Great Deeds Academy

  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...

  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.

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...

  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 ...

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...

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.

Most people do not know what cyanobacteria are, and even students and teachers who teach biology are barely moved by the significance of this tiny organism they see under the microscope. Adults from my generation know them by the name "blue-green algae". It is the first photosynthetic organism that succeeded to use light energy to produce its food. We call that photosynthesis. We also know the waste product of this process is oxygen. Our atmosphere became oxygenated because of cyanobacteria. In natural history, it is called the Great Oxygenation Event. It was given a special name because the rise of cyanobacteria meant the extinction of a different breed of organisms: the anaerobic organisms. Anaerobes used to be the dominant life forms on our planet. What happens after cyanobacteria is the rest of natural history. What is profound about cyanobacteria is the fact that they still live with us. Dinosaurs are already extinct by at least 300 million years, and so are the "he...

Believe it or not, St. Helena of Constantinople was the mother of an emperor. That emperor was Constantine himself, the emperor of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. She is the fourth on my list of saints. Originally what I wanted was to write about the emperor himself because if there is such a thing as the ten most influential person in the history of the Roman Catholic faith, Emperor Constantine is sure to be among them because it was he who decreed the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire. But since this man is no saint, and I am truly disappointed for that, I have no choice but to pick the next best thing, his mother. What feat of achievement did St. Helena do? St. Helena became a royal treasurer of sorts, someone who was entrusted with the management of the state's wealth. But time came when she was given a special mission by her son. To discover and claim as many Christian relics as she can and bring them to Constantinople. This mission br...

I threw away close to a thousand books last year. Because of the lockdown, I couldn't find ways to transport my books to schools and libraries, and so I just paid someone to bring them to our town's dumpsite. One of those books, written by Teodoro Agoncillo, was about the first Philippine Revolution of 1898. It also told how Andres Bonifacio was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He died in a mountain, Mt. Tala, if I am not mistaken, together with his brother or brothers. They were executed. Present-day readers of history are making a huge mistake when they cast Emilio Aguinaldo and his colleagues as anti-heroes. People who were alive during those times did not know the full context and issues of their days in the manner that we know them today. Because we have a panoramic view of those times, we are omniscient. Aguinaldo was not. Emilio Aguinaldo was thrust into a stage to lead a people into achieving a grand vision. Aguinaldo did not share that vision. What he wante...

The bullying news brings back so many traumatic memories for adults. Physical altercations were among my vivid memories. I could still feel the knuckles on my face when a bigger kid punched me because of an altercation about a lemonade. We were 7 years old. I had more quarrels in grade school. Many came to shoving and pushing and punching. The scariest of them was when a kid, who was two years older and a known thug in school, brandished an icepick in front of me. I was grade four. He was grade six. From that moment on, whenever I saw his shadow, I would do my best to vanish in air. That kid-thug still lives in my town. He is now a raving lunatic. He raves and curses at people in one spot at a crossing near the church. The church was no safe place either for kids like me. There outside the church was a gang of kids waiting for me. We had a quarrel in a basketball match a day earlier. They wanted payback. They harassed, taunted me to fight. But they were a gang, and the church which was...

Talking about road less traveled, I wish to share with you the challenges embraced by some of my friends. One is trekking the entire American continent on his mountain bike from Alaska and to the southernmost tip of south America. He is accompanied by his fiancée who refused to be outdone. She too rides the mountain bike. Another friend of mine often runs ultramarathons. He is about to run one in a few days. That's 100K+ of running. Legends says the first marathoner, Pheidippides, died after covering a distance of 42k without rest. This he did to relay the news to his countrymen in Athens that the Persians are on their way to pillage the city. My ultramarathoner friend is a school principal, husband and father to four kids. Epics, folklore, and parables often tell stories of a person who takes a journey, one paved by so many challenges. Few people took that journey, the story says, because few people returned from it alive. Almost nobody comes out of it alive. If ever they are stil...

On top of the early human’s need to describe quantity, they also needed a language to describe and predict patterns in nature. The Ishango bone, for example, was an early mathematical exercise to count the cycle of lunar phases as they relate to the menstrual cycle of adult women. What reasons compelled ancient people of Ishango to track the menstruation cycle? We cannot ever answer this with complete satisfaction, but we can make intelligent guesses based on our observations of people’s cultural beliefs about menstruation in present day societies. In US and UK, for example, women during their period are observed to be irritable, and so it pays never to cross them during their period. Bears roaming the temperate forests of these places have a keen nose for blood, and so it is prudent for women never to enter the forest during menstruation. In Poland, to have sex with a woman in her period is sure to kill the man. In the Philippines, women are advised never to take a bath, because takin...

Maharlika Wealth Fund (Sovereign Fund) House Bill 6398 (Cons and Pros) Cons a. This will create another layer of bureaucracy in a country where government is already humongous and ridden with so much corruption. b. Since the constituent funds will come from SSS, GSIS, Land Bank, & DBP, a major failure in managing Maharlika Fund will cascade into our major pension systems and two major finance corporations. The consequences of a financial debacle stemming from funds mismanagement is huge. Pros a. The Maharlika Fund will receive so much government largesse to jumpstart it, an amount of money which the constituent corporations can never acquire on their own. The sovereign fund will also receive regular contributions from PAGCOR, BSP, General Appropriations, etc. But Maharlika Fund is not obligated to pay the latter back. This means that indirectly GSIS, SSS, LB, and DBP will receive a huge amount of public money. Free. b. In case of a financial debacle, the Maharlika Fund would always...

One thousand pesos, if you were to spend it on yourself only, will give you one day of a pleasant time in a mall. A mall such as Shoemart (SM) which is everywhere in the Philippines. In a comfy restaurant like Gerry’s Grill, which is practically in all SM malls, it will buy you one platter of crispy bits of grilled pork and two regular beers such as San Miguel beer. Dining at Gerry’s Grill is an extraordinary experience not mainly because of their dish, but more so because of their crew. They make you feel you are dining in a 5-star hotel. This meal will leave you with 400 pesos more to spend for the rest of the day. You can get a massage from a vibrating chair for 100 pesos and a decent book from National Bookstore. In the Philippines, one thousand pesos is a decent amount of money to spend on yourself.

The answer may have nothing to do with what's taking place in classrooms. The answer may have to do with what had taken place even before children stepped into schools. It may have to do with IQ, IQ being the innate ability of people to manage all things cognitive and physical. This is the implication of a study done by a team of scientists from John Hopkins University. This study discovered a correlation between the incidence of exposure to infectious diseases and parasitism on one hand, and IQ on the other. Regions where this incidence is high are also the regions where the general IQ of people are low. If you were to produce a map to describe the distribution of each, and if you were to put one map on top of the other, the match and fit are almost perfect for regions with low IQ. The doctor (whose name escapes me now) described how infections and parasitism and IQ became correlated. The intervening mechanism which produced this correlation is the body's immune system. Childr...

Carbon dioxide does not deserve the demonization it is getting from climate-change activists. Carbon dioxide, next to sunlight, water, and oxygen, is an essential molecule for life. CO2 is the gas molecule behind photosynthesis. CO2 is food for plants. The drivers of Earth's climate are the following: a. Sun's radiant energy. The sun's radian energy is the main driver of climate as it injects the planet with heat. This heat affects temperature, and the movement of air masses and ocean currents.  b. Water . The carrying capacity of water, in all of its forms, for heat is huge. This is basic chemistry. Water drives the change in climate through evaporation, condensation, and movement of ocean currents. c. Volcanism . Volcanism sends massive quantities of aerosols and gases into the atmosphere. These block the radian energy of the sun. Some 650 million years ago, our planet turned into a ball of snow because of a chain of volcanic eruptions that took place somewhere in Greenla...

Our vulnerability to typhoons and the discouraging conditions that surround our agriculture both in terms of natural resources and state policies should remind us about a crucial episode in ancient Greek history. It is the Peloponnesian wars. The Peloponnesian War was a war between two major alliances in Greece around 470- 404 BC. One was led by Athens, the other by Sparta. One famous person came out from this war. He was Pericles. Orator, statesman, and eventually a general of Athens. He led the war against Sparta. It was in his period that Athens achieved her full flowering. The iconic Parthenon, for example, was Pericles' pet project. The Athenians, through the persuasion of Pericles, agreed to abandon agriculture because to pursue it was attended by so much risk. Between the months of May and August, the harvesting season, the Spartans would march to Athens to compel the Athenian army to meet them in an open battle. But Pericles' strategy was to starve the Spartans of battl...

This short article has only to do with cultural diversity. If someone belongs to an ethnic minority, say Badjao or Mangyan, and that someone is sent to school to study all the way to college, that person will see his identity as Badjao or Mangyan disappear from himself. He will remain Badjao or Mangyan only in superficial appearances that are paraded in streets during commemorative occasions, or he will recall his being a cultural minority only when requested to recount his life as a kid. Formal education erases the distinct character of a person as cultural minority and replaces it with something that is more universal. The education of a cultural minority brings many ironies. One of them is this: if we want to preserve the genuine spirit and character of a culture that breathes in a group that is a cultural minority, we must keep their members ignorant of the larger realities of life. Most educators are unknowing of the fact that what they do contributes to the disappearance of some ...

One of the immediate defense mechanisms adopted by plants to stop microbial infection is hypersensitive response (HR). It is among the most marvelous adaptive strategies in nature, it deserves our special attention. To put it short, through HR plants stops invading microbial pathogens from infecting the larger parts of plant tissues by deliberately sacrificing infected cells in a process called apoptosis.  During apoptosis, affected cells receive instruction from the plant’s DNA to begin self-destruction. Plant DNA contains resistance genes (R-genes) that give plants resistance to pathogens. An R-gene is a strand of protein whose structure evolved to fit pathogens. If pathogens come in contact with the plant, R-genes lock into the intruder like an enzyme locking into a substrate.  Activation of R-genes triggers plant cells to produce a burst of reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radicals, and nitrous oxides. ROS damages lipids of cell membranes...

When I was in college, I was very much into Filipiniana. I got stuck to the culture, politics, and history of the Philippines in the decades leading to and during the Philippine revolution of 1898. For four years, Teodoro Agoncillo's textbook on Philippine history was like a Swiss knife to me. I used it on many occasions not necessarily related to reading. It was my stool, paper weight, pillow, blanket to cover my face when I sleep and many more. Rizal was the focal point of discussions in P.I 100 (Philippines Institutions 100), a required subject for all students but one which is taken up only during third year college. I, on the other hand, had with me tomes of books about Rizal and his times when I was only a freshman in college. I had a strong liking for Rizal, an appreciation not shared by many in the university. Rizal is studied in UP possibly because it is a government mandated course. Without this mandate, many professors of UP would rather devote a course to Andres Bonifac...

An undergraduate math degree got me to finish another math degree in graduate school. I received it under a teaching associateship program, where graduate students were required to serve for their scholarship by teaching in the university as instructors. You can pretty say that a math degree got me to teach in universities as a regular faculty member. Some five years ago, our country revised the basic education curriculum, where students must finish 12 years of basic education instead of only 10. That means the whole math curriculum had to be revised. New math subjects, new math books. My math degree plus my writing skills, which I honed outside my academic training, allowed me to grab the opportunity to write math textbooks for senior high school. I was able to finish writing 6 textbooks for K to 12 senior high in under one year. On average, each is 200 pages long. The royalty I receive from my books in a year is nearly my annual income from teaching math in the collegiate level.

  1. Meet your deadlines One of the issues a textbook writer must always confront is the deadline. Manuscripts must meet the deadline. Books must get out of the press at least four months before the opening of classes so that publishers would have enough time to promote the book to schools. There is no reason for writers to think that a book that leaves the printing press is as good as cash. Writers are always excited about the thought of earning money from royalty. But printed books are not convertible to cash unless somebody bought them. It is not easy to sell books by the way. Books compete with other books. To market and bring them to schools for evaluation require people and money. Publishers need to shell out money just to promote a book. For this reason, writers must assist publishers in marketing by giving them much leeway in time to bring the book to the public. 2. Trust Microsoft Where does Microsoft come into the picture of marketing and deadlines? Because manuscripts mu...

Strunk and White . They wrote the book Elements of Style in the early 1900s. That book got me writing and writing in a way that observes the guidelines of that book. Carl G. Jung . Carl G. Jung was a prolific writer. The one book that pushed me to write was Man and His Symbols. This is a collaborative work between Jung and some of his former students. I borrowed Man and His Symbols from the university library thinking that it is about primitive cultures. Primitive cultures are steep in symbolic art, and I thought that maybe the symbols Jung referred to had to do with that. But it didn’t. The book describes cultural and psychological archetypes. It also has a chapter on dreams. This is where I found the inspiration to write and write a lot. Somewhere in this chapter, Jung shared his experiences in psychoanalysis. He described one session with a patient that needs psychological help. One of Jung’s methods was to draw the patient into describing his or her dreams and nightmares. He descri...