Category: Society

Filipinos need to learn how to think: Thinking 101 in three convenient lessons

August 24, 2012August 24, 2012 benign0 21 Comments

The last couple of weeks has seen circus following circus kicking off crescendous waves of crocodile emotions that swept many Filipinos off their feet. One good thing coming out of that is that it brought to fore some really key features of the dysfunction that underlies the Philippine National Thinking Process. Below, for the reading…

Civics, Culture, Education, Society

It is too late to honour the late Jesse Robredo now – because he’s dead

August 22, 2012August 18, 2015 benign0 64 Comments

So now Secretary Jesse Robredo is dead. And lo, what do we see around us now but a multitude of armchair eulogies — many of them spread shallow across 140-character snippets of textual diarrhoea — waxing poetic on how good a man he was. That’s all good folks — if it weren’t for the fact…

Civics, Culture, Society

Questionable circumstances of DILG Secretary Jesse Robredo’s death: Could it have been prevented?

August 21, 2012August 18, 2015 benign0 120 Comments

Even as the country mourns the death of Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Jess Robredo in a plane crash this week, some questions are starting to emerge. An observation made by a certain Adolfo Mortera re-posted by Showbiz Government covers most of these questions in summary… [Philippine President Benigno Simeon] Aquino has…

Government, Politics, Society

Should Ateneo de Manila faculty members who choose to continue to teach ‘reproductive health’ be fired?

August 21, 2012August 21, 2012 benign0 41 Comments

Seeing all the rah-rahs — even (horrors!) mudslinging — being thrown by one camp of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill “debate” at the other, I just have to take my hat off to the anti-RH Bill advocates who are employing Roman Catholic dogma as the underlying framework of their position. Their argument is pretty well-grounded….

Lifestyle, Politics, Religion, Society

Search for Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo after plane crash continues

August 19, 2012 benign0 46 Comments

As of this writing the search continues for Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo who remains missing along with two pilots after the Piper Seneca plane they were on crashed somewhere in Masbate Bay on Saturday, the 18th of August. A large search and rescue effort is currently underway involving the Philippine Air Force, Navy, Coast…

Government, Society

App.net: Would you pay to be social online?

August 17, 2012 benign0 3 Comments

Tech entrepeneur Dalton Caldwell is betting that after free social networking services like Friendster, MySpace, then Facebook and Twitter had succeeded in turning social media into something as essential to the 21st Century human being as air, people will now be willing to pay for it. Nothing shocking about the concept. Think bottled water. So…

Society, Tech Talk

Robert Carabuena versus the MMDA: Who’s gonna win?

August 15, 2012August 15, 2012 Kate Natividad 87 Comments

What is it about guys and their cars? The moment guys get behind the wheel, they turn into Mr Hyde. What I thought were mild-mannered Clark Kent types suddenly start acting like they are flying down EDSA (whenever they could) wearing a blue suit, red boots, and a cape. What’s up with that? It’s not…

Civics, Crime, Culture, Education, Society

It’s about time the Philippine government blasts squatters out of the water

August 14, 2012June 13, 2013 benign0 44 Comments

Apparently emboldened by the rising anger over the man-made nature of the massive floods that devastated much of Metro Manila last week and increasingly loud calls to rectify the problems related to it that politicians had allowed to fester for decades, President Benigno Simeon “BS” Aquino III has issued a strong mandate for decisive action…

Development, Environment, Government, Society