peopLe..

We meet different people in every part of the world because you need them and they need you. In every success and failure in life, it was learned from others’ own experiences. Our weakness will be strengthened; we can adapt one’s persona and suddenly our character can be changed then. We can learn to be independent, learn to take risks, be more sensitive to others, lower our pride, control our temper, to be more devoted and matured spiritually, to love and be loved, learned to be professional at work, to be punctual, to have a word of honor which gain integrity to others. We become more competent because we admire their attitudes, personalities and expertise.

People come and go. Certainly, some people cannot stay longer in our lives. They just have to be part of us because of the purpose. Although some of them hurt our feelings but they taught us to grow further and discover our whole being. It’s for you to be thankful or regret that you met them. Just keep in mind that for every person we met there was a new learning.

via Tumblr http://nimbosa.tumblr.com/post/57810012744

Authors@Google: Clay Shirky

really interesting

The author of the breakout hit Here Comes Everybody reveals how new technology is changing us from consumers to collaborators, unleashing a torrent of creative production that will transform our world. For decades, technology encouraged people to squander their time and intellect as passive consumers. Today, tech has finally caught up with human potential.

In Cognitive Surplus, internet guru Clay Shirky forecasts the thrilling changes we will all enjoy as new digital technology puts our untapped resources of talent and goodwill to use at last.

Since we Americans were suburbanized and educated by the postwar boom, we've had a surfeit of intellect, energy, and time-what Shirky calls a cognitive surplus. But this abundance had little impact on the common good because

television consumed the lion's share of it-and we consume TV passively, in isolation from one another. Now, for the first time, people are embracing new media that allow us to pool our efforts at vanishingly low cost. The results of this aggregated effort range from mind expanding-reference tools like Wikipedia-to lifesaving-such as Ushahidi.com, which has allowed Kenyans to sidestep government censorship and report on acts of violence in real time.

Clay Shirky teaches at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where he researches the interrelated effects of our social and technological networks. He has consulted with a variety of groups working on network design, including Nokia, the BBC, Newscorp, Microsoft, BP, Global Business Network, the Library of Congress, the US Navy, the Libyan government, and Lego. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, Harvard Business Review, Business 2.0, and Wired.

FVR has already replied to this Open Letter

02 December at 08:11
via Facebook Notes
by Lila Shahani





" Thanks, all! Ryan, FVR wrote me back to say that he was "hurt" that I had gone public with my letter and that my opinion was very important to him. So I wrote back explaining why I felt I had to do so. I apologized again for having inadvertently hurt him while standing my ground on the questions I had raised, pointing out that he had not exactly answered them yet... After that, we wrote each other several more times to make peace and he eventually sent me a giant box of materials to read, which I am now going through.

In the meantime, he has decided not to make any endorsements until March of next year... He tends to believe that candidates "implode" if u just give them a little time, so I'm sure he's watching and waiting to see who will do what. Already there have been some minor implosions anyway... That said, obviously I would be much happier if he took a stance once and for all...

Feel free to re-post, Bart! "


in reference to: Notes from an Insomniac: An open letter to FVR by Lila Shahani (view on Google Sidewiki)
see the reply: http://www.google.com/sidewiki/entry/darth.Serious/id/qlJy7W3P7fytRteD_Oz1VVmZ2Aw

mistakes and disaster, SAD

“When man makes mistakes, they call it evil.

When God makes mistakes, they call it nature”.

 

That’s according to Jack Nicholson’s character in the 1987 film Witches of Eastwick. And when a typhoon struck down a huge tree in my neighborhood in Manila in the 1990’s, I uttered the same line to my landlord. He thought it was original. (I take it he never saw the movie).

So, were last month’s typhoons in the Philippines man’s or God’s mistakes? They had Pinoy names. What do you think?

Ondoy and Pepeng (internationally known Ketsana and Parma, respectively) were no God’s mistakes. They were ingredients for a perfect disaster.,

I was actually home in the Negros island, one of the middle islands (sounds like Lord of the Ring’s Middle Earth) of the Philippines when Ondoy made landfall on September 26, 2009, and we thought it was going to be just another typical typhoon: dark skies, heavy rains, a little flooding here and there. And that’s it. A few things would get wet, the flooding would go down, and the sun would be out the next day!

But we were wrong! Nobody – the people, the government, and not even the national weather bureau – got it right! And while we were getting the usual downpours in the south of the country, we didn’t know at that time, that people were already struggling to save themselves and their homes in certain parts of Manila and Luzon from the flash floods that even reached the second storey of their houses! And while everyone else was watching the breaking news on TV, we were actually watching a perfect disaster in the making.

And it was. A perfect disaster.

From the primitive weather forecasting equipment, to poor urban planning, poor and undisciplined garbage disposal, poor metropolitan drainage system. Let’s throw in corruption, relentless mining, illegal logging, carelessness and indifference. All these sound like man’s mistakes, and the two typhoons just completed the picture.

This is what we get when we run out of luck. Nature makes sure we don’t have all the fun.

Have we learned?

* * * * * *

On my flight back to Manila (from Negros), I asked for a window seat so that I can take photos of the flooded areas from above. Though not as dramatic as those photos of the floods in the news, I saw for myself the consequence of man’s mistakes. This was the worst flooding in Manila in 40 years. We cannot blame nature; we can only blame ourselves. And if we survived this disaster, the next Ondoy and Pepeng will make sure we don’t.

* * * * *

 

this is a rePOST of a nice article from Alphonse @ http://apinoyinkorea.blogspot.com/ which I full support

 

Please join:

http://www.blogactionday.org/

the de facto president

Gloria’s appeal to the intelligentsia and religious leaders to support her in efforts to weed out corruption and promote good governance is but a last ditch effort to trick all of us to give her another chance. She says one thing and does another. Gloria’s decision to scrap EO 464 now that the damage has already been done on our institutions is too late and too empty to be of any substance. The Supreme Court leaves only the principle of issuing EO-464 constitutional, but everything else is rubbish as it has already junked (much earlier) the constitutionality of all but two provisions of the controversial E.O. 464 which have been used in covering up for the Venable Contract, Hello Garci Scandal, Fertilizer Fund Scam, NorthRail Project and the NBN-ZTE deal. Even before the EO was scrapped, it was toothless and rendered inefficient so that other weapons are now used to achieve the same effect – invoking presidential immunity, the right against self-incrimination, and executive privilege – this is a clear indication of saying one thing yet doing another. Malinaw sa taong bayan na ang administrasyon ni Gloria ay sinisikil ang katotohanan at umiiwas sa pananagutan.

TAMA NA, SOBRA NA. Seven years, and nothing but saliva, Gloria’s moves are not part of a sincere struggle but a blatant hypocrisy that seeks to insult the intelligence of the Filipino people and disrespect our laws and the constitution itself, along with every principle of ethics and morality, in her administration’s quest for political survival and dominion over all that is left of the Philippines.

the de facto president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) has lost all sense of decency and consequently has lost any remaining respect of the Filipino People. She has repeatedly become the centerpiece of scams and scandals that represent the wide range of corruption and dishonesty she and her allies have ventured into. It is an understatement to say that the National Executive branch of the Philippine government has virtually become the exclusive enclave of Gloria and her allies, becoming in fact the Great Arroyo Mafia. (OR, the Great Mafia of the Arroyos, still GMA. Note that JdV was kicked out of this, thanks to the war-drum beat of the three Arroyos in the Lower House, confirming earlier suspicions of further consolidation of power with the election of 3 Arroyos and the explosive growth of ka-KAMPI.)

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the Titular head of this mafia; while we now all know, like Renato de Villa has known way ahead of us, that Big Boy, Jose Pidal, the First Gentleman is its real boss. So in analysis we can surmise that there are two GMAs: one is Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the sincere and hardworking populist president; the other is the Great Mafia of the Arroyos, the underground under-the-table system of alliances developed and aggressively pursued by the First Gentleman, his sons, brother Iggy, and their loyal servants like Abalos, Nograles, and you get the picture. The Great Mafia of the Arroyos is, of course, not complete without the backing and loans from crony capitalists, and the one we know most is Enrique Razon. Who knows how many more of this cabal of conspirators have turned against their own people for financial gain. What we know from erstwhile allies (Manay Gina de Venecia, and the Hyatt 10 like Dinky Soliman) is that the other GMA, the Mafia, has been in virtual control of the Office of the President since its survival of the Hello-Garci Electoral Fraud Scandal.

TAMA NA, SOBRA NA.

If the president stays, she will remain an object not of respect, but an object of national scorn and international shame for us!

The only way out is for the chief benefactors of the rigged 2004 elections to resign immediately and unconditionally, to prepare the way for a snap elections. All the mess done by the current regime has unconsciously dug its own grave and in its effort to cover-up, this grave has become deeper. Of course, Cha-Cha (or charter change) has always been the first aid kit of LAKAS since the Ramos regime. Its recipe has been perfected by JdV himself perhaps out of fervent hopes to become the First Prime Minister in this new Charter. But now this recipe has been stolen from him as GMA poises to transform herself into this new blended vastly reinforced top position. Sorry JdV, but you can’t make it right, probably (GMA hopes) the lord will grant this to her at the right time (after 2010).

Speaking of the lord, please be informed we do not pray to one and the same God. (Remember FG could be heard saying, “god bless!” in the hello-garci recordings.) While also monotheists, these corrupt elements obviously have one god but its name is Mammon, not Allah, Yahweh El Shaddai, or any other supreme deity, but Mammon. So the next time you hear Gloria saying she talked to god, you know which god hears her prayers.

SHE has excelled above all men in theft and perjury.

Her reward will be great in Mammon’s haven. Bahala na si lord sa kanya

Knowledge, Suffering and Improvement

Early in my life I got tired on knowledge…

In the process, I’ve discovered things of real value:

To accomplish things = to do things in your own way

To understand things = to appreciate things not done your way, to accept things beyond you

These two things do not preclude knowledge, but rather require it. They also make knowledge complete by laying bare its purpose.

In more classical terms, knowledge acquires value only if it has aided in the creation of things new and wonderful, or it brings you into communion with a larger whole you have not realized before.

In this way, I am an intellectual but not an intellectualist. I pursue knowledge not as an end unto itself. In the same way, I promote myself and my ideas not for my own glory. Everything I do, everything I know, from now on, serves a greater purpose…

For in the beginning there was void. And then Love was born. It did not compel, it did not demand anything of itself, it was pouring out. From it, everything came into being, before becoming anything. Love was born in Eternity, before Time began, and Love (if it is true) yearns unto that Eternity return.

SUFFERING

“As I say, it’s the human condition. Ever since we were expelled from paradise, we have either been suffering, making other people suffer or watching the suffering of others.

It’s beyond our control.”

Knowledge is only valuable if it has aided in the creation of things new and wonderful,

or it brings you into communion with a larger whole you have not realized before.

In the same way, you are valuable only if you have aided in the creation of a new possibility, new choices; or when you have realized your purpose in a larger reality.

Everything is of value only when it has graduated to a higher sense of meaning and participation.