narrow-mindedness is a disease

Because it's impossible for anyone to know everything, specialization was created. What I originally understood about specialization was that it meant mastery. But based on my experience, it seems that those who specialize put horse blinders on themselves as if only their field of view is the valid and acceptable reality. In this day and age, we cannot be content with our own little microcosms.

The epidemiologist prefers 100, while the anthropologist is content with 1.
Novelists is to flowery words, while Strunk & White is to omit needless words!
Shakespeare is to iambic pentameter, Neruda is to unstructured poetry.
Beautiful to a mother is ugly to another.

Let us maintain a focused view without completely ignoring our peripheral vision. After all, we are all trying to look at something that is beyond ourselves. Hopefully, our own little facets will contribute to a big compound eye that will provide us with a clear picture...that image that will answer all our questions.

baked goods + peanut butter = mind-altering

My brother introduced us to tsinelas, which is mung bean bread with what I recognized as condensed milk and cheddar cheese (Tsinelas literally means "slippers" in Filipino. The bakery item is as big as typical flip-flops). Maaaaan, it's probably spiked with morphine or some endorphin-releasing substance because it.is.incredible...at PhP10.00 per piece, it's a steal! I'm just not sure whether all local bakeries make the stuff. I just had to spread the word so I brought a couple at church last week and I felt so guilty because I thought I just led everyone to sin or something. All the oohs and aahs just wasn't right during Holy week.

Today, I wanted to experiment on tsinelas. My stepmother's sister gave us a jar of Reese's creamy peanut butter (I know...Reese's...peanut butter) so I decided to slather tsinelas with a good spoonful of the stuff to see how it'll taste like....

....Spectacular! By the way, Reese's peanut butter tastes like any other creamy peanut butter. To die for. I love peanut butter!....Anyway, because I'm just naturally curious, I tried tsinelas with chunky peanut butter....

....and whoah....a whole new world....shiny shimmering splendid....!!!

caveat emptor

Let the buyer beware

The entertainment section of today's Inquirer has an article regarding blogging and the power of the internet. And it is always useful for all of us to remember caveat emptor. The monopoly and power that the mass media had in the past has now been transferred to us consumers. So much so that we are able to freely publish our views inasmuch as we have an equal opportunity to access all kinds of information from the web. This means that the chances of getting the wrong type of information is much much higher these days.

We are easily distracted and swayed by nice-looking visuals and high technology that it is easy for us to believe that what is being presented is valid. That's not only applicable to the web. We should alse be on guard about self-proclaimed experts, commercials, enterprises that take advantage of technology in order to look credible. Of course that doesn't mean that we automatically dismiss any form of high-tech sales or high-tech anything....we are all stalkers in one way or another. We have no excuse to NOT know. Pretending to know is as much of a sin as pretending to be ignorant.

It was just simpler way back when...

no more

Holy week has begun and I find myself completely unprepared for it. I've been as bad as I've ever been with the never ending complaints about life and other people whereas I've failed to recognize my own shortcomings. I've been totally consumed with anger and it's unhealthy. I need to be the change I want to see in this world (which has been said before). I'm ashamed. Life must not go on with self-inflicted pain.

I choose to exercise emotional control.
I choose to change my outlook on life; that negativity isn't all around.
I choose to avoid passing judgment on others.

It will be difficult...excruciatingly hard. But it all begins with a decision. And my decision is to avoid instances where I can be vulnerable...vulnerable to being a bad person. I don't want to be a bad person. For all I know, sooner or later the oppressee (if there's such a word) becomes the oppressor....the mutualist becomes the parasite....the underdog becomes the bully.

Thank God for guilt and discernment. Before anything happens outside my person, at least I've decided to put the plug on what will probably become crazy, anarchist reactions.

music, drugs & toilet seats

The Munger's Cognitive Daily discussed the correlation that exists between type of alcohol/drug and musical preference among college students in their recent "casual fridays" post.

"...Rap, Electronic, and to a lesser extent Rock fans expressed any significant positive correlation with substance use. Rock fans were significantly more likely than chance to use only beer and hallucinogens. Classical fans had significant negative correlations with every substance except wine, which was still a marginally significant negative correlation with r = -.08. Far from being wine snobs, it appears that most Classical fans prefer to avoid pretty much all mind-altering substances. The preferred genre of wine drinkers? Alternative, with a .12 correlation between wine drinking and listening. No other genre was significantly correlated with wine drinking in this measure."

So statistics has once again explained real-life phenomena. I love it. Next, regression and sports betting.... By the way, the Math department of our college has proposed a new general education course on statistics. When it was presented during the recent college faculty meeting, I wanted so much to be a student and take it---it's statistics and how it can be applied in real-life situations such as investments, gambling (hehehehe...oops), TV ratings, etc. It's fabulous!

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On the heavier side of the news (pun intended), a woman was found trapped and fused to a toilet seat after fighting with her boyfriend:

"The woman probably became fused to the seat because of skin-penetrating wounds that developed on her behind. Such pressure sores, also known as bedsores, are lesions caused by sustained pressure to the body. In this case, the woman’s skin and underlying tissues became trapped between the ischium—the butt bone—and the toilet seat, cutting off blood flow and causing the affected tissue to become necrotic—i.e., to die. Such sores tend to be quite painful, enough that she probably stopped moving to minimize the pain. After being rooted in one position for long enough (the sheriff estimated at least three to four weeks of continuous sitting), the lesions became open sores, and eventually extended to the tissue below the skin. But the body persistently tries to heal, and as the wounds attempted to scab over, they actually scabbed onto the seat, fusing her down."

I initially LMFAO when I read the toilet seat post, but putting myself in the woman's shoes--it would really have been damn uncomfortable.

witchburn series

Chapter 2: Witchburn was not content with treading on the measly peasants and has decided to target the elders. It won't be long until the citizenry runs out of water to control their kindling tempers. The battle has begun. (LOTR soundtrack......)

brace yourselves kiddies

I recently found out that my blog audience is not mainly composed of cyber-crickets (excluding Eartha and my in-laws who are neither virtual creatures nor insects) ...and that some students actually read my junk. Yes, this is just a bunch of crap. ^_^ I love my cyberspace because it has been my virtual haven. A place where my anonymity allows me to blatantly display who I really am (sad background music please). I must warn my students that my views are simply that----my views. Opinions which, I must admit and overemphasize, tend to be faulty and hormonally induced.

My dear students, you are lucky to have the internet because knowledge is practically at your fingertips. You can basically ask yourself any question right now and have the answer with just a pinkie click of the Enter button....but you must learn how to scrutinize. You have your intellectual faculties to rely on when it comes to finding out whether what you're reading is valid or just a load of beautified excrement (such as this).

I hope that I did not drag you down and influence you to become the whiners of the future. Your potential to become the doers of this planet must never be weighed down by the cynicism of the elders. Mark Twain once said, keep away from people who belittle your dreams/ambitions...small people always do that, but great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.

As for me, I'm still trying to internalize this quote that's written on my planner:
What we need is not merely to reform some bad habits or attitudes; we need to reorient our whole lives and rediscover authentic life, the universal dream of the human race.
As to how I can begin discovering authentic life?...I'm still trying to figure it out.

Amen.

another fixation

Feedreader3.12 is very convenient and user-friendly. What I particularly love about this RSS and Atom reader is that it's for FREE (http://www.feedreader.com/). Fabulous way of organizing your favorite sites, blogs, news, etc. I love it.

summer anticipation

Tell me, who wouldn't want a piece of that?

(I got the image from http://www.lakbaypilipinas.com/)

During my prudent, virginal & kill-joy singlehood, I would squirm at the thought of drinking alcohol. Right now, nothing would be more enjoyable than having a chilled alcoholic beverage while lazily enjoying the fantastic view above.

Close but not quite

Darn it! I posted it! I've been having dreams of writing a book entitled Close but not quite, which is supposed to be about a protagonist (I'm not sure about the character yet) who’s mediocre and a wallflower. I'm planning it to be a relatable and dull story...and I intend it to be dull, because that's the kind of life boring people have...

You know how people are remembered because they're either over-achievers or really terrible? Like in class, how teachers remember the really smart ones as well as the notorious ones? While the rest of the class consisted of classroom fillers who were in between? And they eventually fade away from memory...so that in 5-10 years, when the mundane student greets his/her teacher, the teacher won't be able to recall who that student is? My story is going to be about that kind of ordinary person.

I suppose there's too much drama in literature. Superheroes, villains, mad scientists, damsels in distress, ridiculously good-looking princes....all extremes! It's about time someone wrote about the ordinary person...right? Oh well.

I think I'm bitter. But the fact that I just admitted that I'm ordinary made me feel a bit better. I'm not a genius nor am I stupid...I'm not drop-dead gorgeous, but I believe (and hope) that I'm not butt-ugly...I'm not a super good girl nor a biatch. I'm just space filler. But perhaps, all of us fillers should celebrate our being ordinary. We contribute to social balance...I think. Otherwise, who will the oppressors oppress? Who will leaders lead? You know that type of thing.

But I have a strong feeling that Close but not quite will never actually come out. It will be a fleeting, artistic urge...not that there's much imagination involved.

(Why the title? It just came to mind...yeah, I know, not really attractive to publishers)

a potential epidemic

Insomnia...

Or has it already reached a pandemic state? And what is to blame? All sorts of stressors...and distractions.

the ruthless web of academic deceit

Tension keeps the normal conformation of the academic web. Just the right amount of tension. Decrease it a bit and it will sag like old lace; increase it a tad and it will break. Yes, today is I-had-my-buttons-pushed-baaaaad day. Thesis season is hell season. Horns erupt at a fast rate. Banners of Pride are waving up high. And the students become clueless pawns of the ruthless, self-absorbed antagonists called professors. What role do I play in the scheme of things? I play the aloof but empowered party. A renegade fighter....a soldier without allegiance. A soldier of the moral law? Perhaps not, because I've occasionally defied it. Right now, I'm feeling passionate about seeing change---the removal of barriers that limit each person's points of view. If only everyone could see the web as it really is.

Is scientific research in the biological sciences completely objective and empirical? I think not. The subjective influence of academics add some sort of factor.

I choose to see it my way.
I don't care what you think.
My way is better than your way.
You're not as good as I am.
I own this.
You're nothing.
It's all your fault.

....very frequently used phrases during this time of the year. I would've expected this kind of discourse in the field of philosophy but never in hard core empirical science. I've been divirginized. I've become drawn and sucked into the void of futility and hopelessness.

And all because, we can't accept that we were ever wrong.

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Note: Unless you're in this hybrid of politics and show business called the 'academe', you wouldn't be able to completely see the point of this cyber soliloquy. My apologies for not being so specific about the situations and people. I prefer to let it all out by being dramatic.

of mites and men

I have a new addiction: Clorox disinfectant spray (no bleach!). Before your eyeballs fall out, what I actually meant was that I love cleaning with that thing. It's convenient...and handy....and multipurpose. Plus, it doesn't have that sickening synthetic aerosol smell.

After a long day of holding your #2 (wink wink), Clorox spray will save you. After finding out that you have an inch-thick mound of dust underneath the TV set and you need some form of liquid to wipe it with otherwise dust will spread around the room like a third-world country snow storm, Clorox spray will save you. I just love it!

It's Lent, but I suppose God will allow indulging with cleanliness. Plus, summer break is just around the corner, so a general summer cleaning is in order. I'm not normally the domesticated type but it's inappropriate to live in an uninhabitable place.

And yes, I would appreciate a year's supply of Clorox disinfectant spray (the pink version that smells flowery). It doesn't have CFCs, I think...I have to check again, otherwise before someone corrects me; no, don't use aerosols! Save the ozone layer (if it's still a layer)...or the ozone patch.

I shouldn't be kidding around with the environment. I'm sorry. But I'm still infatuated with Clorox spray.