Tag: March 9, 2009

THE VATICAN has launched its own YouTube channel in order to bring the Pope and the Church closer to people through modern technology, Holy See officials said.

Teaming up with Google, YouTube’s parent company, the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio will give the people access to reliable information about the Pope and Vatican, said Archbishop Claudio Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, during a press conference in Rome, according to a report from www.catholicnews.com.

THE ACHIEVEMENTS of Paz M. Latorena, one of the foremost writers of the first generation of Filipino English writers, in both literary writing and education, were remembered in a day-long conference and festival at UST last February 11.

The academic homage was organized by the UST Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts and Letters, UST Literary Society and the Varsitarian to mark the death centenary of the literary pioneer and pedagogue.

THE WORLD opens

into and out of my narrow eyes:

a ballasted ball of dust.

Gray skies circle above

my head, spinning

me faster than I

spin through it,

summing my time

with age—number

upon number—even better

than my own deliberation

of my sins.

I trace the sky’s

patterns, probing for

signs of its gazillion

age. All the same though

in the morning, it is young.

BILANG isa sa mga institusyong nangunguna sa larangan ng agham at teknolohiya, mapa-edukasyon man o praktikal na medisina, hindi nakagugulat na sa University of Santo Tomas Hospital (USTH) matatagpuan ang Benavides Cancer Institute (BCI), ang pinakaunang institusyon sa bansa na naglalaman ng lahat ng mga makabagong kagamitan at pasilidad na kinakailangan upang masuri at mapagaling ang isang maysakit na kanser.

IN JOURNALISM, plagiarism is a mortal sin. So as in fashion.

But while good journalists fervently nail their pen-and-paper copycats to a cross, fashion designers religiously “condemn” their imitators by – guess what – commending them.

No less than fashion gurus Coco Chanel and, most recently Giorgio Armani have shown, at least verbally, this “unique” approach for subtly belting their runway frustration against copycats in the light of healthy witticism.

FEBRUARY 2009 has featured paradoxical episodes, with each celebration having its own apparent purpose-defeating counterpart. But what intensifies these absurdities is that all these commemorations and festivities are directed not only toward one’s own welfare and recognition but also to his affairs with others – from those who are very special to him to the most distant person in his heart, who just the same deserves his kindness.

WITH all Victorian pomp, Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace in London flaunted the then groundbreaking fruits of the Industrial Revolution in the Great Exhibition of 1851. Then in the Chicago World Fair of 1893, Serbian wonder-worker Nikola Tesla, together with George Westinghouse, bested the now more popular Thomas Edison in lighting up the White City with his alternating current system which simultaneously brought an end to the War of Currents—basically a question of which arrangement was better for transmitting electricity over far distances.

RIDING the jeepney to school the other day, I happened to hear a peculiar piece of eyebrow-raising news on the radio.

In the radio program, a very hysterical DJ was talking about the restoration of the decayed and dying Metropolitan Theater, located just below the LRT station in Lawton. The DJ was saying that the repairs would cost several millions (or was it billions?) of peso, and it would take approximately two years to restore the theater to its former pre-war glory days when, as they say, it had seen better plays.

IT IS A chamber notoriously blighted in the public’s eye for harboring misfits. But House Speaker Prospero Nograles seemed to have reinforced this in his newest legislative design which seeks to add warm bodies -- 50 at that -- to the current number of district representatives in the traditionally quorum-challenged House of Representatives. He has argued for “more congressional representation” because of the alleged rapid increase in population since the 1987 Constitution was promulgated.

THE ECONOMIC “tsunami” raging across the globe could hit UST next school year but the University would be able to meet its obligations to students, faculty, and employees, the Rector has assured.

University officials however said a five-percent tuition increase would be inevitable because of rising operating costs, forthcoming negotiations with the faculty union to increase pay, and the likelihood of a decline in enrollment