capitalistic greed is the likely reason why there is melamine in Chinese made baby formula! With the Federal Reserve intervention, I would like to restate Deng and I really intend the pun,especially in this US Presidential derby season. My apologies to the Paramount Leader! "It doesn't matter if the candidate is black o...

A senior Vatican prelate has said that "evolutionary theory is not incompatible with Catholic teaching" Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council of Culture made the declaration at a recent press con announcing next year's Church sponsored interdisciplinary conference on the 150th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of Species. The fact that the Roman Church has considered this anniversary an important event shows that it values reason and scientific inquiry and demonstrates evolutionary theory and science as important in world culture. The conference will be attended not only by evolutionary biologists, but theologians, philosophers, humanists and artists. Best of all, I believe this another broadside in Pope Benedict XVI's culture war against fundamentalism of all sorts. Benedict recently warned against literal interpretation of the Bible in a speech to academics and intellectuals in Paris. In stronger and more direct words than what his prede...

The Lehman Brother's collapse has been likened in Asia as a tsunami. Like the great wave that washes out seaside villages, this one threatens to wipe out pension funds of people. The blurbs report that the state pension fund organizations, SSS (for private sector employees) and the GSIS (for public servants) have invested in the billions of dollars with these sunk banks. Also the big local banks also have significant exposure too. The politicians are now demanding that the banks and pension fund organizations declare their exposure. I don't think that is a good idea for people may just go on a bank run of nightmare proportions. This is something that our Glorious Queen won't even contemplate about. Commentators have said that the recent Wall Street disaster is the worse since the 1929 stock market crash. The 1987 crash pales in comparison. Since even the ordinary person has some savings exposed in stocks or as mutual funds and other mid term relatively low risk investments,...

I just came from this year's installment of the book fair at SM Exhibition Center at the Mall of Asia complex in Pasay City. The book fair has been held in MegaMall, the World Trade Center, and now at the SMEX. But the SMEX is much smaller than the WTC, thus it felt a bit crowded. The usual bookdealers were there and they cater to the academic sector. But the university presses had a good selection of works by Filipino writers. This suggests that even with the high inflation rate and the economic crunch, publishers still are upbeat. This is evidenced by the crowds that were buying books. The National Historical Commission (NHC) booth is a history bibliophile's dream. Aside from books by Gironiere, Rizal, Del Pilar,Mabini and Sinibaldo de Mas, the NHC recently reissued Patricio Mariano's translations into Filpino of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo . These early translations of Rizal's novels are in itself literary gems. In my family's library, we h...

The United States yesterday celebrated the 7th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks with prayerful moments silence in town halls, state houses, the Pentagon and of course at the sides of Ground Zero in Manhattan. For the first time the memorial service was celebrated not at Ground Zero itself but on the sides, for the site is now being built upon. That is probably the best way to remember the 2,603 fatalities in New York and the 125 in the Pentagon. Rebuilding the site proclaims to the terrorists that truism "You'll never win!" In several cities around the world (London, Paris, Moscow, Sydney etc), the anniversary was commemorated with services. In Manila there was barely a remembrance, not even a public statement from the Palace. The victims of 9/11 came from many nations. There were Brits, Aussies, Germans, French, Japanese etc among the fatalities. That's why the major capitals hold remembrance services every year. There were Pinoys that went down with...

Sometimes I spend good money on philosophy books. This is a lasting legacy of I having taught at Ateneo de Manila! If the Catholic Knight puts the sword on the "tyranny of relativism", theoretical physicist, Alan Sokal skewers the relativists in his latest tome, "Beyond the Hoax: Science,Philosophy and Culture" Sokal made history in 1996 when he sent a paper entitled "Transgressing the boundaries:Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity" to a respected journal "Social Text". The paper passed review and got published. The problem is the paper was a spoof of gobbledygook proportions. Sokal wanted to expose the silliness of the academic Left and the social constructivists which he believed would be best served if their intellectual underpinnings had a dose of reason. In the so called science wars, the realist Sokal took to battle, postmodernists. Nonetheless, I find Sokal's chapter on "Cognitive Relativism in the Philosophy ...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 km long particle accelerator that straddles France and Switzerland just concluded its first test run. Nine thousand physicists were awaiting the result and then the champagne corks popped! The collider aims to replicate the few moments after the Big Bang. The scientists aim to find the Higgs Boson a.k.a. the "God particle". All these particle physics is gobbledygook to me, an ecologist, but this is what Wikipedia says about it "is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics ; it is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. Experimental observation would elucidate how otherwise massless elementary particles nevertheless manage to construct mass in matter. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons . Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagn...

The Philippine Senate is delibrating on an anti-obscenity and pornography bill. But before I go further, these are the words in literature that really turns me on! "Your lips drip honey, my bride,sweetmeats and milk are under your tongue; And the fragrance of your garments is the fragrance of Lebanon. " and this one "Your very figure is like a palm tree,your breasts are like clusters. I said: I will climb the palm tree,I will take hold of its branches.Now let your breasts be like clusters of the vineand the fragrance of your breath like apples, And your mouth like an excellent wine that flows smoothly for my lover,spreading over the lips and the teeth." These words are the apex of sensual literature. No work since it was penned, has equalled the eroticism of these words. BTW the work also counsels something about foreplay that you and I may have forgotten. "Do not arouse, do not stir up love before its own time." If done properly then your myrrr will frag...

As promised to the readers I went to Mass in Manila Cathedral. Here are some photos from what my environmentalist friends now call as the "Bambi Harper Tree Massacre". Plaza Roma has been cleared of trees. I would agree with Ms Harper, a properly landscaped square would bring it closer to its original essence as a European plaza. In the plazas I have seen in Europe, trees bound the square but the square itself is clear ground. In fairness to Ms Harper, she apologized for the incident. But I honestly believe that she isn't completely off the hook. Since she is head of the Intramuros Administration, the buck really ends up on her office desk. I was relieved to see that the old Ficus was still standing although almost stripped of its branches. If environmentalists did not cry foul then this tree would have ended up as firewood! Note the narra in the foreground (probably planted for Pope John Paul II's visit twelve years ago) has been cut. The contractors that Ms Harper...

Plaza Roma, the main square of Manila, just in front of the Manila Cathedral, was bounded by old Figs Ficus trees. One of them I believe existed even during the Spanish colonial period as evidenced by the old photo (probably taken in the 1870s) above I lifted from http://www.simbahan.net/ . It was then hardly a sapling. (Thank you http://www.simbahan.net/ for giving us an online historical resource on our churches.) I have seen the same tree in photos of Manila devastated by the 1945 battle. The cathedral was almost totally destroyed save its facade. In one of the photos GIs are seen having a drink under the tree that was by then a strapping tough balete . As of the last time I was in Intramuros for the traditional Visita Iglesia last March, the tree provided shade for us while we drank our C2 ice tea. We just said our prayers under the tree since the cathedral was jampacked with worshippers. But horrors, the photo in today's print edition of the Philippine Star shows the tree n...

The word salary is taken from the name of the stuff that marine biologists, like this writer, taste every day, salt. Salarium, means the amount of money paid to a Roman soldier to buy salt. Salt in the Roman Empire was expensive since it was imported from Africa and in the age of no refrigerators, it was essential in preserving food. The nomadic herders of the Sahara had the monopoly and controlled the price. Thus the salarium really can't buy much salt. And thus began the ancient tradition of demanding salary increases. Now that we are on the topic, the Philippine Congress is considering a bill that will at least double the salaries of civil servants (yours truly included!). The rationale is that by increasing salaries, the government could attract talented and skilled people. You may accuse me of bias but I honestly believe that this is about time. The government service is the most important sector a citizen deals with everyday. As like anyone in service oriented jobs, civil ...

Felipe Natanio, better known to Pinoys as Mang Pandoy, was for a few months (I think) in the presidency of Fidel Ramos, the living icon of urban poverty in the Philippines. He passed away last Sunday due to the quintessential disease of the poor, tuberculosis. He is survived by his eight children. He was earning just 50 PhP a day before he was catapulted into the limelight. After his poverty became a cause celebre, he was offered capital to start a business, had his own TV show in the government network, and became a consultant to Congress. It seemed that he would be lifted out of poverty. Alas that was not to be. When Ramos was succedeed by Joseph Estrada, Mang Pandoy was forgotten despite Estrada's "para sa mahirap" mantra. It was this time that Pandoy wasn't able to sustain his business, lost his Congress job, sold his house and zoomed back to poverty. Pandoy's tale is the icon of how Philippine society deals with poverty and is a damning indictment and damna...