China, new law on elderly

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/02/world/asia/china-elderly-law/index.html?c&page=0 A new law in China makes it compulsary to visit their parents.

Isabel Allende, writer, woman, failed journalist, novelist

Carl Sagan on Evolution

SO 101: See the above title at You Tube for our discussion on Evolution next week. For TTh and WF classes.

Welcome Freshmen, First Semester 2013-2014

Welcome Freshmen at Miriam College. This will be your place to catch announcement for SO 101. TTh classes, submission of research paper (comprising 5 members), What is Evolution and What is science. All references should be found at the end of your paper. Deadline of submission is 20 June, Thursday.

On human suffering by Chris Hedges

In Review: Required Reading A Hollow Agnosticism by Chris Hedges EVIL IS NOT A PROBLEM. EVIL IS A MYSTERY. BART EHRMAN IN HIS BOOK God's Problemcannot reconcile a belief in God with this mystery and the cold reality of the morally neutral universe we inhabit. He wonders how God could allow the Holocaust to happen and children to starve to death. He wants a God that will make it better. And when God won't or can't or isn't interested, he walks away in a huff. This petulant stance would please Sigmund Freud, who insisted religion was a form of infantile regression, but it is another example of our cultural narcissism and childishness. Ehrman has become, after leaving the faith, a self-avowed agnostic. But he remains trapped within the simpleminded belief that religious faith, to have legitimacy, means there has to be something logical and ultimately just about human existence. "I realized that I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life," he writes. "In particular, I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the state of things." There is strong desire on the part of many in the human species to believe that human suffering and deprivation is ultimately meaningful, that it has a purpose, that our lives make sense. Human cultures have long sought to placate the demands of an all-powerful God, or gods, in return for protection from the vicissitudes of fortune. This is the engine that drives the Christian right. This powerful human desire, however, should not be confused with the reality of the transcendent. God answered Moses' request for revelation with the words: "I AM WHO I AM." This phrase is probably more accurately translated "I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE." God is not a being. God is an experience. God is a verb, not a noun. God comes to us in the profound flashes of insight that cut through the darkness, in the hope that permits human beings to cope with inevitable pain, despair, and suffering. God comes in the healing solidarity of love and self-sacrifice. But God and the vagaries of human existence, including suffering, are beyond our capacity to explain or understand. "What makes mankind tragic is not that they are victims of nature," Joseph Conrad wrote in a letter in 1897, "it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well—but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife, the tragedy begins." The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent forces that cannot be measured or quantified, those forces that lie beyond the reach of rational deduction. We all encounter these forces. They are love, beauty, alienation, loneliness, suffering, good, evil, and the reality of death. These unquantifiable forces in human life are the domain of art and religion. All cultures have struggled to give words, through religion and artistic expression, to these mysteries and moments of transcendence. God—and different cultures have given God many names and many attributes—is that which works upon us and through us to find meaning and relevance in a morally neutral universe. Religion is our finite, flawed, and imperfect expression of the infinite. The experience of transcendence, the struggle to acknowledge the infinite, need not even be attributed to an external being called God. The belief in a personal God can, in fact, be antireligious. Religion is about the human need for the sacred. God is, as Thomas Aquinas writes, the power that allows us to be ourselves. God is a search, a way to frame the questions. God is a call to reverence. Human beings come engrained with this religious impulse. Buddhists speak of nirvana in words that are nearly identical to those employed by many monotheists to describe God. This impulse asks: What are we? Why are we here? What, if anything, are we supposed to do? What does it all mean? God is a human concept that arises from this impulse and the reality of the transcendent. Our idea of God includes human prejudice, tribal and national self-exaltation, morally indefensible edicts, naked bigotry, and absurd formulas to get God to work on our behalf. Religious figures have long found it popular and profitable to pander to the forlorn hope that we can placate or control the transcendent. Religious belief systems endow God, depending on which name you give God, with a variety of attributes, some of which are repugnant, especially if you happen to be on the wrong side of Yahweh's wrath. Ehrman correctly challenges these very imperfect and flawed human descriptions of God and the vain attempts to make sense of suffering. But he mistakes the characteristics human beings have invented for God with the reality of God. Yes, there are writers in the Bible who saw war as a judgment from God for the sins of the people, who insisted that suffering was God's punishment for misbehavior, who argued that suffering was redemptive, or who, like Paul, believed life was about suffering, much as women must suffer to give birth to new life. Yes, the concept of free will argues that human beings cause suffering, though God sometimes intervenes, and yes, the apocalypticists, like Jesus and Daniel, said suffering came from a cosmic evil that would one day be abolished by the Kingdom of God. These are inadequate attempts by human beings to explain why we suffer. But the inherent flaws in these numerous explanations do not finally invalidate God. They only expose those who write and think about God as human. In Ecclesiastes, which Ehrman cites with admiration, it is not what we do in life, but what we do with what life gives us. We have few real choices. We will carry our human flaws to the grave. Our attempts to become godlike, to deny the emptiness, rhythms, and cycles of life, is vanity. The best we can do is endure with compassion, wisdom, and humility and accept the mystery and ambiguity of existence. Ehrman supports this idea of suffering as "something that happens on earth, caused by circumstances we can't control and for reasons we can't understand." He goes on to ask what we do about suffering. His answer is revealing. He tells us to "avoid it as much as we can." He suggests we "try to relieve it in others whenever possible, and we go on with life, enjoying our time here on earth as much as we can, until the time comes for us to expire." This vision is one that comes close to hedonism. If we are to avoid suffering, since it makes no ultimate sense, then there is no point in running parishes in inner city ghettos, working in the developing world, running a hospice for the dying, or perhaps even loving deeply, since these are activities that court loss, pain, and suffering. Detachment without withdrawal, Ecclesiastes wrote, is one of the secrets of wisdom. Death awaits us all. We must give up on the notion that one is rewarded for virtue, that we can save ourselves from our human predicament or that we can morally advance as a species. We remain trapped by human nature. The evil and the good endure the same hardships and blessings. But Ecclesiastes also reminds us that God has put 'olam into man's mind. 'Olam means eternity. It denotes mystery or obscurity. We do not know what this mystery, this eternity, means. And once we recognize it and face it, simplistic answers no longer work. Our vain belief in our own powers, in our reason and perfectibility, in a God who makes sense to us, is exposed as a fraud. Ecclesiastes sees the emptiness around us, the emptiness of those who trust in their own power and live in self-delusion.1And in his work, which often troubles biblical literalists and those who believe we are moving toward a glorious finale, we find the best of ancient wisdom literature. Ecclesiastes expresses a deeply authentic religious sentiment and a profound understanding of God. I do not know why this is not good enough for Ehrman. He circles back from this wisdom to his petulant complaint that since suffering is incomprehensible to him, God cannot exist. "If God is all powerful, then he is able to do whatever he wants (and can therefore remove suffering). If he is all loving, then he obviously wants the best for people (and therefore does not want them to suffer). And yet people suffer. How can that be explained?" Ehrman believes we deserve answers. This belief places us at the center of creation. Ehrman fails to examine, as Primo Levi did in Survival in Auschwitz, the cold reality of our moral degeneration, the fact that not only is suffering meaningless, but those who seek to live a moral life are often defenseless. Levi saw that those who carried out selfless acts of compassion in Auschwitz were the first to perish. He described the psychological death of emaciated and dehumanized victims that preceded death itself. He wrote that inmates who cared for others wasted away faster and died. The few able to carry out isolated acts of kindness were inmates who, through luck, cunning, or bribery, held privileged positions within the camps. They worked in a kitchen or a laboratory. They had the good fortune, on occasion, to be human. To the mass of concentration camp victims, however, human solidarity was a luxury they could not afford. To make morality one's deepest commitment usually meant death. It is possible not only to crush millions of human beings, but also our capacity to be human. We can all be reduced to barbarity. We can all forsake what is moral, what makes us human, for what is expedient. We can place our physical survival above moral considerations. Those groups that fared best in the camps, the criminal gangs with their effete male paramours and penchant for theft and murder, or the tight solidarity of clannish communities, such as the Greeks in Auschwitz, endured at the expense of others. They were predators. Those around them were prey. The camps were always dominated by the most brutal inmates. Their savagery reflected the savagery of their guards. Levi found the true image of humanity clawing for survival in Chaim Rumkowski, the Jewish Nazi collaborator and autocratic leader of the Jewish ghetto in Lodz. He was a Jew who sold out his fellow Jews for privilege and power, although he too was finally consumed by the Holocaust. "We are all mirrored in Rumkowski," Levi wrote. "His ambiguity is ours, it is our second nature, we hybrids molded from clay and spirit. His fever is ours, the fever of Western civilization, that 'descends into hell with trumpets and drums,' and its miserable adornments are the distorting image of our symbols of social prestige." We, like Rumkowski, ". . . are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and that close by the train is waiting."2 Ehrman refuses to plummet to the real horrors of the human condition. He offers, at the end of his book empty, bourgeois platitudes. He urges us to "love and be loved," to "cultivate friendships, enjoy our intimate relationships," and "make money and spend money." "We should," he tells us, "drive nice cars and have nice homes." Of course, he adds, we should "work hard to make our world the most pleasing place it can be for others" and "alleviate suffering wherever possible." But without specifics, especially in an age of globalism, the rise of our corporate state, and preemptive war, these are little more than window dressing to mask a justification for self-absorption. He reinforces the bankrupt ethic of global capitalism. His are hollow, liberal bromides that never grapple with the dark and seductive human lusts of violence—lusts the biblical writers understood and feared. He fails to grasp that human beings, as Freud wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents, "are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and kill him."3 It is not about us. It is about our neighbor. And since it is about our neighbor, we must expect to court and accept suffering. We live in a permanent state of war.Homo homini lupus. This state of war can be tamed and governed by social and political institutions, it can be transferred to the ballot box, the law court, or the sporting arena, but the dark urges remain. These urges, when permitted to express themselves without restraint, create a Hobbesian dystopia. This is the most important question facing believers: how to tame the evil within, not why God, who we can never fathom, allows us to suffer. To ask Ehrman's question is to turn away from the call to the moral life. Ehrman's celebration of middle-class comfort and the wasteful consumption in the industrialized zones of safety mock the hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq. His call mocks the hundreds of millions of people on the planet who live on less than two dollars a day. His call mocks the Palestinians and Lebanese terrorized and killed with United States–manufactured fighter jets and attack helicopters. His call mocks those locked in our bloated prison system and the children who are trapped in our dysfunctional schools and ghettos. His call mocks those who suffer because of us. The question is not why we suffer. The question is why we permit others to suffer. And if we must accept suffering to relieve the suffering of others we move not away, but toward God. Ehrman's refusal to believe in God because God allows human suffering is a thinly veiled defense of our imperial sense of entitlement and unchecked narcissism. It is a way of avoiding real moral introspection. Ehrman encourages us to see ourselves as betrayed by God. But it is we who have betrayed God. We have become a militarized nation of apostates and hedonists. We ignore the evil we commit, from the war in Iraq to the torture we carry out in our offshore penal colonies. We sanctify our own power and wealth as a final good. We turn inward, ignoring our apostasy, and wonder why bad things happen to us. We are not called to avoid suffering. We are not promised a rational world. We are not offered explanations. We are called to act. There is no promise that this will be easy or painless or free us from suffering. In extreme cases, as Levi understood, it does not even mean we as distinct individuals will survive. But the life of faith has a worth and merit that dwarfs a hollow existence devoted to driving big cars, living in nice homes, eating good meals, and being angry at God because God does not adequately take care of us. Notes 1. Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (Harcourt, Inc., 1982), 123-124. 2. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (Summit Books, 1987), 69. 3. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton, 1989), 68-69. ________________________________________ God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer, by Bart D. Ehrman. HarperOne, 304 pages, $25.95 ________________________________________ CHRIS HEDGES, who received a master of divinity degree from HDS in 1983, was a foreign correspondent for almost two decades for The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The Christian Science Monitor. He is the author of several books, including I Don't Believe in Atheists, published this spring by Free Press.

The way to produce a person

If you choose a profession that doesn’t arouse your everyday passion for the sake of serving instead some abstract faraway good, you might end up as a person who values the far over the near. You might become one of those people who loves humanity in general but not the particular humans immediately around. You might end up enlarging the faculties we use to perceive the far — rationality — and eclipsing the faculties we use to interact with those closest around — affection, the capacity for vulnerability and dependence. Instead of seeing yourself as one person deeply embedded in a particular community, you may end up coolly looking across humanity as a detached god.

Think about it.

Reminder of a worthy article sent by a Filipino, Dr. Arsenio Martin of Fort Arthur , Texas ... It is hoped our countrymen will heed his advice. THE DIFFERENCE The difference between the poor countries and the rich ones is not the age of the country: This can be shown by countries like India & Egypt , that are more than 2000 years old, but are poor. On the other hand, Canada ,Australia & New Zealand , that 150 years ago were inexpressive, today are developed countries, and are rich. The difference between poor & rich countries does not reside in the available natural resources. Japan has a limited territory, 80% mountainous, inadequate for agriculture & cattle raising, but it takes third place in the world economy. The country is like an immense floating factory, importing raw materials from the whole world and exporting manufactured products. Another example is Switzerland, which does not plant cocoa but has the best chocolate in the world. In its little territory they raise animals and plant the soil during 4 months per year. Not enough, they produce dairy products of the best quality! It is a small country that transmits an image of security, order & labor, which made it the world's strongest, safest place. Executives from rich countries who communicate with their counterparts in poor countries show that there is no significant intellectual difference. Race or skin color are also not important: immigrants labeled lazy in their countries of origin are the productive power in rich European countries. What is the difference then? The difference is the attitude of the people, framed along the years by the education & the culture & flawed tradition. On analyzing the behavior of the people in rich & developed countries, we find that the great majority follow the following principles in their lives: 1. Ethics, as a basic principle. 2. Integrity. 3. Responsibility. 4. Respect to the laws & rules. 5. Respect to the rights of other citizens. 6. Work loving. 7. Strive for savings & investment. 8. Will of super action. 9. Punctuality. 10. and of course...Discipline In poor countries, only a minority follow these basic principles in their daily life.. The Philippines is not poor because we lack natural resources or because nature was cruel to us. We are poor because we lack the correct attitude. We lack the will to comply with and teach these functional principles of rich & developed societies. It is wished that many Filipinos could reflect about this, & CHANGE, ACT!

Space, Time & Energy, Universe explained

The universe explained.

New Industrial Policy

Given its popularity and high trust rating, the Aquino administration is expected to continue implementing solid reforms to overcome the difficult challenges in realizing the country’s potential. Now seen as a new growth area, the Philippines is well positioned to attract investments that would catalyze growth and development. The government needs to capitalize on our recent investment upgrade to attract more foreign direct investment. Large market opportunities for our industries are offered by the Asean Economic Community market of 600 million people. At the same time, the rising costs in China, and the calamities in Japan and Thailand that hit industry supply chains have driven investors to look for alternative investment sites. Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/52881/new-industrial-policy#ixzz2U9cWqccA Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

The Limits of the Earth

Water is being withdrawn from rivers as well. Seasonal water levels are dropping on China’s Yellow River, on the Nile in Egypt, on the Indus as far north as Pakistan, and on the Rio Grande in the US. Parts of the Colorado River are a stunning 130 feet below their historic levels. The river no longer reaches the sea. Nor does the Yellow River or dozens of others around the world that have been tapped for irrigation. The rivers that flow through Central Asia have been so massively drained for agriculture that the vast Aral Sea they once fed, once the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world, is now little more than a dry, salty lakebed, its former shore dotted with abandoned fishing villages and the bones of beached boats.

AL Pacino, Scent of a Woman

Al Pacino speaks, Scent of a Woman

AL Pacino delivers a speech.

A new design for education

Carita in Veritate - Charity in Truth

Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, Eternal Love and Absolute Truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him, in order to realize it fully: in this plan, he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth he becomes free (cf. Jn 8:32). To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. Charity, in fact, “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor 13:6). All people feel the interior impulse to love authentically: love and truth never abandon them completely, because these are the vocation planted by God in the heart and mind of every human person. The search for love and truth is purified and liberated by Jesus Christ from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it, and he reveals to us in all its fullness the initiative of love and the plan for true life that God has prepared for us. In Christ, charity in truth becomes the Face of his Person, a vocation for us to love our brothers and sisters in the truth of his plan. Indeed, he himself is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6). (Third encyclical written by Pope Benedict XVI, 29 June 2009)

Noam Chomsky, critic, linguistic scientist

Chomsky first came to prominence in 1959, with the argument, detailed in a book review (but already present in his first book, published two years earlier), that contrary to the prevailing idea that children learned language by copying and by reinforcement (ie behaviourism), basic grammatical arrangements were already present at birth. The argument revolutionised the study of linguistics; it had fundamental ramifications for anyone studying the mind. It also has interesting, even troubling ramifications for his politics. If we are born with innate structures of linguistic and by extension moral thought, isn't this a kind of determinism that denies political agency? What is the point of arguing for any change at all?

Walk in her shoes

Walk in her shoes.

Public Invitation

Asian Development Bank, No-Impact week

Awareness on the relationship between human activity and the environment has been pointed out environmentalist Rachel Carson on her book the silent spring. ADB is doing its job on protecting our shared environment. Watch this video.

Chimpanzee greetings, teach us.

Jane Goodall teaches who the chimpanzee greets welcome. http://www.ted.com/playlists/84/ancient_clues.html

Julie Ann Rodelas updated case

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/357611/arrest-of-brains-in-models-slay-legal Click on link for update

Why the dispute at the islets at West Philippine Sea?

Why is it that China and other countries in Southeast Asia have claims to Spratlys, Paracels and Scarborough islands? Clink on the link.

Mali, French forces pushing the rebels.

French forces responded to Mali's request to remove the rebel forces north of Mali. Click on the link.

Can we sustain the economic growth? Ted Talk

Is God close to the male specie?

Is God close to the male specie? What is the place of women in this socially constructed hierarchy?

Final Exam, Second Semester, 2012-2013

Final Exam 2013-2014 First Semester Final Exam, SO 101, Film Analysis 1. This is your final semester exam. The weight of this work is 50 points. 2. You are to group yourselves into 3 person per group. You can do an individual work or in tandem. 3. You are to submit at least 5 film titles for selection and approval of your teacher. Once it is selected you have to view the film. Format: a. Title and group members, schedule. b. Summary of the film. One page. c. Film analysis using 30 sociological terms. Highlight the terms in different color. d. State the conflict and the resolution. e. Individual reflection of group members on what is it working with the group. f. Film trivia. g. Expenses incurred by members in coming out with the final project. Ask your teacher for the model work. Purchase a CD that is friendly to you pocket. No downloading from the computer. See local CD or DVD outlet. State if you are going to donate the CD copy. Deadlines will be announced.

Video on culture

Make a group with 4 members. You are to present 2 video from You Tube on cultural practices of Other's culture. The third one will be cultural practices of Filipino. Schedule will be announced.

Lesson on dying

A lesson on dying. She has pancreatic cancer and she wanted to teach to students what is dying. She died 29 December 2012.

Imagined Communities

My point of departure isthat nationality, or, as one might prefer to put it in view of that word's multiple significations, nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind. Read this article in preparation for an activity this month.

Thy Womb, A filipino film, a riveting review

Thy Womb a riveting review by, Tito Genova Valiente. Click onlink

Church and State

I think the young Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, expressed this concept very well at a press conference in Rome this year. Explaining the principal message of the recent bishops’ synod on the new evangelization, he said: “In the message, we find a humble church, admitting that it does not understand everything that’s happening in the world. That it’s confused, that it has suffered, but it also admits its share in the wounds of society…. Humility for the Church is not a strategy; it is the way of Jesus. It is how God manifested himself to us in Jesus, and loved us in the form of Christ crucified.” Click above for the link.

Bishop Socrates Villegas statement hit by editorial

Read the article Contraception is not corruption. In a group with 5 members, discuss this issue. Research on the pros and cons of the Reproductive health bill. (As of this writing the Congress is going to tackle this bill 17 Dec. 2012). Write a two page report on your discussion. write the salient points of the article and reflect on those. You can also look for the full-text of Bishop Villegas pastoral letter. Submission of the 2-3 page report is on 22 & 23 Janauary.

Help Victims of TPablo and solidarity with ESI partner community.

SO 101 students, those who were not able to bring their donation. 3 classes will be donating the canned goods via INSA. INSA has a way to send it to Mindanao. 2 classes will donate goods going to ESI partner community at Tanay. Bring 3 canned goods for each student as donation. Deadline is 18th and 19th December. Submit to assigned collectors. All class hours.

Pyramid scam, Amman no futures

My sense is that everyone, except maybe the smallest investors, knew there was something irregular or illegal in this venture, and that it was bound to fail. But they didn’t seem to mind making a quick profit while the money lasted, probably thinking they would be able to get out before the collapse. They seemed confident that their inside connections would protect them. That’s the way a premodern society works.

Assignment on culture

Assignment on culture: Read the concept on cultural relativity, set up a group of five members and do a research and make a paper, 2 pages. Do not work on individual basis unless you have a good reason. State the reason behind the cultural practice. Example, what is the supposed reason for the female genital mutilation. Look for at least 10 cultural practices. State the name of society, the practice and the reason or the background of the said practice. Deadline: 6 & 7 December respectively according to schedule of classes. Please leave 3 inches margin from Word format as clear top page space. 12 points Arial, double space. Do not forget to indicate group names, date of submission, schedule and section. Any verbal instruction made inside our classroom is overruled by this document.

Causes of Poverty, BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-20398513 BBC explores the causes of poverty. Click on link.

The coming of reason, James Burke

A matter of fact, James Burke

Dumb ways to die

Order, rules, ritual

James Burke essays on order, rules and ritual. Watch this.

Gutenberg's printing that changed the world

Our world in 2020, a futuristic look

Amman Futures, Inflation of Trust

Pagadian city is reeling from the typhoon Amman Futures that visited them since January engulfing many to thy kingdoms come. More of this will unfold in the coming days. Heads will roll, some committed suicide, what will be the next. The future is just unfolding. Click below. Gullibility is relative. Its opposite is not cleverness but the inability to trust. Between the two poles lies a wide range of individual types who make decisions based on a combination of instinct, solid information and firm guarantees. We all belong to any of those types, as do most of Pagadian City’s small savers. As it usually happens, the higher the returns, the greater the risks—meaning, there is little information to go by and no guarantees. In such situations, one tends to go by one’s instincts and the assurances of people whose judgment we trust.

Amman Futures Pyramid Scam

Bring at last 2 newspaper clippings on 29th, 30th November. Subject matter is about the recent Amman Futures Pyramid scam. In a group of 5, discuss the article and submit a paper on why people get duped with this kind of proposal. One page only on bulletized format. All in word-processing format. Short bond paper. Write your group members, you section and schedule. Clippings will be submitted. State the date of your clippings and source.

Motivation

Born to learn

Taking risks

Where do good ideas come from? Steven Johnson

Pyramid scam

A company managed by a former janitor and driver, and founded just early this year, has duped at least 15,000 people in Mindanao and the Visayas of P12 billion in a pyramid scam, an official of the National Bureau of Investigation said Tuesday. Read the article and we will schedule discussing this. Read on "group-think", following the crowd, critical thinking, http://globalnation.inquirer.net/56132/thousands-gypped-in-p12-billion-scam

Julie Ann Rodelas

Read news articles on Julie Ann. See what lesson can be learned from this horrible crime. We will discuss this on 23, 24 Nov. Bring along newspaper clippings.

Human Evolution

Please watch Carl Sagan's 4-minute video essay on human evolution. There is a search box in this blogspot and write evolution.

Stereotypes

I just got this link for facebook. Please click the link and see how the designers sees the world. http://alphadesigner.com/mapping-stereotypes/

Capitalism's Crisis by David Harvey

http://www.upworthy.com/an-honest-look-at-why-the-world-is-in-debt?c=to1# Click on this: David Harvey

Paper, Whys is our electricity bill so high?

This will be your last regular paper for September. Watch the animation on "Why is our electricity so high?" Send your discussion paper answering this question: Are the arguments discussed in the animation convincing? If yes, why? If no, why not? Do you think this kind of arrangement will continue in the next five years? If yes, why? If no why not? 27-28 September deadline respective schedule. Double space 12-points. A group shall compose of 4-members. Not exceeding this number,4. Below, it's ok.

Why is your electricity bill that high?

Watch this animated illustration to understand how the sins of the past, the capital intensive nature of the power industry, market forces, and moves for cleaner energy sources make their way into the electricy bill.

Clash of Culture?

I did not convert to Islam, nor did my Egyptian friends become atheists. But I learned an important lesson from our discussions: that I hadn’t properly thought through some of the most basic convictions underlying my way of life and worldview — from God’s existence to the human good. The challenge of my Egyptian friends forced me to think hard about these issues and defend views that had never been questioned in the European student milieu where I came from. Click on colored link.

New Theist

A new breed of theist is emerging in nearly every denomination and religion across the globe, and many of us are grateful to the New Atheists for calling us out of the closet. New Theists are not believers; we’re evidentialists. We value scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence over ancient texts, religious dogma, or ecclesiastical authority. We also value how an evidential worldview enriches and deepens our communion with God (Reality/Life/Universe/Wholeness/Great Mystery). New Theists are not supernaturalists; we’re naturalists. We are inspired and motivated more by this world and this life than by promises of a future otherworld or afterlife. This does not, however, mean that we diss uplifting or transcendent experiences, or disvalue mystery. We don’t. But neither do we see the mystical as divorced from the natural. As secular Jews differ from fundamentalist Jews, New Theists differ from traditional theists. While most of us value traditional religious language and rituals, and we certainly value community, we no longer interpret literally any of the otherworldly or supernatural-sounding language in our scriptures, creeds, and doctrines. Indeed, we interpret all mythic “night language” as one would interpret a dream: metaphorically, symbolically. New Theists practice what might be called a “practical spirituality.” Indeed, spirituality for us mostly means the mindset, heart-space, and tools that assist us in growing in right relationship to reality and supporting others in doing the same. New Theists are legion; we are diverse. Many of us continue to call ourselves Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu. We may also self-identify as emergentist, evidentialist, freethinker, neo-humanist, pantheist, panentheist, or some other label. New Theists don’t believe in God. We know that throughout human history the word “God” has always and everywhere been a meaning-filled interpretation, a mythic and inspiring personification of forces and realities incomprehensible in a pre-scientific age. We also know that interpretations and personifications don’t exist or fail to exist. Rather, they are more or less helpful, more or less meaningful, more or less inspiring. New Theists view religion and religious language through an empirical, evidential, evolutionary lens, rather than through a theological or philosophical one. Indeed, an ability to distinguish subjective and objective reality—practical truth (that which reliably produces personal wholeness and social coherence) from factual truth (that which is measurably real) is one of the defining characteristics of New Theists. New Theists are religious naturalists. We do not have a creed (we’re not that organized), but if we did, it might simply be this… Reality is our God, evidence is our scripture, integrity is our religion, and ensuring a healthy future for the entire body of life is our mission. By “reality is our God” we mean that honoring and working with what is real, as evidentially and collectively discerned, and creatively imagining what could be in light of this, is our ultimate concern and commitment. By “evidence is our scripture” we mean that scientific, historic, and cross-cultural evidence provide a better understanding and a more authoritative map of how things are and which things matter (or what’s real and what’s important) than do ancient mythic writings or handed-down wisdom. By “integrity is our religion” we mean that living in right relationship to reality and helping others and our species do the same is our great responsibility and joy. By “ensuring a healthy future for the entire body of life is our mission” we mean that working with people of all backgrounds and beliefs in service of a vibrant future for planet Earth and all its gloriously diverse species (including Homo sapiens) is our divine calling and privilege. Why call ourselves “theists” at all if we’re not supernatural, otherworldly believers? Simply this… All theological “isms” (e.g., theism, deism, pantheism, atheism) came into being long before we had an evolutionary understanding of emergence. Therefore, all such concepts are outdated, misleading, and unnecessarily divisive if they are not redefined and reinterpreted in an evolutionary context. Other terms that have been offered, in addition to “New Theist,” include “evolutionary theist,” “naturalistic theist,” “evolutionary humanist,” “religious humanist,” “post-theist,” “mytheist,” and “creatheist” (pronounced variously, and humorously, as “crea-theist” or “cree-atheist”). Labels are far less important to us than celebrating the fact that we are naturalists who wish to be counted among the religious of the world—no less than all others who are devoted to something sacred and larger than themselves. Whatever our differences, we are evidentialists, committed to living upstanding moral lives in service of a just and thriving future for humanity and the larger body of life. We see this as Religion 2.0.

Final Exam project 2012-13 Second semester

Final Exam 2012-2013 Second Semester Final Exam, SO 101, Film Analysis 1. This is your final semester exam. The weight of this work is 50 points. 2. You are to group yourselves into 3 person per group. You can do an individual work or in tandem. 3. You are to select a film of your choice (to be approved by your teacher) in which you are going to analyze the film and using sociological terms that you have understood in our lesson. 4. A minimum of 30 sociological terms will be used in your film analysis. 5. Parts of your work: A - Title Page which contains the groups member's names, section and schedule. B - One page summary of the film. C - Film Analysis. Written essay tackling the film's theme, the problem or conflict involved or how it was resolved. D - Individual reflection of the members on how it is working with your group mates. E - Trivia of the film. F - Expenses in coming out with the production of the film analysis. 6. You can select any English or Tagalog film available at the market. The CD will be submitted with the film analysis and will not be returned. Thus purchase a CD that is affordable. 7. Deadline of the film analysis will be TTh -... , WF ... will be announced. 8. Ask for the model of the film analysis from your teacher. It is available for you to view. On our regular meeting, I will be needing at least 3 suggested titles that you wanted to analyze. Please submit the list in our class. Draft work will be shown: 5 & 6 March. Video on culture: 25 pts. Flag re-conceptualize 25 pts. Final film analysis: 50 pt.

Globalize This

The jobs are now being done for lower wages. This is, after all, the main reason manufacturing has moved to the third world; to take advantage of lower wages. This lowers costs, enough to pay for relocation and even added shipping costs. Efficient, right?

Digital ethnography, how does it affect you?

Digital ethnography and a new world. Click on the link. http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch?feature=results_main

RH Bill and Case against academic education? Assignment

Read the article written by Fr. Joaquin Bernas SJ and view the Case against academic education found in this blog spot. Discuss the paper and the video with your group members comprising of 4 members. If you agree with some of the ideas presented, write why you agree with it. If you do not agree with some of the ideas presented, write why you do not agree. Not exceeding 3 pages. Same format. Deadline: TTh, 30 Aug. WF, 31 Aug. Submit to your section paper collector for signing. Do not forget to indicate the date, your section and your class schedule. Thus, you are going to submit two group work.

RH bill a view from a religious

RH bill: Don’t burn the house to roast a pig By: Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas S. J. Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:51 am | Monday, August 6th, 2012 6975 6103 A little over a year ago, or on May 22, 2011 to be exact, I wrote an article for the Inquirer titled “My stand on the RH bill.” With the vote on the Reproductive Health (RH) bill approaching, people have asked me whether my stand on the bill has changed. Let me restate the salient points I made then. First, let me start by saying that I adhere to the teaching of the Church on artificial contraception even if I am aware that the teaching on the subject is not considered infallible doctrine by those who know more theology than I do. I know that some people consider me a heretic and that at the very least I should leave the priesthood. But my superiors still stand by me. Second (very important for me as a student of the Constitution and of church-state relations), I am very much aware of the fact that we live in a pluralist society where various religious groups have differing beliefs about the morality of artificial contraception, which is very much at the center of the controversy. But freedom of religion means more than just the freedom to believe. It also means the freedom to act or not to act according to what one believes. Hence, the state should not prevent people from practicing responsible parenthood according to their religious belief, nor may churchmen pressure President Aquino, by whatever means, to prevent people from acting according to their religious belief. As the Compendium on the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church says: “Because of its historical and cultural ties to a nation, a religious community (like the Catholic Church) might be given special recognition on the part of the State. Such recognition must in no way create discrimination within the civil or social order for other religious groups”; and “Those responsible for government are required to interpret the common good of their country not only according to the guidelines of the majority but also according to the effective good of all the members of the community, including the minority.” Third, the obligation to respect freedom of religion is also applicable to the state. Thus, I advocate careful recasting of the provision on mandatory sexual education in public schools without the consent of parents. (I assume that those who send their children to Catholic schools accept the program of Catholic schools on the subject.) My reason for requiring the consent of parents is, in addition to the free exercise of religion, there is the constitutional provision which recognizes the sanctity of the human family and “the natural and primary right of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character.” (Article II, Section 12) Fourth, the duty to care for sexual and reproductive health of employees should be approached in a balanced way so that both the freedom of religion of employers and the welfare of workers will be attended to. In this regard it may be necessary to reformulate the provisions already found in the Labor Code. Fifth, I hold that public money may be spent for the promotion of reproductive health in ways that do not violate the Constitution. Thus, for instance, it may be legitimately spent for making available reproductive materials that are not abortifacient. Public money is neither Catholic, nor Protestant, nor Muslim or what have you and may be appropriated by Congress for the public good without violating the Constitution. Sixth, we should be careful not to distort what the RH bill says. The RH bill does not favor abortion. The bill clearly prohibits abortion as an assault against the right to life. Seventh, in addition, I hold that abortifacient pills and devices should be banned by the Food and Drug Administration. However, determining which of the pills in the market are abortifacient is something for the judicial process to determine with the aid of science experts. Our Supreme Court has already upheld the banning of at least one device found to be abortifacient. Eighth, I am dismayed by preachers telling parishioners that support for the RH bill ipso facto is a serious sin or merits excommunication! I find this to be irresponsible. Ninth, I claim no competence to debate about demographics. Tenth, I have never held that the RH bill is perfect. But if we have to have an RH law, I intend to contribute to its improvement as much as I can. I hold that the approval of the RH bill today will not end all debate about it. It will only shift the arena for debate from the raucous and noisy rally fields to the more sober judicial arena where reason has a better chance of prevailing. Finally, there are many valuable points in the bill’s Declaration of Policy and Guiding Principles which are desperately needed especially by poor women who cannot afford the cost of medical service. There are specific provisions which give substance to these good points. They should be saved even if we must litigate later about those which we disagree on. In other words, let us not burn the house just to roast a pig.

Case against academic education?

Noise your concern

Masakit na pananalita

20 words to change you life

China's claim to Scarborough shoal is baseless

China's claim to Scarborough shoal is baseless. Click on the link and read full article.

Future of Crime

The future of Crime by Marc Goodman. Watch.

Contemporary Health Studies

As a course leader of an undergraduate degree in health studies, I was often asked by students if I could recommend a really good book that would cover the key things that they needed to know when they were starting their 3 year degree programme. I wasn’t able to make such a recommendation at that time. Yes there are some books that touch upon relevant material, but many did not entirely cover the curriculum that I was delivering, and many were written in styles that I found unenticing hence my reluctance to provide a single recommendation.

Is China Buying the world?

How to make optimism work for you - NYT

His approach to life could serve as a battle plan for the millions of recent college graduates now searching for work in an unforgiving job market, as well as for older adults trying to re-enter the workplace after a long hiatus and those who lost jobs and must now reinvent themselves. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/how-to-make-optimism-work-for-you-2/?smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=BL-E-FB-SM-LIN-HTM-070512-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Higgs Boson, being sure

Daughter talks about fame and power

This is an article written by Sue Erikson Bloland. She is the daughter of Erik Erikson. My father was a tall man with an impressive shock of white hair, which gave him a distinctive and dignified look. He had kindly eyes and a gentle face. He appeared to be the quintessential father figure: concerned, compassionate, and knowing. With the advent of his fame he acquired a larger-than-life social aura, a special air of confidence, which nourished people's fantasies about him and suggested that he felt as wise and as comfortable with himself as they perceived him to be. His words, even his most casual remarks, were heard as profoundly meaningful, because of the reverence accorded their source. And people often felt deeply understood by him even in the course of a brief conversation -- the profundity of his empathic responses was magnified by his aura.

SO 101 Read Higgs boson article

Read the article by Randy David on Higgs boson God particle. A two page reflection paper on the said article will have 2 plus points. This is an optional paper. Deadline respectively in synchronize with your class schedule, 24 and 25 July, class hours only.

Higgs boson God particle

The God particle, written by Randy David A few days ago, my 11-year-old granddaughter, Julia, who is in Grade 6 at Miriam, a Catholic school, came up to me asking: “Lolo, why did God create the world?” It was a question her teacher in Christian Living Education had given to the class to think about over the weekend. “Hmm, let me see,” I said, quite flustered, but trying not to show it. Click on the link for the full article.

Socialization Model