blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The hottest summer courtesy of El Nino in at least 10 years gave runners and walkers in the University of the Philippines Diliman campus a visual treat. This year the flame trees Delonix regia are in full bloom! In past summers it wasn't as hot and dry so the trees did not shed their leaves and few blooms were produced. It is the tropical version of the Japanese Hanami or the Cherry blossom viewing season. While Hanami tells us the fragile impermanence of beauty, the flame tree hanami tells us that summer burns but soon it will all be over.

I could have subtitled this post as "More ways to get back at the Devil! " But that may too much for our readers! Sir Thomas More, a.k.a the Man for All Seasons is also remembered as the Man Who Lost His Head for an oath. Of course, it is not JUST an oath for according to More, an oath is nothing but words and by the words it may be possible to take or not to take an oath. Robert Bolt's award winning play (which was turned into an multi Oscar winning movie) A Man for All Seasons has More (played by the great thespian Paul Scofield) say the following "What is an oath then, but words we say to God?" And from here is we can take another view of the Noynoy Aquino won't take his oath from Mr Chief Justice Corona but from his barangay captain issue which has hit the social networking sites and has our most esteemed Law deans, law students and interested non-lawyers discussing the issue. Some people say that the Constitution doesn't say that the Chief Justice...

Several people have asked me whether what we have been experiencing in Metro Manila for at least 2 weeks can be considered as a "heat wave". Since I teach a bit of meteorology and climatology for freshies on Environmental Science 1, I had to dig up my notes and find out what the definition of heat wave is. There is no fast and clear numerical rule for determining what a heat wave is. It is relative. For instance, in Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden, three days of consecutive 28 c weather is officially considered as a heat wave by their meteorological agencies. In these northern European countries where people are used to summer temperatures peaking at 21 C, this is indeed unbearable. Visitors to London from the Southern United States laughed at a Times headline that went "London SIZZLES in the 70s . Southerners are used to having temps that reach above 100 F. In the Southern United States, two days of excessively hot weather is considered a heat wave. Th...

May 10, 2010, election day in the Philippines is historic in several ways. First of all it is the first time that the national elections are automated. Secondly, it is a chance for the electorate to get rid of the Glorious disaster of the last 9 years and thirdly it shows us that religious command votes no longer matter much. Besides the heat (and I was not that hydrated, stupid me and got a mild case of heat fatigue!) I noticed that even in precincts where the heat index would have reached 43 C, hardy anyone wants to leave the queue. It took many voters 4 hours (leading prez contender Noynoy Aquino not exempted) cast their vote. Congratulations Filipino electorate. Your vote was read by the PCOS machine. Some PCOS machines conked out apparently due to the heat. But equipment failure contrary to pessimists was estimated at less than 1% Within a minute after the polls closed, it seems that PPCRV has got a few results in its parallel count. Expect this to snowball as time passes. Electo...

The title of this post is exactly what the tooktook driver told me when I returned from a meeting in Central Bangkok to my well appointed but still super budget hotel near Bangkok’s version of Banawe Street, Quezon City. I couldn’t take a cab and getting to the MRT was out of the question as Red Shirt protesters and Thaksin fans were marching on the streets. I will not dwell on the usual CNN and BBC commentaries that the Thai political crisis will affect Thailand’s economy. That is patently obvious. The Thais have made the whole biz of people power more savvy. The main aim to shut down not the TV stations (it was the government who did that) or the stock market, but the biggest shopping malls. If we had that kind of people power now, then the government will have a struggle to be in power. I have had an interest in Thailand since I have many scientist colleagues from that country. Also my parents have so many close friends from the Kingdom and they have become like fami...

I was 12 or 13 or so when Dad and his good Buddhist friend Hama-San (who to me was my second father) brought me to a museum in Nagasaki dedicated to Japan's Christians and the persecution they endured as the country became a "closed one" and how the faith survived for 240 years after sans priests, nuns, rosaries etc. What I recall is the katana with the cross on the sword guard. This was owned by a Christian daimyo. I also remember the images of the Buddhist Kannon which is really Santa Maria. I also remember clearly the Fumie, or icons of the Madonna which Japanese were to step on as a test of renouncing Christianity. Japanese Christianity began with the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier who in 1547 landed in Kagoshima with co-missionaries. He carried icons of the Madonna and used these to explain to the Japanese what the Catholic faith was all about. By 1579, there were 130,000 Japanese Catholics by the start of the persecutions 10 years later, there were 300,000. . But the ...

In the Qatar, the emir has donated land to build Christian churches provided that the churches have no bells, steeples or a cross to identify them. The churches are the first to be built in this Islamic emirate in hundreds of years. The Catholic Our Lady of the Rosary Church ministers to mostly expats, many of which are Filipinos. The architecture of the church sans the cross looks remarkably like the modernist mosque architecture I have seen in Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. And that is most likely what was intended. In Islamic states, proselytizing to Muslims is forbidden although non-Muslims may practice their religion. The Cross is the sign of the Christians and the very symbol itself is so central to faith and thus can convert the unbeliever. Legend has it that Constantine the Roman Emperor was converted by seeing the Cross and the words "In hoc signo Vinces" meaning In this Sign Conquer. Constantine was the emperor to formally issue an edict given religious toleration...

The discussion thread in the Philippine Association of Marine Science Yahoo group has become interesting. It first started when Professor Flor Lacanilao started about a few years back on what ails Philippine Science. While we may think that it is largely the lack of resources, Prof Lacanilao says it's more than that. It is political. The politics is from the university committee level (like the one the decides who gets academic tenure or not), to the department level (which allocates scarce resources and recommends promotions), the college (which confirms the recommendations), the university administration (which approves the promotion), to the Department of Science and Technology (which gives the grants), the National Academy of Science and Technology or NAST (which advises the President in conferring national awards) and ultimately ends on the President (who approves the awards). Professor Lacanilao contends that "non-scientists" get recognized in this he means the sc...

I would agree that atheism may not be a religion since it has none of the usual stuff theists consider such as eschatology for instance. But I also would agree that atheism is a religion for it posits a belief taken not on empirical evidence that God doesn't exist. To accept that principle on a matter of faith is a key element in subscribing to a religion. Conversely the same principle can be used to characterize theists except that they remove the "doesn't" from the earlier statement. Also both theists and atheists would support their position on their experiences. And lately we can see "religious" organization on the part of atheists, with them preaching from Dawkins' "Delusion" and Hitchen's "Not Great". Is this some sort of selective forces that is needed for coexistence in a human population whose majority are theists? But as an atheist complains to folks that lump his worldview with that of the theists "if atheism is a...

Professor Torsten Wiesel 1981 Nobel Laurate in Medicine for his work on how the retinal cells in the eyes receive light and how the brain conjures an image, is now in town for a series of visits to our research universities. He was in DLSU earlier and proceeded to UP Diliman. He will visit other universities in his tour of the country. Over merienda at the Board of Regents (BOR) room at Quezon Hall, UP administrators briefed the professor about the University’s plans to further push forward our scientific development. Prof Wiesel is no stranger to the problems and pitfalls administrators face, for after receiving the Nobel, he became president of the Rockefeller University. Upon stepping down from this post, he assumed leadership of the Human Frontier Science Program which promotes and funds interdisciplinary collaboration between the sciences and helps train postdoctoral scientists. Professor Wiesel in these various engagements, advises government research bureaucracies on how the...

Those of us in the Philippine environmental science profession learn in undergraduate geology that Palawan is the most aseismic place in the whole country. For one thing, the island is a piece of the Eurasian continental crust that was ripped from the mainland as a result of the formation of the South China Sea more than 30 million years ago. Palawan is a continental island as compared to the other Philippine islands, which are called "oceanic" meaning their origin is from the oceanic crust. Volcanism built these islands. In graduate school, we had to pass the master's level course on geological oceanography. I was fortunately under Dr Margaret Goud-Collins (who is now affiliated with Woods Hole) who had not a few class days devoted on how the formation of Palawan. I fact the evolution of this island is linked with the evolution of the Sulu and South China Seas. Palawan is relatively aseismic since it is far from any plate subduction zone. In contrast the islands of ocea...

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Decades of poor governance, dictators, hurricanes have all contributed to the country's desperate status. The country is at the same latitude as northern Luzon. And like the Philippines is in the path of tropical cyclones and is earthquake prone. The country is the first independent republic in the Caribbean declaring its freedom from France. But due to political instability, the US occupied the country from 1915 to 1934. French and American intervention in the past remains in the nation's consciousness. Widespread poverty has contributed to widespread deforestation. In the 1920s Haiti had 60% forest cover. In 2010 it had >2%. It is mountainous in the interior. Loss of precious topsoil reduced crop productivity, worsening the chronic food security problem. This also is the major factor in the recent devastating floods that hit the country in the last 2 years. And now comes the deadly earthquake. The buildings and houses in Haiti...

The Philippine National Police , which has deployed a thousand cops to secure the Jan 9 procession of the Black Nazarene, says that more people will come to the procession this year due to the environmental disasters we had experienced last year. The devotion is featured in numerous books for tourists planning a visit to the Philippines. It is probably the best known folk Catholic devotion in the Philippines. Of course it isn't the only one. Each and every town in the country has probably a folk Catholic devotion. The Nazarene devotion is what may be said as a functional one. Many folk Catholic devotions dating back to the Spanish colonial period have died out with political and social changes. The public devotions in Intramuros churches are now extinct, having gone with the destruction of the churches in WWII. Some have been revived, like the Marian processions on Dec 8. The Nazarene devotion is notable that it survived wars and revolutions. It dates back to the 1600s for the Naz...

The old Roman Church calendar had January 1 as the Feast of the Circumcision ("tuli" in Filipino) of Christ. Why there is a circumcision is told in Genesis 17 as a reminder of YHWH's covenant with Abraham. Verse 12 has it as " And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner, that is not of thy seed." In the covenant, Abraham was promised that he will have many descendants by his wife Sarah. Abraham's son with Sarah' Isaac was circumcised 8 days after he was born, his eldest son with Sarahs servant Hagar, Ishmael, at 13 years and Abraham himself at 90 years. Christian Tradition holds that the real start of Jesus's shedding of blood for our salvation started on his circumcision. This was also the time when Jesus was named as Jesus. Another name of the feast is "The Naming of Jesus" The new Roman Calendar promulgated by Pa...

Some pundits are glad that we are about to say a big fat goodbye to the first decade of the 21st century which they consider as decadem horribilis or horrible decade tonight. T'was 10 years ago when we craned our necks so see those turn of the millennium fireworks and we hoped that everything will be good, an upbeat economy and technology that would empower everyone. In 1999, SMS messaging was in its infancy but the power of the medium was rearing its head. Someone sent a message that Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila was dead. This was taken seriously that the Vatican had already prepared condolences. Less than a year later in 2001, September 11 to be exact, I was in hospital for a life threatening illness and I was in a dicey situation. The doctors won't tell me so. However what I saw on the TV is worse than facing death. The docs and nurses were transfixed as they saw live New York's WTC tower's collapse after being hit by terrorist piloted jets. It took me about one h...

The Pope last October 20 announced a scheme to bring in disaffected Anglicans (Episcopalians in the USA and the Philippines) into the Catholic Church while allowing them to maintain their ecclesial traditions. The Pope's moves comes as an Apostolic Constitution called Anglicanorum Coetibus or in my rough Latin to English translation means "on groups of Anglicans". Apostolic Constitutions are Papal Bulls since they have an importance that concern the universal Church. I have a keen interest in Anglicanorum Coetibus since we have Anglicans in the family and I was raised as one attending services at Cathedral Heights as a child. The Anglican Communion has been dealing with issues on female priests and bishops, episcopal authority, the ordination of non-celibate gays and now the blessing of gay unions. It seems that the last two issues are the two last straws the broke the camel's back. Conservatives in the USA have split from the Episcopal Church (TEC) and formed the...

To understand the magnitude of the recent floods that hit Manila and northern Luzon in the wake of TS Ondoy (Ketsana), it pays to look at the historical record of flooding in the Philippines. There had been major flooding events before and some have been recorded in Spanish friar accounts. Floods regularly inundated Bulacan, Pampanga and Pangasinan as well as the Laguna de Bay area. Marikina was flooded at certain years and this endangered the colony's food security that residents of these areas had to ask for exemption from the hated colonial tribute. Researchers may well try to see if these flooding events are somewhat related to climate events such as El Nino or La Nina. Also they may take note of how long the floods lasted before it subsided. One very documented flood is the one that deluged Manila in November 1943. This is so significant that all writers of WWII memoirs recall it since it marked the start of the worst aspects of the Japanese occupation. The flood deluged part...

Some lessons for next semester's Environmental Science 1 1. Natural hazards 2. Disaster preparedness and awareness 3. Why the bahay kubo can survive floods. 4. Gated communities can keep the poor out but not environmental disasters

Ironically, I was in the Philippine Coast Guard typhoon response and rescue exhibit in Manila when TS Ondoy's deluge hit Metro Manila. I was following the storm on real time satellite apps on my mobile phone and was shocked to see that the storm's core was compact and consolidated. This meant a deluge will come. Checking on the PAGASA forecast, I saw that the forecast still said "gusty winds" I have seen and experienced these kinds of storms in northern Australia. During my first year there as a PhD student in 1997, a tropical low dumped a year's worth of rain in 6 hours. The university got washed out. Cars in the student parking lot were piled on top of another as the flash flood rushed from the eucalyptus covered hills. There were no casualties. Six hours before, people were advised to seek higher ground. Those in buildings were advised to seek the higher floors and stay put. Some friends were trapped in the library building and did not go hungry since even th...

I have to thank Nanay's (Soccoro Ramos) National Bookstore (NBS) for making available decent books at affordable prices. I'm not advertising NBS but the truth is my bibliophilic generation is truly "Laking National". When we were much younger, only NBS had carried good books in many of its branches. True there were other more specialist bookstores with fine books like Erehwon, Bookmark, Solidaridad and Popular, these bookstores were located in faraway Makati and Ermita (I lived in QC) or in the case of Popular just off Avenida Rizal near the Rathaus beerhouse. The first two bookshops are defunct, Sionil-Jose's Solidaridad is still around and Popular has moved to a trendier location on Quezon City's Tomas Morato near the Boy Scout roundabout. When I was an undergrad, a lefty friend of mine and I would take public transpo to get to Popular since this was the only place where we can read "commie" books. This is where I got my whole edition of Marx's...