Last lecture.

Randy Pausch died this week. :(

That's really sad. I got all teary-eyed the first time I watched his lecture on Youtube. What an amazing spirit.



ABC's report is here.

Books, books, books

My husband and I have had a carpenter over these past several days to help us build new shelving and storage units. But no matter how many new shelves we've had built, it seems like we still can't solve our top problem: WHERE TO PUT ALL OUR BOOKS?

I'm startled that I can't find any articles on the web on academicians and their book storage problems, because I know from conversations with my colleagues that it's a problem many of us have.

One of my older colleagues married a fellow-academic, and every hallway of their house is lined with bookshelves. Yet their living room still has stacks of books that seem not to be able to find a home.

Another colleague married a lawyer. He recently bought some new shelves for his house. When I visited his house, however, the number of books on his new shelves was so high that the shelves were sagging in the middle.

I didn't marry an academic, but I married a bookworm who buys books more frequently than I do. And we simply can't seem to find the space to put all our books!

We've resorted to the terrible two-rows-of-books "solution" on most of our bookshelves. We have books under the bed and in cabinets ... but we still have books stacked on our desks and night tables! I've brought as many books as I can to my office cubicle, but I have exactly the same problem at the office as well: the shelf on my carrel has already fallen a few times because of the weight of books, and I already have books in boxes under my desk. Every year, I go through my books to see what I can give away, but it isn't easy--reading books is how I make a living and unlike books-for-leisure which you can read often read once and toss, most of my academic books are ones I need to keep as reference for current and future projects.

If any academicians or bookworms out there have thought of solutions to their book storage problems, please share them with us. Meanwhile, Mike and I seriously thinking of getting an Amazon Kindle to make some kind of a dent on our book storage problems.

Should philosophers be politically active?

I've been thinking about this question in response to a comment from a colleague of mine (who works in the School of Social Sciences) that philosophy, the way it is done in the Philippines, doesn't seem to be sufficiently "applied."

Here's an excerpt from one of my two responses to him:

====================

I was thinking about how to express better what I said about philosophers feeling that philosophy isn't necessarily an "applied" area of the humanities, because I don't think I expressed it very well. So I'm going to try again, and I apologize in advance if this is a little long ....

I suppose it's something like this. A good economist (I think) presumes that economic development is good, and looks for an economic theory that will best lead to economic development. A good political scientist (I'm presuming) already has certain presumptions about his vision of what effective politics is, and looks for the political theory that will best actualize that vision. A good catechist presumes certain doctrines about God and faith, and looks for the best theological framework to explain those ideas to catechumens in a way that the catechumens can apply those ideas to life.

Many philosophers believe, however, that if a philosopher wants to do philosophy, he has to be "free" enough to be able to question the very notion of "economic development" (not just what it is, but even whether it's actually desirable) or "effective politics" or the presumptions about God and faith.

If he espouses the "application" of only one particular economic or political theory, then that binds him to that theory and stifles the philosophical freedom to question the very premises of economics/politics. As a colleague of mine said, once "application" becomes the "end-goal," you're no longer doing philosophy, but ideology or indoctrination (which is okay if you're, say, a catechism teacher or a political activist, but that isn't philosophy).

(Actually, sometimes I get uncomfortable with the way political debates are handled in school, because I do feel that sometimes they tend to be of the "indoctrinating" type rather than the dialogical type ... but maybe that reflects a failure of us philosophers more than anything else [something I'll talk about again later on].)

This doesn't mean that the philosopher believes his philosophies shouldn't be applied; rather, that the application of philosophies is not necessarily the task of the philosopher himself. The philosopher's job in society is to think about ideas that other people take for granted as "truth" and question/challenge the premises of those ideas, while it's the task of other people to "apply" the theories that they individually choose to subscribe to. Many philosophers feel, however, that the good philosopher himself should never "subscribe" with finality or permanence to any one philosophy because the premise of philosophy as an activity is that the philosopher never has the final answer; he/she always has to be willing to question the ideas he (or others) have previously held.

This also doesn't mean that philosophy has nothing to do with real problems. I agree with you whole-heartedly that philosophy shouldn't just be about dropping names of dead white men (or women), and I strongly believe that any philosopher worthy of the name is motivated by *true* questions (i.e., questions about concrete reality, or tungkol sa talagang nagmemeron, as Fr. Ferriols would say).

That having been said, I personally do think it's wonderful and admirable and important when philosophy-trained people go out and do find practical "applications" for the philosophies they've chosen to espouse for the time being ... however, I also tend to agree that those activities aren't part of philosophy anymore and aren't necessarily intrinsic to the philosophical activity.

The only "application" (if you can call it such) that I do think is an intrinsic part of philosophy is the activity of dialog: I think every philosopher has the responsibility to promote dialog and questioning, and to encourage all people (especially the people whose "jobs" are more "active" than contemplative) to stop every now and then and be willing to critically question their ultimate presumptions.

Through Google, I found this link (PDF) to a document written, coincidentally, by a philosopher who has come to our school a few times to give talks, Fr. Patrick Riordan.

Crikey.

Okay, so the ZTE-NBN thing is sickening.

But having Erap, a convicted plunderer, make a speech about truth and accountability at an anti-corruption rally?

I'm sorry, but you've got to be joking.

And to people who are willing to be bedfellows with Erap; be careful -- it sends the message that it's more important to be anti-GMA than it is to be pro-honesty.

Kadiri!

This whole ZTE-NBN is sickening.

Will this be the issue that finally brings this administration down?

Facebook is owned by Neocons!

It really is, apparently.

Intramuros with Carlos Celdran

So finally, after some years of planning (hehe!), Mike and I went on a Carlos Celdran walking tour. It was a lovely day for a walk, breezy and not too hot; we'd purposely planned to do this in December for the more pleasant weather, but we actually needn't have worried about that, because we ended up walking less than we'd expected (compared with walking tours we'd done in England).

The 3-hour Intramuros tour took us from Fort Santiago to the facade of Manila Cathedral, to San Agustin Church and Father Blanco's Garden, and finally, to Casa Manila (all just a few blocks away from one another). Of course, being a native of Metro Manila, I'd been to all those places before a number of times, but what made the tour amazing wasn't the locations per se (though I'm sure the locations delighted first-timers to Intramuros), but Carlos' colorful, theatrical, sometimes-funny-and-sometimes-extremely-moving romp through the history of Manila.

Indeed, I felt a lump in my throat a number of times during the tour, most especially during Carlos' dramatic description of the rape of Manila during World War 2. I'd learned about it all in high school, of course, but the version in our textbooks had been a highly sanitized version, a month of atrocities crammed into a paragraph. As we sat there in the crypts of San Agustin museum, Carlos' voice transported us back to 1945, and we were surrounded by cries, screams, tumbling walls, and the smell of death and decay around us. (Incidentally, Juan Luna bones are kept in that crypt!)

Most of the tour was very lighthearted, though--funny most of the time, sardonic many times--and we laughed a lot with Carlos, and together with the other Filipinos in the group, we also often laughed at ourselves.

Carlos' love for Manila was evident and infectious. His final line of the tour said it all: "If you want to change the way Manila looks, start by changing the way you look at Manila" (a slight change from the tagline often mentioned in relation to him, "I can't change the way Manila looks but I can change the way you look at Manila"). As Carlos himself pointed out, a lot of tourists consider Manila an "ugly" city, something that travelers should preferably skip over if they're on the way to any other place in the Philippines. But Manila's story is beautiful, tragic, poignant ... and Carlos is one of the best story-tellers we have out there right now.

In a nutshell: Carlos is a really, really good tour guide, among the best I've ever listened to. If you haven't yet, go, go, go on a Carlos Celdran tour; it's an excellent way to spend half a day, and I daresay you'll find yourself a little more in love with Manila after the tour is done.

==========

Incidentally, it's been my dream for a long time to be a historical tour guide, ever since I went on a tour of Corregidor in college. Now I'm more committed to that dream than ever. (I don't intend to compete with Carlos, of course, haha! He's too good and what he does is unique and precious and all his own. I would do my own thing differently.)

Sheila Coronel

There's a nice article on Sheila Coronel in the Columbia University alumni magazine.

Microplace

Theirs were the only ads on the Paypal homepage, and I clicked on it.

Apparently, EBay has a subsidiary company called Microplace that allows its website users to invest in microfinance project across the developing world. Very very cool idea.

Unfortunately, you can't invest in the Philippines yet (I would've made a payment right then and there had there been a Philippine project). I hope the Pinoys working in microfinance have explored this.

A year of taking the Bible literally

Former Esquire editor A. J. Jacobs, a secular Jew from New York City, decided to spend one year, living out all the Old Testament laws and many of the New Testament ones too as literally as possible, (when it wasn't illegal or impossible to do so, as was the case with the law to "kill magicians").

According to this article, it seems to have started out as a tongue-in-cheek, try-it-just-for-fun experiment (before this, he spent a year reading an entire encyclopedia) ... but it became for Jacobs a true year-long spiritual pilgrimage that ultimately transformed his views in surprising ways. (Well, maybe it isn't that surprising .... I say that, not because I believe that the Bible should be taken so literally, but because I do believe that sacred ritual truly is transformative.)

I'm interested in buying the book.

Palestine

Condi: "It's time for the establishment of a Palestinian state."

It was actually "time" half a century ago ....

Fine-tuning Argument

In past school years, I didn't enjoy teaching Aquinas' Five Ways in my Philosophy of Religion class. I only taught it because I do think it's important to teach at least one text that includes a rational proof for God's existence, and it's the shortest. :) (I did Anselm before--the entire Proslogion--which is very nice [if you do the whole thing and not just the "Ontological" Proof], but it takes too much time.)

But this year I decided to spice it up a little by accompanying the discussion of Aquinas with contemporary arguments for God's existence.

And the result is that I'm enjoying myself a lot more with this discussion. I've especially enjoyed myself with Robin Collins' Fine-tuning Argument (his version of the argument from design). I like. I used to use the entropy argument (look up William Lane Craig if you're interested), but this school year I'm enjoying Collins' more.

College, and the meaning of life ....

From the Boston Globe:

"In the past few weeks, tens of thousands of young men and women have begun their college careers. They have worked hard to get there. A letter of admission to one of the country's selective colleges or universities has become the most sought-after prize in America.

The students who have won this prize are about to enter an academic environment richer than any they have known. They will find courses devoted to every question under the sun. But there is one question for which most of them will search their catalogs in vain: The question of the meaning of life, of what one should care about and why, of what living is for."

The rest of the article is here.

Free will.

Free will is not just in the brain.

Educational Reform.

People keep complaining about the state of public education in our country, but a lot of people who complain, don't think of concrete, feasible ways to improve the system.

I like pragmatic, replicable, feasible ideas and although I'm not directly involved in public education, stories like these make me want to stand up and cheer.

Academic Life.

Please ignore this post. I'm just going to babble nonsensically for a few minutes.

My brother once quoted a professor of his who said, "When you get your bachelor's degree, you think you know everything. When you get your master's degree, you realize you don't know anything. When you get your Ph.D., you realize nobody else knows anything either."

There are lots of things I love about the academic life, and I really shouldn't complain, because I know how lucky I am to be here, to be living the kind of life that I do.

But every now and then, one thing about academic life gnaws at me: the creeping insecurity of a mediocre academician. I know I'm never going to really be an expert at anything ... so why am I here?, I sometimes want to ask myself. And with my field, I don't even know if I'm really contributing anything of value to the world, to the country. :-/

I know what I'm competent at: teaching. Oh how I wish I could just be a teacher.

But sigh, this is the academic life, and while it may look like a walk in the park from the outside, it has its own ratrace, it's own crazy rules of engagement....

It doesn't help that at least once a month, some senior faculty member asks me about my Ph.D....

Sigh.

Creationism reaches the Philippines

Do you remember Sonia Zaide, the history textbook writer?

Apparently she's gone Creationist, in the most extreme sense of the word.

I went to National Bookstore the other day and bought the latest edition of her textbook for 1st year high school students, because I wanted to see what textbooks are out there. The textbook is called,"Philippine History and Government."

Here are some direct quotes.

"Origin of the Philippines. There are many explanations about the origin of our land. As Christians, we believe that the land forms were made by God as part of His creation. Therefore, the Philippines was a part of God's creation of the world. After the Great Flood in the time of Noah, many continents and islands appeared. So the descendants of Noah spread out to many parts of the world."

There's a Bible quote from Genesis, then she mentions legends and myths in the next paragraph. Then in the paragraph after that, she talks about scientists' and geologists' ideas.

Some pages later, she talks about the first Filipinos.

"Who were the first people to live in the Philippines? ... The best explanations we have about our distant past come from three main sources: (1) the story of God's creation in the Bible; (2) the story of evolution made by human scientists; and (3) legends and fairytales made up by imaginative people.

"We will study about all these three explanations about the origin of our ancestors. But because we are Christians, we believe that the story of God's creation of man, as described in the Holy Bible, is the real truth. Therefore, any other explanation about how early man came into being, is only the product of human theory or thinking, and it cannot be the truth....

"According to the Holy Bible, all men and women originated from the first man (Adam) and the first woman (Eve). After the Great Flood, Noah and the three sons left to settle the earth. Noah's sons--Shem, Ham and Japheth--themselves had sons after the flood. One of the sons of the youngest, Japheth, was named Javan (See Genesis 10:1-4). Out of Javan, Noah's grandson, came four sons named Elishah, Tharsis, the Kittim and the Rodanim. According to the Bible, 'From these maritime
peoples spread out into the r territory by their clans within their nations, each with its wown language.' Thus, Fr. Francisco, Colin, a Jesuit historian, wrote that the frist settlers of our country was Tharsis, son of Javan and great grandson of Noah, together with his brothers and their descendants. In time, the descendants of these Biblical characters settled in the parts of the world that e know as Asia, including the islands of the Philippines."

On the opposite page is a chart which shows the names of the descendants of Adam leading to Noah, then: "Noah --> Japheth --> Javan --> Elisha, Tharsis, the Kittim and the Rodanim --> their descendants were the early Filipinos"

===========

Argh.

I'm Catholic who studied in Catholic schools and in my Catholic education, we never had trouble reconciling an allegorical understanding of the Genesis accounts with the theological truths that: (1) God is the Creator of all, and that (2) there was a historical moment, even with the history of evolution, that a distinct creature called "man" emerged, different from all previous primates. It was never an irreconcilable issue.

A colleague told me that the notion of young-earth Creationism is very recent. The early Church fathers--even Fundamentalists' favorite St. Augustine--read the Genesis accounts as allegories, and they were never apologetic about it. I'll write more about the Church fathers and their exegesis of the Genesis creation accounts another time, but feel free to Google them.

The Beatitudes.

This excerpt, from the book The Political Teachings of Jesus, is reminiscent of my liberation theology classes in college.

Seventh-year sabbatical.

I've always just taken for granted that academicians have a special perk not found in most other jobs -- a year-long paid leave from classroom and administrative responsibilities, to produce research. The seventh-year sabbatical.

Only today did I realize that the tradition has its roots in the Jewish idea of the seventh-year jubilee: a sabbath of complete rest taken every seven years, after six years of harvesting.

Interesting.

Growing up with Harry Potter.

I had a delightful epiphany today when I realized that my college junior students have grown up with Harry Potter.

A few of them (girls and guys, I should add) were talking about the latest book, when another guy joined in and said, "Harry Potter?!" when he realized what they were talking about.

"Why? Don't you read Harry Potter?" I asked.

He looked at me incredulously. "Not read Harry Potter! Of course I read Harry Potter! All of us read Harry Potter!!!"

Then I realized that they were just about Harry's age, so I smiled and I said, "You're the perfect age group for Harry Potter, aren't you? You were pretty much the same age Harry was when each new book came out."

And three of them--all guys--excitedly nodded their heads. "I started reading Harry Potter when I was in grade 5," one of them said, and another agreed. The third said, "I started in grade 7." (Remember, these are 19-year-olds I was talking to.)

I find it so fascinating that theirs is an entire batch of young men and women who really did grow up with Harry Potter, going through the same joys and pains that Harry was at each stage of his adolescence.

And I find it more fascinating that Harry crossed the gender divide, creating a shared mythology and childhood memory for an entire batch of boys and girls (now men and women).

=======

After I got home, GMA's "Palaban" was discussing the proliferation of men's magazines.

It occurred to me that in an age when teenagers and young adults are often thought of as victims of a sex-obsessed, sex-saturated culture, one topic that can delight and fascinate all of them, male or female, is a whimsical story about a boy-wizard and how he found the courage to fight Voldemort.

=======

Anyway. Mike was telling me to get the hardbound version of HP1, since it's the only one I own that's paperback. (I started reading after HP2 came out.) What I really want, though, is not the hardbound HP1, but the British English versions of the entire set. (The American English edition was the one that came to the Philippines.)