Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
Is this a direct quote? I believe this should read, “ever since I held posts in government, I have stopped engaging in business pursuits.” or something to that effect.
“I have been a businessman for a long time and ever since I held posts in government
, I have never been a businessman,” said Villar in Filipino.
via Villar defends anew poverty roots – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
If you show no respect for the norms/procedures that ensure a workable government of checks and balances then why the heck do you want to govern one(government)? As we can see in the US Senate/Congress, an institution where people seem to no longer have delicadeza is an ungovernable group. If Villar cannot submit to a council of his peers in the senate he is showing a disrespect to half of the the institution which is charged with guarding against executive excess. We do not need another GMA. I think that if he just submits to his peers in the senate, not only will he appear as being ganged up on (we Filipinos love the underdog), he would also quite people like me who believes that personalities are trumped by the institutions in the long run. He needs to stand up and declare to the country and to his peers his innocence. If he is not confident in his skill to defend himself, How can we trust him to defend us, the Filipino People.
Gordon noted that there were candidates, who projected to be pro-poor in political ads only to get elected in office.
“You can see those who play cute with people, those who use advertising to say that they are poor and yet they are not when you see their record,” said Gordon in Filipino.
When booed by some people from the crowd, Gordon said, “Thank you very much, alam kong kasama kayo sa mga pumasok diyan [I know you were among those who went inside].”
He was apparently referring to supporters of Villar, who were in the crowd.
Gordon said the poor were being exploited but often forgotten once the candidates were elected in office.
“You have to face the fact, kung ang leader niyo hindi haharap sa accountability dapat hinds iboto [if your leader will not face his accountability, you should not vote for him],” Gordon added.
His last remark was also an apparent reference to Villar, who refused to face the Senate investigation into his alleged involvement in the road project controversy.
via Villar defends anew poverty roots – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
We can’t get good at something solely by reading about it. And we’ll never make giant leaps in any endeavor by treating it like a snack food that we munch on whenever we’re getting bored. You get good at something by doing it repeatedly. And by listening to specific criticism from people who are already good at what you do. And by a dedication to getting better, even when it’s inconvenient and may not involve a handy bulleted list.
via Real Advice Hurts | 43 Folders.
I wanted the Saints to win. This was because as chuck said when Peyton Manning gets his second ring its almost hard to not agree that he is his generations best. I’m not ready for that world. I love watching Manning play but not yet.
This has ruined the Star Wars reboot for me, read the whole thing if you dare. Damn didn’t think of that.
Damn reminds me of what a friend says about reboot Spock. Reboot Spock was an asshole counter to the original series spock where he was irritating not for being an asshole but for being sooo damn logical.
ty to Brad Delong for the pointer
Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie
Mitch Wagner
There’s a scene at the end of the movie—and I don’t think this is a spoiler, the movie has been building to this point the whole time—where Kirk has the bad guy on the main bridge viewscreen. The bad guy is defeated, his ship crippled, and Kirk offers amnesty. The bad guy proudly refuses, and instead dies with his ship.
Spock approaches Kirk afterward and asks if Kirk was really going to help the bad guy out. And Kirk smirks and says, no, of course not. Spock is happy about that.
It seems to me that one scene spits in the face of one of the greatest things about the original Trek. The show was primarily an action-adventure program, with plenty of fistfights and stirring ship-to-ship battle. But in the end, Gene Roddenberry and the rest of the people who created Trek were espousing a philosophy of peace and forgiveness. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise extended forgiveness to enemies many times, including the very first time they encountered the Romulans, in a sequence that the movie echoes.
The message of Trek: It’s better to talk than to fight. It’s better to forgive your enemies.
via Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Something that really bugs me about the recent Star Trek movie.
I think I was born in the wrong decade.
The sex ratio on many U.S. campuses is around 60/40 and rising. The NYTimes has an excellent piece on the predictable consequences for dating.
North Carolina, with a student body that is nearly 60 percent female, is just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges…Needless to say, this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with a least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”
via Marginal Revolution: Supply and Demand.
This is sooo true nobody wants to make a decision. Make a decision and other people would criticize it or say that there is a better way. I think it’s easy to think of something better. I believe it’s esay to go one up when someone has already set the bar/base, the problem is that few people do, few people accept the responsibility of being wrong. My take? if it’s really important to you then stand up and get yourself heard other wise don’t let other people pass the buck to you. It’s easier finding someone to blame than facing that blame so do it only when you feel it is important to you!!!!
The relentless search for “tell me what to do”
If you’ve ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.
People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”
When asked, resist.via Seth’s Blog: The relentless search for “tell me what to do”.
O feel the same way. Powerpoints are superflous and in most cases unecessary. If you are just going to read stuff to me or tell me things I can read in the book, then why are you wasting my time ? I can read the goddamn book. If you really want to not be useless then teach me. Quiz me and find out what’s the barriers from me understanding something. What do I find unconvincing.
The surprising part is not that he lectures without PowerPoint, because many professors also avoid presentation software. The surprising part is that I prefer his chalkboard notes over PowerPoint despite the fact that his handwriting is almost completely illegible, suggesting that there is a quality of “chalk talks” that is useful to my learning style beyond just being able to read the notes. I have some ideas why this might be:
via Carolyn Blogs » Blog Archive » I Prefer My Professor’s Illegible Handwriting To Your PowerPoint Presentation.
The whole post is about how to win against time. It’s a short fun read. Read the whole thing.
Do what you love
We always find time to do what we love. When you do what you love, you do it well – you make a good job of it and you are rewarded along the way. Some things you just love for no discernible reason, and doing these things is no chore. When you’re doing something that makes you feel good and gives you a sense of purpose and achievement, you are at your most effective.
It is a great tragedy that so many people do jobs they hate, seeing their work only as a way of earning money to enable them to really enjoy themselves at weekends or during vacations. Such people are truly wasting their time. Of course, we can’t just choose to change our job, bur it is possible to find ways of enjoying our work – there are good things about every job, and by focusing on these things, they will grow and the job will become more enjoyable.
via Becoming Friends with Your Nemesis: Time – by Dumb Little Man.
Read the whole thing. Interesting thought, even if a product doesn’t work, advertising does. This is why we need to force the candidates that we like to advertise more. If your for Gibo, for Noy, for Gordon, for Villanueva, we can’t let the Villar (aka Arroyo 2) to win.
Btw1: except for the Ampatuan misstep Gibo’s brand of campaigning is really good, though not good enough. I especially like the way they highlighted the aviator credentials (Believe this is good for the girls). Gibo has the hottest wife they need to get her to do more shows/commercials. Although Gibo’s interview highlights his intelligence I believe as the GMA2’s popularity boost has shown its about virality, Last Song Syndrome etc.
Btw2: Noy’s advertisements are dull and kind of self centered. I fail to get “Di Ka Nag Iisa”. Campaigns should be about the candidate showing us he/she is worth voting. Di ka nag iisa was made as if you want us to convince you to run. Come on, fix your message/Public Relations team, they seem to be too full of themselves.
Bt3: I’ve written about this before but Gordon should be highlighting his nickname. We need a more fun campaign.
Bt4: I believe that Eddie should just point his followers to any of the three other candidates (Gibo/Gordon/Noy). Religion and Government should not mix.
Btw5: I think that in the next Presidential Forum the other candidates should gang up on GMA2(Just love that GMA2 is like 7ABS hehehe) in the passive aggressive way we Filipinos excel at. Everyone should keep saying. Hindi ako magnanakaw, di ko gagamitin ang pera ng gobyerno para sa pansarili kong kapakanan, etc etc. Though I fear only Bro Eddie can say this because he is a relatively new politician, and all politicians are liars (well not all but close enough).
The 10:23 campaign against homeopathy raises a question: given that homeopathy doesn’t work, why is there such strong demand for it? A new paper by Werner Troesken (ungated draft pdf) sheds some interesting light on this.
He studies not homeopathy but US patent medicines in the 19th century. Despite being practically useless, these enjoyed spectacular long-run growth – Professor Troesken estimates that spending on them grew 22 times faster than US GDP between 1810 and 1939. Why?
The answer, he says, is that demand for them was inelastic with respect to failure – people kept buying them even though they didn’t work. This was because the medicines offered enormous consumer surplus; the products were cheap, but the benefits they offered were huge; there’s an analogy here with Pascal’s wager. As a result, when a product failed to work, consumers downgraded the probability that patent medicines generally would work, but still saw a positive expected gain from buying them; the small chance of a big improvement in one’s health is worth paying for.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: The demand for quacks.