"If Sen. Jamby Madrigal cannot do without an armed bodyguard beside her, she should refrain from joining street demonstrations. That is the dictate of civic duty."
"Madrigal tells us her bodyguard’s gun was licensed.
But, dear senator, that is not the point.
The point is that the man brought his gun to the frontlines of a tense confrontation between the police and a political cult that was supposed to be engaged in peaceful protest. That might seem to be an act of minor stupidity. But it is nonetheless an act that put everyone else in the vicinity in great peril."
"Notwithstanding, I think Madrigal owes the nation an apology.
Tito Guingona, former vice-president was there. I don’t think he had bodyguards.
Fr. Robert Reyes was there and, as always, believed he was protected by the archangels.
A host of others were there, bare as they should be as they profess a variant of politics we might not all agree on but could agree to respect. When someone goes to a political demonstration, it should be sufficient to feel that one is surrounded by others of the same belief and is therefore protected by number and comradeship."
"If she does not have the courage to march without armed cover for a cause she claims to hold, how can we call her a peaceful protestor? How can we accept the conviction she flaunts as sincere?"It was such a stupid thing to do. How could we have elected this person to the Senate.
Which makes this story applicable the world over and in all media outlets. Maybe the media, including those in the Philippines can learn form this experience.
- because it was a unique opportunity to make a big joke, kind of like "punk'd" but with TV as the victim, and moreover without having all the means of TV stations at our disposal.
- because the opportunity makes the criminal... The journalist offered us the opportunity for the hoax right away during the very first contact. That he could read the web pages of Destroy-Escort and think that it's real is simply mind-boggling. And if he didn't read those pages before contacting us then it would show a complete lack of professionalism. So, yes, our main reason is this: we created this hoax without any other real reason than because we were given the opportunity, because we belong to communities that are too often stigmatized by television. We weren't able to resist for more than two minutes the temptation to give some TV people a taste of their own medicine by showing that sometimes - if not "often" - what's on television is just nonsense...
- because it was intolerable that such a powerful communication tool - by the size of its audience - didn't go through the pains of checking what they say. As Denise Fabre was happy to remind us all during the show: "When one works in TV, one has to be careful about what one says..." It's a matter of responsibility on the part of the one who speaks and of respect towards those who listen to him through that mass media that is television. The simple presence of our hoax in the landscape of French television raises the question of the authenticity of some of the broadcasts that happen in France...
- because the quest for sensation that drives television channels transforms them in just a succession of images, the veracity of which is no longer the main objective and this is not acceptable for a media that manipulates images.
- because by creating this hoax, we really "investigated" the professionals implicated in our story and it appeared to us that this innocent entertaining show was the work of professionals well known in the French TV world, and because of their recognized professional qualities they shouldn't have fallen for our joke.
- And because there has to be one last reason for all this: definitely because it's been way too easy...
"Ultimately though, it's still an informed consumer that will make the difference. In one Save-More drug outlet, while waiting for my prescription to be filled, a man came in and rattled off three different drugs by their generic names. He was empathic in adding, after he had finished naming the medicines: "Generics lang." Sadly, the sales clerks said they didn't have generic versions for the two of the medicines he needed.
Nevertheless, I was impressed that the man was aware of generics. Maybe he was a health professional, but I suspect he was simply an informed consumer. And we need more of such consumers to spur the demand for generics.
The Department of Health needs to revive the campaign around generics, and for starters, we could get prescribers, sales clerks and consumers to stop saying "generics lang [generics only]" and be more assertive: "Generics ang gusto ko [I want generics]."
Sadly, I am one of those who should know better but does not do better. Given a prescription, I buy the prescribed, brand product. I just figure it will be easier, I do not have to explain to the drugstore clerk nor to my doctor why I opted for a different brand name.
Also I still buy "biogesic" a, home grown brand of paracetamol. It was the brand my grandmother and mother used to give me when I had fever as a kid and I just feel comforted using it. :)
"despite the impeccable condition of Newton's theory, Einstein realized that gravity violated one of the sacred tenets of special relativity. As mentioned, the main conflict with special relativity is that Newtonian gravity allows information to be communicated faster than the speed of light. If the sun were to suddenly collapse, according to Newton's theory we would immediately feel the gravitational change. This is no different from expecting an event in Iceland to instantaneously later the course of events in China. Einstein's theory of special relativity forbids anything, any form of information, to travel faster than the speed of light. Information of any kind must be encoded in the form of energy or mass, after all E=mc2. Information is encrypted on stuff, and stuff travel slower than, or at, the speed of light. The force of gravity should be no exception. Any information about gravitational change, should travel slower than, or at, the speed of light. To ensure this, Einstein had to discover the essence of gravity..." (page 45)And he did, he had to learn Riemannian geometry to do it, so he did. This is a very concrete example of how the scientific method works, you find a conflict in theories and you find an explanation (theory) that better fits reality. And all of humankind benefits.
"...In the primordial universe there was essentially only hydrogen and helium with only trace amounts of heavier elements. There was no oxygen and no carbon, and so no water and no basis for organic life. The primordial universe was a sterile cauldron.She may have been in Columbia, but I was in a jeepney commuting to work when I realized this. It was a humbling yet euphoric moment. To be made of the stuff of stars, What a feeling.
Much of the material synthesized in the center of stars gets ejected back out into space when the star dies. Eventually new stars and planets can form from the star's scattered remains. This next generation of stars, and more importantly, their satellite planets, can be made from heavier elements like carbon and oxygen. Plasma can form on the surface of planets. Maybe on one with optimal conditions, complex molecules form and an inanimate broth waits for the sparks to generate organic life. Voila. a few hundred million years later, Africa blooms and here we are.
We have the peculiar realization that we are made of the stuff of stars. I was sitting on the back of my astronomy class at Columbia when I learned this." (page 80)
"Some of the great mathematicians killed themselves. The lore is that their theories drove them mad, though I suspect they were just lonely, isolated by what they knew."Of course this line, reminded me of my favorite mathematician, EEE. I hope that he is just a little mad, and I fervently hope that he is not lonely.
"Cantor realized that the set of irrational numbers was infinite in a way that was so huge as to be uncountable. They cannot be represented by one integer divided by another and some require an infinitely long desciption, such as pi or the golden ratio. An uncountable infinity could never be put into one-to-one correspondence with a countable infinity and so the irrational numbers must be of a larger infinity than the natural numbers"And this is where I got lost. reminding me why I preferred political science as my undergradute course. I will still read the book, hopefully finish and increase my understanding of mathematics and the universe. Hopefully, this book will not drive me mad. If you can find the book, maybe you can join me in this adventure.
