Saddam?

apparently not

Franciscan monks in Assisi -- considered too leftist by some Italian Catholics

man, would jose rizal be surprised.

Something worth blogging:

Italian man "understood everything" during 2-year coma

It says here... (warning PDF file)

Tens of other studies have confirmed Kuznets’s finding showing no clear link between population growth and economic growth. Similar conclusions have been arrived at by the U.S. National Research Council in 1986 and in the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Consultative Meeting of conomists in 1992.

so the UN knows?

I know somebody who's just as annoying

More Flips to Euro

someone at mark shea's blog commented on bringing more filipinos to europe to save it from being "eurabia." i agree fully. i would support any movement that would advocate such a thing. european and philippine interests would complement each other. the phililppines is said to be suffering from "overpopulation" (although i've challnged this thesis its premises before). so sending our "excess" population to a underpopulated area would be a interesting solution to our "population problem." plus filipinos can provide cheap but highly skilled labor that european entreprenuers need. there are more bonuses, in that filipinos are more sociable than their muslim counterparts. there are millions of filipinos working around the world trying to earn a decent living to feed their families back in the philippines and we haven't seen any major incident of filipino terrorism so far (hehehe). and filipinos, as the late pope john paul ii envisioned, would be the light of asia and the world. filipinos have brought the faith with them and have in many instances revived faith in the areas where they find themselves, as proven by the success of apostolates and groups like the Couples for Christ.

Busy, busy, busy

i know, i know, i haven't been churning out the same amount of blogging as i used to. but be assured that i'm committed to keeping this blog alive and going. time, however, hasn't been so kind to me in this regard. anyway, i shall resume blogging when i've accomplished all my priorities for this week. 'til then, see yah!

More excuses

i'm currently out of town. the department to which i belong has been roaming a great part of northern and central luzon. i'm blogging in baguio, where civilization has offered me the convenience of a nearby internet cafe. i'll catch up with my blogging and tell you more about my trip when i get back.

A dream...

we just concluded our team-building seminar this morning. one of the most stiring statements made in that session was

"conflicts are deemed a liability in a group but an enriching experience in a team"

among the first thoughts that crossed my mind was how different our society would be if we see some conflicts as good things rather than negative. that being said, i am of the opinion, contrary to many pundits, that “chaos” is good for politics, at least in the philippines. as GK Chesterton once quipped:

“It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. it shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.”

perhaps if our people tried thinking more like a team, we could build on and benefit from the many conflicts that come our way daily in politics, home, office, school, markets, etc. then again, we were speaking of a team, not a society. but wouldn't it be nice to try it in a larger scale like filipino society?

Oh the Pain!

last saturday i blogged about my new server being finally online. i was wrong. it was a false start.

apparently, the cable internet i subscribed to didn't allow single account users to let their accounts be used in such a manner. their corporate accounts do allow servers to run properly using their internet facilities, but such accounts costs PHP9,000/month compared to my current PHP1,688/month account, or a full PHP7,312 premium for basically the same bandwith and service.

this is, for me, representative of the many obstacles struggling entrepreneurs such as myself have to go through to set up a viable business. theoretically, many business entreprises would work and be profitable, but often, as in this case, there are hidden costs and problems along the way, ones that could eventually kill the business if not resolved immediately. sometimes some start-ups can't even begin because of these.

sigh! such is the cost of doing business.

I don't buy it

here we have a journalist [yawn!] complaning the lateness of pres. arroyo's reaction on the issue of mixing detained child-offenders with adults in jails.

our brave journalist here seems to suggest to her readers that a presidency is an easy job and that the president is somehow an omniscient fellow who can can easily solve issues with a snap of a finger. she seems to assume that a president could never be busy, never! nor that the president could have other concerns that might preoccupy her time and attention. all issues of course have equal weights, no matter how small they might appear, right?

i must point out that i do find the mixing of children and adults in jail unacceptable. but our brave journalist should not disparage the president simply on the basis of her late reaction. after all, there are people down the hierarchy who are and ought to be directly involved in such matters.

i don't buy it.

has our brave journalist never had a busy moment where all the clutter of work, home and others simply make her forget some stuff or defer them or ignore them all together? but of course, it's always easier to blame the president on everything, isn't it?

Finally!

the new server for my business is up!

broadband cable internet was just set up this afternoon and all the pertinent programs for the server are running smoothly... so far so good!

however, i'm planning to only have a soft launch by monday. blogging today is for the purpose of trying out my new broadband connection to the internet... oh such pleasure!

Charter Change

you knew it was inevitable that i would post on the charter change issue. while i have no strong stance on the issue, there are some points presented convincingly well here and here and here. it would be wise to study these opinions for a very fair and balanced view of the issue [duh!]. but then again, there are some people that need such reminding.

Full disclosure

for purposes of full disclosure and in order to rid myself of any idiot criticizing me in the future for not doing the following in the earliest possible moment, i make this disclosure:

since 3 May 2005, i have been employed by JAKA investments corporation, a company owned by the Ponce Enrile family. as my filipino readers would know, the Ponce Enriles are involved in philippine politics, well at least Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and his son Rep. Jack Ponce Enrile.

anyway, although i'm employed by their company and although i have the utmost respect for them as my principals in the organization, i share none of their political views, be it that some of them do agree. further, the views presented in this blog are strictly the product of my growing insanity and do not the reflect the opinions of the Ponce Enriles or of the company, unless otherwise stated [duh!].

my blog is for purposes of preserving what is left of my sanity in spite of being in the midst of all sorts of madness surrounding us , madness that seduces and then corrupts.

Feed it with what?

Net25, a local uhf tv station owned and operated by a local sect which pompously calls itself the "iglesia ni cristo", has as its slogan

"Feed your mind."

often would i see this slogan in car stickers around the metropolis, and also often would i have the vindictive urge to get a permanent marker and add:

"... with crap."

the slogan would at least be more accurate, wouldn't it?

My first thoughts

the blog is, for me, among the newest means of advertising one's utmost and dispicable ignorance.

it is my fortune therefore that nobody has really seen my blog, well at least from the moment i revived it the day before yesterday. at least nobody knows how utterly stupid and insane this blogger is.

that being said, i feel more free to express my insignificant thoughts and share my insanity with the rest of the blogosphere.

which brings me to my second point, being an idiot with a keyboard, i should be more in line with keeping down the level of stupidity that gets published in my blog. stupid things like commenting on politics.

politics itself, at least in the philippine setting, isn't as bad as many filipino bloggers, journalists and psuedo-pundits would want their readers/audiences to believe. they can only talk about the bad things because that's the nature of the media. as chesterton once noted, the newspapers can only tell stories of the unusual, the unique, the queer and the largely irrelevant. the newspapers cannot relate what is normal, the things most obvious and most intelligible. for those things, no newspaper can print the excessive complexity peculiar to the most ordinary of things.

anyway, for myself, if the need warrants it, i intend only criticize the opinions of the largely air-headed media elite worshipped in our country. yes, it appears to be a task more degrading than constructing a harsh review of filipino politics, but it's a nice way of telling my reading public that i'm not alone in the world of publishing the absurdly stupid.

Testing!

hellooooo blogospheeeeerreee!

i'm back! or hopefully i'll be back updating my blog on a regular basis.

circumstances have changed and now i feel that it would be best to return to the world of blogging. hopefully i could churn out the same amount of cr**... err... musings that i did in the past.

You know you're living in 2004 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
6. You go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
7. You make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "9" to get an outside line.
8. You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
10. You learn about your redundancy on the 11 o'clock news.
11. Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.
12. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
13. Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.
14. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
15. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
16. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
17. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.
18. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
19. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
20. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

AND NOW U R LAUGHING at yourself.

Go on, forward this to your friends ...you know you want to!

(fresh from my inbox)

Olympic suggestion

a couple of days ago i was watching the hammer throw event in the olympics on tv. i couldn't help but think about how dangerous the job of those guys measuring the distances where those heavy things fell. shouldn't those guys be wearing protective clothing like helmets instead of soft hats? accidents do happen.

it also occured to me that somebody should perhaps invent a hammer with a built-in tracing device to make measuring distance, and perhaps velocity, done in real time. i guess to could be applied to other thrown objects like the javelin and the discus.

I pity the soldier

across the street from camp aguinaldo (the HQ of the philippine armed forces) one finds that there are several, perhaps a dozen, lending and finance companies having offices in the buildings opposite the base. i always pass by that street whenever i go to the office and everytime i do so i always think of how debt-ridden our soldiers must be.

with their meager salaries, they and their families often times seek the help of these companies when they find themselves in dire financial need. now i'm not condemning these companies for their services, they have legitimate services and often they become saviors, but i wouldn't be surprised if those they've saved become unhappily dependent on them.

i really pity our soldiers. they have specialized skills but their salaries are less than that of those unskilled filipino laborers who find themselves working abroad. this is the state of the filipino soldier, a member of the one of the most advanced armed forces in asia in the 50s and 60s, but currently the lousiest.

the root of the problem i think is that filipinos are not proud of their armed forces. i also believe that a great number of us are still suspicious of the military especially when they recall its role during the martial law era. they have lost respect for the institution. my generation perhaps never had respect for it in the first place, unless one belongs to a military family. so the bottomline is that we instinctively reject the military while demanding it to do its job of helping and protecting us. we refuse to supply it with respect and support yet we expect it to be modern and professional while performing extraordinary tasks.

a country's military institution, i believe, should reflect the best of what that country is all about. if one considers this, then the filipino will continue dissing and abusing himself as long as he does the same with his own boys in arms.

It happens to me

it started out as a lazy stroll along the "gimik" places in our place with my cousin, when i decided to go to the local internet cafe (since the phone company hasn't yet sent their people to install the new phone line) to take a peek at my server's activities. i discovered that it has failed to process some transactions. in a flash, i left the place and my cousin and now i'm at the office, at midnight!

anyway, i've fixed the problem by reseting the server but i've decided to hang out for a couple of hours more to investigate the bugs in the server program. right now, i don't see them. the server's running as smoothly as i expect it to run. strange. it behaves itself when i'm around but fouls up when i'm not.

Philippine troops to withdraw from the Philippines

"Since we withdrew our troops from Iraq not one of our troops have been kidnapped. Obviously my much criticized negotiations have truly worked. To prevent further problems of hostage taking in Mindinao and in other parts of the Philippines we are going to withdraw all troops from the Philippines. I realize that this will be disruptive to those in the military and their families but this will surely prevent further hostage taking of our troops. My ministers in fact our working out plans to move all non-Muslims citizens from our country. We haven't quite figured out where we all will go yet, but that is a minor detail when faced with the threat of hostage takings and beheadings"

(by one of the masters of parody himself, the curt jester)

Lose money by putting them in banks

basic finance theory states that transaction or service charges diminish the value of a financial asset. so according to what i've learned in school, if investors, savers or depositors discover that such charges are made on their bank deposits or stock transfers, there is a greater likelihood that they'll shift their investments to forms which are cheaper and more profitable.

it is this principle that long governed the imposition of service charges on routine and mundane banking transactions that has long kept banks, at least here in the philippines, from making their clients bear transaction costs.

but it seems that banks recently no longer observe this principle of costs. a couple of years ago they imposed an 8 peso charge for every withdrawal made through the ATM. now, i've discovered that they've also imposed a 1 peso charge for every balance inquiry transaction. this move is apparently done to make up for the losses banks have been incurring from their main source of revenue, loans. losses from non-performing assets have been the scourge of the local banking industry lately.

for a casual observer, such costs look insignificant, but for a frequent ATM user, such costs are a heavy burden. and in my opinion, they simply defeat the purpose of keeping money in the banks. and being one trained in finance, i'm interested to discover the extent of the impact of the introduction of charges to ATM transactions. but as a small depositor, i'm more interested to see that such charges are removed and that banks reimburse all their depositors, for such charges are, in my view, unfair.

In Quezon City, Philippines

one finds the national headquarters of the bureau of jail management and penology along the avenue called kalayaan, "freedom avenue." further along the way, as one takes kalayaan avenue, one also finds a place named after a tropical disease: Malaria, Quezon City.

Good news

first, i'm expecting to get the new phone line installed at the condo in a few days time. it means i shall once again have access to the internet once it is done. so bear with me. i shall return to regular blogging soon.

second, business in riyadh seems to be growing, although extremely slower than how i've expected or wished. the marketing effort is slowly taking shape, 2 new agent accounts were created the other day. but there are still some bugs i need to address with respect to the "accounting" system within the service. so even if i do get a new phone line, there are still other impediments that will come to prevent me from blogging freely.

Why am I not surprised?

the Poles are with the Nazis this time, so to speak, except that the Poland of today bears no resemblance to yesteryear’s sad and noble country of the same name.

a filipino journalist's comparison of the WWII polish uprising with the trouble created by islamic militants in najaf is simply one of the insanities that he or she can easily get away with. fully appealing to the historical ignorance of the paper's readers, this editorial tries to make a false equivalence between the struggle of the poles with that of the najaf muslims.

even if one is half educated with the polish uprising, one would easily detect the inconsistencies in the comparision between these two events.

the americans aren't doing nazi style suppression of culture and national identity as what took place in war time poland. in fact, the americans are trying to get iraq back on its feet. they didn't target iraqi intellectuals and leaders and sent them to prison or their deaths, but rather placed them in authority. and most of the fighting done againsts al sadr's men in najaf is done by iraqi forces. iraqis themselves are tired of the troublemakers whose exploits are venturing unto criminal behavior (wholly incomparable with that of the poles) and are the ones doing the fighting in the holy sites. americans surely don't want to alienate iraqis by going into their sacred places, so they prefer to iragis themselves to settle the insurgency and help out only when they are most needed.

somebody should educate this editorial's writer.

but the bigger question i must ask myself is why i still keep reading such insanities from that paper... perhaps i enjoy distrubing humor daily spewed and vomitted by our fearless journalists. perhaps.

Sorry folks!

the phone line at the condo was disconnected due to unpaid bills, thus i wasn't able to connect to the internet and have my daily fix of blogging yesterday. right now i'm at the office doing some errands, as well as trying to figure out how to get a new line installed since the old one was in the condo's previous owner's name. while waiting for the miraculous to happen, i decided to take advantage of the unsupervised pc connected to the net and write, if only i could come up with something.

RP may send peacekeepers back to Iraq under UN charter

finally some good news. under this initiative, the philippines could come back to that war zone we call iraq without losing face.

filipino leaders know that they've made a mistake pulling out. iraqi leaders have continously pointed out that our knuckle-headed decision to pullout caused the surge in the violence. of course our spin doctors made it clear to the rest of the world that there has been rising violence down there prior to the pullout, but they never ever told anyone how the iraqis perceived the after effects, the sharp rise in the trend and the greater persistence of the militants after the pullout, and how they are directly suffering because of us.

our cowardince simply caused more problems for the people left in that land, while we're out here far away from the violence. but the violence will soon find its way here. pullout or not, muslim militants will strike us because they've discovered a weakling, an easy prey that could easily be manipulated and frightened into submission.

Strange twists

in the movies: criminals do their jobs professionally
in real life : professionals do their jobs criminally

US 'dismayed' at E Timor tribunal

events around the world only become news when the US issues statements something about them, even mere side comments or "no comment."