Stuff, Religious Stuff

Stuff I found over at BBC:

God-u Akbar: Malaysian row over word for 'God'

Fighting monks: Unholy dust-up at Nativity church

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Pretty scary what's happening in Pakistan these days.

Merry Christmas to All

No, Santa isn't Coca Cola's evil invention.

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Only in America is it an issue whether to use Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays/Season's Greetings. And a contentious issue at that. Some people seem to have this idea that saying Merry Christmas to a non-Christian is offensive or tantamount to proselytising. It's a a non-issue, really-- Kuala Lumpur in December is awash with Merry Christmas signs after the Hari Raya Adilfitri signs come down. My Central Asian colleagues (mostly Muslim, and one Jew) greet me Merry Christmas, and I greet them back with Merry Christmas which they graciously accept.

So the next time someone feels offended at being greeted Merry Christmas on the 25th of December, tell him to go back to work and return all his presents. But do it nicely-- it's Christmas, after all.

God Hates the World (the video)

My friend dr.sbdink alerted me to this vid. I heard about this on the news some time back, but I saw the vid just now. If I didn't know better, I'd say this was some sick joke. Watch it and see for yourself.


http://view.break.com/278059 - Watch more free videos

Manila, T minus 2 hours

At the CX lounge now, at the beginning of my annual vacation in the Bay Area to visit my folks. I'm taking CX this time instead of the usual NW, even if the latter is cheaper by around a hundred dollars (which isn't much these days, really). CX has much better service and food, and seemingly a non-politically correct employment policy, if you know what i mean. Also, I get to relax at the business class lounge even if I'm actually flying coach, thanks to my miles courtesy of Central Asia.

I'll miss you terribly, Dear. Take care always, ok? Hopefully next year we'll be taking this flight together.

Advice for Your Excellencies

Just read this story over at Inquirer: Bishop opposes QC birth control ordinance. Now, Bishop Ongtioco isn't the first bishop to oppose such measures, and I'm pretty sure he won't be the last. So to help the Magisterium engage the "anti-life" propagandists over at City Hall and various reproductive health centres, let me offer Their Excellencies some pieces of advice:

1. Stop confusing the laity by abortion-baiting (i.e., lumping contraception and abortion in the hope of transferring the distaste for the latter towards the former). There is a clear line between contraception and abortion-- even abortifacient drugs don't blur this line-- and you know this. Abortion-baiting is dishonest and condescending, something I'm sure Your Excellencies don't want to be.

2. Avoid making medical claims because, however we look at it, DD does not equal MD. Also, if Your Excellencies will point out that some contraceptives can raise the risk of certain cancers, you will be hard pressed to explain away the fact that contraceptives can reduce the risk of some cancers, and sex without contraceptives raises the risk of other cancers.

3. Emulate the great apologists like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons by avoiding name-calling and sloganeering. Do you think the Athenians would have listened to St. Justin if he called them "boy-lovers", Your Excellencies?

4. Do not use "freedom of conscience" in your argument if you are trying to stop the dissemination of certain, even destructive, information. Free will can only be directed towards God if the conscience is given complete information, Your Excellencies. How holy is choosing the strait and narrow if the wide and broad was never shown?

5. Drop the argument that a teacher should be allowed to choose what she teaches based on her conscience-- this is a very treacherous slope. What applies to the Catholic teacher will also apply to the Jehovah's Witness teacher and the Iglesia ni Cristo teacher. Think about it, Your Excellencies.

6. Do not oppose humane, non-judgemental counselling and health care for anyone, even those you consider automatically excommunicated. Being humane and non-judgemental are good things, Your Excellencies.

7. Stop telling the laity how to have sex, Your Excellencies. Celibate men do not exactly make the best sex therapists, just like Stephen Hawking doesn't make the best track coach.

The Aftermath

As you probably know, the siege of the Manila Peninsula is over. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read about it here.

So after all their posturing and bravado, these idiots surrendered after a whiff of teargas and a 50mm cannon pointed at their asses. They say it's to protect the civilians and the journalists-- if they're really concerned and ready to fight, they should have prevented those civilians from being there in the first place. They say they never intended to fight-- then why march down the streets with guns brandished? They say they only wanted to be heard-- last I checked, weapons, armbands, and fatigues were not prerequisites for a presscon. They should be honest that they surrendered because they saw there was no groundswell of support for their pathetic and idiotic little adventure. They wanted to launch a revolution, and they were embarrassingly shunned. Boohoo, no one wanted to attend their sad, sad party.

As I write this, Metro Manila is in the middle of a 12mn-5am curfew. Payday preceeding a three-day weekend and the bars are closed by 10pm. What really riles me is that these idiots just gave GMA the perfect reason to impose this sort of thing. If she tried this yesterday the whole country would be up in arms; because of these idiots, people are accommodating and understanding.

What doesn't topple GMA only makes her stronger. Thanks a lot, idiots.

What brave men they are

Senator and ex-Navy Lieutenant Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV has vowed to stay at the Manila Peninsula hotel "as long as necessary".

Oh the humanity! How much more suffering to these soldiers have to endure? Their sheets have been there for half a day already, and the cordon bleu chef has left the kitchen. Why should we let them suffer in such indignity? They only walked out of their trial to defend the constitution-- why do we punish them by making them stay at an airconditioned hotel? With soft mattresses and fluffy pillows. Why do they have to suffer such pain and hardships? Isn't it enough that they braved through the fountain to get to the revolving door?

Oh, how they suffer.

Idiots, all of them! Idiots!

As of this posting, read the latest here, here, and here.

I'm sick and tired of these smiley-smiley passive-aggressive confrontations. These idiots should just plan their coup properly and shoot it out already. At least Honasan had the smarts to plan his adventurism and the balls to shoot it out-- he even got to fire rockets at Malacanang! All these idiots do is barricade themselves in posh hotels and order room service. Do they want to stage a coup in airconditioned rooms? Gravel and asphalt not soft enough? "Today a hotel, tomorrow the world!" Come on, if you're gonna attempt to topple the government at least do it properly with more than a prayer's chance of success. No wonder Honasan publicly disowns you guys.

Idiots too these civil society groups and bishops who join in. They're saying this is a "spontaneous" event-- do they think we're fucking stupid? "Oh, we just happened to be in Makati with these banners and press releases when they were marching through." They can "spontaneously" combust for all I care. And look at their logic-- the government is violating the constitution, so let's use unconstitutional means to topple it. What the fuck?!?

The cops and military should just grab these people and haul them in jail, guns blazing if need be. These idiots have the gall to do this stunt because they know the cops and the military will be too pussy to do anything about it-- well prove them wrong, goddammit! Evacuate the hotel and gas them out! You can do it to unarmed people marching towards Mendiola, why not do it to armband-wearing armed putschists and their cohorts? Grab these idiots and lock them up in your camps-- you've had enough practice with students and farmers anyway.

Don't get me wrong-- the GMA administration is sleazy, corrupt, and morally bankrupt. (No news here, bishops. Don't beat yourselves with press releases of things we already know.) But there's only one thing worse than the GMA administration, and that's sleazy, corrupt, and morally bankrupt idiots who stage coups.

Ninoy must be rolling; Covetousness, Marx, and the WGA strike

It's so good when you can make a commentary just by juxtaposing quotes:

"I am not against the granting of a pardon to persons who deserve it. However, people who have refused to accept their guilt and have shown no contrition for the crime they committed do not deserve pardon."
-- Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, on the pardoning of ex-Sgt. Pablo Martinez who has been in jail for 24 years for the murder of former Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr.

"I am happy for former president Joseph Ejercito Estrada and his family. I pray that as a free man, former president Estrada will harness the lessons he had learned from the sufferings he had endured and continue to serve our less fortunate brothers and sisters."
-- Former Pres. Corazon "Cory" Aquino, on the pardoning of former Pres. Joseph "Erap" Estrada barely a month after his conviction for plunder.

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On less idiotic and irritating news, it seems brain scans have shown that relative wealth (i.e., your wealth as compared with those around you) is a more important determinant of happiness than wealth level (i.e., what you can actually buy). This comes as no surprise to anyone who has envied someone else's stuff, or boasted one's wealth and watched others salivate in envy. However, this is an area in which mainstream economics still has to catch up.

Take any microeconomics textbook and you'll find that the utility(i.e., happiness) function, U(.), is defined as U(X, L) where X is a vector of goods and services and L is leisure time (sometimes L is even left out). In the Becker-type altruism models, you get U(X, L, V) where V(X, L) is some other person's utility. However, I have not seen a utility function that explicitly takes into account the impact of covetousness on utility. That part of utility that makes people want to get one over the other guy. This might sound crass and brutish, but, if you think about it, homo economicus is supposed to the paragon of selfish behaviour, so why not extend the description?

Among the early economic theorists, it was Marx who came closest to this concept of covetousness, albeit among classes rather than individuals. He acknowledged that it is possible for the material condition of workers and peasants to improve under the capitalist mode of production; however, their material improvement comes at the expense of their social position because the capitalists get rich even faster. This was confirmed by Kuznets (and lots of other later economists), who observed that economic growth exacerbates inequality-- everyone gets richer, but the rich get a bigger share than the poor.

Which brings us to the Writers' Guild of America strike, which has deprived me of my daily dose of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Late Nights with Conan O'Brien. It's a classic problem of splitting the pie-- the writers want a bigger share of the proceeds from their labour than the producers are willing to give. Eventually they will have to settle, but only after relative bargaining strengths have been determined.

I really hope the writers win this one, but chances are they'll get a small fraction of what they're asking for. The producers have time and options on their side, and eventually some of the starving writers (and not-so-starving writers like Ellen DeGeneres) will break the picket line and go back to work.

I think a better strategy for WGA would have been to conduct their strike one network at a time. Say, begin with CBS and close down all CBS shows but keep, say, NBC running. Ratings, along with advertisers, will flock to NBC and strike fear into CBS producers' hearts, making them likely to give in to the writers' demands. After CBS comes Fox, ABC, NBC, etc., all falling one after the other. It is the threat of advertiser flight that scares these producers, not work stoppage. The writers mistakenly believed that the product of networks is shows. The product of networks is advertising airtime; the shows are just there to attract ratings. By simultaneously stopping work all the networks were equally affected by the writers' strike, so there was no ensuing advertiser flight. For producers, it is relative position that matters in attracting advertising dollars, something that the WGA missed.

Which brings us back to the article on brain scans.

Very Bad Taste

Before everything, I would like to convey my condolences to the Saguisag family. They truly suffered a terrible and unimaginable loss.

I'll go straight to the point-- the Inquirer's front page today (9 November 2007) is in very bad taste. It's so bad that I think it crosses into the unethical.

Just yesterday, dr.sbdink and I were discussing another article on the accident posted at GMA News. He felt that the treatment of the story was voyeuristic; i.e., that details such as "dragged Saguisag's van by 20 to 30 meters" or "The van was crushed" were unnecessary. I took a different view-- details on the strength of impact were needed to give a complete picture. I thought those details were valid in an article reporting an accident, although I have reservations about the style of the writer (there's a reason why obituaries are separate from the news).

On the other hand, the Inquirer front page crossed the line by publishing the bodies of the dead and injured. What value does that serve in the article other than pure voyeurism? The accident picture showing the impact would have been enough-- why did they have to publish slumped bodies and shocked victims?

Publishing pictures of the dead, dying, or injured is an ethical tightrope. Even during wartime, when the horrors and evils of war are the story, it isn't an easy decision whether or not to publish these kinds of images. Editors have to ask themselves whether publishing those images is necessary, and weigh two sometimes opposing forces-- what the public needs to know vs. the dignity of the dead, dying, or injured. In war, sometimes the public does need to see in stark red how horrifying the situation is, but in an accident? Does the public really need to see that? And did the Inquirer editors even consider for a moment how the Saguisags would feel to see their slumped mother published on the front page of a national broadsheet?

Now compare this treatment to another tragic accident-- the death of Princess Dianna in 1997. Photos of a dying Princess Diana were taken and offered to various papers, but no tabloid dared publish them even ten years after the fact (they were eventually shown only in court). Dianna deserves more respect than that, and her family doesn't need to see her dying image in the corner newsstand.

Even for the British tabloid press, known for its crass sensationalism and voyeruism, some ethical lines should not be crossed.

The Contrarian Gene

I read an interesting article over at BBC today: Human species 'may split in two'. It talks about the prediction of Dr. Oliver Curry, an evolutionary theorist over at the London School of Economics, that humanity will evenutally split into two strands-- the "tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative" upper class and the "dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like" underclass. The article mentions the similarity with H.G. Wells' The Time Machine-- I haven't read the book but I saw the 1960 movie adaptation one late sleepless night.

Curry's notions of "upper class" and "underclass" have nothing to do with income or race; rather, they refer to the selection of sexual mates. He posits that as people become choosier about their sexual partners, hot+smart people will only choose to mate with other hot+smart people, while those who are fugly+dumb are left to mate among themselves-- a separating equilibrium with looks as a signal of health and intelligence, to use game theoretic jargon. Browsing Curry's work it seems he applied game theory in his analysis of evolution, and I have to say his analysis is consistent with the framework. It is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) for the hot+smart set to mate with each other, leaving those not in the set (ergo fugly+dumb) to mate among themselves. One can argue that there are hot+dumb and fugly+smart people out there, but after eons of choosing mates the fugly+smart people will choose hot mates and hot+dumb ones will choose smart mates, eventually resulting in the separating equilibrium described by Curry.

I haven't seen Curry's paper on this theory (can't find it on the net), but I'd like to see how he tackles people who are "irrational" by ESS standards-- those that do not follow what reason tells them to do. While Darwinian natural selection is a slow but straightforward process, it is the contrarian mutations in a small percentage of people that makes the species leap and take sharp turns. These are the people who, from an ESS/rational standpoint throw all caution in the wind and think up or do new things. The contrarian gene that makes some people climb skyscrapers and jump out of planes is the same gene that led early man out of Africa and take to the seas. This contrarian gene is a wildcard-- it can either lead to destruction or greatness; the lack of it (i.e., doing the ESS all the time) leads to mediocrity.

Applying this to Curry's theory, if the hot+smart people are indeed the offspring of successful generations, I would guess that they will have a relatively higher proportion of people with the contrarian gene as they are descendants of geniuses and adventurers. Therefore, these hot+smart contrarians may not choose the ESS and instead mate with some of the fugly+dumb set. If this happens during the process of evolution, it will have implications on the separating equilibrium as described by Curry.

So this is the question that interests me in this and other economic theories-- how robust is it to "irrationality"? Will it stand if x% of people do not follow the ESS? How about x+1%? Theorists have to remember that in any situation where human behaviour is aggregated some proportion will not act according to the rules of rationality. There will always be contrarians in the mix-- those who go left when all reason says to go right-- who will mess up the outcome. We cannot simply assume away these contrarians because a lot of who we are today is an outcome of their "irrationality". After all, if everyone followed ESS we would all still be in Africa.

Kuala Lumpur, T minus 1 hour

At the KLIA lounge now, waiting for boarding. It was hectic the past three days, but it was productive. Glad to be going home. My friend dr.sbink was kind enough to offer to pick me up at the airport (thanks, dude).

I only got to buy stuff yesterday afternoon when I went to Bukit Bintang. Very uncharacteristically, I bought something on a spur-- a new laptop! Electronics are insanely cheap in KL (relative to Manila), so I couldn't pass up the oportunity for a bargain. I bought a souped-up Toshiba Satellite M200. I actually perplexes me why electronics are so darn expensive in Manila.

Based on my experience, average electronics prices are cheapest in KL, then the Bay Area (which is known for its high prices), and most expensive in Manila. Therefore, the high cost in Manila cannot be due to transportation costs because electronics are cheap in SFO, and the Dell I bought was actualy assembled in Malaysia. So is it taxes? Market imperfections? Something worthy of investigation.

Kuala Lumpur, Day 1

(Exchange rate: US$ 1 = 3.31 Malaysian ringgit; RM 1 = PHP 13.38)

Arrived in Kuala Lumpur a few hours ago. Today is Hari Raya Adilfitri-- the end of Ramadan-- in Malaysia, and the were correct: the city is empty. There are very few people in the streets today and the restaurants are relatively empty (by relatively I mean compared to when I was here in December last year).

Kuala Lumpur, at least the parts I get to see, is much better than Manila. The airport can compare with any airport in developed countries-- even better than LHR, SFO, or NRT. The streets are smooth and feathery and the cab can travel at an average speed of 100 kph from the airport to downtown KL. I don't see slums in every corner, and the streets are generally clean. While there are a few beggars here and there, they're not seen in swarms like in Manila.

It disappoints me to see such development in KL; disappointed not for KL but for Manila. When can we ever catch up?

Manila, T minus 24 hours

I'll be going to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, tomorrow, 12 October 2007. Tomorrow is actually Hari Raya Puasa, the end of Ramadan, in Malaysia. I hear that everyone will be gone tomorrow and next week, so we'll pretty much have the city to ourselves. I also hear that the government made all shops promise that they'll remain open during the holidays, which is extra good for us. I just hope the sales people won't be too grumpy because we're the reason they have to go to work on a holiday.

Hopefully I'll have time to write here in between meetings, although by the looks of it my schedule will be tight. And I will more likely write in my other blog as I'm hoping to make food the highlight of my trip.

Survey Says...

Family, not sex, is Pinoys’ No. 1 source of happiness (from the Inquirer)
How Happy are Pinoys with Sex? (by Dr. Romulo Virola, Secretary General, NSCB)

Despite the titles, note that the results cannot be generalised in any way. The data are from a pilot survey among 167 nonrandom respondents taken from participants in a meeting; therefore, one cannot generalise these results to the general Filipino population (or to the meeting participants' population, for that matter). So no need to be surprised. Yet.

What surprised me is the write-up in the Inquirer. If you only read the write-up, it would seem that the results are from a full-fledged National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) study, which would make the study laughable given the sample selection and size. However, going to the source article by Virola, you get the sense that the results are from an informal study done after a meeting-- equal in generalisability to a Best Dressed survey. He repeatedly points out that the results are from nonrandom respondents as a caution to the readers-- a caveat lost in the Inquirer article. More importantly, Virola attributes the results only to the sample, while the Inquirer write-up uses generalising language ("among Filipinos")-- a glaring misrepresentation.

The Inquirer reporter should have stressed that the results were in no way generalisable; however, doing so would trivialise the article. Which is exactly the problem-- they were trying to make news out of a non-event. They could have referred to the results in passing as part of a bigger story on Filipino sexuality or sexual taboos. Instead, the results were made the story.

Having worked in media, I know the pressures of putting some spin in your article to ensure that it makes the press, particularly on matters as staid as statistical data. However, as someone who also does survey work, I draw the line at misleading the readers in interpreting the data. Reporters have the responsibility to aid the readers in reading the data and lay out any and all caveats to interpretation. Statistics are difficult enough to understand and malleable enough to be spun; we don't need to add misrepresentation to the mix.
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Below are the results of the nonrandom pilot survey, taken from NSCB:

Woman on Top

Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko
Former Prime Minister
Ukraine

• Born in 1960 in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.
• Married Olexandr Tymoshenko in 1979. Gave birth to daughter Yevhenia in 1980.
• Obtained her degree in Economics in 1984 from the Dnepropetrovsk State University, after which she worked as an economics engineer in a Soviet machine-building plant.
• Opened a video rental chain in 1991 after perestroika.
• Became the Managing Director of the State-owned Ukranian Oil Company (UOC) in 1991, which was eventually privatised and became the United Energy Systems of Ukraine (UESU).
• Became President of UESU in 1995, during which she amassed a huge personal wealth and was nicknamed the "gas princess".
• Elected Member of Parliament in 1996, representing the Kirovograd Oblast.
• Became Deputy Prime Minister for fuel and energy issues in 1999 under then-Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, a post she held until 2001.
• Arrested in February 2001 over forgery and smuggling charges during her presidency of UESU; the charges were eventually dismissed.
• Led protests against then-President Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovich, eventually culminating in the Orange Revolution in 2005.
• Appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine by President Viktor Yushchenko on 24 January 2005.
• Dismissed as Prime Minister on 8 Septembr 2005 amid in-fighting and resignations among her ministers.
• Her Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYT)-- a coalition of three parties-- remains a formidable power in parliament, winning 31% of seats during the 2007 parliamentary elections.
• Probably the only Head of Government to be on the cover of a fashion magazine; her hair was recently featured on BBC.
• Has a personal website.

Lest We Forget

PROCLAMATION No. 1081 September 21, 1972

PROCLAIMING A STATE OF MARTIAL LAW IN THE PHILIPPINES

x x x

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested upon me by Article VII, Section 10, Paragraph ('2) of the Constitution, do hereby place the entire Philippines as defined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution under martial law and, in my capacity as their commander-in-chief, do hereby command the armed forces of the Philippines, to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well as any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by me personally or upon my direction.

In addition, I do hereby order that all persons presently detained, as well as all others who may hereafter be similarly detained for the crimes of insurrection or rebellion, and all other crimes and offenses committed in furtherance or on the occasion thereof, or incident thereto, or in connection therewith, for crimes against national security and the law of nations, crimes against public order, crimes involving usurpation of authority, rank, title and improper use of names, uniforms and insignia, crimes committed by public officers, and for such other crimes as will be enumerated in Orders that I shall subsequently promulgate, as well as crimes as a consequence of any violation of any decree, order or regulation promulgated by me personally or promulgated upon my direction shall be kept under detention until otherwise ordered re- leased by me or by my duly designated representative.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the Republic of the Philippines to be affixed.

Done in the City of Manila, this 21st day of September, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and seventy two.

FERDINAND E. MARCOS
President
Republic of the Philippines

Amen! (3)

By now you all know that former President Joseph Estrada was found guilty of plunder. I was going to comment on the events that happened since the verdict, particularly on what's been said in many quarters. However, my thoughts were exactly captured by the Inquirer's editiorial today. Usually I just give the link when I make one of my Amen! posts, but this editorial merits a full paste.
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Legal Insanity
Philippine Daily Inquirer Editorial, 17 September 2007

MANILA, Philippines - Those who choose to view the Estrada verdict as a half-empty glass of dubious water are not doing the country any favors. Yes, other plunderers continue to roam the land. Yes, Mr. ex-Marcos justice minister Estelito Mendoza, other public officials continue to rake in enormous amounts of commissions from jueteng, and plunder cases can be filed against them. (Would you like to start the ball rolling?) And yes, certain scandals since Joseph Estrada fled Malacañang call for the most severe legal accounting.

But do these extraneous facts diminish Estrada’s guilt one whit?

Lawyers who think so are indulging a form of legal insanity. They taint the legal process with innuendo or outright contempt, unmindful of or uncaring about their impact on the rule of law itself. What do they want to do, run themselves out of a job?

As we have said time and again, both the Arroyo administration and the Estrada camp have sought to politicize the plunder trial. But the conduct of the Sandiganbayan justices themselves and their measured decision prove that the anti-graft court’s Special Division confined itself to the facts and the law of the case at hand.

To be sure, the stature of the principal defendant was not lost on the justices; the decision unfailingly refers to him as “FPres. Estrada,” apparently a new honorific. And as we saw on live television, the division’s three justices were ready to allow Estrada’s continued detention, pending final conviction, in his Tanay, Rizal rest house even before his defense counsel raised the possibility (or even after Estrada lawyer Rene Saguisag pandered to the off-site gallery by declaring, airily, that his client did not want special treatment). But we do not believe the rule of law suffered when the former president was accorded these minor courtesies.

It needs to be stressed: the court’s independence, as evidenced in its decision, is triumph enough. Its well-tempered decision on the plunder case, however, is a true legal landmark.

Those who insist that Estrada’s guilt is contingent on the sins, perceived or real, of the Arroyo administration are preaching a false and cynical faith. Not because these sins do not exist; they do, and the administration’s continuing refusal to testify in Congress about various scandals is the surest proof that it has something to hide. But because those who insist are attacking the very rule of law they claim to defend.

To use an unsavory but necessary analogy: Do we stop ourselves from pursuing a case against a rapist, because other rapists have gone scot-free or because other rapes have not been reported? This is not legal realism, or even the realpolitik of law; this is “weather-weather” defeatism, a cynic’s formula for anarchy.

Other plunderers roam the land? Then let’s throw the book at them too. The good thing is, now we can apply the vital lessons learned from the Estrada plunder trial.
Perhaps first on the list: Involve private lawyers in the preparation and the prosecution. Private law firms can bring otherwise unavailable financial resources and litigation expertise to bear on the case, complementing the work of government prosecutors.

Support government lawyers to the hilt, not least in the matter of which state witnesses to use (necessarily a decision with political considerations). Over-prove the charges, not only through the use of incontrovertible documentary evidence but also through redundant corroborative testimony. And while landing a Chavit Singson is both distasteful but necessary, build the real case with the help of a Clarissa Ocampo—upstanding witnesses with unimpeachable credibility.

It’s tough work—and therefore all the more reason to praise the government prosecutors led by Dennis Villa-Ignacio (and spearheaded once upon a time by then-Solicitor General Simeon Marcelo). Tough and—if you listen to the snide Saguisag—fundamentally thankless. Estrada’s lawyers believe they had a monopoly not only on the truth of the case but even on sincerity of conviction. It is our duty to disabuse them of their final illusion.

9/11

I was in America when 9/11 happened. Not in New York but on the other side of the country: the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a sunny Tuesday morning, I remember, and as usual I woke up around 8:15 in the morning to prepare for work which was just a 20-minute bus ride away. I was living with my cousin then, and usually by the time I wake up he has already left for work; that day, I saw him watching the news with a grave look that will only be clear to me in the moments to follow.

"Planes crashed into the World Trade Center," he said. "The towers are gone." He had just visited the towers a few weeks back, bringing me a souvenir keychain.

"What do you mean they're gone?" I asked. "How could they be gone?"

"They're gone. They fell into the ground. Like in the demolition movies," he replied.

By the time I woke up it was already 11:15 in New York and all the events of 9/11 had transpired. Details were still hazy-- there were rumours that bombs detonated all over Washington, that the Air Force just shot down another plane, that around 10,000 people may have died.

Before I got the complete picture I took my usual bus ride to work. No one made a sound in the bus that day-- no chatty old men, no teeners tapping their cd-man-- but the mood was electric. Everyone was aware of what happened and the shock was at its strongest.

My officemates and I immediately talked about what happened and all the theories of who did it. We learned that the best friend of one of my officemates worked in WTC-- she made it out. We watched footages via video streaming, which was still very low quality those days. Over and over, we watched as UA175 hit the South Tower-- there were no footages of the other attacks yet. Airplanes usually pass over our office building, which is just a 15-minute drive from the San Francisco Airport. That day there were no flights and silence replaced the usual roar of passing planes.

By lunch time, our boss allowed us to go home. There was less traffic than usual along El Camino Real that day, so it took longer to get a bus home. While waiting for a bus I saw a lone young man-- maybe in his late teens or early 20's-- walking the length of the thoroughfare waving the American flag. I saw more flags on the way home, and even more being put up. I decided to get a flag myself.

Looking back after six years, nothing really compares to the mood and electricity of that day. Even I, whose politics you all know, proudly waved the Stars and Stripes. It was a shared feeling of shock and anger at what happened, tempered by the empathy one felt for his community and his country. Politics was set aside, replaced only by the oneness that can only come after a shared jarring experience. As famously written by Jean-Marie Colombani in Le Monde: Nous sommes tous Americains. We are all Americans.

Looking back after six years, I am truly saddened that things turned out the way they did. How, from a point of almost unshakeable unity, policy after disastrous policy has given us the utterly polarised world and America we now see. How the world's compassion and support was met with arrogance and contempt.

We were all Americans.

Woman on Top

Due to insistent public demand (you know who you are)...

Dana Marie Perino
Deputy Press Secretary
United States of America

• Born in 1972 in Evanston, Wyoming
• Graduated in 1994 from the University of Southern Colorado with a bachelor's degree in mass communications, minor in politics and Spanish.
• Obtained her master's degree in Public Affairs Reporting from the University of Illinois in Springfield.
• Began her career in Washington, DC, by working in Capitol Hill, first for Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colorado) then Rep. Daniel Schaefer (R-Colorado).
• Served as the spokesperson for the Deprtment of Justice in 2001, then as Director of the Council on Environmental Quality in the White House.
• Appointed by President George W. Bush as Deputy Press Secretary on 31 March 2006.
• Less irritating, less condescending, and less obfuscating than Tony Snow.
• The only good thing to come out of the White House press room these days.

I Knew It

I knew it... I'm evil.

I AM
64%
MEGATRON
Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons. He will stop at nothing to establish his empire and destroy the Autobots, starting with Optimus Prime.

Like Megatron, you are not compassionate and harbor evil thoughts. You are inspiring, confident, and a natural leader. The Decepticons have chosen well. In addition, you stick to the basics and don't need all the encumberances of modern technology.
---
Thanks to cyberlaundry for the test.

Annuit coeptis: The Theoretical Chef

I just started a new blog: The Theoretical Chef. It's a food-related blog (obviously). It has two posts now, the first one explaining the title. Do visit it if you have time, assuming you haven't lost your appetite after reading this blog.

What ryhmes with "Aumentado"?

From inquirer.net: Boom Boom's village loses road project after boxer's loss

So Gov. Erico Aumentado of Bohol (seen right) will cement the provincial road connecting Can-uling to the rest of the world if and only if boxer Rey "Boom-boom" Bautista becomes champion. Wow. I was thinking of some analogy that will show the absurdity of the situation, but, man, nothing beats the real thing.

In his message on his official website, he describes Bohol as the "Island of History and Natural Beauty". Yeah, nothing harks back to the rustic pre-colonial days like a dirt road.

So, what rhymes with "Aumentado"? It'll come to you.

Amen! (2)

Judge shuts out Trillanes

How right Judge Pimentel is not to "parrot" the special treatment to Erap and Nur. Enough of this insanity of special treatment for special prisoners-- it makes a mockery of the concept of blind justice. Maybe the Sandiganbayan should learn a thing or two from Pimentel.

But, of course, comes the criticism: Beltran: `Ruling on Trillanes betrays govt fears'. Immediately, Pimentel's decision is politicised-- the one instance where a judge makes a decision not based on politics but on the rule of law, he gets politicised. (Ok, I can't know whether or not Pimentel decided sans political considerations, but his reasoning-- or the snippets published-- seems to be in the right place.) I guess cases involving politicians will always be politicised.

Now the administration can lay claim to rule of law and equal application of justice, while the opposition is reduced to politicising the judiciary. Sigh. Comments like Beltran's based on partisan knee-jerk just help prop up this bankrupt administration. Paraphrasing Burke: The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to constantly put their feet in their mouth.

Quote of the Day

"No disciple of any school of economics can afford to close his eyes to a new discovery, obtained from another point of view, which will not fit in with his own ideas, nor must he treat it as unimportant, if not incorrect."

Henry Schultz

28 December 1926

The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 35 No. 5 (Oct. 1927), pp702-706

Law & Order: Trial by Technicality

The Supreme Court recently announced that it will amend the rules on criminal procedure, possibly even the rules on evidence. Reforms of any kind-- legal, economic, political-- give us a chance to compare what is and what ought to be. Now, I'm nowhere near an expert in legal theory and am not a practitioner of law, but I'd like to take a look at some of the rules on evidence, particularly the so-called poisonous tree. Please bear with me if I mix up my legal terms or processes; feel free to educate me. To lay my point let us consider a hypothetical but very likely situation:

[thun-thun]

An eight-year-old girl goes missing in the park; a few metres from where she was playing, blood and several teeth are found by passers-by. SOCO confirm that the blood and teeth belong to the missing girl. SPO4 Lenny Brusko investigates-- there are no witnesses to the attack and abduction, and there is no evidence in the scene that can point to any suspect. However, some witnesses say they saw Manny Yakis-- a known violent sex offender who recently got out of prison-- walking in the park on the day the girl disappeared, but no one can say that there was any contact between the two. Brusko, after 30 years on the job, has a hunch that Yakis is their guy.

Brusko invites Yakis for questioning. Yakis is careful with his answers, giving Brusko nothing but leering eyes and tonnes of frustration. Jack Makoy, the fiscal who will prosecute the case, says they don't have enough evidence on Yakis to secure an arrest or search warrant. With no other leads to follow, Brusko stakes out Yakis' apartment.

After three days of staking out and no other sources of evidence in sight, Brusko is getting very worried, believing that the girl is being harmed in the apartment. Claiming he heard a scream from inside Yakis' apartment, Brusko breaks down the door and finds the body of the missing girl, along with the club that broke several of her teeth in the park, the plastic-lined duffel bag which he used to cary the girl, and the kitchen knife he used to stab her. Brusko immediately arrests Yakis, knocking the perp unconscious in the scuffle. The coroner identifies the cause of death as loss of blood due to multiple stab wounds-- she has been dead for two days. Yakis' semen is found on the girl's body. Confronted with this evidence, Yakis, alone with Brusko and a camcorder in the interrogation room, confesses to the crime. He is then assigned a public attorney for his trial.

During the arraignment, Yakis' defense attorney files a motion to throw away all evidence gathered from Yakis' apartment because they were found in a warrantless search-- he can prove beyond any doubt that the scream Brusko supposedly heard never happened. The attorney also files a motion to throw away the confession because (1) this was brought about by evidence from the warrantless search and (2) Yakis wasn't informed of his rights when he was arrested because Brusko knocked him unconscious. Noting that the police and prosecution have no other evidence on Yakis aside from those gathered in his apartment, the defense attorney files a motion to dismiss the case due to lack of evidence.

Under current rules of evidence, the judge has no choice but to grant the defense attorney's motions to throw away all evidence on Yakis because they are all fruits of the poisonous tree-- they are all tainted evidence. Brusko conducted a warrantless search and lied about exigent circumstances, and Yakis' confession was obtained without him knowing about his rights. The judge will have to dismiss the case due to lack of admissible evidence because he will have to pretend that he never saw the girl's body and the perp's confession. Even if the judge rules that double jeopardy does not apply, Yakis will remain free unless Brusko can find evidence that is not in any way linked to the contents of the apartment.

I clearly understand the need to prevent agents of the State from committing abuses such as warrantless arrests and searches. No one wants to see overzealous detectives overstep the rights of the accused-- allowing one noble detective to overstep the lines will lead to other less noble ones doing the same and before we know it it's as if the Magna Carta never existed. There is a clear need to protect people from the State's agents given their immense powers.

But is it really in the interest of justice and human rights to overlook what we know is true? In the case above, two people committed crimes: Yakis and Brusko. If the judge does not admit the evidence and dismisses the case, Yakis and Brusko will both go free (ok, Brusko will have a bad day, maybe a stern warning from his boss) but the real victims-- the girl and her family-- will be denied justice. How can a wrong correct two wrongs?

I understand that the purpose of the doctrine on tainted evidence is to prevent abuses by agents of the State. But instead of completely ignoring the truth, even from tainted evidence, why not simply criminalise acts that taint the evidence? Say, life in prison for a warratntless search or illegal wiretap, or the errant cop joins the perp in jail for the duration of the latter's sentence. This way the criminal goes to jail along with the abusive agent of the State, giving justice to both the victims and the criminal justice system.

I'm not arguing that the end justifies the means; on the contrary, agents of the State who abuse their power should be punished harshly, even as harsh as the criminals they convict. But I think it's wrong to deny the truth-- to pretend that what we know as true does not exist-- just to punish those who abuse their police powers. In fact, the present doctrine on tainted evidence is incentive incompatible-- those who abuse their powers (i.e., agents of the State) are not held personally liable for their actions. Their punishment, if you can call it that, comes mainly in the form of dismissed cases. There is a mismatch between the crime, which is a personal decision by the abusive agent, and the punishment, which is borne by society in the form of a dismissed case (not to mention a criminal on the loose). We want agents of the State to do their jobs well, within the bounds of the law, and respecting the rights of the accused-- I think the prospect of a long prison term provides more of a deterrent against abuse than potentially dismissed cases.

I can't see how ignoring facts, wherever they're from, helps the cause of justice. It's weak as a deterrent and does not really hit abusive agents of the State where it hurts. Now that we are considering revising the rules on criminal procedure and evidence, what is the philosophical reason not to change the doctrine on tainted evidence and fruits of the poisoned tree? Aren't justice and the justice system served by considering the facts-- all facts-- and punishing all who did wrong?

As I said earlier, I'm nowhere near an expert in legal theory and am not a practitioner of law. If you are, and you think I'm way off, please educate me.

Unleash Hell

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Loss of Political Capital

Vote dashes Bush immigration plan (on BBC)

It is unfortunate that in the one issue where Bush is acting in a non-partisan manner, where his views are balanced and his actions tempered, he is torpedoed by his own party. In the one issue where there is a tinge of the "compassionate conservative" in him, the, um, uncompassionate conservatives win the day. Too bad, he lost so much political capital over Iraq that he can't even get his good policies out.

Anti-Americanism explained

The BBC is having a series on anti-Americanism to be aired over Radio 4 in the UK. Based to the article, it seems to challenge the concept of anti-Americanism as a reaction to American foreign policy, putting it in the same hate box as anti-Semitism or racism. The correspondent, Jim Webb, "argues anti-Americanism is often a cover for hatreds with little justification in fact". He travels to Paris, Caracas, Cairo, and Washington to study this phenomenon. Too bad I don't get Radio 4 in this part of the world-- it would've been good to listen in.

It is apparent in the article that the series has a benign veiw of America, attributing anti-Americanism in Paris as a reaction to America's "kind of democracy that celebrates and encourages ordinariness" (i.e., the elitist and cultured French aristocrat versus the egalitarian but uncouth American cowboy). But whatever the etiology of French anti-American sentiment is, what I'm more concerned about is the sentiment as a reaction to American foreign policy-- is it well placed? Webb discusses it early on in the article. After seeing an anti-American protest in London, he observes:

"A pattern was emerging and has never seriously been altered. A pattern of willingness to condemn America for the tiniest indiscretion - or to magnify those indiscretions - while leaving the murderers, dictators, and thieves who run other nations oddly untouched. "

What Webb fails to comprehend is that this strong reaction to America's "tiniest indiscretion" is actually an acknowledgement that it is expected to have moral ascendancy. The world demands more of America and is very disappointed when it acts like other thuggish countries.

More than any other country in the world and more than any other superpower in history, America has trumpeted itself as the beacon of democracy and human rights. The British never claimed to spread democracy in India-- it was honest that it's all about expanding the British Empire. America, on the other hand, never owned up to its imperial past, pointing to Manifest Destiny as the reason for denying the nascent Filipino government its independence.

America prides itself in its democratic ideals and its wide open arms to all peoples. It claims to defend human rights and civil liberties, and promises to defend the world against oppressive regimes. And, to a large extent, the world believed that. That is why the world bristles at America's "tiniest indiscretions"-- it cannot claim to defend democracy and human rights and democracy while destroying them with its actions. America has proclaimed itself to be the good guy, the defender of the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free". Its actions have shown us otherwise. That is why there is so much anti-Americanism in the world-- it's a reaction against hypocrisy. That is why America is so easily condemned for its "tiniest indiscretions".

There is one thing the world hates more than murderers, dictators, and thieves. It is self-righteous murderers, dictators, and thieves.

Re: Filipino Theory of Value

My good friend Out in Four had an interesting thesis in his blog. I wrote this as a comment, but it got too long so I'll just it post here.
---
It is always interesting when anthro and econ meet. A few comments:

1. Material conditions and language do not work in a single direction (i.e., material conditions affecting language); it's more of a two-way interaction. Material conditions do affect the language (e.g., our many words for rice-- palay, bigas, sinaing, bahaw), but the language also affects the way we perceive the world (e.g., our word for sickness is sakit, which is also pain, so mental health is often neglected or trivialised). And this is most true for abstract concepts. Therefore, even if you find significant correlations, it will be difficult to establish causality. Did the language develop because they traded, or did trading develop because the people were open to it?

2. Note that most of pre-Hispanic trade was barter rather than in money, so "expensive" might be a very different concept for the early Filipinos (it would be more akin to marginal rates of substitution rather than actually being "expensive").

3. In any study of culture you will always find exceptions, so explaining them within the theory would be very difficult. And unlike other statistical anomalies, it wouldn't be possible to explain them away as outliers-- how does one consider a language or culture as an "outlier"? Could we disregard an entire Weltanschauung because it isn't like any in the rest of the world?

4. Filipino (i.e., Tagalog) is part of the Austronesian family of languages, so a lot of our words would be the same with, say, Bahasa; however, trading circumstances would be vastly different across groups. In many cases, there is more diversity between languages within the Philippines than between other countries (e.g., compare Ivatan and Panggalatok vs. Tagalog and Bahasa). So the results will be driven by how the sample is selected. The results will be different if we compare the different Austronesian languages or if we include, say, Indo-Eurpoean languages into the mix. Not to mention that a lot of our words came from Chinese and Indian (including mahal), so the lines get even more blurred. Cross-section analysis can't be done on data where the supposedly random samples are talking to and influencing each other.

5. Also consider the case of the Maranaos and the Maguindanaos-- almost identical languages, religions, social structures, etc., but the former are prolific traders and the latter are not.

Bottomline, your thesis is interesting, but very difficult to test. Obviously, I'm very much into the study of econ and anthro (the two extremes of the social sciences, actually) and have given this some thought-- studying both makes one aware of the limitations of each. The way I see it, Economics has a long way to go before it is crowned Queen of the Social Sciences.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

US crowd beats passenger to death (BBC)
Angry crowd kills passenger in car that struck child (CNN)
Texas Crowd Kills Man After Car Hit Girl (CBS)

I wonder if the same would've happened if the passenger weren't Hispanic.

Lakbayan: World Edition

Countries I've Visited
(That's 16 countries, or 7% of the total, according to the website.)



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Lakbayan

Found this nice test c/o cyberlaundry. Yes, I have a measly grade of D. Ergo, I should be spending more time on vacation. A LOT more time.

My Lakbayan grade is D!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out atLakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.

Amen!

Powell urges Guantanamo closure -- on BBC

Let Freedom Ring

"The United States is committed to the advance of freedom and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism."

-- George W. Bush

5 June 2007

Prague, Czech Republic

US President Bush delivered a speech on democracy yesterday in Prague. It was in many respects a "legacy speech", full of ideals and historical references, waving the principles on which America was founded. It would've been a good speech, if only the speaker weren't so morally bankrupt on the matter.

Bush should be the last person to lecture the world on democracy. His government has been attacking the very values that democracy needs to survive: transparency, human rights, rule of law.

Everything is a state secret with the Bush government these days, and he's viewing congressional oversight as an inconvenience to be shunned. Just last March, he ignored subpoenas from Congress, saying his advisers can only speak behind closed doors and off the record. And this is just over the firing of eight US attorneys because they were not "loyal Bushies". Talk about transparency.

"...every human life has dignity and value that no power on Earth can take away."

Gitmo. Unlawful combatants. CIA renditions. Legal limbo. No access to attorneys or consulates. Wholesale wiretaps. Talk about human rights and the rule of law.

"...freedom is timeless. It does not belong to one government or one generation. Freedom is the dream and the right of every person in every nation in every age. "

Everyone loves the concepts of freedom and democracy embodied in the Stars and Stripes. Everyone loves the libertarian ideals and principles on which the founding fathers grounded the United States. Everyone hates the hypocrisy with which it is preached.

Finally!

Senate OKs new charter to give UP more autonomy (from the Inquirer)

I, Consumer

I read an interesting book review in The Guardian website on Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin Barber. Now, I haven't read the book myself since I haven't had the chance to buy it (can anyone point me to a copy?), but the brief review gave me enough points to ponder.

I won't tackle the book's premise of consumerism being the offshoot of capitalism-- the transition from being a demand-driven economy to being a supply-driven one (i.e., so that "new needs have to be invented") wasn't discussed amply enough for me to comment. It wasn't clear whether advertisers just amplify trivial wants that are already present, or they actually goad consumers into wanting things they didn't want before. Maybe (hopefully) the book tackles this better. However, the review moves on to a more interesting point:

"...Barber moves things on by fingering what he calls the 'infantilising ethos' at the heart of consumerism. The perfect consumer, he says, is like a toddler: unable to defer gratification, lacking empathy, clinging to material objects for security, wanting to be told the same stories over and over again.

xxx

"Consumerism, in Barber's view, exploits the unsophisticated and voracious demands of children and makes adults emulate them. It actively promotes the pursuit of bliss through ignorance. It is fundamentally hostile to history and metaphysics, to anything in fact that might intervene in a citizen's consciousness and make him aware of the difference between what he wants now, as an individual, and what he might want in the long-term, or for society. So, for example, he fancies another cheeseburger, but he would also like a healthy cardiovascular system. He wants an SUV, but he also wants a temperate planet. Consumerism makes it imperative that he choose McDonald's and the Range Rover."

This actually goes to the heart of microeconomic theory: the assumption of stable preferences. Suppose there are three possible options: x, y, and z. A rational individual should have opinions on the three options and be able to order them accordingly, say x > y ~ z or x > y > z (> means "is preferred to" and ~ means "is indifferent to"). Also, if an individual orders the options as x > y and y > z, then this should imply that x > z for him to be rational.

What Barber seems to say is that an individual may have x > y > z, but then advertisers come along and change them to z > x > y, and another one comes along to turn them into y > x > z. Although economic theory already allows for changing tastes, most economic theory still needs the assumption of stable preferences-- calculus would just be impossible without the bedrock of stable preference relations (in other words, the number line). Moreover, Baker says that these changes are not necessarily the outcome of rational thought processes; rather, they are more similar to the "unsophisticated and voracious demands of children", easily swayed with just a little teasing.

This has two important implications. First, in a consumerist world, should all economic theory be modelled to allow changing preferences? Static models can still hold; i.e., there would be no problem if we stick our analysis to an individual's decisions at a single point in time. However, all analysis involving time horizons will have to change-- consumption smoothing decisions on day 1 won't make sense if the individual can't be expected to stick to them on day 2. More importantly, can we even find a way to model and test these changes in preferences? Is there a way to measure the impact of advertising on a person's consumption decisions? Which brings us the the second implication

Measuring and modelling preference changes assumes some kind of rationality in the way individuals interpret and digest information (i.e, advertising)-- a system of cause and effect if you will. But what if individuals are really childlike in their preferences and supposedly rational adults don't know what they want? What if at the decision point the relations between x, y, and z are still changing? In this case, axioms on revealed preferences do not even hold-- choosing x over y doesn't necessarily imply that x is preferred to y because the individual was just as likely to choose y over x at the decision node.

So what now? Well, obviously economic theorists should do a lot of introspecting regarding the basic assuptions that are held so dear. Homo economicus might need a serious makeover to render economic theory more than just a thought exercise. What economists now consider as "irrational" behaviour for Homo economicus might actually be the norm for many (or most) decisions made by Homo sapiens.

But more importantly, we as consumers should start thinking about our decisions and preferences. Do we even know what we want? How and how much do advertisements influence our decisions? What do we really derive from the goods that we consume? Are we now increasingly defined by what we consume?

I consume, therefore I am?
---
Thanks to dr. sbdink for thinking of the title.

Tit-for-Tat

It seems we're back to the old game. Russian President Vladimir Putin said recently that they may point their missiles at European targets in response to American plans to set up missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Although the Russia-US word war has been going on for months, this is the first time Putin has made such a strong threat.

First some background: the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed by the United States and the former Soviet Union in 1972 to put a halt to the Cold War arms race. One of its basic principles was mutually assured destruction (MAD)-- any country that launches a nuke could expect a quick and equal retaliation, making both countries unlikely to press the trigger. Thus, an important stipulation of the treaty was a ban on missile defense systems that would render MAD inapplicable, which would increase the likelihood of a first strike and foment an arms race to overwhelm whatever defense system is in place. However, in 2002 the US unilaterally pulled out of the ABM Treaty, saying it needed to develop missile defense systems to fend off possible attacks from Iran or North Korea.

An important assumption in MAD is the rationality of all parties-- an irrational player could still launch and not care about the consequences. During the Cold War there were only two nuclear-armed parties to consider-- the United States (and its satellite states in NATO) and the Soviet Union. Both parties were rational even if brinkmanship was a common game (think Cuban missile crisis).

For a presumably rational US to pull out of the ABM Treaty it had to believe that other irrational players have come into play, in this case Iran and North Korea. Both Iran and North Korea have long-range missile capabilites (none can hit the US mainland), and North Korea has confirmed nucelar capabilities albeit still weak. Thus, the US is willing to risk the ire of rational Russia to fend off the threat from potentially irrational and nuclear-armed Iran or North Korea.

So is this calculus correct? Well, it is true that there are now more players in the nuclear game, but only two pose a serious threat to the United States-- Russia and, to a lesser extent, China-- and they're both rational players. Iran has no demonstrable nuclear capabilities as of now, and its missiles can only reach as far as Israel (it won't think of hitting Arab countries, Turkey, or Russia). Iran has not shown any tendency towards irrational behaviour, and all its strategies seem to be in line with rational thinking. On the other hand, North Korea can theoretically hit Alaska if it's lucky; its missiles are more likely to hit the ocean assuming they can get them off the ground. While North Korea has shown bouts of irrational behaviour in the past, this can be viewed as part of its brinkmanship strategy which, rationally speaking, it has played so well.

It does not seem that the US is in any serious threat from ICBMs, so why build defenses in Eastern Europe and bring back Russia into the tit-for-tat game? A missile defense against Iran should be placed in Israel, not Eastern Europe. On the other hand, missile defenses against North Korea should be placed in California, Canada, and Alaska. Moreover, the biggest nucelar threat to the US is not from ICBMs or cruise missiles, but from dirty bombs carried by Al Qaeda and its sympathisers. The Eastern Europe defense shield will be useless against backpack nuclear bombs.

While the US may have valid concerns over nuclear proliferation, it seems that its decision to irk Russia by building nuclear capabilities in its doorstep is a miscalculation of the costs and benefits. It gains very little in facing its stated security threats, but loses a lot in terms of a new arms race with Russia (and China). Russia has already tested new missiles designed to thwart the latest American missile defenses, so the first step in a new arms race has begun.

The irony of MAD is that when one party tries to eliminate the ability of the opposing party to retaliate, it increases the likelihood that the other party will strike first because failure to do so will ensure its exclusive destruction. So in trying to eliminate a threat (real or imagined) from small players (Iran and North Korea), the US has significantly increased the threat from a big player (Russia). Moreover, the clear and present threat from the truly irrational player (Al Qaeda) is in no way mitigated by this strategy.

Makes one wonder who is really the most irrational player in this game.

Six Weird Things

My friend Tsumenki just tagged me to play this Six Weird Things About You game. Here are the rules:

Rules: Just cut and paste if you decide to participate in the tagging game. Each player of this game starts off by giving six weird things about themselves. People who get tagged need to write in a blog of their own six weird things as well as state the rules clearly. In the end, you need to choose six people to be tagged and list their names. After you do that, leave them each a comment letting them know you tagged them and to read your blog.

Now, this seems fun, but I don't really like chain letters or games. Thus, I'm not following the last rule-- I'm not tagging anyone. (Sorry, Tsumenki, but you probably expected this.) If you want to play, consider yourself tagged and drop me a note that you're participating in the game. Anyway, my six weird things:

1. I'm into heraldry, vexillology, and numismatics.

2. I used to memorise prayers in Latin and Hebrew.

3. I don't read fiction longer than what can be considered as short stories.

4. I was a Russophile in grade school.

5. I like ube in only one form-- ube halaya. Otherwise I don't like it.

6. I don't use ketchup on anything.

Stop and Question

According to the BBC and The Times, the Blair government is thinking of giving increased stop-and-question powers to the police, claiming it is needed to prevent acts of terrorism on British soil. At present, police need "reasonable suspicion" before they can stop and question people on the street. The proposed measure relaxes this need for "reasonable suspicion" and allows police to just stop and question anyone-- a policy already in effect in Northern Ireland. Moreover, anyone who resists the questioning will be fined £5,000 for "obstructing justice".

This comes a few weeks after it was revealed that the 7/7 terrorists (i.e., those that bombed the Tube) slipped through MI5's surveillance, so the Home Office must be looking for ways to ensure that this won't happen again. Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair goes a step further, writing in the Sunday Times that prioritising civil liberties over fighting terror was "misguided and wrong". A few excerpts:

"We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first.

"I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong. If a foreign national comes here, and may be at risk in his own country, we should treat him well. But if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country."
xxx
"Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

"Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism."

I won't argue here about the importance of civil liberties vs. national security-- everyone else is already doing this (often with help from a quote by Benjamin Franklin). But i would like to make this point to the Brits (and the Americans): be careful with what you wish for.

For a society that hasn't experienced government abuse in recent memory, the prospect of increased security might be preferred over civil liberties. After all, if you have nothing to hide there's nothing to fear, right? Wrong.

I just came from countries where police regularly stop people for no reason at all-- you don't have to act suspiciously, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was doing nothing wrong and neither were my hosts, but we all felt dread when we saw policemen approach us. Sometimes the police stop people just because they need money for a snack; refusal to feed them can lead to a trip to the station. Knowing that the police can just arbitarily stop you won't help you sleep at night.

Only a society that hasn't experienced government abuse in recent memory would be too willing to give up their liberties for security.

The Libertarian Reader

It's been a long time since I last posted-- been very busy lately. Will try to make up in the next few weeks while my boss is on leave. Hehehe.

A few weeks ago, my good friend cyberlaundry gave me three books (thanks, Seiji!), one of them being The Libertarian Reader. Very interesting book, at least based on the table of contents. Nice reads, especially in a world increasingly dominated by neocons and radicals.

Hopefully I'll be able to browse through it soon.

Central Asia pics

Finally got to upload my pics from my recent trip (used Flyupload). If you know me (and I know you), do drop me an email or leave a comment to this post and I'll send you the link (don't forget to give me your email). The file is in WinZip format and is 181+ MB. There are more than 200 pics in the file plus an Excel file for captions.

Manila, log off

Arrived in Manila two days ago. It's so hot here and the traffic is terrible-- it took me an hour and a half to get from the airport to my house.

My travelogue is now officially turned off, to be appended next time. Back to the usual boring stuff I spew out in this blog.

It's good to be home.

Hong Kong, T minus 40 minutes

Had an 11-hour flight from London, six hours of which I was asleep-- a record for me. Despite being stuck in the plane for two hours in LHR (they had technical difficulties with the refuelling process) it was a good flight.

Got to watch four episodes of the American version of The Office. [Spoiler alert: Jim leaves the Scranton branch over his frustrations with Pam. Pam's marriage does not push through. Oscar is gay. Dwight has an affair with Angela.]

I'm almost home.

London, T minus 90 minutes

(Exchange rate: US$ 1 = UK£ 0.463; UK£ 1 = PHP 103.67)

Had a good two hours in London. Took the Tube from LHR to Piccadilly Circus (a day pass costs a bit more than six quid). Had a quick lunch with my old chap Paeng at Aberdeen Steak House also in Piccadilly-- I got the Fish and Chips for 12 quid. Afterwards I took a stroll then headed back to LHR to maximise my lounge relaxation time. The CX lounge is the best-- good Asian food, private and spacious shower rooms, and free internet.

I was actually planning to stay one night in London on my way back from Central Asia but decided against it as I'm very very keen on going home. I guess this means I'll have to cancel dinner at the Palace tonight.

Baku, T minus 60 minutes

After problems in checking in (somehow they can't handle e-tickets) and a very long line in passport control (only one officer for our half of the terminal), I'm in the lounge waiting for departure.

It was a long trip. Exhausting becasue of the tonnes of work but also fulfiling because of new friends and experiences. Almost every traveller's nightmare happened to me during my trip, from an immigration officer fishing for a bribe to being surrounded by presidential bodyguards. But a lot of exciting things also happened, from a tour of historic Hisor near Dushanbe to attending a sunnat in Baku. [A sunnat is basically a debut for an 11-year-old boy, his official entry into manhood. On sunnat he parties; the next day he is circumcised.]

It was a long and memorable trip, but I've never been so raring to come home. I'm finally coming home.

Baku, Day 5

[It's actually my 7th day in Baku today, so this is a delayed post.]

Spent most of the day billeted in my hotel room. Usually I take a cab to my colleague’s office across town (AZN 5), but today he said he was still busy cleaning the data so I just did my work in the hotel.

For lunch I had a sandwich of sliced beef, cucumbers, onions, and fries in Azeri bread (yes, the fries were inside the bread). It’s basically a shawarma, but much better than the ones we have at home—nothing like eating food in the region where it was born. I also bought 1.5 litres of water. All in all, lunch cost me AZN 1.40—not a bad deal at all. Btw, in Azerbaijan 100 kapik = 1 manat. Note the similarity of kapik to kopeck (in Russia, 100 kopecks = 1 rouble) and manat to monat (монат is Russian for “money”).

Still on money, Azerbaijan replaced the old manats (currency code of AZM) with the new manat (AZN) in January 2005. After years of hyperinflation the AZM finally stabilised in the early 2000’s; however, by this time the exchange rate was around USD 1 = AZM 5,000 and local prices were followed by numerous zeros (not good for business perception). To reflect the manat’s stability, the government replaced AZM with AZN and set USD 1 = AZN 1, or AZN 1 = AZM 5,000. Why am I telling you this? Because some people in Baku still quote prices in AZM rather than AZN. So when you’re asked for 4,000 manats for a piece of bread, don’t be shocked and clarify what currency they’re using.

Took a brief stroll outside my hotel. Not exactly the right weather for a walk-- there were gale-force winds and a temperature around 6C to 10C. The pine trees were bending like they had duckpins for Christmas balls. It was actually hard for me to walk and I had to hold on to my cap lest it gets blown away. All in all, not a bad stroll.

Congratulations, Dear!

It was just yesterday when I met you during UP Fair and you were anxious about your application to law school. It was just yesterday when I saw you in Malcolm Hall as you were about to take the dreaded LAE interview. It was just yesterday when you were being shell-shocked by reams of readings and terror profs.

Now you're about to walk onto the stage, shake the dean's hand, and officially graduate from law school. After tonnes of paper, barrels of ink, and gallons of coffee, you can now say you survived law school.

Congratualtions on your graduation, Dear. It is such an achievement. I am proud of you.

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[Picture taken somewhere in the Azerbaijani countryside, around 30 mins from Baku.]

Baku, Days 1 to 3

(Exchange Rate: US$ 1 = 0.864 Azeri new manats; AZN 1 = PHP 55.55)

Day 1

After two weeks in (relatively) sweltering Bishkek and Dushanbe, I was greeted by a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius in the middle of the afternoon. Good thing I brought my winter-in-SFO clothes.

There are two things that immediately struck me in Baku-- it's dusty/muddy and there are a lot of newly constructed buildings (and even more that are being constructed). The latter can be attributed to Azerbaijan's new oil wealth-- they found large deposits of natural gas in the late 1990's. Main roads in Baku are wide and smooth, but side streets are terrible. Unlike Bishkek and Dushanbe which retain their Soviet ambience, Baku feels more like Istanbul.

Almost everyone in Azerbaijan speaks Russian and English usage is starting to grow because of an influx of foreign investors. The main language, of course, is Azeri-- a Turkish dialect which has its own alphabet based on the Latin alphabet (lots of tails, umlauts, and an inverted "e", though). So far I know two Azeri words: salam (hello) and saol (thank you, good bye, and can be used as a toast).

Day 2

My colleague invited me to lunch at his home. His wife prepared a superb meal of fried mutton, grilled tomatoes and eggplants, and salad. This was washed down with home-made red mulberry juice. Of course there was the omnipresent bread. Those who know me probably expected this, but the highlight of the meal was the eggplant-- grilled with olive oil and thinly sliced garlic.

After a tour of the Azeri countryside, we had dinner at his home. Again, the meal was superb-- eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers stuffed with mutton, garlic, and spices. We also had fresh herbs (basil, parsley, spring onions) from their garden.

I saw family life in Dushanbe and Baku and I can sum it up in one word-- patriarchal. In Dushanbe, my hosts (husband and wife, both professors, and their son) ate with me as a family but only the wife prepared the meal and cleaned up. I tried to help, but I was stopped by both of them. In Baku, I had two meals at my colleague's home, but I didn't really share the meals with his family. It was just the two of us sharing the meal and his family (wife, daughter, and son) were serving us. I only got to meet his wife shortly before I left their home. Fathers here are really treated as kings and the family revolves around them.

Day 3

From my arrival in Baku until now I stayed at the Park Inn hotel (AZN 150/night). It was a very posh place with a great view of the Caspian Sea outside my window. But, alas, it was too expensive for me. My per diem can accommodate it, but it would mean I'll have no savings and I'll have to scrimp on food. So I gave up my hi-tech room with a great view for a sparse, viewless room (the view is a construction crane) at Hotel Empire. The good news: it also has free internet, is just two buildings away from ADB, and it's only USD 100/night (or AZN 86/night)-- almost half the price of Park Inn.

For dinner my colleague brought me to a restaurant with a nice pastoral view of a lake in the suburbs of Baku. Along with fresh vegetables, various shashlik (beef, mutton, and sturgeon), and olives, we had a dish called sacici (pronounced sa-ji-chi)-- a stew of chicken, potatoes, peppers, oranges, and tomatoes cooked in a base of butter. It tastes very much like the Filipino afritada sans the tomato sauce (a perfect meal if only we had rice). The dish is actually named after the dish it's cooked in-- the sac (pronounced saj). It's a cast-iron pan shaped like a shallow Spanish paelleri and any food cooked in it is called a sacici, literally "in the sac".

Tomorrow, Monday, the hard work starts.

Dushanbe, Days 1 to 4

Since I haven’t posted for a while, this will be a long post covering four days.
(exchange rate: US$ 1 = 3.43 Tajik somonis; TJS 1 = PHP 14)

Day 1

Arrived in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, last Saturday. My initial impression of Dushanbe was not good. The international airport was, how do I put this, decrepit. The provincial airport in General Santos City is much better than the Dushanbe international airport. After going through consular affairs and passport control, my airport pickup was a Zhiguly, an old Soviet car infamous for being the sourest of lemons. They tried to sell it in Finland under the name Lada—apparently Zhiguly has a bad connotation in Finnish—but it didn’t sell too well despite the name makeover.

While people in Bishkek look either Mongol or Russian, people in Dushanbe look more like Turkish or Persian. You find a few Russians, Kyrgyz, and Koreans in the fray (Koreans were forcibly relocated to Central Asia during Stalin’s time), but most of the people are of Turkic origin. You’ll also see many women walking around in their national dress, which looks like the ubiquitous duster in Manila (floral or plain print) but with material ranging from luxurious silk and velvet to the truly duster-like cotton.

My hotel in Dushanbe is called Hotel Sino. To help you picture it, it’s not exactly what I would call a gostinitsa (building/hotel); rather, it’s closer to an inn. It’s clean and fairly secure, but the staff doesn’t speak English and it doesn’t provide the usual amenities you’ll find in a hotel (they have excellent satellite TV, although only few channels in English). As for the name, given the lacquered furniture, oriental bed sheets, and the made-in-China shampoos and combs, I think Hotel Sino is their idea of a typical Chinese hotel room.

After a few hours of rest, I was picked up by my colleague in Dushanbe driving a Volga—another one of those infamous Soviet cars. The ride to their office was very short, passing by wide tree-lined boulevards. In Dushanbe, everything important from the Presidential Palace and Parliament to TV stations and markazi savdo (stores) is around one major road called Rudaki Street (formerly Lenin Street). Like Bishkek, buildings in Dushanbe are mostly Soviet-era apartments and government buildings. But unlike Bishkek, there are more new buildings in Dushanbe and the old apartments seem to be better maintained (or at least nicely painted). Dushanbe is also less congested, giving it a more laid-back feel. However, like Bishkek, roads are terrible in Dushanbe even by Manila standards.

Despite the initial car ride, everything in Dushanbe is within walking distance; i.e., within a 30-minute walk. Dushanbe is a walker-friendly city with wide tree-lined sidewalks. It seems that walking is the main form of transportation in this city, although there are also public buses, minibuses and cabs. If you’re staying in a hotel in the city centre (which I am), almost everything you’ll want to visit in the city is within walking distance. My hosts also tell me that it’s safe to walk around Dushanbe even at night; the biggest threat is actually the militsia (police) who can stop you and ask for a bribe.

My colleague strongly advised me not to drink tap water. Actually it was stronger than that—under no circumstance should I put tap water in my mouth lest I risk contracting typhus. I can bathe with the water and I can use it to wash my clothes, but I should not ingest it in any way. I should only use bottled water, even for brushing my teeth. I immediately bought seven 1.5 litres of bottled mineral water, costing a total of 10.5 somonis (or 1 somoni per litre—not a bad deal). I also bought some Russian-made chocolate bar (brandy and hazelnut flavour) for 5 somonis.

My first real meal in Dushanbe was at Choyhonnai Rokhat, literally meaning “place of rokhat”, the house specialty. Rokhat is basically an oval-shaped meatball made of beef and herbs, steamed (I think), then fried with lots of onions. I also had a soup of rice, beef, potatoes, and herbs, and a salad of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, and radish. Of course, there’s the omnipresent bread, non in Tajik. [I thought that non is from the Indian naan bread, but I was corrected by my hosts. Indian naan is actually from the Farsi non. Persians and Central Asians conquered India during the Mughal Empire (of Shah Jahan and Taj Mahal fame) and introduced naan bread to India.] Dinner at Choyhonnai Rokhat for the three of us cost 36 somoni, tip included, and it is considered one of the pricier places in the city. By the way, restaurants in Bishkek and Dushanbe already include tip in the bill, so no need to leave a tip.

Day 2

This day, Sunday, my hosts took me to the outskirts of Dushanbe, particularly the historic region of Hisor. Hisor was one of the important centres of the old Tajik Bukhara Empire, which spanned present-day Tajikistan and parts of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan before it was overrun by the Russians. I saw the ruins of an old castle and a madrassa, which now serves as a museum of Tajik history. It’s good that my hosts are an historian and an anthropologist—they really make an effort to show me the culture and history of Tajikistan.

Tajikistan literally means “land of Tajiks”; “Tajik”, in turn, means “people who wear a crown”, thus the crown (taj) seen in their flag. King Somoni (yes, like the currency) is credited as being the father of the Tajik people, and has a monument in the centre of Dushanbe.

For dinner, my hosts served me manty (meat dumplings common in Central Asia), spiced yoghurt, salad, and the omnipresent non. Tajiks, I see, are very generous and hospitable. My colleague, the anthropologist, says that it’s because the Tajiks are a mountain-dwelling nation, so visitors are treated like kings because they are few and far between.

Day 3

Met two US Embassy employees in my hotel today. Although I’m not exactly a fan of US foreign policy (and those who carry them out), it was nice to talk with people who spoke fluent English.

Had dinner at the famous Sirius Restaurant, which serves mostly Russian cuisine in an Egyptian-themed ambience. I had winter salad, Kiev cutlets, and rice. Salad in Russia and Central Asia, mind you, is serious business and can occupy up to half the menu (none of that flavourless chef’s salad crap we get in Manila). Kiev cutlets are like the chicken ala Kiev we get in Chocolate Kiss in UP, but much bigger and better. I spent a total of 18 somonis for my dinner—not bad considering this is the “in” resto for fashionistas and expats in Dushanbe. I then spent 2 somonis on apricot-flavoured ice cream sundae which I bought from a street hawker (like the Magnolia/Selecta carts in Manila).

Day 4

This day started off interestingly. I often walk to my colleague’s office, so I expected the day to be like any other day. It just so happened that today Pres. Imomali Rakhmon (formerly Rakhmonov) was speaking at the Tajikistan Technical University which was along my route, so I committed the crime of walking past an area where he was. Presidential security, thinking I was a threat, stopped me and sternly asked for my dokumenti. Much to my chagrin, my passport and Tajik visa were with ADB; fortunately, I had a photocopy of those documents which I presented them. They yelled something in Russian or Tajik (couldn’t tell which language), to which I answered, “Ya nye panemayu Russkiy yazik (I don’t understand Russian),” and, “Rabotayu Aziatskiy Banke Razvitsiya (I work in ADB).” I think it was enough to convince the president’s bodyguards that I wasn’t a terrorist or assassin and they let me go, telling me in Russian or Tajik to get lost. I followed their instruction and indeed got lost, somehow finding myself in front of the Kazakhstan Embassy in Dushanbe. There I called my colleague and he fetched me. Bolshoi spasiba (many thanks) to Kazakh Embassy security for letting me loiter in front of their gates.

Back in the office, we had lunch of non, salad, and plov, a rice dish common in Central Asia but Tajik plov is famed for being very good—a fact I learned from my Kyrgyz colleagues. The plov I had here was basically like paella but cooked with beef, carrots, chickpeas, and spices (including carroway seeds). It’s served with a side dish of julienned radish and cucumber. It’s very good, I should say, even for a rice eater like me. [From plov we get the common rice pilaf dish in the West, which I say is a lame version of the original.] Meals in Tajikistan are often washed down with green tea and some sour milk drink (think of liquid cottage cheese) which I don’t really like.

This afternoon, my hosts brought me to the National Museum and gave me an excellent tour—imagine an historian and an anthropologist being your tour guides. The museum exhibits Tajikistan’s long and proud history from the paleolithic period and Buddhist kings to Alexander the Great and the Bukhara Empire. The museum also boasts of a very large statue of a reclining Buddha—a legacy of its pre-Islamic history. Afghanistan and Tajikistan share these treasures of gigantic Buddhas carved from stone; however, the Taliban destroyed their statues in Afghanistan so now only Tajikistan maintains this legacy.

My hosts again prepared dinner for me, this time consisting of meat fritters, bulgur wheat, fussili pasta, salad, and non. They also served me copious amounts of Tajik vodka—much smoother than Absolut and tastes more like sweet water, attributed to the crystal-clean water from Tajikistan’s mountains.
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Sorry, cyberlaundry, still no pics. Btw, my hotel is a three-minute walk from the Komitet Gossudartsvennoi Bezopastnosti office in Dushanbe. It still serves its original purpose and carries the same name to this day (albeit working for Tajikistan rather than the Soviet Union).