Posts

Youth vs Old

Which life deserves more protection from a virus that is deadly and infects various segments of the population? Is it the young? Or is it the old?  The young needs more protection. Because when young people die early, they lost an opportunity to live many years forward into the future. For an individual person who is only 10 years old, that can be an opportunity cost of 60 years. Collectively, when one does the math, it is 60 years times the number of young people who could die. That is a lot of years lost in a population. A big opportunity cost as they put it in economics. Old people, and this cruel to say, deserve some protection but not to the extent that the assistance rendered to them puts in peril the life of the young and their opportunity to live longer. Old people only have few years to live.  If the average life expectancy is 70, a sixty-year-old person stands to lose only 10 years. Do the math. The sum of life lost when old populations die is significantly small com...

The bellicose China

  The developments in western Philippine seas are worrisome. It is not the possibility that war could erupt which should trouble us, it is the uncertainty about how China will respond which should. The possibility US will step into this arena shouldn't be doubted. Nobody in the world doubts that US uses war to pursue her foreign policy. But the democratic tradition of the United States tempers her bellicosity. This makes US policy predictable. But the same cannot be said about China. Political power in China is concentrated in one political party. In fact, the whole of Chinese military organization is simply an extension of the political party, it is their armed wing. Think about the NPA (New People's Army) of the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines). Politics in China is exercised as dictatorship. It's dictatorship of one party. Contemporary history gives us no comfort when we think about how dictatorships behave. The Nazi party of Germany in WWII, Stalin and the Commu...

The Philippine's big one (West Valley Fault System)

  I am reading and preparing for my lectures on exponential probability distributions. My readings and thinking about this topic got me to say the paragraphs below. If an active fault hasn't moved in a long time to give us a major earthquake when geological records show it has done that in the past, then the probability it will move again as to give a massive earthquake, leaving behind massive destruction, progressively goes close to 100% as time and years pass by. The destruction of all buildings and infrastructures along the West Valley Fault System and the pain and anguish it will leave behind are already set on stone. The probability of a huge earthquake due to the movements along this fault is as sure as the destiny of all our dogs and cats. They all die. I wonder where in Metro Manila will my siblings and their kids be when the big one happens.

My college experience

T alking about going to college, I had some seriously disappointing memories about choosing and applying for admissions in college. The first-degree program of my choice was medical technology. To be a Doctor of Medicine was the only prestigious occupation I knew, and medical technology was a premed course. I wanted to be a doctor because doctors possibly earned a lot. In our province, the doctor's house was always the biggest in the town. I applied to UST. UST was my first school of choice. I did not pass that exam. My second choice was a degree in music. I went to the conservatory of music in CEU to apply but they required us to perform. I checked out what sort of skills and talent my co-applicants brought with them in Metro Manila. What I saw and heard dashed all my daydreams with music forever. I was a big kid in our town and a bigger kid in school but seeing my co-applicants sang, played the piano and guitar, my sense of who I was crumbled. I was shocked. I would be happi...

The healer inside all of us

  T here is a healer inside all of us.  The archetype of the great healer is as old as human culture itself. It's been there always. Jung said that each one of us embodies the seeds of the archetypes of the great mother, the great father, the great healer, the great teacher, warrior, hero, etc. Most people gravitate to only a few of these archetypes. But when a person feels that the great mother and great father are always someone else, that person is unable to be a mother and father to himself. If one feels that the great teacher is always someone else, that person is unable to discover that he can be the best teacher for himself. People who believe that the embodiment of the great archetypes is someone or something else seem always to need someone or something. It is the same with healing. Since most people always project the great healer onto another person or thing or spirit, etc., the spirit of the great healer inside them cannot manifest itself. It is forever dormant. I ...

K+12 helped prepare the minds of students.

I wish to share with you my experience with one of my students and I hope to present this is as counterargument to people who bashes K+12 on account that it is not an addition of years which students need; it is quality. My point is students need quantity (length of time) just as just as they need quality. We do not teach calculus to 5-year-olds. Diego sat in my class in Algebra. From his looks, I can see right away that he was not among the normal students I meet in the campus. He's burly. Big, wide, muscled. He was big for a freshman. His demeanor was also not normal. He comported himself like a gentleman when his classmates all going from 16–17-year-old still tease each other like a bunch of bosom buddies in high school. As weeks and months passed by, I became more impressed with the results of his quizzes and exams. One day, I was so perplexed, I approached and said to him straight on "You are different, you are not like the rest". Then he told me his story. He stoppe...

The driver of evolution

T o eat or be eaten? That is the question. Think of this, plants do not possess something like a nervous system, but animals do. What pushed organisms to develop a nervous system was when they chose to hunt other animals for food. But it also pushed the animal that was about to be eaten to acquire a nervous system. Surely, no animal wants to be eaten. The predator-prey relationship between animals was the first push that gave rise to intelligence. To hunt and avoid being eaten was a big event in the evolution of animals. Today, people no longer hunt in the manner that spiders and cats do, but they do still hunt. Their prey had been replaced by money, fame, power, prestige, girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, etc.