Exploring myself.
Lil Wayne feat. Drake - She Will
Perhaps the best song to encapsulate what the petitioners to “reconsider and reject” Senator Miriam Santiago’s election into the International Criminal Court were thinking when they wrote the petition.
Salient part of lyrics are in Drake’s hook:
Cause she bad, maybe she won’t
Uh, but shit, then again, maybe she will
by Orlando P. Carvajal in his Sun.Star Column Break Point.
HAVING claimed Phil-Mexican-American as one of its very own, this country now basks in the bright glow of Jessica Sanchez’s success as runner-up on “American Idol.” She’s the latest in a string of world class Phil-Am or Phil-Brit, etc. artists and athletes that our political leaders claim as proudly Filipino.
To the extent that a person is for the most part a social construct, this is a false claim. While Filipino blood certainly runs in their veins, Jessica and the others really soared to glory on the wings of a totally different social milieu. The remarkable development of their talents is the product or construct of a foreign culture that promotes originality, creativity and high standards of excellence. The Filipino culture that is often just content with mediocrity (“puede na”) had very little to do with it.
The same holds true for internationally acclaimed pure-bloods like Manny Pacquiao and Charice Pempenco. At first blush they would seem to be local constructs. But on closer look they are not and government officials’ claim to any part of their success becomes pretentious. Manny and Charice rose to fame and glory not because of, but in spite of, a local culture of mediocrity abetted by official incompetence and corruption.
Tell me what is the common complaint of our athletes in national and international sports events? Is it not lack of budget for equipment, food and training for a creditable competition? Thus, not government personalities responsible for entertainment and sports but a foreign individual (from a different culture) recognized and developed Charice’s talent. Thus, neither had any government sports program produced a champion like Manny Pacquiao who had to gut it all out on his own.
Don’t get me wrong though. These achievers are true heroes. In the case of those who, like Jessica, were raised in a different culture the nation can be truly proud of the Filipino blood running in their veins. In the case of locals like Manny and Charice, the Filipino people can even be prouder that they have it in them to rise above our culture of mediocrity.
But precisely because a different culture produced their success or they pulled themselves up by their own shoestrings when a culture of mediocrity and an inept government conspired for stagnation, their success should be as much an indictment of our negligent officials as it is an inspiration to other Filipinos who have dreams to pursue.
Our leaders’ claim to a part in the triumph of successful Filipinos is a false claim because, sa binisaya pa, igo ra silang mangangkon ug na-a na. They do nothing but ride on the success of remarkable Filipinos often for, presumably, selfish political reasons.
Usher—Climax
That pitch-perfect and controlled falsetto makes my ears climax whenever I hear this song.
Abraham Lincoln (via ellobofilipino)
Interesting and quite different from all of those economics classes which treat labor as banal and as meager as capital or as a kind of it. And rightfully so.
Don’t vote or root for Jessica Sanchez because she’s Filipino. She’s in a singing contest and not in a war of races after all. Get swayed by her talent, not by the color of her skin, or the language she speaks, or the blood that flows through her.
- Still uses Calculator in solving simple arithmetic. (So dependent to Calculator).
- Read the book for 6271891times and still says “I haven’t studied that much”.
- Computes. Gets an answer that has decimal places. Panics. Recomputes.
- Absent for 1 day. Feels absent for a month.
- Finishes the exam first. Still waits for a person to pass his papers first.
- Solves a problem. Answer not in the choices. Works back from the multiple choices.
- Finds the problem easy. Then thinks that some information has been neglected to be considered.
- Cheating is not an option.
- Hates memorization but learns to love such because of Law.
- Drops a ballpen during exam. Thinks that they wasted a couple of seconds on getting that pen.
- Knows the debit. Forced balance the credit side.
- Knows the grade before the professor gives it.
- Still loves Accounting even it makes their lives stressful.
Story of my life.
(via tumblraccountants)
This is supposed to be the number one rule of Tumblr. Whereas I expected more flexible rules allowing for our individual freedoms’ extension, this rule propagated by some hardcore bloggers here seems to curtail it.
The reason behind the formulation of this de facto regulation seems to be a wish to maintain a sort of Narnia, a private sanctuary where one could express his emotions without any other people bumping in and ruining the party.
That is cowardice. First of all, when you connect to the internet and express your emotions, you should already know the consequences of being personal, vulnerable and open about your opinions and feelings. You must be prepared to stand and accept criticism, controversy or outrage, and to appreciate to praise and acclaim. This is supposed to be a forum, a sanctuary for expression and discussion.
That is ignorant. There are settings Tumblr provides for you to privatize your account. You can set a password and you can block people. These security features assure a controlled environment.
What is really the point here? Is it to secure your blog, to hide its contents, or just to create a false sense of pride just because you own one?
“We don’t want others to know about Tumblr,” said one person.
We are sadly moving backward here by making an illusion of esteem over something that is given for free and without discrimination. There is no other side. There is no Tumblr user and non-Tumblr user. The mere fact that we’re wielding a free service doesn’t give us the right to fence others out. It’s not sosyal to own a blog.
This isn’t a popularity contest. Unfortunately, social networking sites have long been plagued by a mist of vanity; trends on Twitter no longer serve their purpose reliably because of advertising and this illusion of popularity it seems to hold, likes on Facebook no longer mean anything except blind statistical figures, and Tumblr makes you look cool.
No, just no. We’re straying from the original purpose. While these social networking site might double as aforementioned, we must always remember to keep their essence and to never forget it.
Florence and the Machine—The Bird Song
View high resolution
An Unhackable Baby Quantum Internet Was Born Yesterday
Years from now it may be said that the quantum Internet was born today. When the baby system matures, it will be able to process unfathomable amounts of data and never be hacked.
The system only has two nodes, but the Internet’s birth started in a similar way back in the late 1960s. The developers — physicists led by Stephan Ritter and Gerhard Rempe of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Germany — published their work in this week’s issue of the journal “Nature.”
The quantum network was built using two atoms of rubidium that exchange photons, or particles of light. Each atom is placed inside a cavity with highly reflecting mirrors on each side, and at a very short distance from each other. The two so-called optical cavities are connected by an optical fiber.
Scientists aim a laser at the first atom, causing the atom to emit a single photon. That photon zooms along the optical fiber to other optical cavity containing the other atom. That’s where the mirrors come in — ordinarily it’s difficult to get an atom and a photon to interact reliably. But by bouncing the photon off the mirrors in the cavity thousands of times, it’s more likley to hit the atom and be absorbed by it. That absorbtion is what transmits the information about the first atom’s quantum state to the second atom.
Besides sending information, the two atoms were entangled, meaning that the atoms were linked. If the first node is in quantum state A, for example, the second node will also be in quantum state A. In this experiment, the atoms were entangled for 100 microseconds — a long time in quantum physics.
This entanglement is what makes hacking into a quantum computer and eavesdropping on impossible. As as soon as a hacker tapped into a quantum network, the states of the atoms wouldn’t match up — a big red flag that something was awary.
It’s a long way yet to a truly large-scale quantum network, but this is a first step.
During the Lenten Season I tried following in Jesus’ footsteps and denied myself, took up my cross, etc. It certainly taught me to control myself but now I feel like I’m too much of a self-denier. And I mean that in the most literal sense. I deny even the truths right in front of me.
And I just realized that has no connection to Jesus or my Lenten sacrifice. Maybe that’s just watching too much How I Met Your Mother.
Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition 4 launched last Easter Sunday. Since then I’ve watched the show since I fancy the teen editions more than the adult ones, which is no surprise since they’re just my age.
On its face PBB brands itself as a social experiment, while remaining vague and silent about its true purpose, its objectives, and other specifics of its so-called “experiment.” This causes quite a lot of doubts as to the shows real agenda.
On its launch date, nine of the fifteen housemates were introduced, seven of them males, and two of them females. One thing that caught my attention was how most of the male housemates were gwapo, had appeal, and had all the makings of a future teen celebrity. On the next day, six female housemates were introduced, and most of them had the same characteristics. This made me cast doubts on the show’s real motives: is it trying to create a social experiment or is it producing talents for the network that airs it?
If it really is a social experiment of the Filipino teen (the show calls itself the teleserye of the Filipino youth’s real lives), then shouldn’t it have a test group that is a more realistic reflection of the population outside? This group is not randomly selected. The housemates all underwent auditions before they were accepted. I personally think that the housemates right now are not accurate representations of the population and the diversity of Filipino youth.
First, not 60-70% of Filipinos are half-foreign. And not a handful out of fifteen is living well in life. And not a handful from fifteen go to school everyday unlike what seems to be normal. There’s still a handful of us who don’t even have enough food to eat, or a shelter, or clothes. But you don’t see that handful in this sample.
But maybe that might just be a more accurate representation of reality itself: that we try to censor out what we see as negative compared to what is projected by the media as normal. These people not auditioning is not even an excuse. They could always search for them if they wanted to. What remains is a facade of what really is the youth: sosyal, well-endowed and star quality.
But on the flip side this may just be economics. Why go to all of the trouble to achieve accuracy when that’s not the end game? Maybe it’s just some nifty way to sift through the youth—the underprivileged and the privileged alike—and find the next love team or teen star to supersede the older and gradually diminishing ones.
But the truth is, despite all these realizations, I have still brought myself to like the show. Maybe it’s not as accurate as I and some would want it to be, and maybe its just a teen-celebrity factory, but the entertainment it brings is not necessarily negated.
This sample that they have still has some of the qualities that we see in everyday Filipino youth, and as time progresses we can hopefully draw out some reflections about ourselves that we can learn from.
Or maybe this is just what the last tag says it is.
their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”“Carlos—what’s genocide?”
they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”
“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”
…what’s genocide?
they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them…what’s genocide?
Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him…what’s genocide?
Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade…what’s genocide?
she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Luz, this…
this right here…is genocide.”
I love this piece but my favorite of his remains this one.
(Source: dead-dog-fred)
The story of how Mary Magdalene became known as a prostitute is a complicated one.
One of at least six Marys that followed Jesus as a disciple, she was distinguished from the others through identification with her hometown of Magdala, a fishing village off the coast of the Sea of Galilee. According to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus cleansed Mary of seven demons, after which Mary became a devoted disciple, mentioned by Luke in the same context as the Twelve, who traveled with Jesus and helped finance his ministry.
In 597 Pope Gregory the Great delivered a homily on Luke’s gospel in which he combined Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany (Martha’s sister), suggesting that this Mary was the same woman who wept at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7, and that one of the seven demons Jesus excised from her was sexual immorality. The idea caught on and was perpetuated in medieval art and literature, which often portrayed Mary as a weeping, penitent prostitute. In fact, the English word maudlin, meaning “weak and sentimental,” finds its derivation in this distorted image of Mary Magdalene. In 1969, the Vatican formally restated the Gospels’ distinction between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the sinful woman of Luke 7, although it seems Martin Scorsese, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Mel Gibson have yet to get the memo.
A cynic might suggest that this mistake and its subsequent popularity represent a deliberate attempt to typecast and discredit a woman whose role in the gospel story is so critical and so revolutionary that the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to Mary Magdalene as Equal to the Apostles.
(Source: azspot)
