blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

Something to meditate in Lent Station 1: Our Last Supper Lord, all the food we eat comes from you. Nature holds these for us. Destroy nature then we eat our last meal. We recall the words of your prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread" by which environmentalists read as "The meal to come give us this day!" All comes from you, none from our hands. But the last supper brought upon our greed condemns us. Lord send your renewing spirit now. Station 2. In the garden of tears Our Muslim bretheren consider gardens and the whole of nature an image of Paradise. Have you ever been in a wild place and knew that this will be forever changed in the name of "development"? The thought of this destruction Lord, causes me anguish and I am gripped by a sense of desolation and loneliness. Those who know how nature as it really is are like Saint John the baptist, voices in the wilderness. Lord take this cup away from me. I sweat blood! Station 3. Nature is brought before t...

The end of the second semester is always a headache for professors like me. For one thing the real summer has kicked in. As someone who keeps tab on climate as part of my career responsibilities, I can probably divide the Pinoy summer into two “sub seasons”. The early summer (late Feb and early March) is when the last of the northeasters blow and the NW Pacific high pressure ridge is over us and the weather while warm is still pleasantly dry with tolerable humidity. The second is the long hot muggy summer (late March to mid May) when the easterly wave brings slight winds but high humidity. Traditionally the Holy Week is the start of the muggy summer season. Unfortunately the end of sem and graduation season falls right smack into the muggy season. The graduating students have to be given their grades and I make it a point to conduct informal “exit interviews” before informing them of their last grade as undergraduates. I have not been in the teaching business for a long time unlike ...

Ex President of the Philippines Joseph Ejercito Estrada is in hot water for riding a US Army jeep replica with a simulated mounted machine gun. The Philippine National Police is looking into filing charges in violation of the anti-gun toting law. Now this should be fodder for the Toys for Peace campaign.

This is really high summer. March 9 is high summer in the Philippines (although the start of spring in the USA and autumn in Australia) with temperatures reaching the 37 degree Celsius mark. Humidity is probably in the 80% region or more. This is also my high summer. My hemisphere should be tilted to my Sun and supposedly I am at the peak of my cerebral powers. I should be at the top of a challenging career! (oooops some friends of my own age make 4X more than I do!) But this week was marked by two sad events. Pinoy rapper Francis Magalona passed away this week after happily battling leukemia. Jeepers FrancisM was only two years older than me! Think about reminders that we are all mortal! Another shocker, a classmate from primary school whom I haven't seen in 29 years I found on Facebook. He told me he had a stroke quite recently. Nonetheless my birthday cake by tradition has only one candle! Well at least that has less carbon impact on the atmosphere! LOL! :-) Anyway everytime I ...

The genius of the Catholic Church is that it can update its practices and expressions of belief no matter how long that may take. Paradoxically the Benedictine papacy has made great strides in recovering the traditions that Vatican II lost. But in this context, we read that Roman Catholic bishops in Italy want that there should be a fasting from electronic gadgets for Lent. And this includes SMS texting and iPods! Earlier on the Vatican released an updated list of the Seven Deadly Sins. Since I have a bit of traditionalist streak, I would prefer to use the old appellation "The Seven Cardinal Sins" :-) The Philippines has had one and we seem to be haunted by him still. The new list has drug trafficking, environmental destruction and obscene wealth on top of the old luxuria, gula, avaritia, acedia ira etc. The public saw this as a novel attempt by the Benedictine church to remind the planet that sins still matter. Some in public were made to reflect and some ridiculed t...

I was in Cebu for a meeting when I heard about the tragedy that befell Ateneo grade school pupil Amiel Alcantara on the school's parking lot last Tuesday. The boy was run over by a van driven by woman who was picking her son from the school. The boy was declared dead on arrival in a nearby hospital. The tragedy was made even more disturbing because it was witnessed by the boy's siblings and the nanny who pushed the other kids from the rushing van. She was also injured. The incident brought back memories of a loss we experienced 30 years ago in March 1979. One of my classmates named Renato drowned in a friend's pool on his birthday. The death was an accident and my whole elementary school was in shock. The teachers had to go on counselling mode and they told the children that no one wanted this tragedy and that it was an accident. No one is to blame not even the kids who attended the birthday party. The teachers said that the best way we can deal with it is to learn from th...

The current debate on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) and plans for its recommissioning has placed the Pinoy scientist center stage. In many ways the debate brings the Pinoy scientist into his/her debut on the national political stage. The scientist can determine the direction of national policy and development. This is different from the past view that scientists are PhDs and as such are limited to the classrooms. The scientist is no longer a “teacher lang”. National development and strategy are no longer the exclusive domain of lawyers, economists and those pretending to be one. The scientists will play a large role in this country’s political life as their critical mass increases. Despite her faults so often discussed here, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has to be thanked for this. Her support for the country’s scientific development is very much greater than her predecessors. She appointed as science minister a research scientist and experienced research manager who has n...

With apologies to Alex Pope! The secret of life hid in priestly superstition And God said, Let Darwin be! And thus was freed from its darkened prison!

I have finished my treat of DVD for review movies. "Australia" is billed as a tribute to the "golden age" of movies. The opening credits however reminded me of Indiana Jones. Nonetheless the Baz Luhrmann film has proven the wags wrong. The film is no Outback Waterworld! Anyway the film lives up to its Aussieness. There are a lot of Australian private jokes in the movie and only blokes and sheilas who have lived long enough in Oz can get the punchline. Example 1: all newbies to Oz are enthralled to see hopping kangaroos. The ooooohs and ahhhs I have heard in Billabong sanctuary years before. But then something typically Aussie happens to the roo. Guess!?!? (Clue: When I first landed in Australia when I was an overseas student there, the first roo I saw in Oz was a roadkill.) Example 2: Also when Nicole Kidman's aristocratic character goes down the gangplank and into the wharf, she tries to check into a "hotel", where in Oz a hotel is a pub. She walks r...

The urban dictionary defines obamination as "The disastrous result of doing or following the speakings of a smooth talker." The Pro-life camp is up in arms over Barack Obama's EO removing the Federal ban on funds for organization providing abortion services outside the USA. What Barack Obama has done according to them is "An obamination in the eyes of the Lord!"

It seems that Bayani Fernando's Pink and Blue revolution has made advances. Photo taken in a public high school in Quezon City boy's toilet

The truth is plain. We were once children. The foreword to a recent edition of GK Chersterton's "St Francis of Assisi" tells of the world of children and the price of being an adult is never being able to re-enter that world, even in a dream. Not even for a memory since many adults only have a hazy recollection of childhood especially if it was a happy one. As Merlin played by Sam Neill in the Hallmark remake of the Arthurian legend says, "My childhood was so happy for it was over in a flash" Too bad biology dictates that we end up as all adults. But the Gospel speaks of Christ telling the people that "they won't enter the Kingdom of God unless they become children once more." I have heard this in Church many many times since I was received in the Catholic Church during the feast of the Santo Niño 20 years ago. I was a young adult then and no longer a child. The Gospel reading was about Jesus after being found the the temple by his upset parents, g...

I got the email about University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman retired janitor Meliton Zamora getting 0.92 pesos as his retirement pay. I have known Zamora aka Mang Milton since he swept the floors whilst singing early in the morning before my 7:00 AM English 1 class. However some students had a closer relationship (financially) since he guaranteed their loans with the student loan board. Even with its then low fees, students had a hard time making ends meet since money was needed to pay for paper, food, school supplies and dorm fees. In a sense the socialized tuition fee scheme was meant to answer this but it could never do so completely. As for student loans, one of the first things that a newly hired prof or instructor learns is NOT TO GUARANTEE student loans since students rarely if ever pay for these. Even if the loans are quite small, when retirement time comes, the process of clearing accountabilities with the university becomes a tedious process. One may have his/her retirem...

Methinks it was in the early 90s that Ken came out of the closet. My sister has different Barbie and Ken dolls and as little girls do, she dresses up the dolls. At 4 years of age, I realized Ken had no male organ. The next year I realized that Barbie had no female organ either but she had secondary female sexual characters that Ken lacked. So I think this was the reason why Ken became a gay icon. Much later on some people thought the Teletubbies were gay. Then came Spongebob and now it is Tintin, the boy reporter as gay ! The Times has the whole gay analysis . I have a complete Tintin series and when I was a boy, I never had any inkling that Tintin could be gay. However when I was in college, I suspected that Captain Haddock could be gay. How can a Seadog have no girl in every port or at least frequented a brothel as many seamen do? The only noted female character in the whole series is Bianca Castafiore. The Captain Haddock-Tintin friendship invites gay rumours. But as the Times says...

It also amazes me that like the reinstitution of capital punishment, the Philippine Congress (and the rest of elite Pinoy society) can't settle the language issue. The Philippine Daily Inquirer takes essentially the same position as leading our own language and academics do. The language gurus in the UN and our colleges of education have long known that acquisition of literacy, numeracy and basic science skills in schoolkids are best through the mother tongue. House bill 5619, the proposed Act Strengthening and Enhancing the Use of English as the Medium of Instruction authored by Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas seeks to junk the bilingual policy adopted by the old education department in 1974. While it is patently obvious that English competency has declined precipituously since the Americans left us to run our own education system, the bill may be the wrong band aid for the right problem. The Marcos regime instituted a bilingual policy that split the teaching of certain subjects in basic...

This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of a telescope to observe the heavens. This was even noted by Pope Benedict XVI in his Feast of the Magi homily. It seems that the Church has finally come to terms with the Galileo affair as it even sponsors the scientific anniversary. Also this year is Charles Darwin year marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. The Catholic Church is also commemorating it be sponsoring a symposium hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Science.

No te olvideras is the the whole message of historical -romances- in- war movies like Mark Meily's Baler (VIVA films). It seems that every decade there is a big budgeted Pinoy Spanish era movie. Ten years ago we had Marilou Diaz-Abaya's Rizal (GMA Films). So those who saw it then can't help but compare Baler with Rizal . But that is where the comparison ends. Rizal is a hagiography with certain liberties taken while Baler is a love story with extreme liberties taken. Now one wag who happens to be gay once said on ANC TV when asked which is the most notable film of the last 30 years " Rizal is the most beautiful ugly movie made!" (Bernal's Himala was the best movie ever) I'm sure this movie critic cum wag will say the same thing if not worse! I saw Baler in the same Ayala cinema I saw Rizal ten years earlier. Worst of all since I bought my ticket quite late, I found myself in the same crummy seat from where I saw Rizal ! Baler can be forgiven for ...

Nothing shows that we are so far from Christ as Christmas. As Saint Luke tells us, the baby was born of a virgin, had no room for him at the inn, and was born where animals were kept in a manger. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes not the fancy one but what the poor have. Mary and Joseph were poor. The manifestation that this wasn't an ordinary baby came from what the shepherds say what the angels told them. The first visitors to see the baby were what the scriptures say are downtrodden. The baby was born empty of the trappings of one who has power. None of the shepherds offered a present as the Lucan gospel tells us. It was the magi who gave the precious presents of myrrh, gold and frankincense since they recognized that the child was of royal lineage and has absolute power. But the baby would follow the Israelite way of being refugees and flee to Egypt. This baby has experienced everything! Even this power had to be emptied and whatever power Christ exhibited during his earthly ...

Pope Benedict XVI is like any good professor should be. He just given new insight on something very Darwinian. In a year end message to the Roman Curia , Benedict linked why there are two sexes only and why the environment has to be protected. The whole Darwinian understanding of sex is premised on the existence of 1) Males and 2) Females. Now it is only males and females period. Either males or females may do sexual selection and reproduce and by consequence any sexual preference aside from heterosexuality (which doesn't result in reproduction) will be naturally selected out. That is the Darwinian understanding. Any so called "homosexual" behaviour in animals is only an facultative way to achieve heterosexuality. Straightness rules in evolution and this means a male/female binary only. But some scientists like Joan Roughgarden have provided evidence that there might be multigenders in nature. But Roughgarden has to prove that these genders are functional with respect to ...

According to the Philippine Star , the Presidential Task Force on Education chaired by Ateneo de Manila president, Fr Ben Nebres recommended to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that tertiary education be at least for 5 years. Fr Nebres essentially suggested the European Bologna system wherein applicants for university will have to spend 2 years of preparatory courses before moving on to three years of university study. This is similar to university qualifying programs offered by some Commonwealth universities. At the end of these two years, the student may enter the job market or proceed to university. This presupposes that the two year qualifying courses provides skills necessary for the job market. The proposed system is essentially a two cycle system The proposal also calls for mandatory university aptitude exams. This is necessary is this qualifying scheme is to be implemented. There are certain overlaps with the American Associate in Arts degree system. But if Fr Nebres and his c...