Giancarlo Angulo's Blog
If you’re not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. You don’t get the benefit of the brand when it’s hot without accepting the blame of the brand when it’s wrong.
via Seth’s Blog: “All I do is work here”.
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Last week I signed up as a monthly donor to WWF-Philippines. I’m giving 500php per month debited on my credit card every 15th.
The gist of the post is really about not being able to convince myself to subscribe to the skycable select plan that is only 280 php per month + 20php for Turner Classic Movies.
I feel very wierd about this, or I suspect that I am weird.
Disclaimer, when the nba begins I’m definitely subscribing BTV! yipee! just not now!
PS: My parents gave me a 32 inch series 3 (not full hd) lcd tv ! Thanks Ma and Pa, this is such a nice gift! Woot!
Wow, this really hit home, part of me at least accepts that a big part of who I am now is till because of things that happened as far back as 7 years old. Hope the society I grew up in is much worse than the society that people growing up now is going to be exposed to.
Second, it is very difficult to have a great deal of power in this society if you are not exquisitely well-prepared to compete when you are 25–which requires that you have or be able to rapidly acquire patrons and that you went to and took advantage of a good college or did something else functionally equivalent, which requires that you applied yourself in high school, which is very hard to do unless you got a solid foundation in terms of basic skills and study habits in elementary school. This means that i people who are scared off from going to college because of the debt it incurs have a very small shot at large amounts of upward mobility, and ii the decisions people make when they are seven about how to spend their time shape their lives for the next seventy years. In even a half-good society, one should not be able–it should not be the rule–that one can greatly narrow the possibilities for one’s life by what one does or fails to do at seven.
via Education and Equal Opportunity.
Iglesia ni Cristo to hold huge assemblies
By Dona Pazzibugan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:48:00 07/23/2009
Filed Under: Churches (organisations), Religions, Anniversaries
MANILA, Philippines—The Iglesia ni Cristo, which is celebrating its 95th anniversary on Monday, announced Thursday it will hold huge religious assemblies in 14 venues around the country and in five sites in four other countries.
Tens of thousands of delegates are expected to congregate at designated venues in each of the regions in the country to celebrate “Iglesia ni Cristo Day,” read a statement issued by the Iglesia ni Cristo.
In Metro Manila, the gatherings will be held at the Araneta Coliseum in Cubao, Quezon City, and at the Rizal Memorial Complex in Manila.
The five-hour special gatherings would begin at 4:30 pm.
Malacañang last month announced July 27 of every year as a special day to commemorate the founding of the Iglesia ni Cristo.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo‘s last State of the Nation Address to Congress, which is expected to draw large mass actions, falls on July 27.
The Iglesia ni Cristo said local authorities have issued traffic advisories to avoid congestion on major roads leading to its venues.
In the provinces, delegates will assemble at the following venues: Butuan City Sports Complex in Agusan del Norte; Bicol University Sports Complex and Commencement grounds in Legazpi City, Albay; Cebu Sports Center in Cebu City;
General Santos City Oval Plaza, South Cotabato; Davao Agro-Industrial Institute Football Field in Davao City; Quirino Stadium in Bantay, Ilocos Sur; Central Integrated Terminal in Santiago City, Isabela; Ashton Field Subdivision grounds in Calamba City, Laguna;
Panaad Stadium in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental; Villa del Sol Subdivision-Olongapo-Gapan Road in San Fernando City, Pampanga; Narciso Ramos Sports Center in Lingayen, Pangasinan; and Ipil Sports Complex in Zamboanga City, Zamboanga-Sibugay.
Gatherings will also be held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. and HP Pavilion in San Jose, California, USA; Central Hall Westminster in London, UK; Parco Esposizioni Novegro in Milan, Italy; and Hills Center in Sydney, Australia.
The rest of the local congregations in the Philippines which are too far from the announced venues, as well as congregations in countries outside of the US, UK, Italy and Australia will also hold celebratory gatherings in their respective houses of worship simultaneously with the big assemblies.
The Iglesia ni Cristo is an independent Christian religious organization registered with the Philippine government on July 27, 1914.
It was first preached by the late Brother Felix Y. Manalo, its first executive minister, who hailed from Tipas, Taguig City.
Under the present executive minister, Brother Eraño G. Manalo, who assumed overall leadership of the Church during its 49th year of establishment, the Iglesia ni Cristo became global.
Its first local congregation outside the Philippines was organized in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA on July 27, 1968.
At 95, the Iglesia ni Cristo has over 5,400 local congregations (roughly equivalent to parishes) in 90 countries and territories, with a membership composed of 102 nationalities
This weekend, July 25 and 26, Iglesia ni Cristo thanksgiving worship services would be simultaneously conducted by all local congregations
A TV anniversary special will also be aired on Sunday at 8 p.m. over GEMTV-49 and Net-25.
Last Saturday, July 18, the INC through its “Lingap sa Mamamayan” socio-civic program, conducted a health service mission in the village of Maharlika in Taguig City as part of its anniversary celebration.
Around 20,000 residents benefited from the free medical and dental services, vitamins and medicines, and a package of rice and canned goods.
via Iglesia ni Cristo to hold huge assemblies – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
The results are clear – people (or at least, children) with the most exaggerated views of their popularity have further to fall emotionally when their social status is challenged. As Thomaes says, “These results support the view that distorted self-views promote emotional vulnerability and that realistic self-views promote emotional resilience.” It’s better to deal with the reality, bite though it may, than to whitewash over it with an ultimately vulnerable facade.
via The bigger the ego, the harder the fall – how self-awareness buffers against social rejection : Not Exactly Rocket Science.
There would not be racial, the racial justice that we have of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Phil Berrigan. There wouldn’t be, without the love that you all had for justice, and the love enough for black people, to say, “Quit niggerizing these people. Quit intimidating them. Quit trying to make them so scared that they won’t stand up and fight.” Love is a serious thing. When you love your mamma, you take a bullet for her if she’s treated unjustly. That’s why justice is what love looks like in public.
from here :http://postconflicted.blogspot.com/2009/07/best-we-can-do-is-love-our-crooked.html
read the whole thing!
I agree with this, rewards based incentives although seems more fair, it undermines the fact that in a lot of things teamwork wins over individual excellence (Just don’t tell Michael Jordan). In relations to the workplace, bosses are severely inept, or if they are very capable they seldom have the whole picture, this deficiency makes most of their decision subjective to a fault, and as a few experiments have shown us people value themselves according to the people around them, in this setting the boss always loses. The takeaway is simple, why are there academics who could get jobs in industry but still go the academic route? why is there people in NGO‘s who you can envision leading their own companies, simply put , doing these things make them happy and in the end that is what money is for, to facilitate our happiness by helping us acquire the things (skill/tools/stuff) that would help increase our happiness. If you are the boss your job is to find ways to make the job equate to your worker’s happiness. Look at a well trained and bonded military unit and you’d see that people do seemingly crazy stuff for something beyond money, something beyoond themselves. This is much harder and maybe this is the reason this is not done more often. The default action is throw money at the problem, not find the best solution.!
Let’s file this under “What I’d Do When I Have My Own Company”
Read the whole thing it’s very interesting.
A closer look, though explains why incentive plans not only do not succeed, but cannot succeed:
- Rewards punish.
- Like punishments, rewards are manipulative.
- Rewarding people is similar to punishment for another reason. When people do not get the rewards they were hoping for, they feel punished.
- Rewards rupture relations.
- Relationships between supervisors and workers, too, can collapse under the weight of incentives.
- Rewards ignore reasons.
- Rewards deter risk-taking.
- Rewards undermine interest. Loving what you do is a more powerful motivator than money or any other goody.
One of the many things that I miss in being a student is the access all the IEEE journals through UP’s academic access. Nothing seems more against the principle of the academe than the way that research isn’t propagated because of cost. See I am interested in alot of things , this is because of an intense curiosity that tries to seek out as much knowledge as my little brain can grok. One of the themes that continously arises is how much progress made in the sciences are due to lateral or expansive grasp of present knowledge.
I use lateral in the way that alot of progress is due to connecting various seemingly independet events into a theory that explains both. I put Einstein’s theories in this category.
The expansive grasp means knowing all the pertinent techniques with respect to your problem. If you read Feynman‘s Nobel Lecture you see whaI mean here. He had a claim that(probably true) that he knew everything about the problem he was trying to solve, which help him connect the dots on the different approaches to the same problem.
Both of these are negatively impacted by the high cost of journals. The amateur/hobbyist is doubly affected , and what are most of us in fields that we are not actively trying to research further are we? Most of us are not experts in everything and some of us (including me) are not even expert in anything. How much progress is not being made because information is not readily available?
If this is a simple case of “It’s always been done like this!”, then I think we need to rethink this. In a way science has progressed. During the time of newton or darwin they rarely collaborated with fellows, but we have progressed far faster because of openly available information. The thing is we are moving ever faster towrds an age where science would either stagnate or reach a point that people call a singularity. Stagnation means that there would be a return to malthus and that is something we cannot let happen, this for me means that we have a duty to ourselves and those that come after us to make sure that the future is aor near the singularity. This calls for cheaper if not free flow of information!
The ridiculous high prices of online journal articles.
I’m a lucky guy! I work for a major UK University and one of the perks of the job is that I (along with every other member of the University) get access to a massive array of academic journals and this is close to priceless as far as I am concerned. I’d rather take a salary cut than lose that particular perk (shhhh, don’t mention this to my bosses) and I don’t even do any formal research!
I have been blogging for almost two years now and one thing I have learned from the whole experience is that the world contains legions of amateur scholars – people who do research for personal rather than professional reasons. These scholars (and I like to think I am one of them) don’t want to publish papers or get qualifications, they simply want to learn about and discuss whatever subject takes their fancy. In my case I focus on subjects such as mathematics and physics since they are (and always have been) the subjects that float my boat and they are also the subjects I studied both at school and at University.
via Walking Randomly » The ridiculous high prices of online journal articles..
In the Philippines people practice something called counter flowing, this is the act where a driver moves his car and enters a lane that is going at the opposite direction. You see this behavior whenever only one side of a busy road is experiencing heavy traffic. Well this behavior is dependent on two weaknesses. ONe is that when they are trying to get back at the proper lane drivers are either scared or kond enough to let them back into the proper lane. This creates a feedback loop where you one up other people by not following the rules and it is expected. This is bad because this causes the other lane to be more congested and in turn creates a very bad traffic jam. I suggest that traffic enforcers be made to book these traffic offenders to lessen this driving barbarism and that we do not let these types of drivers dominate the streets. If you read the article it has a nice dissection of the problem. The individuals are optimizing for themselves and thereby decreasing the total societal value. What is needed is for traffic enforcers to be the ones, through doing there jobs, force these players into a nash equilibrium where everyone wins!
But maybe these two traffic models have more in common than it first seems. Both encourage individuals to drive more slowly so that everyone gets to his destinations faster. Both favor a holistic approach to traffic, one that designs from the perspective of the overall flow rather than that of an individual driver. And both open up more space for pedestrians.
It’s not too difficult to imagine a city designed with these principles in mind. Fewer roads with slower but smoother traffic. Spaces that can easily be converted to car-free zones to suit the needs of the network. And fewer opportunities for people to drive like jerks. Sounds like a nice place to take a walk, actually.
via Does closing roads cut delays? | csmonitor.com.
At the start of the day I have something of a ritual which involves in almost chronological order:
-Get Coffee
-Check Email, Answer only immediate and important emails, leave the rest for later
-Read RSS Feeds of Expansion/Thinkers/Coding
-Check Unimportant/Not immediately pertinent emails
-Check Friendfeed
-Check Facebook
-Read RSS feeds from news sources (Inquirer/GMA)
-Breakfast
-Check tasks for today.
-Check production servers applications I am supporting.
-Begin work on tasks.
All in all this takes about 1-2 hours of my workday.
I’ve recently lost internet acces to most sites I go to, thank God for google reader, still can read most posts.
So I was pleasantly surprised with the new “social features” that they have included in google reader.
As far as I can see they have made liking more open, because now people who allow other people to see their likes are showing up at the rss entry.
This is interesting because now you can follow these people.
Following other people has been an old feature of google reader, what’s new is that it is now far easier to find people who read the same things you do.
Hope they can do this with google reader notes, and that they find a way to convince more people to read posts from rss.
I’ve been just using the new social features for a few minutes but, I can see the possibilities!
Kudos to the google reader team, I don’t know what they plan for the future but I am surely going along for a ride!