Tag: September 9, 2012

AFTER being dormant since 2008, the UST creative writing center has been revived with former UST Publishing House director Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo as director. The center’s original name has been slightly modified, so that it is now known as the UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies. It has been lodged in its original office inside the St. Raymund de Peñafort Building, where it started in 1999 with the late Ophelia Alcantara-Dimalanta as inaugural director, although it reportedly will move later to a new office at the Graduate School.

When I first got inside the renovated center at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, I thought it was a playground since students were running inside like lovers frolicking in the woods.

Entertainment has taken over the information function of Philippine television, with the masses gobbling up daily soap operas that not only dominate the evening prime time but have also started to fill up even morning and afternoon programming. Many of these soap operas are inane and have the IQ of cretins and the EQ of the emotionally stunted.

Because of the stiff competition for ratings, networks cannot anymore sacrifice certain times of the day and shield them from blatant competition by devoting them for news and public affairs. Even news and public affairs have become nothing but “infotainment.” The big networks have made television a three-ring circus operating in the morning, afternoon and evening.

“HE GOT those from 9Gag.”

My seatmate leaned close to whisper this to me while a classmate was reporting before the class. I looked at her, uncomprehending.

When she noticed my blank stare, she looked so shocked that I would have laughed loudly if it weren’t for the situation we were in.

“He got those pictures from 9Gag,” she said, pointing to the images my classmate put in his PowerPoint presentation. “Ano ka ba? Do you not know what 9Gag is?”

She went on whispering about the glory that is this strangely-named thing, and I listened intently.That night, I searched the Internet to see for myself.

And that night marked the 9Gag invasion of my life.

HARMFUL to women, harmful to children.

This was how doctors described hormonal contraceptives that will be distributed nationwide using taxpayers’ money, once the controversial “reproductive health” (RH) bill hurdles Congress. For the unborn, the devastating effects stem from the fact that contraceptives do not always prevent ovulation. A woman could still be under a contraceptive regimen not knowing that she had already conceived. In this case, contraceptives will affect the development of an infant particularly during the formation of the organs, said Dr. Edna Monzon, bioethics department chair of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.

BELIEVE it or not, the country’s population will decline in less than a generation. This is according to the latest projections of the United Nations (UN) Population Division.

The latest projections, released last year, show the Philippine population will peak at around 135 million in 2060. From 2055 to 2060, the population growth rate will slow to just 0.05 percent from the current 1.9 percent. After that, the population will dip by 0.1 percent during the period 2060 to 2065.

The country’s headcount will go down to 134.8 million in 2065. That year, the median age will be at 42.6 years old, a clear sign of population aging.

IN WHAT was yet another giant leap for mankind, science rover Curiosity landed on Mars last August 5. And part of its success could be attributed to Lloyd Manglapus, who took up mathematics in UST.

Manglapus, a 42-year-old senior software engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA-JPL), is the one who makes sure that the flight software of Curiosity is working perfectly.

“Working on Curiosity’s flight software has been the most challenging and, what I consider to be, the most rewarding accomplishment so far,” Manglapus said in an e-mail to the Varsitarian. “I’m just enjoying the fact that Curiosity arrived safely and the system checkouts have been very good.”

THIS DOCTOR’S goal to keep athletes in tip-top shape through alternative healthcare rooted on his own love for sports.

An athlete himself, Dr. Martin Camara co-founded INTERCARE Healthcare Systems in 1993 to promote the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which uses traditional and natural methods such as acupuncture and chiropractic. He serves as its director of clinics and chiropractic specialist.

He now handles national sports teams like the Philippine Azkals and is co-chairman of the Medical Commission of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

As congressional debates over the “reproductive health” (RH) bill near the homestretch, the Church is again confronted by dissident voices, sparking a war of words over the practice of “academic freedom” in Catholic universities.

One hundred ninety-two professors of Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University and 45 professors of De La Salle University have issued separate statements contradicting the official Church position against the RH bill, which is seeking billions of pesos in public money to finance a nationwide contraception and sterilization program.

Government statistics show the number of people getting married is on the decline. There are fewer Catholic marriages as most couples now prefer civil ceremonies. The reason: the rising cost of weddings.

Is the Church to blame for this?

The little-known fact is that the cheapest way to get married is through the Church, said Fr. Nicanor Lalog II, parish priest of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Sta. Maria, Bulacan. The Sacrament of Matrimony is free, he said.

“There is a decline in the number of people getting married, but I would not attribute it solely to poverty,” said Lalog.

The Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) has returned to UST, more than 40 years after massive changes in the liturgy brought about by the Second Vatican Council.

Upon the request of students and faculty, the “Mass of the Ages” was offered last Aug. 24 at the St. Dominic Chapel by an alumnus of the Central Seminary, Fr. Michell Joe Zerrudo, parish priest of the Holy Family Parish under the Diocese of Cubao.