"One Nation, Overseas"
Sometime ago, an LA-based friend directed my attention to this Wired Mag article on the Filipino diaspora. It's an interesting read on how the phenomenon of Filiino migration has served as both boon and bane for the Philippines.

Update: The global demand for workers generates about $6 billion in foreign currency annually for the country, about 8% of its GNP. In 2001, more than 97,000 of the 865,000 Filipinos who left to work overseas were educated professionals. Those who simply immigrate from the Philippines are not tracked systematically by the government. Source: Naik, G et al (2003). Age Gap Benefits Developing Nations. AWSJ 27 (125): A5

Accidental Email Forward
Forwarding an email could be a violation of privacy... really? A personal, for-friends-only account of "Class A hobnobbing" with the rulers of the Earth at Davos has turned out to be a Class A Privacy Spill. "A" as in "accidental." Here's a long-winded discussion of its implications.

Cooperation v. Competition
Lamark's (cooperation) and Darwin's (competition) evolutionary theories are competing models. But it appears Darwin's always wins (no pun intended) the day. For a long time, ant hills have been viewed as paragons of selfless co-operation for common good. Enter this report on Finnish researchers suggesting that some ant colonies are nests of nepotism and hidden selfish agenda. Here's the link to the original article.

Take It From the Senior, Bill!
A retiring Micro$oft exec tells his company to embrace the open source. This is his advice: "Open source software is as large and powerful a wave as the Internet was," says the exec David Stutz. "Microsoft cannot prosper during the open source wave as an island, with defenses built out of litigation and proprietary protocols" (not to mention people are increasingly running out of reasons to use Micro$oft or actively seeking alternatives). Well, way to go, David, to humble Goliath (for whom the world is not enought)! [ InTrO tO oPeN sOuRcE ]

On the other hand, while so much blood has been spilled over Open Source, perhaps equal zeal should also be focused on Open Data. (Here for the Open Data Format Initiative.) We should also take a look at the gift, and consider copyrights a crime. :)

Extreme French Cooking
Here's a case of French cooking taken to the extreme. One of France's most celebrated chefs kills himself after his restaurant has been downgraded by critics who probably can't prepare decent meals themselves. Well, after all, if you can't be an artist, be a critic. That's a lot better than agonizing over bad cooking.

Evidence- v. Race-based Medicine
This article from San Franscisco Chronicle reports of a controversy in AIDS vaccine research: whether the efficacy of a vaccine has some racial basis. A vaccine trial initially shows that among blacks, Asians, other non-Latino minorities, the vaccine appears to reduce infection rates by two-thirds, compared with a trial with other races where there has been no difference in infection rates between those who received the vaccine and those given shots of an inert placebo. Would this really constitute evidence-based medicine? Too early to say.

In Blog We Trust
Just came across these articles from Salon about blogging:

- 'Use the blog, Luke'
- 'Much ado about blogging'
- 'Fear of links'

I won't be saying much about them for now as I'm sleepy already. Basically they're debating about how to construe the latest craze on the Web called 'blogging'. Is it the "new journalism"? Or, is it something else? What's with blogging that would make you fight the urge to sleep just to finish an entry? Good night! In blog I trust. [ blog: charterization; history ]

Update: A survey says bloggers are mostly teenage girls. Makes sense! :)

Is Religion Hot Again?
My friend Tim Montes directed my attention to this article ('Kicking the Secularist Habit') from the Atlantic Online. This led me to ask how much "religious" orientation I've shed off myself over the years, in my exposure to philosophy and sociology as well as to a secular and academic lifestyle. I will certainly give this article some more serious thoughts. Meanwhile, I wonder if secularism isn't somekind of a religion itself. It might well have its own "gods" (like money perhaps) and rituals (like watching "Sex and the City" or the Oscars), canons (think of what all the punditry in your humanities and social science classes is all about) and "heresies" (well, basically anything going against the 'secular' worldview), heroes/victims.

Meantime, ambiguities characterize Mr Bush, supposedly a 'religious' president.

Hot date on KaZaA?
Here's an El Reg account of the new dating feature of Kazaa music download. Wew, the music file swapper can now become a date swapper! Hmmm.... on second thought, I'm waiting for my Hero.DVDRip.DivX5.02.AC3.popofox download to finish. 1412:36.17 hours to go!

Delight
After blogging past midnight, this comes as sheer delight from Illiad!

The Gramscian Turn
OK, this is a sociology class stuff and perhaps not appropriate for blogging. My personal spin on Gramsci has to do with his dictum "Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will" that I first read about back in college. O, that got me! In a roundabout way, it justifies (or I wish it does) my OC, bullhead behavior. Perhaps that's "the political is personal"/"the personal is political"! (whatever... except any reference to natdems, socdems, popdems, gaddems.)

I'm reporting on The Gramscian Turn in the Study of Popular Culture. Relevant materials:

- report outline (extended version commin' up!)
- Resources on Gramsci
- Gramsci at the Marxist Internet Archives; Gramsci and Marxism; Marxist Cultural Theory (Readings)
- Resources through PopCultures.com
- "hegemony" in Prison Notebooks
- Gramsci for beginners

- Gramsci of the Right? Here's a fascinating account of how Gramsci has been abandoned by the so-called "progressives" and appropriated by the Right.
- Mass Media Effects. This is a look at how media could be studied using the Gramscian approach.

I'll try to annotate these links some more. (But don't bet on it.) Incidentally, my class report has been postponed due to extended discussions on Adorno and Althusser. "Cya nxt mtg!"

What's Hot, What's Not?
Surges in the use of certain words in web blogging may suggest what's "hot" online, according to this New Scientist article. In a parallel vein, bursts in the google using certain key expressions may be linked to the rise of certain trends. Well, for a while, "sex" topped as the most frequently used word in Google, until "mp3" replaced it about 2 years ago. I wonder what that really means... your feedback please. :)

Soundless Music
I've thought my emotions were somekind of music playing in my head. (Lately it's been mostly Bartók and less of Mozart... sans actual sound, only the intensity.) Now, there are experiments on "soundless concerts" using infrasound, according to this report.

"Beam me up, Scotty (from Perth)!"
Arguably the possibility of a space elevator first concocted by Arthur C. Clark is increasingly becoming a reality. A company is planning to build one right in Perth, Western Australia. Perth is the sunniest and "farthest" city in the world! According to this article, Perth is chosen as the spot because (1) it's within 45 degrees latitude of the Equator, (2) has a gentle ocean, with lower than average tidal movements, (3) access to land, a city and international airport, (4) in or near an economically advanced and politically stable country.

IMHO, Perth, as a city, is unimpressive. That of course will not affect the space elavator. There's the hip neighbor city of Fremantle, though. Before you take off to space from Perth, perhaps you can hang out in "Freo" (as Fremantle is called fondly by its locals), with its friendly people, cool bars, old-Western style streets. Western Australia is also known for good wine. You might want to check out some estates that serve their products right next to oak barrels... What a lifetyle to precede one's journey into space!

Still speaking of space elevators, here's a /. review of a book that concludes space elevators a near-term feasibility. Beam (er, take) me up, Scotty!

Dating Guide
Perhaps this is rather belated, as I live in a +8 GMT country and Valentine's Day comes ahead of other time zones from where this matter has been brought to my attention. Nonetheless, Valentine's Day or not, we date. Here's Slashdot's "Some Geek Guides for Dating." If you're really handicapped, you may start with this Dating Flow Chart by Illiad. (And don't forget to speak her/his language.) Happy Geek hunting!

Tech Support
This piece by Illiad reminds me of my 'tech support' days. Hmm... that was like some patience and ages ago!



Incidentally, people are increasingly dissatisfied with commercial tech support nowadays. But tech support people contend that some users are just clueless if not irrational when dealing with tech support guys. Or could it be due to a general malaise with technology itself?

Diet
Lately Atkins diet seems to have staged a good comeback, challenging the traditional nutritional pyramid. But here's an alternative to both choices. (<-- just don't quote me :) )

'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog'
Let's revisit that 1993 New Yorker cartoon. There's really nothing inherently wrong with being a dog, if we may add. I still wonder, however, why up to now no one has come up with some kind of a Turing's Test to distinguish human intelligence from dog intelligence on the Net. :)

Speaking of Internet and "smartness," here's a piece on "What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else," and find out why stupidity is bless when it comes to Internet.

Amara's Law

I've just blogged about Murphy's Law. This time, it's about another popular "law": Amara's. Named after Roy Amara, former president of the Institute for the Future, it states that people tend to overestimate the short-term impact of technological change and underestimate its long-term impact. That's true with cars before and most true now with the Internet, with all the hype about it. One observation from Phil Agre's Red Rock Eater News puts it quite clearly,


"It strikes me that the conventions of news reporting introduce a bias into our understanding of new technologies and their place in society. And it's not just news reporting: scholars who want to get tenure are asked whether they have discovered something, and the easiest way to discover something in the social world is to declare that something is new: for example, that we have entered an "information age", a concept that has been renamed many times. (James Beniger's book, "The Control
Revolution", includes a huge table of these names, and it's already fifteen years old. Nowadays the table would probably extend to book length all by itself.) If you can't declare a vast world-historical discontinuity then you have to go to the trouble of analyzing the same old world more deeply than others have, and that's a lot of work.

"The hardest work, it seems to me, is analyzing just how the existing forces of society are transposed in a world of pervasive information and communication technologies..."

Such "transposition" takes a long time. By then most people would find it boring to talk about what happened.

The Japanese Ring

Based on a novel by Kôji Suzuki, this series of Ringu (1 and 2, plus 0) is the best horror film I've seen since Blair Witch Project. Hideo Nakata (director) makes the most of persistent supertition in modern life (this time, surrounding the video technology). Film's synopsis here. Interview with the director here. Some of my friends do not recommend watching this movie alone at home. Or if you must watch, make sure the phone ringer is off. :)

Is the 'digital divide' destiny?
Perhaps, as this Clay Shirky article muses: "A new social system starts, and seems delightfully free of the elitism and cliquishness of the existing systems. Then, as the new system grows, problems of scale set in. Not everyone can participate in every conversation. Not everyone gets to be heard. Some core group seems more connected than the rest of us, and so on."

While this possibility certainly poses a challenge to people of egalitarian persuasion, the whole point of human development is the overcoming of present problems (including digital divides) and, perhaps unintentionally, replacing them with new ones--each time with the hope that the world will become a better place to live in.

How long will the rule of Moore's Law last?
At least for a decade, reportedly according to Intel cofounder Gordon Moore and formulator of the law. Others seriously doubt it, or at least think we should forget it altogether as it has become an unhealthy obsession.

Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months. Arguably this law helps define the limits or pace of technological progress.

Update: NASA has discovered a way of improving computers with tiny carbon tubes on silicon chips. Arguably this extends the life of Moore's law.

George Lucas In Love

Finally got to watch this short hilarious film about the "origin" of Star Wars saga and its characters. (Here's the download link at MediaTrip.) Fighting a writer's block while trying to complete his final screenplay for USC Film School, young George Lucas finds inspiration from people around him: his stoner roommate, evil neighbor, and a girl fan (with matching hair buns) who becomes his lover. These are some of the "prototypes" of the characters found in Star Wars... yeah right! R2D2 and 3CPO, Darth Vader, Yoda, Hans Solo--you'll find them here in their "natural" habitat! 'Shakespeare In Love' + 'Star Wars' = 'George Lucas In Love'. Arguably this is the most watched short on the web. Run Time: 9 minutes Director: Joe Nussbaum

War on Terrorism?
How about war on plagiarism? Here's a report that claims the British dossier on Iraq was lifted from the work of an academic, even copying its grammatical mistakes! O, Tony Boy, this time it's more than just mispelling the word "tomorrow" three times! Tsk, tsk, tsk...

Hero

Zhang Yimou's Hero is one of the best films I've ever seen. A dazzling beauty, this picture could have been made only by the man who did Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum, The Road Home, and Not One Less--only the films I need to hazard the bet that Zhang is the best Chinese film director ever. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would pale in comparison to Hero. Zhang is probably China's answer to Japan's Akira Korusawa. Hero is a historical fiction or a fictional history of the drama behind the rise of China's first dynasty. Synopsis here. Nameless (Jet Li) the assasin-in-the-making competes with other legendary assassins, Broken Sword ( Tony Leung Chiu-wai), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and Sky (Donnie Yen), to get to the King of Qin (Cheng Daoming) and to kill him. From start to finish, this is easily the best Chinese banquet on celluloid!

Is your boss spying on your Net activities?
Tell him to back off! Workplace Net monitoring has negative effects, says a Business2.com report. While about 50 percent of Net utilization at the workplace is for personal, non-work related pursuits, that fact does not necessarily support an outright ban of non-business online activities. The ban might result to (1) employees taking days off from work to deal with personal matters that could have been done shortly from a Net connection at work, and (2) low morale of employees when net controls are enforced. Another study suggests that personal web use at work is offset by online office work at home. So tell you're boss it's just about even. Now, if you excuse me, you're blocking the monitor. I have an eBay auction to bid in.

Los Amantes del Círculo Polar

Another great film by Spanish director Julio Medem shown at the UP Film Center. (I blogged about the films of this director only last Wednesday.) 'Los Amantes...' (Lovers of the Arctic Circle) plays up the notion of coincidence as a matter that ultimately guides personal relationships. Otto and Ana (whose names are palindromic) meet by chance in grade school and fall in love with each other. Otto's dad and Ana's mom also meet by chance, and marry. The rest of the story is a muti-vocal narration of Ana's and Otto's quests for the greatest coincidence of their lives. I won't spoil the story for you. Go find the DVD release!

The Phantom Edit

FINALLY I got to watch 'Star Wars 1.1--The Phantom Edit'. A "fan cut" of Phantom Menace rumored to have been done by a Hollywood insider, this movie is certainly better than the original George Lucas release: less of Jar-Jar Binks and pointless action and dialogue. Phantom Edit is also shorter by about 20 minutes, but the sound dub and the speaker's lips seem out of sync. This is a controversial underground release. Initially Lucas thought it's just a case of fans having fan with the material. But when more cuts were done and distributed as the "better" movie, the director and the film industry realized that the digital approach they inaugurated in film making also allows people to have their own takes at the material. Here's Salon Magazine's piece on the matter.

Illiad on Ethics
Here's Illiad's take on "ethics." Lots of intelligent geek humor are available at one of my fave sites, www.userfriendly.org, the home of Illiad. Now, who's Illiad? :)

Is Micro$oft afraid of Open Source?
Both El Reg and /. have noticed Micro$oft's report of falling profit in its Second Quarter Form 10-Q filed with the US SEC, allegedly in part due to the increasing adoption (or "revolution" as President Nemenzo would call it) of Open Source software. Microsoft notes the "increasing challenge" from the Open Source movement to its traditional software development model. But there's more in the report than meets the eye. Remember all sorts of lawsuits against Micro$oft? Class actions, state actions, private actions, government investigations, patent suits against the company's false adverts, monopolistic practices, insecure systems and crappy products ran up to hundreds of millions of dollars. And I bet there's no letup in sight! If Filipinos have to keep up with the rest of the world, perhaps, they should also go after the company in the legal front. It ran after pirates in Virra Mall and Quiapo. Filipinos can run after Micro$oft in court. (And here's to remind you how much suffering you had to endure. :) ) Wouldn't that be a classier act to do? In this country with an oversupply of lawyers, it shouldn't be a problem. :)

If you're an Open Source fan, here's a cartoon to make your day!

But, what if Micro$oft goes open source?

Are girls more suicidal than boys?
According to a study, in some likelihood, yes... if they use alcohol and drugs. :)

Suicidal women might need some exposure to male sweat, as it has been found to brighten women's mood, according to this research. But I guess the last thing a woman needs is a man's stinky armpit. My feminists friends shouldn't blame me. :)

Still on the subject of girls-boys/women-men, it appears that women would need bigger computer screens more than men, according to this New Scientist article... perhaps so they could be even in playing Quake. There'll be suicide no more. :)

Bandwidth Talk
Our UP President, Dodong Nemenzo himself recognizes how limited the UP Internet bandwidth is. He takes the initiative to increase our ability to access the Net. "Since I took over," the President says, "we have increased our bandwidth at considerable expense, yet it did not take long before the line got congested again" (Forum, 28 Jan 03). Well put. Still, we lag behind Ateneo, "the other great school down the road" (as one UP anthropology professor fondly calls the rival). In the 2000 Asiaweek Survey of Asia's Best Universities, Ateneo's Net bandwidth per student was 0.27kbps; UP's, 0.03kbps! La Salle is at 0.60kbps per student. Since 2000, despite the administration's enthusiasm to promote IT, there has been no substantial increase in the bandwidth in relation to our number of Net users. There's just too little bandwidth to share at UP, to begin with.

Which is not to say that the administration is wanting in the initiative to put this resource to optimal use. The university's Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is supposed to be a step in that direction. However, the ban of non-academic use of the network infrastructure--including the ban on chatting, MP3 download and access to porn site--can only go so far. Technically, the implementation is limited. Porn sites can be accessed through sites that feature anonymous surfing. Porn publishers are known to keep changing their URLs. Chatting can be web-based and doesn't have to depend on locally installed chat client software. There are also software applications that alllow people to dodge certain port blocks by proxy servers, our gateways to the Net. In other words, bandwidth management can only do so much, especially in a situation where there's just too little bandwidth to manage, to begin with. Needed still are more innovative and aggressive means to get additional bandwidth for UP.

One possibility (inter alia) is to get private investment that will put up a parallel proxy server, a gateway accessible by paying subscribers. This should be welcome by those who want premium access through the UP Network. It will loosen bottlenecks at the existing proxy servers. The investment can be negotiated such that UP's "earnings" in this venture can come in the form of added bandwidth for the "free" common proxy servers. Thus, theoretically, the scheme will generate more bandwidth for the wider university constituency as the number of premium subscribers increase. Well, this is just one unsoliticited suggestion. I'm sure the President is backed by good managers who can do better in securing more bandwidth for UP.

The matter of Internet access fees is a very sensitive issue. But should UP charge people for premium or high usage, this practice isn't exactly "unheard of" in an academic setting. Cornell University charges its faculty, staff or students for using more than 2GB of bandwidth a month. Well, that's Cornell, and I'll genuflect before my University officials if only I get just half of what Cornell gives out for "free."

On the "envy note" relating to bandwidth, the BBC reports a new Net speed record of transferring 6.7 gigabytes of data (the equivalent of 4 hours of DVD-quality movies) across 10,978 kilometres (6,800 miles), from Sunnyvale (US) to Amsterdam (Holland) in less than one minute. Wow. But that wow should be short-lived. Caltech has announced the protocol capable of delivering 8,609 Mbps over the Internet, using 10 simultaneous flows of data. That means the abiliity to download a full-length DVD movie in less than five seconds! Pretty soon I'll run out of wows.

SAGE e-journals available for free? Well, that's the blurb. Supposedly it's accessible via ingenta during February and March 2003. Access includes (daw!) full text files for some issues going back as far as 1999. But as I logged in there now, full access to most issues is unavailable. If it would really be available, what happens to the cliche that good things never last? And, darn!, someone got my handle again!

Shortcuts to some SAGE journals (you have to login of course): New Media and Society ( a personal fave) Anthropological Theory Business & Society Communication Research International Sociology Journal of Sociology Media, Culture & Society Philosophy & Social Criticism Philosophy of the Social Sciences Social Science Computer Review Sociology

Are Open Source hackers altruistic?
Hmm... maybe not, to begin with. Here's a First Monday article that laments the fading altruism in Open Source development. It maintains that "hacking rises and falls inversely to its opportunity cost." But as Barry Wellman has been telling us all along, the information society is "networked individualism."

Lucia y El Sexo (2002)

Watched this erotic Spanish movie last night at the UP Film Center with wife and friend. It's about Lorenzo (Tristan Ulloa), a writer, and his relationships with 3 women: a waitress named Lucia (Paz Vega), a woman he meets on an island (Najwa Nimri), and a young nanny (Elena Anaya). Directed by Julio Medem--a medical doctor, a leading voice of post-democracy Basque cinema. Sometime last year, I also watched his 'La Ardilla Roja' (The Red Squirrel). The BBC declares 'Lucia y El Sexo' "an intoxicating experience." This makes me wonder how much we're really missing with not that many choices at our theatres showing too many crappy Hollywood and local movies.

Sashimi
Just finished a meal of sashimi, rice, and soup. The sauce for sashimi came with wasabi, of course. Yummy! I like this food even with the thought that fish like tuna has certain level of methyl mercury which may cause heart disease, in addition to other risk associated with mercury contamination. A report says its risk is underestimated.

Hmm.... will I cut down a bit on my fish consumption? Darn! Perhaps I should also feel guilty that the fishing industry that supports my taste for sashimi decimates major species.

Sex With Animals... er, In the Animal Kingdom
Here's an interesting piece on the larger picture. :) Some links somehow led me to this site... yeah right!

Janis Ian on Life in the Music Business

a /. interview. I've never been familiar her music. But since she figured prominently in netizens' fight against the Greed that is RIAA, I began to listen to her well-thought-out arguments... and her music. Courtney Love also did speak well against the Greed.


In this LA Times editorial, Ms Ian asserts, "The RIAA says it is doing all this to make more money for me and other artists like me, but don't be fooled. Many musicians would lose money, many fans would be denied a universe of new choices and the possibilities of Internet music would be cut off before the revolution even begins." Her site: www.JanisIan.com.

Speaking of money successful recording artists would make, here's a "study" of their income in comparison with what city sanitation workers earn.

Only 21% of the 40 million downloading Americans think they're hurting the artists. [ report | charts ]

One study suggests that piracy is just a scapegoat of RIAA for its miseries, comparing it with similarly placed companies. Here's to start RIAA-bashing!

On a lighter (musical?) note, Illiad has this to say on the matter.

Blogging Virgin
Alright! This is my first blog. Well, not really. I did some web admin stuff at web.kssp.upd.edu.ph for many years since Internet was introduced in the university. But this is really one place for pure blogging. Just can't get rid of the itch, huh?



Are you "psy"?
You took away my handle! Well, I guess our dogs have the same name. But, really, "psyfi" is my alternative handle when "psy" is taken.

When I opened an account here at blogger, I realized "psy" was gone. So perhaps I must count the times some other "psy" has been ahead of me in getting login accounts using the handle. So far, I've only been able to get one "psy" ahead of other impostors. :) That's my rocketmail account. O, maybe that's a giveaway! But, yes, I got to rocketmail ahead of others... back when yahoo, hotmail, msn still weren't around. Anyway, "psy" or otherwise, let's blog our thoughts away!