Disjointed Thinking

Media people are so full of it. I know that I've been harping about Philippine media's sense of entitlement these past couple of days but they're just so arrogant.

Look at what Amando Doronilla wrote today.

"The mutineers surrounded themselves with media people, all aching to report a good story. Trillanes and Lim used them as shields. They knew the media shield provided them immunity from violence. They knew that government forces could not assault them without slaughtering media people. That would have provoked international outrage against the Arroyo administration."

He recognized that Trillanes and Lim used the media people covering their fiasco as human shields yet, he concluded that.

"The charge that media people were obstructing police operations does not wash and is a poor excuse."

If media people were being used as human shields so that "government forces could not assault (Lim and Trillanes)... then how can you say that "media people obstructing police operations does not wash?"

And then he makes what almost all the media people I've read and heard have argued.

"Their official IDs should be sufficient to identify media people. They should not be subjected to political loyalty test. This restriction is unwarranted and unacceptable, a breach of journalistic freedom and responsibility to serve the public right to know."

Which is just a plea for special treatment because they are media people. They were witnesses, possible accomplices, what were the police supposed to do. Take their word for it? Would the media countenance the police taking the word of anybody else? Would that be good police work?

Wind Talker

When last we saw Senator Lacson in the fron pages, he was making tsismis with his friends regarding the possible relationship between Judge Macarambon, the newly appointed Comelec Commissioner and former Comelec Commissioner Garcillano.

At least at that time, he talked with unnamed "reliable sources", in his latest front page adventure, he just talks about "information he gathered" that told him the cash gifts from the administration came from the "P1-billion intelligence funds of the Police Security Protection Office (PSPO) and the Police Anti-Crime and Emergency Response (PACER)." Presumably, he gathered the information from people and not the wind, though since he doesn't say, he may have been talking to the wind.

He does not offer any shred of evidence that the money actually comes from the PNP. No disbursement ledger, no receipts, no witnesses, nothing. He does not even try to give any hint where evidence may be gathered. Rather, he wants the Senate to investigate his allegations, to get more his mug on the front page.

Update: 11-13-2007

The Inquirer has an update on this story where they reference a source who does not want to be identified.

"One of the biggest sources of the money distributed in Malacañang was the Bureau of Customs, according to a source, whose rank is equivalent to a general in the military. The source did not want to be named owing to the sensitivity of the issue.

According to the police official, the money was entered as a “special fund” in the PNP budget, purported as an item for the PNP’s counterinsurgency program in support of the military’s own campaign.

The checks for the fund were cleared in the name of the PNP in July, the source said. The money was later transferred to the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the source added."

If the Inquirer's story is true, that the money was coursed through the counterinsurgency program of the PNP. Senator Lacson's allegatio that it was through the intelligence fund cannot be true. It may be argued we shouldn't quibble over details, the PNP is still involved. But God and the Devil is in the details. You should not accuse an office, of criminal activity if it was not involved in the activity, even if the true culprit is an office within the same agency. Which is why he needs to get more evidence before spouting off. It can only make him look trigger happy.

Cory Aquino is a Slut

And yes, I have called her worse during her term as President. It's what we call, freedom of speech. And as Atheista so eloquently put it, those hurt have every right to be hurt, but as Dispatches from the Culture Wars puts it,

"freedom of thought and expression must include the right to offend .... If it does not, then there is no point in calling it freedom at all for it doesn't deserve the name."

Censoring Lois Lane

The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that ABC news

"...confirmed that a remark made by actress Teri Hatcher's character in a recent episode of "Desperate Housewives" which has prompted ,angry reactions from Filipinos all over the world will be deleted.

It is believed that ABC made this decision after

"Rico Foz, executive vice president of the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns, said the group was demanding that the ABC television network immediately edit out the controversial scene..."

Now, I am on record (its comment #7) that I believe that racism influenced the crafting of the remarks but c'mon, you want to delete it? Historical revisionism at it's best, sure Desperate Housewives is not Shakespeare but what is? Do we as a nation really want to be part of censoring things offensive to us?

And since I am already on this subject, why are people shooting the messenger? Teri Hatcher, who will always be Lois Lane to me, was the actor, she delivered the line, yet a lot of the vitriol I hear or read centers on her, c'mon people let us be more discriminating.

Walang Bakla sa Iran

Sabi ng Presidente ng Iran, baka dahil sa pinapatay nila yung makita nila.

Update:

O kaya nagiging babae.

5 Questions Season Two of Heroes Had Better F#@king Answer

from CRACKED.com

"we’ll re-examine some of the loose threads and questions left over from the first season of Heroes, and make some predictions about what will happen next. Hopefully this will help our readers get back up to speed before Monday’s season premiere. Also, this will give us a good excuse to post several pictures of Ali Larter in her panties."

read more | digg story

Abolish what?

Newbreak is running this story entitled "Abolish ULAP" the story starts

"The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), the umbrella organization of local government leagues, has yet to elect its new set of officers, but a former member is already calling for its abolition."

The rest of the story however discuses former Governor Dela Cruz' struggle with the DILG to reinstate her former Chief of Police. Nowhere was the ULAP again mentioned or why Governor Dela Cruz would want ULAP to be abolished.

Ang Pinaka

ANG PINAKA: MAINIT NA PINOY BOLD MOVIES
AIRING DATE: 22 JULY 2007

Ngayong Linggo, tiyak na maglalagablab ang inyong TV screen at mag-aapoy ang inyong mga damdamin dahil buong kapangahasang ililista ng natatanging listahan ng bayan ang "Sampung Pinaka-Mainit na Pinoy Bold Movies of All Time"!

Ang mga pelikulang mapapasama sa listahan ay pinag-usapan hindi lang dahil sa kanilang maiinit na eksena kundi pinuri rin ng mga kritiko at kinilala rin sa kanilang makabuluhang pagtalakay sa tema ng seks at pakikipagrelasyon.

Masasabing ito rin ang mga pelikulang nagpasakit sa ulo ng censors at nagpataas sa blood pressure ng mga moralista. Tinawid ng mga pelikulang ito ang manipis na linya na naghahati sa sining at pornograpiya.

Bold movies that pushed the envelope! Ito ang ililista ni Pia Guanio kasama ang mga panelistang sina: independent filmmakers Ato Bautista, Aloy Adlawan, at Sigfreid Barros-Sanchez, film & TV scriptwriter Shugo Praico, men’s magazine editor Eric Ramos, at Inquirer Libre editor Romel Lalata.

Abangan ang kapana-panabik na paglilistang ito ngayong Linggo, July 22, sa "Ang Pinaka", 6 p.m., sa QTV Channel 11 (Channel 24 sa Sky and Home Cable, Channel 15 sa Destiny Cable, at Channel 19 sa Sun Cable)

Galing po sa kaibigan ko na kapuso ng GMA

Mickey who?

Even with Die Hard 4 in the offing, the one movie that I was really looking forward to was Ratatouille. Now I find a review from Dana Stevens at Slate Magazine:

"Ratatouille moved me to tears because it was just so well-done—not kinda cute, not OK-for-a-kids'-movie, but a work of art crafted with as much passion and attention to detail as its hero, Remy the rat chef, puts into every vat of soup he makes. Ratatouille is Brad Bird's best movie yet, and from the writer-director who made two of the best American animated features of the past decade, The Incredibles and the sadly neglected Iron Giant, that's something."

Pooh!

Additional clips from Pooh, the original infamous clip is here

Pooh sings magic sing jingle (medyo nakakhilo lang kasi magalaw yung kamera)



As Money Poohkiaw (November 25, 2006)



Pooh (January 11, 2007)


in Sharon

Manny Poohkiaw

My wife got this vid from an e-mail. I hope abs-cbn let this video stand. They need all the advertisement they can get.



Other Pooh clips here

Excommunication

From the Guardian via Pharyngula

"A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl, who was eight weeks pregnant after being raped by her stepfather.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the president of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, said in addition to the doctors and nurses, the measure could apply to "relatives, politicians and lawmakers" whom he called "protagonists in this abominable crime".

Update

Cardinal Trujillo, the one quoted above has denied having said such a thing.

"A Roman Catholic cardinal has denied reports that he said the Vatican would excommunicate doctors who performed Colombia's first legal abortion on an 11-year-old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather.

"I have not said that, nor has the Holy See, nor have I thought it," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican's pontifical council for the family, on Caracol Radio on Wednesday."

One Voice vs. AdCom

FYI. Got this from the One Voice mailing list.

The Manila Times asked the Advocacy Commission and One Voice to
answer 10 questions. Here is part 1 and part 2

The AdCom replies were written by Dr. Jose Abueva. He served as
chairman of the Consultative Commission that drafted the
recommendations that President Arroyo endorsed to Congress last year
for the new Constitution to replace the 1987 one. A former president
of the University of the Philippines, Dr. Abueva is now president of
Kalayaan College.

The One Voice replies were written by Dr. Rene B. Azurin. He
authored the Dissenting Report of the defunct Consultative
Commission and is a convener of One Voice, the nonpartisan
organization against the Charter-change efforts of Sigaw ng Bayan,
the Union of Local Authorities in the Philippines (ULAP) and Adcom.
He teaches Strategic Management at the University of the
Philippines.

Ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan...

How far has Alex Magno gone away from his leftist roots? Very far. He is so far gone that he either forgot or was unwilling to directly attribute a quote from Karl Marx. In his column today, he wrote

"They just thought history would simply do a re-run, forgetting Hegel’s famous injunction: that when history seems to repeat itself, the first time it is a tragedy, the second time it is a farce."

I have always thought this was a quote from Karl Marx but I was taught that Marx borrowed a lot of ideas from Hegel and since Alex Magno was one of the teachers who taught me that, I had to consider that I might be mistaken and Marx actually quoted Hegel. So I googled the quote and found out that I was right. Marx was the originator of the phrase, it was the first sentence in his work "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte".

"Hegel remarks somewhere[*] that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle. And the same caricature occurs in the circumstances of the second edition of the Eighteenth Brumaire."

This sentence was followed by my favorite quote from Marx

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language."

Failure of Logic

This is old news, but I still wanted to write something.

I was taught the different Logical Fallacies when I was in high school and again almost immediately after I entered college. The determination whether a statement is logical or fallacious is a skill every one should possess. This skill can help us parse through arguments and determine if it holds up or whether it is full of baloney

In his August 11 column entitled "Foreign investors’ letter proves Monsod wrong", Mr Jarius Bondoc started out with baloney and goes downhill from there. He started out with this sentence:

"One Voice, an elitist front to demonize Charter changes of little folk, keeps screeching the claim of its head Christian Monsod:"

This is one of the oldest logical fallacies, argumentum ad hominem, He immediately attacks the personality of the organization whose position he is arguing against by calling them elitist without explaining why they are elitist and how the heck does being an elitist makes their argument less valid. He even characterizes their argument as screeching, they are not presenting their opinion, they are screeching.

And what is this "charter change of little folks"? Is this a dig at the stature of President GMA and speaker de Venecia? Certainly he is not saying that the principal proponent of charter change in the Philippines are the masa. Is he?

He then presented One Voice's or as he presents it Christian Monsod's position as

"Restrictive economic provisos in the 1987 Constitution do not bother foreign investors. What they do care about, surveys say, are infrastructure, human capital, consistency of policies and regulations, peace and order."

When I first read this paragraph, the first thought that came to mind was, 'is this even a direct quote?'. I have watched Christian Monsod on television since he was the chairperson of the COMELEC and I have never heard him say such a stupid thing. And even if he was so inclined to say such a stupid thing, I do not think Winnie Monsod will let him get away with it. So I tried to find out if this was an exact quote. Here is the quote I copied from their blog.

"Many other claims of the proponents of the Initiative are not borne out by the facts. For instance, the claim that the economic provisions of the Constitution on land ownership, public utilities, natural resources, media and advertising have closed the doors to beneficial foreign direct investment (FDI). Not only has the 1987 Constitution proven to be resilient to the demands of the times but surveys of foreign investors repeatedly show that the critical factors to FDI are infrastructure, human capital, quality of policies and stability of the regulatory framework, peace and order, among others. Nowhere is amending the economic provisions considered among the really critical."

As you see, the One Voice movement is not arguing that the economic provisions of the constitution do not bother foreign investors, they are arguing that the economic provisions is not a critical factor to foreign investors. Mr. Bondoc basically changed critical factor into bother and that made all the difference. For Mr. Bondoc, a writer to not know the difference between the word bother and the word critical is astonishing. One is a minor irritation while the other one is indispensable or essential.

This is a clear example of a straw man argument. Mr Bondoc mischaracterized One Voice's position so he could more easily poke holes in them by pointing out that

If his (Monsod's) claim were a person, it would slip on a piece of paper and fall flat on its face. That paper is a letter to Economic Planning Sec. Romy Neri, sent July 24, by the Joint Foreign Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the Philippines. In it, the umbrella of foreign firms urged the government to liberalize the entry of new investments – by executive, legislative and constitutional action.

Here, Mr. Bondoc is arguing that the JFC letter urging the Philippine government to liberalize the entry of new investments even through constitutional action proves that foreign investors are bothered by the economic provisions of the constitution. Which of course it does, what it does not prove is that the liberalization of new investments through constitutional action is a critical factor for these investors in their decisions to invest in the Philippines. It does not prove that these investors will decide to not invest in the Philippines because of the presence of the economic provisions.

To round up this display of logical fallacies, Mr. Bondoc also falls into an appeal to authority. In the third to the last paragraph, Mr. Bondoc states that

"one of Monsod's favorite provisions consigns Filipinos to cottage enterprises, never to genuine industry based on metal and machine. Written by Monsod himself, it confines industrialization to agriculture and agrarian reform, and effectively prohibits Filipinos from making railways, bullet trains, ships or cars like neighbor-states. "

and this provision is from

"Article XII (National Economy and Patrimony), Section 1, 2nd paragraph ? states: "The State shall promote industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform through industries that make full and efficient use of human and natural resources, and which are competitive in both domestic and foreign markets."

Now, I am not an economist and but I can't see how this article consigns Filipino's to cottage enterprises. It states that our industrialization be based on sound agricultural development. and industrialization by its very nature would include technological innovation, I cannot find any provision here that tells the government or anyone that the industries should be limited to whatever. But Mr. Bondoc cites nationalist economist Alejandro Lichauco's book which states

"And what kind of industries can Filipinos engage in under the constitutional rider? 'Apparently, industries like furniture and carpentry, rice milling, making fertilizer out of animal waste, tree-planting, all forms of handicraft, food canning and the like,' Lichauco writes. 'No engineering or machine tool and metal industry because such industries have no connection whatsoever with agriculture and agrarian reform."

I respect Mr. Lichauco, he is one of our premier nationalists. But that does not make his opinion correct.

In other news

This story on the one laptop per child project by the Sun.Star Cebu was carried by both groklaw and digg. I wish I knew who wrote this piece so I can congratulate him/her. Landing your piece in the front page of digg is huge, and being carried by groklaw is not a small matter either.

"Countries which will initially receive the laptops are China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand... The $100-laptops, which are designed for rough usage, will be Linux-based and have a 500 MHz processor, a 128MB of DRAM, and a 500MB flash memory."

read more | digg story

From Today's Headlines

Talk about stating the obvious. I think all of us do know that we are all going to die. No need to remind us. :)

Letter to the Manila Times

I wrote the Manila Times a 2nd letter. this will be, I hope, the last. If I cannot convince them, then they deserve the brickbats they are getting. This is the letter.

To: The Editor
The Manila Times

Dear Sir:

First, I would like to thank you for pointing out the many grammatical errors I made in my letter to you dated May 6, 2005. I will try and do better.

Second, I would like to commend you for having the courage to admit that you did not check the veracity and accurateness of the story "UP Math prof proves Princeton man wrong" before publishing it because, as you put it, you "did not have any reason to doubt (Mr. E.E. Escultura) him."

Third, I would like to encourage you to stop this practice of not verifying stories from people you do not have any reason to doubt as this can lead to false or inaccurate stories. The Philippine Press Institute's code of ethics for journalists states that journalists "shall scrupulously report and interpret the news, taking care not to suppress essential facts nor to distort the truth by omission or improper emphasis."

I would like to point out that not getting comments from Mr. Andrew Wiles regarding his alleged e-mail reply can "distort the truth by omission". If the alleged e-mail from Mr. Wiles did not really come from Mr. Wiles, then your story attributed to him a position he does not share.

I would also point out that the title of the story "UP Math prof proves Princeton man wrong" distorts the truth from improper emphasis. Mr. Escultura may believe that he is correct but the vast majority of Mathematicians, as can be seen from a google search, do not share his view.Last, I did a quick google search for the names of the mathematicians included in your list and came out with e-mail addresses for 3 of them. I wrote them a letter inquiring whether they agree with Mr. Escultura's claim that he has proven that Mr. Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem is false. Mr. George S. Osipenko, Editor-in-Chief of the "Electronic Journal Diffrential Equation and Control Processes" http://www.neva.ru/journal/ answered

" I am not sure that I is a person that you need. I know only that this theorem was proved few yeas ago by the Spanish mathematician. The proof is not so simple and is so big. My object is Dynamical systems and I have weak in the Ferma theorem."

This does not invalidate the list, but this at least questions the accuracy of the number of mathematicians who "acknowledged and/or congratulated" Mr. Escultura.

I hope this convinces you to revisit the story and verify the claims in them.

Thank you.

Roy C. Choco
Blk 1, Lot 3, Sapphire St., Hiys Subd.,
Valenzuela Metro Manila

In reviewing the letter, I saw that I again failed to add at least on "the" and spelled Mr. Escultura's name wrong. When will I ever learn to review my writing before sending it, not after.

Fermat's Last Theorem

I was so upset with the news story by the Manila Times last week that I wrote them a letter.

"I was reading your on-line edition on Thursday (May 5) when I came upon the story about Prof. Edgar Escultura proving the proof advanced by Mr. Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor on Fermat’s last theorem was incorrect. The story is at the very least incomplete and most probably untrue.

First, according to the theory, the refutation of the proof was published in 1998 and was greeted with much discussion on the Internet. A casual Google search on the terms “proof Fermat’s last theorem” yielded websites that only discuss the proof as presented by Mr. Wiles and Mr. Taylor. No mention has been made regarding Mr. Escultura nor his supposed refutation. Did your reporter, Mr. Rony V. Diaz, even made this kind of cursory search?

Second, according to the story, Mr. Wiles conceded an error regarding his proof and will be reviewing all his proof. But the e-mail was addressed to Mr. Escultura. There is no independent verification of this “supposed” concession was made. Did The Manila Times even tried to contact Mr. Wiles regarding this assertion by Mr. Escultura? Nothing in the article leads me to believe that asking Mr. Wiles nor other mathematicians was even considered.

Third, who even said that Mr. Escultura actually refuted Mr. Wiles’s proof? Who or what body was the source of this story? Whom did this person/body/ experts/ decide that Mr. Escultura was correct? To whom should the readers actually try and validate veracity of the story?

So The Times ran a story from no-one that was verified by nobody. Is this the kind of journalism that The Manila Times practices? I expected more from your paper."

They published the letter together with an editors reply here

According to the reply,

"The source of our information, including the letter of Dr. Wiles, was Dr. Escultura. We did not have any reason to doubt him".

So, the Manila Times will actually print a news story, from anybody, as long as they do not have any reason to doubt him. They will not try to verify the story. They will not dig further for independent confirmation.

Who are then these paragons of truth from whom the Manila Times feel they need not double check? Is Mr. Escultura the only, are there more? What criteria does the Manila Times use to determine who are these founts of wisdom?

How can we then as readers trust the Manila Times? How can we be sure then that the news they print is truthful and factual and not the imaginary submissions of a person that they have no reason to doubt?

I will ask my question again. Is this the kind of journalism the Manila Times practices? It seems so.

UP Math prof proves Princeton man wrong???

The Manila Times Internet Edition | TOP STORIES > UP Math prof proves Princeton man wrong

Nandito na naman tayo, last year, lumabas yung mga kagila-gilalas na adventures ni Faye, isang bata na against all odds ay nanalo saa isang paligsahan, laban sa mga katunggali niyang galing sa mayayamang bayan sa mundo, na wala man lamang tulong sa ating gobyerno.

Ngayon naman, isang balita galing sa Manila Times kung saan ipinagmamalaki nila na ni-refute ng isang teacher sa UP ang proof na ginawa nina Andrew Wiles at Richard Taylor sa Last Theorem ni Fermat.

Ayon sa article, ni publish ni Edgar Escultura, ang kanyang refutation sa proof nina Wiles at Taylor noong 1998 at dahil dito ay nagkaroon ng masigabong diskusyon sa internet tungkol dito.

Ayon pa sa article, nag-concede na ng error si Andrew Wiles kay Ed Escultura.

And yet, kung mag search ka sa internet, wala ka namang makitang diskusyon sa sinasabing refutation sa proof nina Wiles. In fact, kung mag search ka sa google ng "proof fermat's last theorem" katakut takot na pages tungkol sa proof nina Wiles ang ipapakita sa iyo ng google at wala tungkol sa supposedly refutation ni Edgar Escultura.

Kung ganito ang lagay, bakit na-publish ang istorya na ito? Alam ba ng Manila Times ang kanilang ginagawa? Humingi ba sila ng katunayan sa kanilang reporter na si Rony V. Diaz sa report na ito? Ni-email man lang ba nila si Andrew Wiles para makunan nila ito ng comment? Kumuha ba sila ng comment sa ilan pang Mathematicians? Nakalimutan ba ng Manila Times ang kanilang April Fools joke at bumabawi ngayon?

Ganito ba talaga ang standard ng journalism sa Pilipinas?