Tag: September 30, 2012

SOCIAL media use has gone beyond leisure and entertainment.

Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become useful platforms in information dissemination especially during calamities, social media denizens noted in “The Social Good Summit” organized by online media outfit Rappler last Sept. 22 at Greenbelt 3 in Makati.

Nina Terol-Zialcita of the People Power Institute said mainstream media are “no longer the sole gatekeepers.”

But social media speeds up information-gathering for journalists, said Howie Severino of GMA News Online. “The traditional new gathering is that you send a crew to an event and by the time you get there it’s over,” he said. “These days, we get these photographs in real-time.”

THE PHILIPPINE Ambasador to Myanmar will take the helm as consul general of Los Angeles, California, with the task of implementing Philippine laws and regulations in the United States concerning citizenship, immigration, trade, navigation and commerce.

Hellen Barber-de la Vega, who finished cum laude in Asian Studies in 1982, will assume office on Sept. 30.

De la Vega, the second woman consul in Los Angeles since the Philippine Consulate’s establishment in 1947, also served as consul general at the Philippine Embassy in China from September 2008 to August 2009.

A THOMASIAN filmmaker’s award-winning independent film will represent the country in the 2013 Academy Awards.

The 2012 Cinemalaya Film Festival Director’s Showcase entry, Bwakaw, written and directed by Communication Arts alumnus Jun Lana, will banner the Philippines next year in the Oscars' Best Foreign Language Film Category.

Bwakaw, which also won the Audience Choice Award, is a drama-comedy indie film starring Eddie Garcia, who plays an aging homosexual man with a pet dog as his only companion.

The film is also the country’s entry to the Toronto Film Festival and the New York Film Festival this year.

FOR THE past two years, our daily conversations were graced by the words “level-up,” “pick-up line,” “fish kill,” “trending,” and even by the odd yet comical Tagalog terms pagpag (food scrap), palusot (alibi), and wagas (eternal). And who wouldn’t forget the terms “SALN” and “impeachment” which became the word(s) of the mouth during the impeachment of ousted chief justice Renato Corona?

But lo and behold, it’s that onomatopoeic term for the sound of a vehicle siren that was hailed the word of the year: “Wang-wang”!

SA PANAHON ng instant coffee, instant noodles, instant make-over, at Instagram, nakahanap ng puwang ang isa pang “instant” na mabentang-mabenta—ang Instant Boyfriend/Girlfriend.

Kaakibat ng instant boyfriend/girlfriend ang isa pang instant—ang Instant Panliligaw—na tila patok din sa makabagong panahon. Ngunit bakit nga ba naging ganito na ang kalakaran ng pagsinta, samantalang nanggaling tayo sa panahon kung kailan paglapastangan nang maituturing ang pagdampi sa kamay ng mga kababaihan?

UST BECAME an evacuation center for around 1,600 Thomasians trapped on campus last Sept. 10 after torrential rains flooded the district of Sampaloc in a matter of minutes.

Here’s bad news: Flash floods will come oftener for two more years.

Rogelio Singson, secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), has admitted that UST will have to wait until flood mitigation projects are completed.

“Flash floods will continue until we’re able to do the major pumping system improvement and additional drainage,” he said in an interview over radio station DZMM.

Until then, Sampaloc will continue to catch rain water from Quezon City.

LESS GREEN, more gray.

UST will have to endure the environmental backlash once trees at Lacson Avenue are uprooted to give way to a flyover, University experts say.

College of Architecture Dean John Joseph Fernandez warned that the loss of trees could worsen flooding in UST.

“The purpose of the trees is to [keep] flood from immediately cascading down,” he said, adding that flooding has been a perennial problem for UST due to the fact that the Sampaloc district, formerly a swamp, is below sea level.

Architect Manuel Maximo Lopez del Castillo Noche, a professor at the College of Architecture, agreed, saying concrete infrastructure would prevent soil from absorbing water.

WHERE do heaps of garbage go?

For a metropolitan region producing more than two million cubic meters of solid wastes a year, collecting and transporting these litters are complicated unless proper solid waste management is employed.

Solid waste management refers to a system of proper management of household wastes generated by a community, said Alexander Umagat, director of the Solid Waste Management Office of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).

“It is a system by which wastes are fully treated in a manner that will protect a community from the ill effects of mismanaged wastes which end up along the streets or being thrown in the rivers, resulting in flooding and other dangers in sanitation,” Umagat added.

INVASIVE species of zooplankton affecting Philippine lakes and the synthesis of a medicinal compound highlighted the University’s golden year in scientific research.

These studies were presented in the “Ika-13 Panayam Pang-Agham” held by the UST Research Center for Natural and Applied Sciences (RCNAS) at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex (TARC) Auditorium last Aug. 24 to commemorate the 50 years of contributions of Thomasian researchers in the field of science and technology. It was the 13th year that research papers were presented in Filipino.

Rey Donne Papa, an assistant professor from the College of Science, discussed how the increasing number of fish cages affects the plankton biodiversity and aquaculture in Taal Lake.

FOR TROPICAL countries found near the equator like the Philippines, cyclones are inevitable visitors during the rainy season.

The database of the Citizen’s Disaster Response Center, a local non-government organization advocating disaster management, showed that cyclones affected more than 10 million people, making it the leading disaster in terms of affected population.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) has set four categories for classifying tropical cyclones according to intensity: tropical disturbance, tropical depression, tropical storm, and typhoon.