blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The University of Illinois reinstated Dr Kenneth Howell who was fired by the university for teaching the Roman Catholic Church's doctrinal position on homosexuality. Dr Howell taught a course on Catholicism. EWTN news has this to say ' In a class on Catholicism last spring, he followed up a classroom discussion with an e-mail contrasting the ways in which utilitarianism and natural law theory would each determine the morality of homosexual conduct. A student complained that Howell's words were “hate speech” in an e-mail to the head of the department, Dr. Robert McKim. Howell was called into McKim's office at the end of the semester and told that he would no longer be allowed to teach for the university because his e-mail had “violate[d] university standards of inclusivity.” In Howell's defense, the ADF declared that the First Amendment exists to keep controversial ideas from being suppressed. “A university cannot censor professors’ speech--including clas...

Isang kakatwang eksena ang nasaksihan ko sa isang pribabdong opisina kamakailan lang. Dalawang empleyado ang inatasang bigyan ng solusyon ang isang isyu tungkol sa logistics. Ang isa ang tubong Davao at ang isa ay taga Iloilo. Ang unang wika nila ay Cebuano (Bisaya) at Hiligaynon (Ilonggo). Ang dalawang wika ay halos pareho ngunit may mga katagang iba ang kahulugan sa isa't isang wika. Ginamit nila ang wika nilang kinalakihan at hindi sila nagkaintindihan. Ang nangyari tuloy ay gumamit na lang sila ng wikang Ingles! Yung na nga rin ang sabi ko. Mag-English na lang kaya kayo! At bakit di wikang Filipino ang ginamit nila? Sa totoo lang, marami pa rin ang hindi bihasa sa Filipino upang gamitin ito sa mga larangan tulad ng logistics. At hindi lamang sa mga larangang teknikal, sa mga biyahe ko sa ibat-ibat lugar sa Pilipinas, ang mga naka-paskel sa mga CR o palikuran tungkol sa pagtitipid ng tubig ay naka sulat sa 1)Wika ng rehiyon 2) Wikang Ingles 3) at minsa'y sa wikang Filipino S...

As expected, President Benigno S Aquino III delivered his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) before Congress yesterday. The Constitution requires him to do so. The President has the right to appear before Congress in other times he sees fit. But that doesn't happen often. It usually happens if there is a national crisis. So for people who ask, why he had to deliver a SONA barely a month into his term, the answer is that the Constitution requires him to do so. A president's first SONA in all respects puts down the Presidential platform of government for the next 6 years. This is unlike the British Queen's Speech at Westminster where the government of the day writes a speech outlining the program of government . The government is always at the pleasure of Parliament and if the government loses a vote of confidence, it has to resign and the Prime Minister has to go to Buckingham Palace and ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call for new elections. One of the first...

President Benigno Aquino III plans to tell the truth about the corruption of the previous administration. He expects the electorate to be shocked. But I believe they won't be. The truth shall set you free, the Gospels tell us. This is true but the truth isn't enough. The success and failure of the Noynoy presidency lies on one thing. And this is sending Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her cabal behind bars. The people will not like a pardon, so he better forget entertaining that possibility. Mr Aquino can use the vast powers and persuasive or otherwise of his office to see justice is done. And perhaps this is the last chance for the Rule of Law to eliminate corruption. The other options have been tried and initially found successful until a new crop of corrupt politicians take over. History calls this the executioner's block. But that never does any good!

On Monday, Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III will give his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) to Congress as what the Constitution requires him to do. Wags are now having a field day on predicting what that shocking revelation could be. The blurbs say it is about the top 5 corruption allegations of the administration of ex Prez now Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, which left the nation's coffers having only 100 M left. If this is true then the government is functionally bankrupt. While Noynoy won the presidency on an anti-corruption platform, I hate to say this but the wags are right. Filipinos are so inured to corruption that any revelation wouldn't be a shocker at all. What are the things that can really shock the Filipino people? The wags say 1) Mr Aquino gives a SOMS (state of my sexuality) rather than a SONA speech! 2) Mr Aquino arrests Mrs Arroyo after he gives the "shocker" speech. But of course none of that would happen!...

Blackshama's blog deals with everything "heretical" in the Galilean sense. In fact I tend to throw a spanner (monkey wrench to you American English users!) to widely held and accepted ideas from science, philosophy, religion (yeah!), politics etc But my good friend Juned Sonido suggested that I set up a science blog that will deal primarily with science issues in the Philippines. This blog will be a group blog eventually and probably a base for a science blog alliance. I asked Juned who the "evil empire" is and he replied via SMS "ignorance and pop science". I invite readers to check out Agham at Scientia . Of course I and hopefully the science blog community will hold on to the Galileo's "It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved" Which is precisely what faces Filipino society with respect to science.

Manila is one of the few megapolises in the world which is dependent on one water catchment or dam for its water needs. The city depends almost solely from Angat Dam for water and power generation. The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that 50% of the city is under water rationing. The worrisome story here is that this rationing is implemented in the rainy season. While the rains have been falling, only two tropical cyclones have passed and people observed that they were more windy than rainy. The last one raised Angat's water level by 0.2 m. The dam's water level is 15 m from the normal. The rain bearing "habagat" winds have not yet blown. August is historically the wettest month. Unless weather patterns change, next month may be the driest August. September is the last month of the wet season and then the dry begins. The only thing to be done is to lessen water use. Renowned painter Joey Velasco passed away yesterday from a lingering illness. He was 43 and is su...

The Philippines Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Balik Scientist Program aims to strengthen academic and technological human resources in the sciences. It started in 1975, was suspended in 1986 but resumed in 1993, during the Ramos presidency. The program aims to bring back Pinoy science talent from overseas to teach, do research or science consultancy with the academe, government or even industry. About a year ago, my high school buddy and ex UPIS science club member, Yale computational geochemist and system administrator Dr Mihali A Felipe corresponded with me on his plans to apply for the program. This was approved and this July he is spending a month a UP to teach students and lay the groundwork to establish a computational chemistry research effort. Computational chem has immense importance since using computers, the need to do expensive chemical experiments can be minimized. Also the approach has obvious environmental applications. In the environment, large scale exp...

The Chairdestroyer ooops wrecker Mac Esposo asks a similar question in the Philippine Star on why the Left never seized power. He enumerates the long term effects of Spanish colonization and Christianization of the islands and the people and the American branding of our nationalists as "bandoleros" as factors why Filipinos never accepted the Left. The Left has been in the electoral political arena for several years now. They are now moving out of the partylist sphere into the wider field by being guest candidates of the Nationalista Party. With this attempt at coalition building, it shows a bit of pragmatism. But this pragmatism was criticized Left, Center to Right. Why? The Left went to Bed with characters that to put it simply, tried to kill them. But I dispute Esposo's "damaged culture" argument. Filipinos still go for nationalist types. But they won't go for Communist "Nationalists" for one simple reason. And this reason has been well discussed...

Typhoon Conson (Basyang) was a relatively weak typhoon with a small circulation. I have followed the cyclone's development from a weak low pressure area near Yap island to its intensification in the Philippine Sea as a category 1 typhoon. It got most of its steam from the deep and warm waters of the Philippine Sea. What I found very unusual is that one of the first storms of the season followed an almost westerly track. Check out the maybagyo.com forecast scenarios. Typhoons that follow this route usually do so late into the season in October and November. The reason given by meteorologists is that there was a strong high pressure steering ridge in southern China. Usually northwest Pacific typhoons swerve and take a curving path towards northern Luzon, Taiwan and Southern Japan during July. So Conson made a beeline for Metro Manila and by the time it passed over the city. it had a maximum wind speed of 95 km/hr with gusts of 110 km/hr. This made it as a tropical storm rather tha...

In 1992 the Church of England (CoE) voted in its Synod to ordain women priests. It followed the wake of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (TEC) which decided to ordain women priests in 1979. The first Anglican church to ordain a woman is Hong Kong, whose bisjop ordained its first woman priest Florence Lim in 1944 as a response to a need to minister to women during the Japanese occupation of the territory. It became obvious that when the CoE decides to ordain women as priests then it must ordain them as bishops. TEC ordained its first woman suffragan bishop Barbara Harris in 1989. However the first Anglican church to ordain a woman bishop as a diocesan was New Zealand who ordained Penny Jamieson in 1989. TEC elected a woman primate (head of a national church), Dr Katherine Jeffert-Schori in 2006. On the picture here is a supposed ancient depiction of the Virgin Mary as a priest and bishop. She is supposed to wear the Pallium, which is a vestment used only by metropol...

We have this science graduate who got his biology degree this year with a magna cum laude to show and now is quite in the dumps. After having won accolades from the university like best thesis research and of course the McL plaudit, he applied to work for a top notch hospital as part of the research team dealing with patient satisfaction. Given the good scholastic record he has, he got accepted. But one month into the job he quit. The reason is that he was placed under job training first (where he got a pay he did not expect to get) and the change of orientation from the grade oriented life as an undergraduate to the output and team building orientation of life in the corporate private sector was quite of a shocker. He complained to me about "poor labour practices". And this leads me to think that our undergraduate training philosophies are horribly out of sync with what is to be expected in the world at large. Note that I refuse to use the cliche "real world" sinc...

This whole brouhaha about sex education in the schools shows that a lot of Filipinos have a narrow idea of what sex is. Sex for most is limited to the reproductive organs and the sexual act. And this gives the Church, parents and teachers on who should be the right people to tell children about sex. May I suggest Charles Darwin? Unfortunately he is dead and buried in Westminster Abbey. But his book (which I believe is more radical than his own "Origin of Species") "The Descent of Man" lies down our modern ideas on how we should look at sex. Sex is crucial to understanding evolution. First of all Darwin observed that the sexes are different. The males have structural differences from the female and in some cases these are so obvious. Look at the horns in some mammals. In some cases, only males have them and in most cases, the males have larger horns. These are what we call secondary sexual characteristics. Any child who grew up in a farm notices these (after all chil...

Once the last goal is scored and the national euphoria (Spain or the Netherlands) dies down and the first football world cup in Africa fades into history, what will be most remembered with be Paul the Vulgar Octopus. (He belongs to the common octopus species which Linnaeus named as Octopus vulgaris ) He is credited for correctly predicting who won 11 out of 12 matches. I calculated the binomial probability that this could happen and it is just 0.2929%! Here is what Wikipedia says "In the lead-up to Germany's international football matches, Paul is presented with two clear plastic boxes, each containing food: a mussel or an oyster . Each container is marked with the flag of a team, one the flag of Germany", and the other the flag of Germany's opponent. The flag on the box chosen by the octopus is interpreted as being the flag of the predicted winning country." He was also asked to predict who would win in the UEFA Euro 2o08 and he predicted 4 out of 6 wins b...

Give up on the hero? No! the international airport (NAIA) that is. The recent spate of flight diversions, cancellations and delays have brought into attention the state of the Philippines' foremost international gateway and domestic flight hub. It also has brought more attention to changes in our climate patterns. How come we still haven't felt much of the monsoon? The Ninoy Aquino International Airport now handles 24.1 million passengers annually with 205K aircraft movements. The airport has 4 terminals but it has only two runways (one 2.25 km long and the other 3.73 km long). That the airport has only two runways and has no room for expansion places a limit on future air traffic growth. All airport experts agree that the airport is now in a state of air traffic and passenger congestion. Terminal 1 was designed only for 4.5 M passengers a year. Terminal 2 (used exclusively by PAL) has a 9.5 M capacity, Terminal 3 (used by Cebu Pacific and AirPhilExpress) has a 13 M capacity...

The July 2010 cover of the National Geographic has the skull of a female Ardipithecus ramidus which is the oldest known hominid skeleton. For those who aren't familiar about the taxonomy and systematics of humans, Hominids are the great apes who belong to the family Hominidae. These include humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orang utans. The family is further subdivided into Ponginae which contains the Orang utan and the Homininae which contains the chimps, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Gibbons belong to another ape family, the Hylobatidae. Ardipithecus ramidus "Ardi" is the oldest known human ancestor with a fairly complete skeleton that has survived to the present. Estimated at 4.4 MY, the skeleton was unearthed in the Middle Awash in Ethiopia. Before the oldest fossil skeleton was the famous Lucy ( Australopithecus afarensis ) discovered by Donald Johansen in the Awash region of Ethiopia in 1974 and is estimated to have lived 3.2 MYA. The skeleton was nick...

It may surprise the reader that scientists are spiritual creatures too. The Roman Church recognizes sainthood (by canonization) of pious people who can be exemplars for the faithful to live lives of holiness. The Catholic Church being in the fullest sense, catholic, has saints for almost every calling in life ir life's problems. And Catholics call these people as "patron saints". Lawyers have St Thomas More. Doctors have St Luke. Even the Internet has its own patron saint, St Isidore of Seville, who 1000 years before the World Wide Web was invented, wrote 20 volumes of the Etymologiae documenting the knowledge of his time. It is said that the work is like a relational database. Countries and other geographic entities have their saints too. You may get the hives because of a hairy caterpillar. You then call on St Magnus of Fussen (Who is he?! Where is Fussen?) Saints also carry national identities even if they never lived in the country were they are patrons. For example ...

Mr Angelo Palmones, a nationally known broadcaster, was elected as representative for AGHAM, the party that advocates scientific issues. He was on ANC last night discussing the direction of S & T in the Aquino presidency. Listening to Rep Palmones on ANC, I could not help but note that it seems he did not get much input from the Filipino professional science community on what direction should Philippine science programs focus. While it is unarguable that much of the problems of Philippine science development lies on the poor state of basic education, that is just one end of the problem. The success and utility of basic science education lies on top of successes in 1) Literacy, 2) Numeracy, 3) Comprehension in basic education. Science cannot be taught effectively if children do not acquire these skills in the early grades (plus of course encouraging independent and curiosity driven thinking). Here is where the importance of teaching these skills in the first language comes in. And ...

Ngayon na narinig ko unawit sa Presidente Noy sa Kyusi Circle kagabi. Ito ang handog ko sa kanya at humihingi po ako ng paumanhin kay Ka Freddie Aguilar Presidente Blues Ako ang nakikita Ako ang nasisisi Ako ang laging may kasalanan Pagising sa umaga Batikos ang almusal Bako pumasok sa Palasyo Kapag nanganatwiran Ako'y pagagalitan ng mga periodistang walang alam gawin Ako'y sunudsunuran Ayaw man lang pakinggan Nasasaktan ang damdamin REFRAIN Ako'y walang kalayaan Sunod sa SWS lamang! II. Pagpunta sa Batasan Diretso na sa SONA Wala namang akong aabutan! Wala na dun si Nanay Wala na rin si Tatay Si Jojo ang naghihintay! Tatawag si Obama Gusto niyang sumama Lagot na naman paglarga! At 'pag nangangatwiran Ako'y titirahin Ng Kaliwang walang alam gawin! [Ulitin ang Refrain] [Ulitin ang I] [Ulitin ang Refrain] Si Marcos ang nakikita Si Erap nasisisi Si Gloria ang laging may kasalanan!