On the 8 Spot

So Kim and Gerald play best friends since high school, Kim is a complete doormat for love, and Gerald has a few scenes in which he ruminates on life while standing in the shower. Yes, because the shower is the perfect place to ponder the big questions of life, particularly if you have those abs. Like the typical Star Cinema product no one has any real problems; what they really need is to have a strong cup of coffee and get over themselves.

…………..

But when the movie ended there was applause anyway, because all the audience really wants is to see Kim being pretty and Gerald being handsome. Nothing they don’t already see on TV. For free. I expect it will be a huge hit.

via 18. What have we done to deserve this? | JessicarulestheUniverse.

Prof Wiesel advices Pinoy academics that these S&T incubators will only deliver its promise if the academics themselves adopt a more daring interdisciplinary view of things. This would imply a major shake up of how university bureaucracies are run which at present promotes departmental isolation. He suggests that academic departments and even the various UP campuses be daring enough to set up shop at the technohub (which should facilitate departments to collaboratively how to hatch projects). He gives the example of UP Manila’s health sciences research units. Medicine should not limit itself to clinical research but look into the potential of basic science research which can be incubated as new medical technologies. The best place to do that is in UP Diliman’s technohub since UP Diliman is strong in the basic natural sciences like physics, chem, biology and environment.

via Merienda with a Nobel Laureate | Filipino Voices.

Hope I can test this while I still remember it, with something concrete that the technique get imprinted in my memory.

The 5 Whys is a question-asking method used to explore the cause/effect relationships underlying a particular problem. Ultimately, the goal of applying the 5 Whys method is to determine a root cause of a defect or problem.

The following example demonstrates the basic process:

* My car will not start. (the problem)

1. Why? – The battery is dead. (first why)

2. Why? – The alternator is not functioning. (second why)

3. Why? – The alternator belt has broken. (third why)

4. Why? – The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and has never been replaced. (fourth why)

5. Why? – I have not been maintaining my car according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, a root cause)

via 5 Whys – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I’d like to answer these questions but not now, I can’t be that honest to myslef right now.

Question 1: If someone had a video tape of your typical day, what would they see?

Question 2: Based on your current actions and behaviours, where would you expect to be in five years?

via Two Questions to Help You Gain Perspective.

This is an interesting take on faith today.

In short, modernity didn’t undermine the contents of religious belief. What modernity did was change the location of belief in the mind. Specifically, faith moved from the background to the foreground. From taken-for-granted to an object of choice.

And what this means is not that modernity has made faith unreasonable. But it does mean that faith is more fragile and unstable. As are all things in the foreground. The fact that faith is a choice means that faith can be revisited and the reasons behind that choice opened up to scrutiny. Further, we are constantly in contact with people making their own faith choices and can’t help but be affected by their reasons. No longer taken for granted, faith is always exposed to reflection and revisitation. When faith is a choice it needs to be reasserted, like all our other choices. It’s like waking up every morning and deciding what to wear. The choice is an everyday object in the mind. Thus, we need to keep choosing faith, over and over. And, like all things in the foreground, this take a lot of time and effort. Faith is now hard work. And some people, not surprisingly, just get tired.

In short, faith is going to feel different in modernity. It’s going to feel vulnerable and fragile. It’s going to be effortful. All this is simply saying that faith has moved from the background to the foreground.

via Experimental Theology: Faith, Doubt and Modernity.

But many churches fail to make this distinction. They tacitly set up the following equation for church life:

Spirituality = Sociability

For example, I was once visiting with a church leader at my church who was making a recommendation that, to make our adult classes more “meaningful,” we would need to share more of our lives in these classes. I stated that such a recommendation would drive the introverts crazy. The response was, “God is about relationships and church is about relationships. Thus, if these people aren’t going to be involved in relationships they will just have to change.”

via Experimental Theology: Introverts in the Church.

read the whole thing!!!

Not caring works surprisingly well. Another of my great former students, now a peer and a friend, saw a request from a magazine reporter doing a tech story and looking for examples. My friend, who’d previously been too quiet about her work, decided to write the reporter and say “My work is awesome. You should write about it.”

The reporter looked at her work and wrote back saying “Your work is indeed awesome, and I will write about it. I also have to tell you you are the only woman who suggested her own work. Men do that all the time, but women wait for someone else to recommend them.” My friend stopped waiting, and now her work is getting the attention it deserves.

If you walked into my department at NYU, you wouldn’t say “Oh my, look how much more talented the men are than the women.” The level and variety of creative energy in the place is still breathtaking to me, and it’s not divided by gender. However, you would be justified in saying “I bet that the students who get famous five years from now will include more men than women”, because that’s what happens, year after year. My friend talking to the reporter remains the sad exception.

Part of this sorting out of careers is sexism, but part of it is that men are just better at being arrogant, and less concerned about people thinking we’re stupid (often correctly, it should be noted) for trying things we’re not qualified for.

via A Rant About Women « Clay Shirky.

Are you guys serious about campaigning?

Come one Dick-BF (as pointed out by friends) the name alone is worthy of so many catchy phrases.

You should be mining your names for unintentional comedy and some votes.

Let’s make this election a tad bit more enjoyable!

It is said that the reform wing of the NoyMar Campaign is running things. If this is true maybe we should get the not so reformist wing to run their campaign. The ads are simply not cool. Kailangan nakaka LSS. The tune needs to be catchy. How do you know this? Simple demo a jingle to friends. Wait a day. Ask if anyone can sing the tune, or still know the lyrics (don’t ask superbrains they won’t forget the words and the tune) if no one can the tune/lyrics/melody is just not good enough.