Category: personal AnGoL

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Love To Read :: Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start | 43 Folders

Seconds Away
Your Lizard Brain is absolutely right when it tells you that most people won’t notice if you don’t make something, and that a lot of people won’t particularly care if you do. But, how you choose to respond to that existential kōan will say a lot about your potential as both an artist and as an engaged human.
Because, if you’re relieved that universal apathy provides legitimate cover for eight blissful hours of “managing email,” then you’re in luck. Every day for the rest of your life. Punch out.
But, if you’re like me, you may find you’re invigorated—even challenged—by all that bigger ambiguity. By knowing that, at any time, you might be seconds away from starting something amazing that seemed impossible a minute ago. Even oddly prepared to drop the lizard crap whenever the need arises.
Weird to think how insanely different your day could be today. Purely depending on what you do in the next 10 or 15 seconds. If that switch gets flipped in the right direction, then stays there.
What can you tolerate? What will you start? Now.
See? You’ve got enough of everything you need. You’ve already started. Now just keep going.
via Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start | 43 Folders.

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Against The High Art Feeling People::Pinoy Penman

I’ve been seeing protest against specific individuals honoring as national artist, by people who have the gal to say that they know what art is. Well Fuck Off.

Let me be very clear that my protest is not directed at the appointees themselves, who all possess some sterling qualities that lifted them to the prominence they justly deserve. I do not mean to put down certain categories or definitions of the word “artist,” which in these times must surely go beyond the age-old figures and spheres of the poet, painter, and musician.
…….
At the very core of things, no true artist needs an award, especially one granted by a government whose credibility and sincerity many artists will or should find trouble with. But the National Artist Award was meant to rise above petty politics, to give some material recognition and sustenance for our most creative and most productive imaginations—a vain hope, as it turns out, in this politically besotted and benighted country. As one pundit has put it, why be so surprised? How can we be so naïve as to expect that our cultural bureaucracy would be immune to the same strain of corruption that infects our public works, education, and customs offices?
via Pinoy Penman.

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rePost :: Why I am Not a Professor

I’ve been mulling taking up graduate studies for over a year now and the only reason I am vacillating a decision is I’m afraid of being underwhelmed.

Teaching was not the only criterion of assessment. Research was another and, from the point of view of getting promotion, more important. Teaching being increasingly dreadful, research was both an escape ladder away from the coal face and a means of securing a raise. The mandarins in charge of education decreed that research was to be assessed, and that meant counting things. Quite what things and how wasn’t too clear, but the general answer was that the more you wrote, the better you were. So lecturers began scribbling with the frenetic intensity of battery hens on overtime, producing paper after paper, challenging increasingly harassed librarians to find the space for them. New journals and conferences blossomed and conference hopping became a means to self-promotion. Little matter if your effort was read only by you and your mates. It was there and it counted.
via Why I am Not a Professor.

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Feeling Weird About Cable

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!

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What You Do When You Are Seven::Education and Equal Opportunity

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.

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Iglesia ni Cristo to hold huge assemblies – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

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.

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Finding Meaning In Your Work::For Best Results, Forget the Bonus

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.

via For Best Results, Forget the Bonus.

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Walkable Cities Meme::Does closing roads cut delays? | csmonitor.com

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.

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The Women's Right To Be Unhappy::Stumbling and Mumbling: Real freedom & unhappiness

This is puzzling, because there can be no doubt that since the 70s women’s real freedom has increased hugely. They have more and better educational and job opportunities, better control over their fertility, are more able to flee bad partnerships and – thanks to technical progress – can spend less time on household chores.
Greater freedom, though, has not brought greater happiness.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: Real freedom & unhappiness.

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