An Inquirer article caught my eye which will cause not a few raised eyebrows and guffaws among my esteemed compañeros and compañeras in the profession.

In a recent resolution, Judge Medel Arnaldo B. Belen of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Calamba, Laguna was reprimanded by the Supreme Court for unbecoming conduct. It seems the good magistrate told a lawyer appearing before him that since he (the lawyer) did not graduate from the UP College of Law, he and the judge could not be equals. He was referring to Atty. Melvin D.C. Mane, who referred to himself as “a proud graduate of MLQU”. Read the rest of this entry »

Has the internet made us stupid, a recent article in the Atlantic asks. The author, blogger Nicolas Carr, frets about the effect the internet has had on his thinking processes, on the way it has rewired his brains’ very circuitry.

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon.

I have the same problem and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I haven’t read a book in its entirety in ages, even though I keep buying them. I have piles of books at my bedside table which, when I got them, I knew I would devour in one reading. Months, even years after, I haven’t gone beyond a few chapters, at best. I stop and start and finally give up at some point, distracted by the flickering text and images on my monitor. Read the rest of this entry »

Manolo Quezon wrote in his column (Bringing the World to Our Shores, Inquirer, 06 July 2007) about his plans to take up graduate studies, specifically an MBA, in an international program offered by an Australian university. His reason for doing so is to keep up and deal with the complexities brought about by an increasingly borderless world, in the context of his vocation as a political commentator.

As bigger and bigger chunks of our population become less insular and more comfortable with the complexities of the modern world, I have a hunch that people like me, who have the task of commenting on national affairs, will find it increasingly hard-going unless we make an effort to understand these complexities. These complexities, on the whole, have to do with economics and finance as disciplines, and business as an activity: and how all three have been used to discourage citizens from being politically engaged.

I confess to sharing his concern, a sort of low-level anxiety, a vague fear that my knowledge and present skills level may not enable me to understand and cope with the speed of globalization and change. It seems there’s nothing unusual in this, as I found out in a piece written by David Brooks of the New York Times. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are my forecasts for the next half of 2008, and I feel gloomy just thinking about most of them.

1. More Oil Price Increases – a worldwide trend with no let-up in sight. I get a fever every time I go to the gas station. Unleaded is now P60.00 plus per liter at the pump and rising weekly. Crude hit a new record high of U.S.$ 143/barrel and keeps climbing. It will get worse in the last quarter as winter approaches. I fear we will hit the nightmare scenario of U.S. $ 200.00/barrel sooner than predicted.

2. Food prices and other basic commodities will increase - a no- brainer. The effect of rising energy costs, combined with other factors like increased demand and diminished production, will drive up the inflation rate, which in Metro Manila has reached double digits. Expectedly, food will exhibit the steepest price increase. The negative impact on overall income due to inflation will naturally lead to a drop in personal consumption. Which will in turn slow down the economy etc., etc. ad nauseum. Read the rest of this entry »

The lone suspect in the gruesome and senseless murder of Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell has been found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Regional Trial Court of Banaue, Ifugao province.

In a 36-page decision, Judge Ester Piscoso-Flor found the accused Juan Donald Duntugan, 25, guilty of murdering Campbell in Batad village, near the Ifugao rice terraces where the victim was hiking, on April 8, 2007, “with the use of treachery and abuse of superior strength”.

It appears that the convicted murderer killed Ms. Campbell without any clear motive or reason. Read the rest of this entry »