Big fight at NAIA/Airframe

I couldn't help but give my ten centavos worth on what happened to NAIA, the Raymart-Claudine-Tulfo thing. What happened happened and there's nothing that could be done about it and all the charges and counter charges would not go anywhere.

Cebu Pacific was blamed.  NAIA was blamed.  Now the security guards and the airport police were also being blamed and their jobs were threatened. I just hope that these minimum wager earners would not lose their jobs because of this incident because faced with the situation of two famous personalities fighting, screaming, and rioting, these poor security personnel were overwhelmed and it was understandable how difficult it must be for them to decide who to hold, what to touch, what to say...I mean.


Secretary Roxas was correct in saying that the whole thing was an attitude problem and the reactions and the finger pointing was unwarranted.  After the emotions ebb and the issue grew old, everything would be forgotten and everything would be back to normal.

That's how it is, things move on. I just hope that after all is settled,  no job would be lost. 

Anyway, to serious matter: here are some lucky numbers for the Santiago-Tulfo brouhaha. 

  Swertres lotto 4-4-1, 0-4-8,0-1-4,7-0-9

 4 Digit lotto 6-7-1-5, 1-6-5-4,0-1-1-0,1-6-6-0 

 Based on Birthday Raymart Santiago - July 20, 1973 

Swertres- 5-5-5, 4-1-5 4 digit- 5-4-2-8, 9-3-4-3

 Claudine Barreto 

Swertres -8-6-0, 2-7-6 4 Digit -6-5-4-8, 9-1-9-7

No, I do not gamble...just having fun with the issue.

__________________________

I have finished reading an old Crichton novel that has been lying in the house for almost ten years. It was my brother's book. I have read thirteen novels by Crichton that I thought I had enough of his novels, but I was bored so I picked it up. I read, and I was not able to stop until I finished the book.

Of course this was a work of fiction (Crichton's novels are well researched) but the book did present some  issues about the deregulated airline industry specifically about the safety of the old planes being bought, reconditioned and flown by small starting (budget)  airline companies and also about the danger of bootleg (pirated) airplane parts.. 

Anyway...makes one wonder how safe these budget airlines are.

Miracle in the Dirt (not that dirt)

  

I and a lot of people have often wondered why it is that the relatively well off people are prone to sickness rather than those who live in poverty areas. I know of a politician’s daughter who died from eating street food. I also know individuals who cannot eat food other than what their family prepared because of fear of getting some stomach bugs or something. There is this fear of microbes and germs and bacteria that they observe the most stringent hygiene they can well afford. But why is it that they are more prone to infection than the unwashed.

Of course, for someone like me who grew up in a depressed area, children playing in the dirt are a common sight. I also grew up like this, playing in the dirt, swimming in the carabao pond, catching catfish and mudfish in the drainage canals, eating junkfoods without washing hands, etc.  For those who are relatively more educated (like me, now) and well off (not like me) are shocked at this sight but what is significantly true is that these children seldom get sick and if they do get sick, they recover quite easily with little or no intervention from doctors unlike the well off whose first instinct at a sign of a fever is to go to a doctor and bombard their children with medicines.

Of course, the theory is that exposure to dirt, grimes and other unhygienic stuff boosts the unwashed immunity against bugs—this is both a theory and a joke, stinging joke, may I add. 

We use antibacterial soap to wash our hands, we swab doorknobs with antibacterial wipes, we pop antibiotics at the first sign of disease - all to avoid infection. But we are all infected. From before birth to after death, infection is what makes humans human. In a startling, chilling, and inspiring narrative, veteran microbiologist, and author Gerald Callahan, explores the world of the microscopic creatures that live on, in, and around us. Did you know that: our overuse of antibiotics is placing us on then cusp of a resurgence of diseases we had thought long conquered? and, many ailments - from schizophrenia and gastric ulcers to obsessive-compulsive disorder - are now being linked to infections? Infection will awaken you to the microscopic brethren that ensure our health as well as take it from us. For better or worse, infection shapes our lives. From book jacket

I am reading a book (sale) that I bought from National Bookstore titled “Infection: The Uninvited Universe” by Gerald Callahan and there was a chapter about what I have mentioned about: The Miracle in the Dirt: The Hygiene Hypothesis p. 223 ff. The book cited a research done on the two Germanys, the well off West and the poverty stricken communist East and Dr Mutius, the researcher, has come up with some startling conclusions that seem counter intuitive to what we have been taught about hygiene.

1. Children who grew up in the dirtiest conditions had the fewest allergies and asthma.
2. Long term and early exposure to stables and farm milk induces a strong protective effect against the development of astha.
3. Childhood exposure to bacyeria, particularly a group called gram-negative bacteria, correlates inversely with the frequency of asthma among school age children in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
4. There was also a research in Boston where investigators collected dust samples from infants’ bedrooms floors, mattresses , family rooms, kitchens and the result correlated with Dr. Mutius research.
5. The higher the level of endotoxin in children’s mattresses, the lower the incidence of asthma.
6. The more bacteria the children have been exposed to, the healthier they are.

I am still reading the book. Of course, I don’t pretend to understand any of this stuff and I don't know if the research is applicable or could be duplicated here in the Philippines because ours is a tropical country etc. blah, blah, blah,  but it just shows misconception abound. Anyway, always be aware of the caveats…good reading though.

CS Lewis

I was looking around for books on sale at National bookstore and I saw this book by CS Lewis, The Complete CS Lewis Classic Collection. Even though it was on sale, it was still expensive. I checked the table of contents and it cointained 7 of Lewis' classics; it was the last copy on the stand. I looked around the bookstore debating with myself whether it was good investment to buy when I saw other Lewsi' books each costing about 5 hundred pesos each. I looked at their titles and they were sinlge books of the ones in the collection. I made a simple calculation and realized that the collection was a bargain.

Of course, I bought it. 

NCD

I secured a copy of Natural Church Development from my younger sister. I showed it to our church's Sunday school head but she thinks its too technical for some of our layman pastor. She suggested that we simplify it. Anyway, I am looking for help on how to make it accessible. I am looking for websites.

When Bad things happen to good people…

Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love him and forgive Him despite his limitations, as Job does, and as you once learned to forgive and love your parents event though they were not as wise, as strong, or as perfect as you needed them to be?

And if you can do these things, will you be able to recognize that the ability to forgive and the ability to love are the weapons God has given us to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in this less-than perfect world?

This is the conclusion to Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s best selling book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. I got my copy of his book from a used book shop. I picked it up because of the title and the writer. Though I didn’t know that Kushner is a famous rabbi, I was more interested to find out what a rabbi thinks about the problem of evil.

The book is a good read. It explored the problem of evil based on the rabbi’s experience of losing his son to progeria, or rapid aging. The book is mostly a confession, and according to the rabbi, it is not a theological book. The book was not written for scholars, in fact I believe it’s the most accessible and honest book that I have read about the problem of evil. But I was surprised to find out that a rabbi, of all the people, would deny the omnipotence and omniscience of God so that he could live with the knowledge that his God is a loving God that his God is not a cruel God!

He is right to say that we do not need to defend God. But he is wrong because I think what he meant, by reading the book, by not defending God is to betray God. Tsk,tsk,tsk this is what happens when one goes to the other side of the problem of evil. I can not find comfort that we are living in an imperfect world made and governed by an imperfect God! I would rather find comfort in the fact that we live in a fallen world made and governed by a perfect God.

How do we explain suffering then?

It’s just the way it is, it’s because of the fallen nature of man—we are imperfect beings living in an imperfect world! I would not dare go to explaining and giving analogies but that’s just the way things are and I do not have to defend God in the same way that I have to emasculate Him so that I could find comfort in the fact that God has nothing to do with sufferings. I am more than willing to accept that God caused our suffering and that God is cruel because we will miss the point of redemption and salvation if there’s no suffering.

Suffering is a human concept. It is only an organism that has a concept of a deeper meaning of pleasure, not just animal pleasure that can experience suffering. Animals cannot suffer. They can be tortured, they can experience pain but do they suffer the way humans do. Animals kill their children yet do they show grief? For the animals, suffering and joy are the same. They are part of their instinct.

My point is there’s something in us that make us suffer. Its not pain but its how we deal with pain that make us suffer. Without faith in an all powerful God, our suffering will be unbearable. Job has said it very well, “God may kill me, but still I will trust him and offer my defense.”

God is not asking us to defend Him, God is not asking to defend ourselves, God is not asking us to defend our faith in Him, and God is not asking us to do anything at all but to have faith in Him that He is in control.

Suffering is something we have to live and deal with. To explain suffering and to rationalize it is something we cannot do, it is best to admit our frailty, it is best to admit our helplessness when faced with suffering.

Of course the Rabbi is Jew hence he do not believe in The Messiah, but the suffering of Jesus on the cross, for us Christian, is a proof that God knew our suffering.

But there’s one thing I agree with in the book. It is the need to forgive God. In our sufferings we must have the heart to forgive God, not because he has sinned against us for that is not possible, but we have to forgive God because even if we understood Him and have faith in Him, our suffering caused us to unknowingly and sometimes knowingly build resentments against Him.

Yes, I agree with the Rabbi that we need to forgive God, too. Not because of what he had done or not what he had done but because we need to accept Him as He is-God.

CR Books

I was rummaging through used books at Booksale when I found a short story collection, “Sudden Fiction: International Edition.” The book is a collection of short short stories (2-3 pages) and for forty pesos; I did not think twice, I immediately bought the book because it’s the perfect book for our comfort room.

I read whenever I am on the throne depositing to mother earth all the processed fertilizers that I have accumulated in my stomach. It’s a habit. So I had books lined up in a makeshift bookshelf near the toilet. Usually the books that I put there are books that I had to review once in a while, there’s a book about logic, bible doctrine (yes, and this is not blasphemy) and sometimes especially, when I have LBM, I take with me, on the throne, classics like Herman Melville’s short (I wonder why they call these short stories in the first place when they are, in theory and practice, all epically long and I am talking about mere descriptions here!?) story collection.

The problem with reading books on the toilet is that when I become engrossed with a story or an article, I can’t stop, so I read on until my…hmm…dries up and when it’s time for me to wash my rect…rectifier… (We Filipinos wash, we do not wipe) I found it difficult to do because the thing is stuck dry on my…hmmm…rect…rectifier that I had to re-hydrate it to soften the hmmm… thing stuck on my hmmm…

Anyway, this book, “Sudden Fiction” is the best toilet book because the stories are long enough to complete the transaction and avoid dehydration through exposure to air of the…hmmm…

I have read some of the stories and although the collectors brag that they’re the best collection so far, for me there are good stories and there are some stories that are simply unintelligible…maybe it’s because of culture, language, subjectivity, relativity and the lack of motility in my stomach. Ehehhhhee..hhhheeeeee….

Book List

Here are some of the books that I have just finished reading:

1. The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant.


I bought this paper back brand new. I removed the price tag because I don’t want my wife to see how much it costs. I feel guilty buying brand new books because a brand new paperback here is equivalent to almost fifteen kilos of rice, enough rice for us for two weeks but the book is worth it.

Dr. Durant described Kant as, “…like and unlike Jehovah. He speaks through clouds, but without the illumination of the lightning flash.” I have tried reading Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” and after a few pages I gave up. I was confused, discouraged and sick (all those abstract words!). But after reading that Kant’s friend, Herz, a man versed in speculation according to Dr. Durant, returned the book half read saying he feared insanity if he went on with it I am challenged to reread it again, maybe for…hmm…fun or torture.” Maybe next year I will reread the book again, or next decade...he,he,he…

I love Nietzsche for his honesty and bravery and Dr. Durant has this to say about him: “Nietzsche has been refuted by every aspirant to respectability; and yet he stands as a milestone in modern thought and a mountain peak in German prose…He spoke with bitterness, but with valuable sincerity; and his thoughts went through the clouds and cobwebs of the modern man like cleansing lightning and a rushing wind. The air of European philosophy is clearer and fresher now because Nietzsche wrote.”

Rating: Very Good!

2. Battlestar Galactica by Glen A. Larson and Robert Thurston


I am an avid Sci-fi fan Hmmmm…Battlestar Glactica was one of all my time TV sci-fi favorites. I was ten years old when the series was first shown in the Philippines. The special effects were outstanding. This was where I first saw Dirk Benedict, a matinee idol then. Then I saw him again on the series A-Team. But after A-Team, Dirk “the Face” disappeared on Philippine Television. I don’t know what happened to him.

I dreamed of owning a model of the battlestar after my father brought home an AAFE (US Army-Airforce Catalog) catalog showing models of Galactica, Enterprise, Eagle (from Space 1999) and other spacecraft from classic sci-fi series.

It was fun reading the book version of the TV series.

Rating: Fun!

3. Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau



I love the outdoors. I was a former boy scout patrol leader during my grade school and high school days. But going on outdoor activities and reading other people’s outdoor activities are very, very different things. Walden is a bore with a super duper capital letter “B.” I bought the book because I have read a lot of good things about it. I started reading it about a couple of months ago and to tell the truth I didn’t finish Walden but I did finish reading “On Civil Disobedience.”

It’s a classic and sometimes one has to read a classic for stock knowledge (definitely not stimulation for the classics are, in reality, soporific literatures).

Reading this classic is like riding in a classic car. Upon riding a classic car one expects to feel the atmosphere of the era of the car, but sooner disappointed to find out that the car has poor suspension, no air-conditioning, the space cramped and the engine noisy…so instead of enjoying the trip the passenger develops calluses on his butt.

Rating: Call me a caveman but this book is “Booooriiiiiiiinnngggggggg!!!

4. The Elements of Preaching by Wiersbe and Wiersbe.

This little book is patterned after Strunk and White’s “Element of Style” and it’s a very good guide for lay preachers. But…hmmm…. Anyway, the book is like those books I hated, grammar books, lots of rules and suggestions etc. Reading it feels like my hand was being tied behind my back. The book is an old book from my brother's book shelf.

Rating: Hmmmmm….Good.


I have a lot of catching up to do with my reading.

The Lathe of Heaven

Dreams. I have always had this fascination about dreams, so mysterious and powerful. I am not talking about aspirations or those things that people dream while they’re awake. I’m talking about dreams that people have when they are asleep.

Imagine having the power to make your dream come true, I mean literally come true. It would be fascinating and at the same time scary waking up to a different world every time you wake up.


Imagine having the power to change reality through dreams.

I read this interesting sci-fi classic (it was made into a movie according to the cover) by Ursula K. Le Guin (one of the best in the genre) titled “The Lathe of Heaven.” The story is about a man whose dream can change reality.

The novel was set in future, the year 2002, a time when there are tamed aliens roaming the earth.

George Orr realized that whatever he dreamed became reality. Not all his dreams could do it, only the “effective” ones; the ones that are produced in deep sleep. He was afraid of this power, so he avoided sleeping. He took prohibited drugs that gave him dreamless sleep.

Orr was caught using other people’s prescription. He was arrested and taken to counseling. He was given a choice, voluntary therapeutic treatment (VTT) or Obligatory therapeutic treatment (OTT), which is the nut house. George submitted himself to the VTT program. His therapist is Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist and a researcher on dreams. Haber discovered Orr’s power. He used hypnosis and a device of his own design which he called “the Augmentor”…(hmmm…the Augmentor… an interesting name that sounds more like a plastic surgeon’s device) to manipulate Orr’s dreams to change the world, to make it a better world.

Haber, through hypnosis, asked Orr to solve the population problem and through this suggestion Orr dreamt of a less populated world. But when George woke up, he was shocked to find out that in this world that his dream created, billions of people died because of a plague, and that solved the overpopulation problem but the death of those billions of people was on his conscience. He kept the memory of the past realities, Dr. Haber kept them too, but the world has no idea that reality was being changed by Orr’s dreams. The change was so complete that if Orr dreamt of a pink dog, even evolution will produce a pink dog; the changes are untraceable except for Orr, Haber and a lady lawyer.

Haber made Orr solve wars. When Orr woke up to a new world, there was unity in the world, the only problem was there was an alien invasion and this is what made the warring countries unite—in defense of earth.

Haber made Orr solve racial discrimination. When Orr woke up, all the people in the world has one skin color. There was no racial discrimination, but people with sickness and diseases were arrested and euthenized.

Problems were solved by Orr’s dreams but the dreams have its own way of solving the problem; Orr has no control over it. Orr has no power over his dreams.

Orr only wants the dreams to stop.

The sessions stopped and Haber took away Orr’s powers by telling Orr that his dream does not have the power to change reality.

Orr woke up to a normal life. He was on his way home, together with his wife, the lady lawyer, when he suddenly realized that something was not right. He watched as reality was being changed. He ran back to the lab and he found Dr. Haber sleeping with a device attached to his head. Orr realized that Haber had somehow discovered a way to have dreams like his. Haber was changing the world in his own image of it. Orr realized what would happen and stopped Haber.

Haber went mad and Orr continued on with his normal life.

(There are turtle like aliens in the story that knew dreams, but they speak different language so Orr can’t understand what in the world these aliens are saying about his dreams.)



Why do we have this reality? Once in a while we have these questions. I don’t know but the novel by Le Guin made me think about reality. Like the question my Sunday school students asked: Why do we have this reality and not the other reality where it’s the man who ate the apple in the Garden of Eden? (My reply to that was, would it make a difference because if that was the case then we would be thinking of a reality where it was the woman who ate the apple in the Garden of Eden and where back here thinking about a reality where it was the woman who ate the apple in the garden of Eden and if that were so, then we would be thinking of a reality where it was the man who ate the apple in the Garden of Eden…)

It’s like a game, we can think of having reality according to our image of it and would it still be a better world? Or each one of us can have realities of one’s own where one can be in control. Maybe this is madness, maybe insane people have this world of their own, a universe of their own and its us whose outside it, that’s why we can’t understand them or them us…Or it may even be true that each person has his own perspective on things that in a way made each individual’s experience of reality different from the other people’s experience of reality that what they are actually experiencing is a different reality from what the other is experiencing as their own reality, so, there’s this difference of experiences of realities from other people’s experiences of realities. We all have experiences of realities that is unique to our own…it’s like we are all interconnected realities and universe….I just made a breakthrough here! I have come to the very deep realization of what reality is really all about and I suddenly realized, it’s like the “Eureka phenomenon” you know, hey Eureka there’s something I realized about reality! That is reality is reality….is the realization that I need to go to the comfort room. I had too much fish cooked in coconut milk and it’s making me…realized that I’m losing touch of reality.

Maybe Leibniz is right when he said that this reality is the best reality we have, the best of all possible worlds.

I can live with that.

Le Guin’s book is outstanding, a classic. There is humanity in the story (what ever that means).

(I am reading an old Robert Heinlein novel about twins, telepathy, interstellar travel and psychology. I’ll talk some nonsense about it when I’m done.)

Hitler

I was looking through piles of brand new second hand books when the name Albert Speer and the book “Infiltration” caught my eye. I was wracking my brain trying to remember where I heard that name. So, I opened the book and read the synopsis and then I remembered reading Speer’s earlier book “Inside the Third Reich.” It was a few years ago when I bought a dilapidated paperback edition of that book. I was looking for it in my shelfr so that I could review it, but I can’t find it. (I had this habit of buying old books and then after reading them, I just forget about them. So whenever the titles books I had read were quoted in other books, I have this urge to look for the book and re-read them. Of course, most of the time, I can’t find them.)

Here’s an interesting description of Hitler:

Hitler so thoroughly embodied his politics, and all his helpers had so utterly lost their own will power, that Hitler’s person, rather than political considerations, counted for everything. In regard to anti-Semitism, Hitler could have safely taken a radical about face without his follower’s rebelling. For, example, there was unprotesting acceptance of his pact with the Soviet Union, which directly contradicted his doctrines of many years. Such denial of all the principles with which he had waged his struggle for power was accepted unthinkingly. His will alone determined destiny.

Infiltration is a book about Himmler and his plan to build an SS industrial empire.

(Actually this is the subtitle of the book. My gulay, I need to learn how to write book reviews!)

On aging and ageism

Fundamentally, the term “aging” is derived from the organic realm. Aging is also a social process, and as such it is accorded different cultural values in different settings. The terms “youth” and “age” belong to the rhetoric of this continuum of the biological life span, which is given different meanings in different societies. But we also apply these terms to artifacts. And when we do, the negative connotations attached to the term “age” when it is used to describe, for example, a material object that is falling apart (such as car or a washing machine), will return to the human domain laden with negative associations.

We also, of course, use the term “new” and “old” to describe both artifacts and organic beings--it’s a new tree, we say, or a “new” car. But we do not say that a computer or a blender are “young.” The problem, then, is that the term “old” but not the term “young” is transferable from the organic realm to the technological realm—and then back again. And generally speaking, in our technological culture there is nothing good about an artifact or a technology that is old. The supreme value is to work efficiently (which is understood to be synonymous with being new), not to breakdown. In short, I would argue that rhetoric (as well as social practices) of the technological culture of advanced capitalism contributes to widespread ageism against older generations.

Age relations are power relations—with the young generally holding the power over the old.
Kathleen Woodward
From Virtual Cyborgs to Biological Time Bombs:
Technocriticism and the Material Body

Books/Typhoon holiday Hang over

I am now at the school using the student publication computer. I have finished reading reading the book that a blogging friend has sent. And here's how I feel and think about the book. (I am trying to make use of my school break.)

When I opened the first page of the book and read a few chapters an alarm went off in my head, "Prosperity Gospel!"

I belong to a church that is composed mostly of the poor; a church situated in a poor neighborhood. I grew up in a poor family. Most of our pastors came from poor families who studied in poor schools. I grew up poor and up to now I'm still poor. I grew up thinking that being poor is good. I grew thinking that being poor is a blessing. So, naturally our theology is mostly the theology of the poor. I grew up thinking this way; thinking that God made some people poor so that his grace can be manifested wherein the day-to-day struggle for survival is seen as a virtue, an imitation of Christ. So upon reading the book I can't help but feel threatened or scared of what it is saying.

-

The book is a study of money. It is a biblical study on the rights of every Christian to be financially well off. In fact the books says that it is God's will for Christians to be prosperous, to share in the riches of God. The author cited biblical passages with sound interpretations to support his assertions. His challenge is true and practical for how can we expect the church to evangelize if the church has no money!

-

One thing about this book is its study of the foundations of Christian prosperity: salvation, service, sanctification and holiness that made this book sound.

-

Seek ye first...

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If we are prosperous in spirit why not in material wealth?

-

And I say why not?

-

A good book that made me rethink our theology of the poor. It made me rethink that being poor is not necessarily a virtue in the same light that being rich is not necessarily sin.

-

But I can't help but be scared.

Bad Textbook

I was listening to our ethics instructor discussing…hmmm…ethics and I was a little disappointed when the situations given by the instructor are not good situations that demands ethical exploration. (The instructor is a wonderful human being, kind and humble.) I can’t blame the instructor because, let’s face it, very few Filipinos are interested in the philosophy of morals even at the introductory level.

Anyways, I am not writing about the instructor but about the textbook that he is using. I looked at the title and the author and scan a few pages, and the book is one of those cut and pasted books that works more like a review outline—good for memorization but not for learning. The instructor was lamenting the fact that no sample situations were given in the book; in fact, nothing is discussed in the (I’m trying to restrain myself) that good for nothing waste of paper, called textbook.

Let me quote Dorothy Parker:

“This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

May I add, burn the darn book…burn it!

The quality of our text books is a manifestation of the general condition of our educational system.

(There are good textbooks but why don't we use them. Now, why is that?)

A Rose is a rose is a rose.

Now listen. Can’t you see that when the language was new—as it was with Chaucer and Homer—the poet could use the name of a thing and the thing was really there. He could say ‘O moon’, ‘O sea’, ‘O love’, and the moon and the sea and love was really there. And can’t you see that after hundreds of years had gone by and thousands of poems had been written, he could call on those words and find that they were just worn out literary words. The excitingness of pure being had withdrawn from them; they were just stale literary words. Now the poet has to work in the excitingness of pure being; he has got to get back that intensity into the language. We all know that it’s hard to write poetry in a late age; and we know that you have to put some strangeness, as something unexpected, into the structure of the sentence in order to bring back vitality to the noun. Now it’s not enough to be bizarre; the strangeness in the sentence structure has to come from the poetic gift, too. That’s why it’s doubly hard to be a poet in a late age. Now you all have seen poems about roses and you know in your bones that the rose is not there. All those songs that sopranos sings as encores about ‘I have a garden! Oh, what a garden!’ Now I don’t want to put too much emphasis on that line, because it’s just one line in a longer poem. But I notice that you all know it; you make fun of it, but you know it. Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying ‘…is a…is a…is a…’ Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for hundreds of years.

Gertrude Stein

Writings and Lectures

1909-1945

Sci-Fi and King Arthur

I just finished reading Alan Dean Foster’s “Life Form”. It’s a sci-fi novel about a group of scientist that landed on a terran planet, Xica. Here they found exotic life forms. But their greatest discovery was that of a humanoid being with human like intelligence. The scientists were surprised at the humanoids sophistication; they were also intrigued at the humanoids ceremonial wars. On further investigations they met an old man who called himself “Old Conc” who really was an old general on the level of Alexander the Great who suddenly disappeared on earth. They were surprised that the humanoid were Old Conc’s creations. The humanoids were anthromorphs (changelings). Old Cons found them and taught them how to morph (change) into humanoid form. He didn’t make them looked too human because Old Conc hated earth, that’s why he left it in the first place. Then tragedy struck the expedition and only few of the scientists survived. Old Conc gave the survivor a choice: leave the planet or help the humanoids in their hunger for knowledge. They chose to remain and play God.
This is one of the dominant themes in Sci-Fi novels: Man as gods or aliens as god (or the god).

I am holding Malory’s “ Le Morte D’Arthur”, and I’m thinking if I’ll be able to read the thing. I hate old English. (I mean, I don’t even like the King James Bible because the language is archaic.) But when I opened the pages I found that this Morte D’Arthur is written in modern English. It was a retelling by Keith Baines and I think I’m going to enjoy this Morte D’Arhur. This will be the fourth King Arthur book that I read. The first was Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex and the second was T.H. White’s the Once and Future King. I love T.H. White’s king Arthur especially since the story was told humorously and in reverse—the story started from the future. And the third Arthurian book I read was Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. All of them are wonderful read.

I hope I will enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed the rest.

Summer Books

These are the (used) books I’m reading this summer.

1. Christian Theology by: Millard J. Erickson. This is my brother textbook during his seminary days; he is now a missionary in Thailand. I’ve been using this book as a reference for my bible doctrine study. But this summer I plan to read it from cover to cover. (I plan, I plan, I plan….)

2. Church Leadership by: Lawrence O. Richards and Clyde Hoeldtke. This is also one of my brother’s theology books.

3. The Norton Reader Ninth Edition edited by: Linda H. Peterson, John C. Brereton and Joan E. Hartman. I’ve been reading a few selections from this reader but this summer I plan to read more of the essays in the collection.

4. The Conscious Reader Second Edition edited by: Caroline Shrodes, Harry Finestone and Michael Shugrue. Essays collection from some of the best essay writers.

5. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America Sixth Edition by: Leronne Bennet Jr. An eye opener. I always thought of black or Africans as a backward people (how ignorant and prejudiced of me, must be all those slave movies I saw). But I read in this book that there were African civilizations that used whites as slaves. Of course during those times slavery is not an issue of color but of spoils of war and this is the difference between the slavery practiced by blacks and the one practiced by the whites. A very good book.

6. Robert Frost Reader edited by: Edward Connery Lathem and Lawrence Thompson. I admit, I bought this book with the thought that it could add a “little” culture along with my eclectic collection of sci-fi, mystery, techno and what have you books in my shelf, but, I think this time I made a mistake. I can’t relate to most of the poems in here. But… it never hurts to try…poetry is an acquired taste…hmmmm…sleeping therapy?

Frost

My younger brother gave me money. What I did was go to my favorite mall, EVER GOTESCO MALL. (I like the mall because pirated CDs abound in there.) I paid our bills and then deposited some of the money to my account which is really my kuya's (older brother) account because that's where I deposit their meager savings, the rental from their house, of around twenty dollars a month. I was thinking of buying shirts; but then, I was magnetized by my favorite second hand bookstore. New title just arrived and I was rummaging thorugh them when I found a copy of a Jonathan Swift Collection and a Robert Frost reader. I am not a classic literature buff; in fact, I think of these books as the best and most effective cure for insomnia, but as a future teacher I must read some of this stuff even just thinly so that I will not be, I hope, caught by surprise by well read students. (My course is elementary education but I have plans to go into teaching college students too.)

I was weighing whether I will buy the Swift collection or the Frost reader. I can't buy both because I have a very small budget. It's a difficult choice. It's like choosing between an asthma attack and a rhinitis attack, or like eating bitter gourd as against eating burnt rice. I mean, who reads a classic? Twain is right: "A classic is a book that everyone hopes...." , dang, I forgot the classic quote.

Anyway I need a little poetry and culture: Frost it is, and Swift is the book not taken.

SCi FI stories

A few years ago I read a sci-fi short story that unfortunately I forgot the title and the author. The story is about a machine that does everything for man (or humanity). In the story humanity achieved a level of technology where in they perfected a machine that requires no human intervention in its operation and maintenance --the machine is perfect.

Since the machine does everything for man, man became free of the burden of work. The time came when all the designers and the engineers and all the science people who created the machine died. Generations come and generations go the machine worked as expected. Because the machine provided everything for man not only did work ceased, learning also ceased. Man regressed to ignorance.

For thousands of years the machine worked well. Then the time came when the machine starts to breakdown. Nothing is so perfect that time cannot wear down. The machine started to malfunction and the people, dependent on it, started to realize that something is not right. Since all the learning vanished and the scientific and technological knowledge that created the machine died a few thousand years earlier, man is helpless.

“What are we to do,” said the people to the leader.
“Machine is angry at us for we are not worshipping right,” said the leader.
“Read the book and pray!” The leader was holding aloft a thick book titled “Operating Manual”.
And they knelt down and prayed hard for forgiveness of their sins.

This is how I remember the story. And this story got me thinking of the internet and Tielhard de Chardin. The internet may one day evolved to deity and may one day become the machine, like in the story. Chardin argued that through evolution and the emergence of man (or humanity) evolution entered a new dimension and that is the development of the layer of the mind or the noosphere as opposed to the biosphere or the layer of living things covering the earth. As the power of the internet increases, so does the information it contains and process. It is the pool of man’s mind. Imagine information interacting, processing on the internet on surface of the earth—earth, in reality is evolving a layer of mind.

This got me thinking of Arthur C. Clarke’s Child Hood’s End. (Most of Clarke’s novels that I read are creepy: Space Odyssey series, Rendezvous with Rama, The Songs of the Distant Earth and Childhood’s End.)

One day there came to earth great ships manned by “overlords”. These overlords solved the world’s problem like hunger, war, poverty etc. and promoted a golden age. After a few generations then came the phenomenon of the children; children were born with special gifts or powers. These special children were collected by the overlords.

The “overlords” then revealed that they (the overlords) are nothing more than an instrument of a higher consciousness or the “overmind” and although they are technologically superior to the earthlings they are at the end of their evolution; they don’t have the earthlings’ potentiality to higher evolution.

Thus said the overlord:
“In the centuries before our coming, your scientists uncovered the secrets of the physical world…Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth…all the earlier changes your race has known took countless ages. But this is a transformation of the mind, not of the body. By the standards of evolution, it will be cataclysmic and instantaneous. It has already begun. You must face the fact that yours is the last generation of Homo sapiens.”

Then the overlords collected the children and left earth. The Homo sapiens left their childhood and evolved to a higher form.


Science fiction is creepy especially if you read some that was written during the 60’s and the 70’s because some their prophecies not only came true but some were even surpassed. Science fiction poses difficult question and they also provides profound answers to the questions they asked through stories that tickles and stimulate the imagination and entertains at the same time.

Another one is the story about the Kinimitz. Kinimitz are aliens that arrived on earth and solved men’s problems. They provided technology that solved war, hunger and poverty. The earth became paradise and all the earthlings became healthy, big and lean. Then came the invitation to visit the Kinimitz’ planet. Because of the promise of immortality, many volunteered and left earth happily. Then one earthman, a CIA cryptologist, decoded one book accidentally left by the Kinimitz in the UN assembly. He decoded the title of the book and it said “How to Prepare Man”. The cryptologist was thinking that the Kinimitz maybe preparing man for greater purpose in the universe. But on further decoding, he was shocked to find out that the book is really a cook book.

Buhay nga naman parang life.

Excerpts from Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

By: Larry Niven

What turns on a kryptonian?

Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, size, etc. Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is not a homo sapiens. What arouses Kal-Els mating urge?

What ever it is, Lois Lane probably doesn’t have it. We may assume that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like at errestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Louis Lane would feel like sodomy.

Assume a mating between superman and a human woman LL.

The problem is this. During orgasms one loses control over one’s muscles. Superman has been known to leave finger prints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration.

Superman would literally crush LL’s body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

Lastly, he’d blow off the top of her head. Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El’s semen would emerge with a muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy’s puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?)

Niven also analyzed the possibility and the complications of artificial insemination between Superman and LL; like how supersperms will behave inside LL’s ovary, the possibility of all the sperms fertilizing all LL’s eggs, how birthing will be for LL, instead of caesarian delivery the superbaby (or babies) will just rip LL’s stomach and run amok flying and whizzing around the nursery etc.

My 2006 Top 10 second hand books that I've actually read

1. The Dancing Wu Li Masters—Gary Zukav

The book literally blew my mind. I never thought that physics could be this...er…fun and troubling. All those theories about reality…more bizaare than Poul Anderson’s time paradox novels.

2. The Seat of the Soul—Gary Zukav

Eastern philosophy, theology and science.

“I was drawn again and again to the writings of William James, Carl Jung, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein…I found in them something special, although it was not until later that I was able to understand that special ness: these fellow humans reached for something greater than they were able to express directly through their work…they were mystics.”

3. For Whom the Bell Tolls—Ernest Hemmingway

Finally I was able to finish the book. Reading Hemmingway is like reading a play. There are traces of Gertrude Stein’s repetition in his writings, not surprising since they were friends.

4. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre—Walter Kaufmann

The book that taught me what existentialism is not all about.

5. Rendezvous with Rama—Arthur C. Clarke

From the master of space objects comes Rama, a floating Noah’s ark?

Now why is it that my Space Odyssey 3001 was missing from my library? The last guy who borrowed the book goes by the name of hmmmm…Gnatz.

6. Religion in Sociological Perspective—Keith Roberts

A scientific study of religion.

7. The Bluffer’s Guide to Philosophy—Jim Hankinson

Irreverent introductory book about philosophy that proves humor is the best way to teach difficult things.

8. The Communist Manifesto—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Why would anyone read this little read book?

9. Star Trek: The Motion Picture—Gene Roddenberry

I love Star Trek. I have a humble collection of 1960-70’s Star Trek Log series, lots of theology and philosophy in there.

10. The Cost of Discipleship—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Hmmmm…..No comments.

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“I suffer thirst, Govinda, and on this long Samana path my thirst has not grown less. I have always thirsted for knowledge. I have always been full of questions. Year after year I have questioned the Brahmins, year after year I have questioned the holy Vedas….I have spent a long time and have not yet finished, in order to learn this, Govinda: that one can learn nothing. There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only knowledge—that is everywhere, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I’m beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning.”

--Hermann Hesse