We beg to differ.
The much-awaited Easter holidays are coming up. In the Philippines they call it “Holy Week” presumably because over the several days that make up that “week”, people are supposed to reflect upon the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the events leading up to it as documented in the New Testament. One of…
Read More “Holy Week reflection: Are Filipinos still capable of suffering with grace?” »
It seems when things happen to be convenient for us, we are willing to lower the bar of the standards of decency we apply and the principles we presume to pontificate about. Recall how jeepneys were once regarded as “ingenious” quick solutions to what at the time was a grossly-misunderstood issue of mobility in a…
Later on this evening (between 8:30 and 9:30 pm, to be precise), the Philippines will join 151 other countries around the world in celebrating Earth Hour, an annual exercise in environmental slacktivism that began in Sydney, Australia in 2007. The main activity of Earth Hour is, of course, switching off one’s residential and other non-essential…
Many ‘activists’ who are focusing on how much money is spent by election candidates and where and when their colourful messages are being flashed miss the whole point of elections. Elections are a necessarily messy occasion. Messiness is a good symptom of a healthy number of options presented to “the people” — those folk that…
Iceland may become the first Western democracy to ban internet pornography. CNN.com reports a “strong consensus” building in the Scandinavian island nation noting mounting convincing arguments from many experts on the matter. “At the moment, we are looking at the best technical ways to achieve this. But surely if we can send a man to…
Read More “Assault on free speech: Iceland mulling ban on internet pornography” »
There is an adage modern doctors live by that encapsulates what their real role is in the holistic process of healing — Do no harm first. The human body is a wondrous but complex system. We never quite known what is going on in the way its billions of component parts interact. Yet many modern…
Read More “Are the noisiest advocates of social ‘change’ doing more harm than good?” »
Certain advocates of “constitutional reform” make use of two cornerstone arguments to support their position that a change in form of government will necessarily translate to an improved probability that the Philippines will prosper as a society over a given period: (a) a correlation between systems of government and evidence of prosperity in today’s nations,…
Read More “Change in system of governance equals prosperity? Think again” »
In recent days we’ve been seeing a few new “movements” and “advocacies” emerging (or being repackaged) as dominant topics amongst the chattering classes. Many of these involve one or another form of implementing some sort of “governance” around the way the Philippines’ wondrous cacophony of activity and voices that is its “democracy” work their way…
Read More “Are we over-governing political campaign activities?” »