We beg to differ.
Lots of people seem to have, at best, a rather shallow understanding of what I mean when I keep harping about the lack of a concept of “efficiency” in the Tagalog dialect. My simple explanation is that the lack of a concept of efficiency native to (or long embedded in) Tagalog reflects the inherent intellectual…
Writing in yesterday’s Manila Standard, columnist Rod Kapunan demonstrates exactly the sort of violent, misplaced nationalism that is the best reason for the Philippines to join the International Criminal Court. If I was writing this for my own blog, I’d probably call Kapunan a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy freak and an uncivilized thug, but since this…
Read More “The Philippines and the ICC: The Right Sort of Foreign Intervention” »
Whatever it was said by whoever this James Soriano is, if it is the truth about the utter lack of intellectual tools Tagalog provides its speakers, then no apologies are needed to be given to those who take offense from these words. A Manila Bulletin column published on August 24 titled “Language, learning, identity, privilege”…
Read More “English vs Tagalog: James Soriano owes no one any apologies” »
Popularity contests seem to have taken a new turn in the last decade. It has become literally, just about being “likedâ€. Forget about working on your talent or congeniality. Joining a contest takes less effort than that. If you have no problem with shameless self-promotion, you can win just about anything. Gone are the days…
Read More “How popularity trumps talent in most ‘contests’ nowadays” »
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.†– Eric Hoffer Turn on your television, or log on to the Internet, or pick up a newspaper – in whatever way you get your daily news, chances are pretty good…
It irritates me to a great extent whenever I encounter or hear about other people in the United States stealing resources that should only belong to American Citizens. Take the case of Jose Vargas, a journalist who wrote about the Virginia Tech shooting and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for it. He came to the…
Read More “Jose Vargas: Does ‘coming out clean’ compensate for a life of deception?” »
Media spin, political slogans and catch phrases, and “majority rule”. Today, these seem to be the preferred bases for validating what we come to know about our world everyday. At the very top of the hierarchy of this flawed approach with which we validate the “knowledge” we live by is the very concept of democracy…
Read More “Fact by consensus: are we accepting beliefs in lieu of knowledge?” »
The death of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr is being commemorated today the 21st of August. The fact that this event, which happened 28 years ago today, is so revered illustrates a fundamental problematic aspect of the Filipino Condition. The issues that the Philippines faces in its journey through time — presumably towards that much aspired-for…