Category: Science

How Christopher Nolan’s #Interstellar unified all time travel movies for me

November 18, 2014July 17, 2015 Kate Natividad 4 Comments

I finally got around to seeing Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. It’s alright, I guess. I liked the way they turned these complex relativity principles into visual eye candy, specially that part about how time (the fourth dimension in spacetime) was turned into a kind of a physical coordinate that Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey) could navigate…

Film Review, Science, Tech Talk

The transgender life: It’s not just about becoming a girl, it’s about becoming an ATTRACTIVE chick!

October 16, 2014 benign0 21 Comments

One thing that the brouhaha over the murder of Jeffrey Laude (allegedly by Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton of the United States Marine Corps) revealed is that Filipino transgenders live in legal limbo in the Philippines. No less than the Philippine Supreme Court is reportedly “confused” over how to regard them. The publisher of…

Crime, Culture, Lifestyle, Politics, Science, Society

Climate change activism: mere farts in the wind

September 25, 2014December 16, 2022 benign0 12 Comments

Another United Nations (UN) climate summit, another bunch of promises. Has the UN really been an effective body in efforts to mitigate the worst of humanity’s many scourges that Planet Earth suffers? Considering that China is, today, the single biggest producer of “greenhouse gases”, the role the UN plays in an effort to curb emissions…

Development, Economy, Environment, Government, Lifestyle, Science, Society

Change from within: how science and celebrity can effect it

July 4, 2014 benign0 4 Comments

It has often been highlighted that to get on a sustainable course towards prosperity, Filipinos need not a change of men but a change in men. It is a social transformation that needs to come from within. An article in Scientific American provides insight on how lessons learned from the success of some past initiatives…

Culture, Development, Lifestyle, Media, Science, Society

The real dangers of artificial intelligence Tesla founder Elon Musk leaves unsaid

June 19, 2014April 28, 2015 benign0 13 Comments

Much is being written about what Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk said about how rapid advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) could lead humanity to a “Terminator” scenario. The Terminator series of films which star former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger paints a bleak picture of a future where human stragglers battle intelligent…

Science, Tech Talk

Wacky Church-Supported Doctor Plays the Antivax Card and Says Condoms Give You HIV

April 26, 2014April 26, 2014 BenK 39 Comments

Leave it to the Philippines, a country where one of the largest daily newspapers keeps a medium on the payroll, where psychic surgery is still a thing, and where, for a disturbingly large part of the population, dripping candle wax into a bowl of water is considered a legitimate diagnosis technique, to issue a license…

Education, Religion, Science

Abortion is really a simple issue if you take the ‘soul’ out of the debate

April 20, 2014February 3, 2022 benign0 71 Comments

Nobody who rests comfily within the bed of Establishment thinking seems to want to take a position on the debate around abortion. The highest profile players in this arena include New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights playing forward striker for the Forces of Ethical Thinking and on the other side is the 2,000-year-old bedrock of,…

Civics, Lifestyle, Religion, Science

Our Limited Thoughts of Infinity

April 17, 2014April 17, 2014 P. Farol 35 Comments

Pi is still, theoretically, an endless number and yet it ends when the minds that can conceive or perceive it ends. Computers can calculate the last number of Pi only as far as the formula used and the capacity of the computer to calculate. Beyond which, I suppose, Pi goes on and on. But in…

Science, Tech Talk

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