New blog

As you might have guessed, I don't update this blog anymore. I now blog on merc248.vox.com. It's A Good Thing. (tm)

For those of you who fall asleep on my posts

Here is something hopefully to make things more interesting
so
I can catch the attention of
more
people
woooo

Objections to the $100 Laptop

I've read a few things about the "$100 Laptop" and how it will approach the problem of poverty and illteracy in the third world. It is indeed a very altruistic initiative in its nature; I'm surprised at how they reduced the price of a laptop so low to something somewhat attainable by the poor.

There seems to be a number of problems with this initiative, however. There are obvious problems laying underneath all of the altruism, such as selling them directly to governments which relies too much on the government's own plan of massive distribution and trustworthiness. I am, however, more worried about the underlaying ethical issues that come with distributing such a machine to millions of children living in third world countries.

The laptops that are being distributed are meant as a sort of one way passage to all modes of learning; it will contain electronic textbooks, programs that allow to write up presentations, programs that will allow for children to learn various concepts, etc. This solves the problem of printing costly textbooks that may or may not be as good as textbooks that are already extremely expensive over here in the United States, as well as helping children solidfy their thoughts in a standard medium. However, this also creates an environment that relies on technological dependence; we shouldn't of course assume that the environment will become nearly as extreme as America's dependence on technology, but it will still cultivate a sense of technopositivism. Technopositivism, in general, destroys human culture; it breeds a sense of mechanism within the person that will influence him to deviate far from culture as possible. It is, however, essential that third world countries have some sort of educational initiative; throwing in a laptop, however, will not solve the entire problem. There has to be some sort of grassroots transformation of society so that they are more accepting of such changes without compromising culture and humanity.

E. F. Schumacher might disagree with me in this point as he postulates in Small is Beautiful that in order for countries to evolve as humanly as possible, the techology introduced must be able to be employed by the individual, it must help cultivate creativity, and it must be small enough for man to use. This device does indeed meet those criteria, yet long term dependence on technology will certainly hurt the third world. It is possible that they will start to demand services that will rely on a central system rather than the individual; and if such a society becomes dependent on computer technology, then surely the mechanism that arises from such dependence will only harbor uncreativeness. In other words, interdependence on computer technology will foster a parasitic relationship larger than man himself.

Perhaps deploying the $100 laptop with complementary initiatives that transform the society into something that will both accept technology and stretch itself to not become consumed by said technology will be the best way to go about doing it. However, it seems to be contradictory to wish that such a society will accept technology and not be consumed by it, as it seems to be a nasty part of human nature to be consumed by something that is desired and depended upon so much.

Eh, that's all I'll bother to write for now. I'll try to motivate the ideas a bit more later down the line.

A Letter To The Future

I stumbled upon this blog post while browsing through one of the internet forums that I frequent. For those who are too lazy to click the link to find out what is contained inside, it's a "time capsuled" letter addressed to the blogger's two sons and how the mother wishes them to grow up to be refined men. I thought that it was a moving letter, even if I can't exactly relate to the blogger by any means.

"Filipinoness"

Often when I go to Philippine cultural events, I always seem to find a large group of like dressed people (often tending toward FUBU) that always seem to make it known how much more Filipino they are compared to others around them. I'm not against people exclaiming their Filipino pride (in fact, I welcome any form of said pride), but when it turns into a dick measuring contest that is often measured by how many Rex Navarette lines they can spew out or by how many Filipino jokes they can tell over and over again, the whole thing transforms from a display of pride to a display of ego.

What's even worse is that "Filipinoness" is often measured by the aforementioned criteria of arm flailing rather than accepting the fact that the person is indeed Filipino as much as the other person. Maybe it's true that those born here in the United States are "less cultured" than those born in the Philippines or that those who research a lot about Filipino culture in their free time will be "more cultured" than those who didn't, but really, who is to say how cultured someone else might be compared to them? Such comparisons would only lead to those who wish to be "more cultured" to only fit themselves within a certain stereotype in order to be "more Filipino."

In my opinion, "Filipinoness" is merely measured by how much inner appreciation you have for the culture. Inner appreciation, to me, is defined merely as an appreciation that is taken to the heart rather than taken as a superfluous addition of knowledge. Being Filipino isn't about Rex Navarette punch lines, adobo jokes, dressing a certain way, etc.; it is about appreciating the hardships that our ancestors have gone through, appreciating Philippine culture beyond pop culture, etc.

I'm proud to be a Filipino and I'm proud to be American born as well. I recognize that since I am American born, a lot of the environment around me has changed me from what a prototypical Filipino should be to what an American is today. People do say I am "white washed," but then again, what is "white washed?" Is it my choice of clothes? My choice of words? My choice of interests? No matter; all I know is that I am who I am, and being Filipino is part of the identity that I've absorbed.

Perhaps I'm merely jaded by the "Filipino pride" that seems to engulf a lot of Filipino youth today, but I can't help but notice the amount of negative fervor that merely creates a single but stereotypical identity of the typical Filipino youth.

Bikers, Phelps, Godhatesfags.com, Oh My!

Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church leader extraordinaire, decides to step over a fairly thick and defined line in order to protest soldiers' funerals in an agenda seemingly unrelated -- by a huge margin -- to the servicemen and women in the military.

Luckily enough, scraggly bikers from all across the United States go to these funerals in order to flush out the protesters.

Ahh, I love the first amendment and the sweet scenarios it provides. Protestors, check. Pissed off families, check. Bad ass motorcyclists, check. Fred Phelps... I wish he wasn't around, but check.

Since they can't really harm each other through physical action, they can at least yell at each other while wailing families cry in the background, adding to the overall cacophony of an otherwise peaceful funeral. I guess someone could "accidentally" ride their motorcycle into the crowd of protesters in order to somewhat solve the problem.

Valentine's Day: OVERRATED

What better to spend Valentine's Day on submitting homework that took hours upon hours of painstaking tedium to complete? Well... eh, perhaps that's just my own problem. But still, there are other reasons why Valentine's Day is HORRIBLY OVERRATED:

• Single men above the age of 21 (19 if you live in Canadia) can drink their Valentine's Day away in a conveniently placed tavern somewhere near their homes. They can freely stumble home and forget that the day even happened. HOWEVER, if you have a high alcohol tolerance and/or you are below the age of 21, what is there to do? Nothing.
  
• There's only so many "original" places that you can go to with whoever.
• It's a waste of money! Flowers? Fuck that! I need money to feed myself.
  
• There are, however, tons of those candy heart things that taste great. Too bad they're all filled with cliché phrases that elicit some sort of canned reaction.

But eh, who knows, maybe it's just the bitter single side of me that's saying this.

Valentine's Day still sucks, though.

What the fuck do you know about blues?

I'm not particularly fond of going around Downtown Seattle at midnight, but I am now kicking myself for not staying there longer tonight.

A random person walked up to me while I was waiting at the bus stop and started asking me if I played blues music (I had my guitar firmly attached to my back at the time, so it wasn't a wonder why they approached me about it.) I'm not even near that level at all, which I told him right away. He asked me what sort of music I even play on the guitar... which I had no clue of either, since I typically improvise.

He was telling me various things about music theory; various basic concepts like "relative minor" keys and dominant/subdominant keys were what he talked about mostly (bus came earlier than I wanted, so there wasn't much time to talk.)

I was about to pull out my guitar before my bus came exactly a second after. Dammit. The thought of staying for another thirty minutes crossed my mind, but I wanted to leave the old Downtown that I loathed staying in late at night.

I'm determined to find him in Downtown sometime this coming week and learn from him.

The thing he said to me right before the bus came was especially great: "blues scales? Do you know anything about blues scales? What the fuck do you know about blues anyway?"

Hahah, man... I really need to find him.

Wikisource

I stumbled upon this website while I was looking for various things on Wikipedia. It's a website filled with all sorts of FULL texts ranging from Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Chomsky.

The only gripe I have with such a resource is that I personally find it harder to read material online compared to printed material. But hey, it's thousands of free texts online for everyone to view at their own leisure; I'm going to give some of these things a read and see if I can stand looking at a monitor for hours in order to go through a novel.

V for Very Hungry

V for Vendetta.

This will be an excellent movie. However, I could not help but think of a potential scenario that stars the main character in the movie. I present to you the following scenario:



vs.



in a duel to the death. The stalker king will win, for sure.