Category: rePosts

March 2, 2016

Ms. NINEZ CACHO-OLIVAREZ

Editor-in-Chief

The Daily Tribune

Port Area, Manila

Dear Ms. Cacho-Olivarez:

We are writing to clarify the issue raised in your newspaper editorial, “Dinky’s LP streak shows”, which was published on February 29.The editorial mentioned that the Commission on Audit (COA) report on the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) covering 2014 and early 2015 showed several alarms raised over Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.Thank you for your concern in the implementation of the Pantawid Pamilya.However, we would like to clarify that the Department has already responded to the COA issues mentioned in the editorial. The explanations and justifications have been accepted by COA, and subsequently included in their final audit report.The first issue raised was that COA said that 3,649 families that were covered by the audit received cash grants even if they were found non-compliant with the 4Ps criteria. It added that a total of P4.9 million was released to the beneficiaries even if they are not meeting the health and education requirements of the program. The COA report went on to say that the payment of grants to beneficiaries not compliant on the conditionalities of the program is contrary to 4Ps Operations Manual, which should be immediately recovered from the beneficiaries.Per DSWD’s Management response to the issue, it explained that the beneficiaries were paid grants accordingly either because they had registered new eligible members for compliance monitoring, or they were compliant with at least one conditionality in the latter periods of 2014.One of the major reasons, based on our assessment and validation, is that they have no eligible members for compliance monitoring, but they subsequently registered 15-18 year-old children beneficiaries in the latter periods because of the new Extended Age Coverage policy, therefore they were monitored again and paid accordingly.The other major reason was that they have transferred school or health facilities and have been complying but there were delays in knowing where to monitor them.  Thus, it is not correct to state that grants were paid to non-compliant beneficiaries.On the issue that auditors also discovered 1,872 duplicate beneficiaries, only 395 have been so far found to be duplicates, and the Department has corrective and recovery measures in place if indeed these duplicates were confirmed to have received excess payments.Please note, too, that the observations made by the COA in the audit report are not conclusive statements confirming that irregularities had been actually committed. These were made as part of the government routine to provide a check-and-balance mechanism and enhance operations.Aside from the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) issues, the editorial also mentioned that the camp of Vice-President Binay insinuated that Liberal Party has been using CCT funds to recruit “volunteers’ or poll watchers for the May elections.There is no truth to this allegation. DSWD is not in anyway involved in the recruitment of volunteers for the May polls. Beneficiaries of Pantawid Pamilya are free to decide if they want to be involved in political activities or not. That is their right as citizens, and it is on their own free will.As implementer of the program, DSWD conducts the Family Development Sessions (FDS) where the beneficiaries are taught about active citizenship and their role in nation building.We hope this clarification finds space in your newspaper.

Thank you.

Very truly yours,

[Sgd.] CEZARIO JOEL C. ESPEJO

Director

Social Marketing Service

Source: Letter to Daily Tribune | Department of Social Welfare and Development

https://vimeo.com/blog/post/fund-your-film-how-to-make-a-successful-crowdfundi

Prior to 2008, if you had a film that you wanted to fund, you either needed to sell your soul to a rich person or descend into the 10th circle of hell known as debt. First came Indiegogo (who we’ve teamed up with), then came Kickstarter, and then GoFundMe and Tilt, and so on and so on. These services enable people from all around the world to empty the contents of their wallets directly into the dreams of others. It’s like taking candy from a baby, if babies could use the Internet and candy was cold, hard c

Found this nice sql.
I needed to randomize a date for the random data I was using to test a batch job I was fixing.  I would have used several excellent random data generators available online except my internet sucks so have to do this on my own.

This works perfectly even for leap years:select from_unixtime( unix_timestamp(‘2000-1-1’) + floor( rand() * ( unix_timestamp(‘2010-12-31’) – unix_timestamp(‘2000-1-1’) + 1 ) ))The idea is simple: Just take a random timestamp between the two timestamps, then convert it to a datetime using from_unixtime. This way you can ensure that each option has equal probability.

Source: sql – Mysql insert random datetime in a given datetime range – Stack Overflow

When Magsaysay ran for president, the barrio-to-barrio campaigns only opened his eyes even more to the issues of the rural folk that had been neglected by previous presidents.He realized that the Philippine government shouldn’t be a government of the elites, but an entity fully dedicated to the welfare of all its people–especially the peasant farmers long considered to be the “backbone of the nation.”Magsaysay believed that insurgency would continue to exist as long as the government stays deaf to the calls of the rural folk. “To  be really secure,” he once said, “a country must assure for its citizens the social and economic conditions that would enable them to live in decency, free from ignorance, disease, and want.” Magsaysay became the voice of the voiceless, and his impressive rural development programs only proved that he’s sincere in uplifting the lives of the oppressed.

Source: 6 Reasons Why Ramon Magsaysay Was The Best President Ever

William Briggs, an adjunct professor of statistics at Cornell, provides an overview of the flawed design and statistical analysis of this study. He first criticizes the indicator used to quantify “altruism,” and then ridicules the “moral sensitivity test” that children completed, which suggests a serious “abuse of regression on the pseudo-quantified answers … this model has no real predictive value.” Briggs concludes that “nearly everything is wrong with it, start to finish,” and is especially dismissive of the “wild, over-reaching theorizing about cause.” Suggesting that “altruism was not measured, but kids sticking stickers in envelopes was,” and he asks: “How much influence did the researcher have, especially with the younger kids? Did kids stick stickers because they wanted to prove to the whitecoat that they were compliant or because they wanted to be liked or because they wanted to share? Altruism forsooth!”

Source: Are Religious Children “Meaner than Secular Children?”

The problem with Agile’s two-week iterations (or “sprints”) and user stories is that there is no exit strategy. There’s no “We won’t have to do this once we achieve [X]” clause. It’s designed to be there forever: the business-driven engineering and status meetings will never go away. Architecture and R&D and product development aren’t part of the programmer’s job, because those things don’t fit into atomized “user stories” or two-week sprints. As a result, the sorts of projects that programmers want to take on, once they master the basics of the craft, are often ignored, because it’s annoying to justify them in terms of short-term business value. Technical excellence matters, but it’s painful to try to sell people on this fact if they want, badly, not to be convinced of it.

Source: Michael O. Church – Why “Agile” and especially Scrum are terrible

An avenue is traditionally a straight road with a line of trees or shrubs running along each side, which emphasize arrival at a landscape or architectural feature.*A boulevard is usually a widened, multi-lane arterial street with a median and landscaping between the curbs and sidewalks on either side.*A court is a short street that ends as a cul de sac.

Source: What’s the Difference Between a Street and a Road? | Mental Floss

Bill in Oz has asked “is the Philippines is a nation or an empire”? James Fallows wrote about a damaged culture (link) in 1987. I think it is an accidental n

Source: The Accidental nation

The campaign period officially opens on Feb. 9, so you can expect more direct messages—rather than thinly disguised ones—from the candidates starting then. I am most interested in what their agricultural policies are and so, presumably is the nation, because one of the main topics of the Commission on Elections’ first presidential debate (to be held in Cagayan de Oro) this month, is precisely agriculture.

Source: Agriculture a must issue in 2016 presidential election – Inquirer Opinion

It’s scary.
Another thing that could help is immigration. Lots of people — mostly women — from countries like China and the Philippines are moving to South Korea for marriage, to the point that the number of mixed ethnic families grew 700% from 2006 to 2014.
By 2030, it’s estimated that 10% of the population will be made up of foreign-born families, compared with a little over 2% today. This means huge changes in cultural norms for a society where being “pure-blood” Korean has long been a praise-worthy trait.

Source: South Korea’s gender problem could lead to an existential crisis