Is there an impending rice shortage ? Despite government assurances that there will be an adequate supply of this dietary staple, the indications are not good. President Arroyo said that although prices are bound to rise due to domestic and international factors, supply will be sufficient. Should we believe her ? Consider the following facts.

Senator Mar Roxas, himself a former trade secretary, identified three signs of an impending crisis—the country’s traditional rice sources such as Thailand and Vietnam could not commit to any volume, the price of rice has jumped sharply in the world market, and Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap has suggested that people cut their normal serving of rice from one cup to one half.

President Arroyo requested Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to guarantee the Philippines up to 1.5 million metric tons of rice, in itself an unusual step. Is Vietnam in a position to deliver ? The Vietnamese government announced on Friday that it would cut rice exports by nearly a quarter this year. It hopes that keeping more rice inside the country would hold down prices for its own people. Read the rest of this entry »

Voting 9 to 6, the justices of the Supreme court upheld the right of former NEDA Chief Romulo Neri to invoke executive privilege in refusing to further testify before the Senate. The decision in the case of “Romulo Neri vs. Senate Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations, Senate Committee on Trade and Commerce, and Senate Committee on National Defense and Security” was penned by Justice Teresita J. Leonardo de Castro, and concurred in by Justices Quisumbing, Corona, Tinga, Nazario, Velasco, Nachura, Reyes and the newly-appointed Justice Arturo Brion. All of the concurring justices, except for Justice Leo Quisumbing, are appointees of President Arroyo.

Chief Justice Reynato Puno, dissented together with Justices Santiago, Martinez, Carpio-Morales and Azcuna. Justice Antonio Carpio issued a dissenting and concurring opinion which, in essence, sides with the dissenting magistrates. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a predisposition to dwell on Good Friday even when its already Easter Sunday.

I am not a great devotee of the standard rituals of the Catholic Easter mass. We all know the story and how it ends, so its like watching a familiar late night movie, you can’t wait for the good parts: the dimmed lights are brightened and the choir sings the Halleluiah chorus, we rejoice, Lent is over and we go forth, to hunt for Easter eggs and return to our carnivorous ways.

But my mind and heart is still in Good Friday mode, not least because work starts tomorrow. So I find kinship and comfort in the perspective adopted by Sheila Cassidy in her classic book on contemporary Lenten reflections, Good Friday People. The world is an evil place and we will not be spared from suffering. The Easter bunny will soon enough end up as rabbit stew. That, in Cassidy’s words:

As thinking, rational human beings we must always struggle to make sense of the dual realities of our life as Christians: the existence of appalling wickedness and suffering, and our belief in a loving God.

Columnist Juan Mercado defines Good Friday People in the Philippine context.

JuicyCampus.com is a website focusing on gossip, rumors, and rants related to colleges and universities in the United States, according to its Wikipedia page.

The site describes itself, somewhat high-mindedly, as an enabler of “online anonymous free speech on college campuses” and “as a place for both entertainment and free expression.” Through various services such as offering access to anonymous IP servers, it allows users to post messages and comments anonymously and supposedly without possibility of identification. Readers can also vote on which posts they find “juciest” or
most provocative. There is no registration process — anyone may post and anyone may read the posts. Set up in August 2007, the site now contains message boards relating to around 60 U.S. colleges and universities, and growing. As its crows on its website “We are SOOO popular!”.

The JuicyCampus founder and main proprietor, 2005 Duke University alum Matt Ivester, claims he conceived of the forum as a place where students could gossip without fear of
consequence from peers or administrators, but he never expected the site’s content to turn so nasty.

“It’s a gossip site and we never said that it’s not. I guess we didn’t realize how mean some people can be.” Mr. Ivester intones piously in an interview with the Yale Daily News.

JuicyCampus, doubtless owing to its vast commercial potential, is now owned by Lime Blue, a Nevada state limited liability company. Read the rest of this entry »

Death and resurrection are basic themes of the Catholic Lenten observance. The oblation of Christ on the Cross is the central image.

How then do we perceive death ? Hegel says that death can be interpreted as a mere natural fact, pertaining to man as organic matter, or death can be seen as the telos of life, the distinguishing feature of all human existence. In Hegel’s words:

If death appears as an essential as well a biological fact, ontological as well as empirical, life is transcended even though the transcendence may not assume any religious form. Man’s empirical existence, his material and contingent life, is then defined in terms of and redeemed by something other than itself: he is said to live in two fundamentally different and even conflicting dimensions, and his “true” existence involves a series of sacrifices in his empirical existence which culminate in the supreme sacrifice - death.

In other words, we choose, as followers of Christ, to give meaning to death. Death becomes a transcendent and transformative experience, as we are redeemed by the Redeemer. In a broad sense, we need to “die” to ourselves (our worldly desires, ambitions, values etc.) , before we can be reborn in Christ. Read the rest of this entry »