Verisimilitude

Story Time 2

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 03:00:00 +0000

Found this in the files. Unfinished. I mean it's finished as in it made it all the way to the end but still needs some work but you may regard it as complete.

Blue Moon

I hope somebody’s getting this.

They’re all dead. I am the last survivor of the Popotchik. Fourteen thousand years after it left the Earth, everyone is dead and soon I will be, too. I don’t like to think the human race ends here. The other ships might have survived. Before he died Vostock said they received a signal from what they think was the Einstein-Hawking. That could mean they’re still alive, or that its computer is and they’re all dead, but I don’t want to think about that. I hope they’ve been getting our signals and are on their way here, but I don’t think I’d still be alive when they get here. Our DNA banks are still intact as far as I can tell; no visible damage to the storage facilities. Crew of the Einstein-Hawking, if you’re getting this, everything we know about the planet is in the file called Earth2.dxb in data stream D-0957-7. Only humans are affected but I don’t think the human DNA in storage have been contaminated. None of the plants and animals we brought show any adverse effects. The livestock are doing well and are thriving. Take care of them for me.

"Scouts found something, Commander. Primates, they look like. They're saying they could be human." The call was from the advanced party already on the planet.

"Copy, Silius. Tell them to stay put and just observe. We'll be there presently." Commander Natharm Wedlen of the space ship Popotchik hid his excitement well. Since they got here three years ago, the scouts haven't reported any large mammalian life forms living on this planet. This planet, the planet where his ancestors came from, the source of their civilization, the planet Earth. Who would've thought they'll be back here again? It is populated by arthropods now mostly. Some marine vertebrates were worthy of note, but no large mammalian species of any kind. And now this. To find humans, over one million years after they left Earth and found their new home in Earth2... They weren't really expecting a remnant to survive, not after what happened. "Portsmont," Wedlen said to his chief science officer, "get a team together and notify me as soon as you’re ready. I'll be coming with you. Unson," to the First Officer, "you're in charge here while I'm gone. I'll be in my chambers til then."

"Yes, Commander." Portsmont and Unson.

Back in his chambers, Wedlen takes out his copy of Fellow Traveller his father gave when he was twelve. Fellow Traveller is the journal of one of the first humans to arrive on Earth2. It is a compilation of written entries and transcripts of video documents of one Pretera Massumahond, who was a farmer in the space ship named Popotchik for which his ship is named, the deep space vessel their ancestors came in on. The book has a cover of the finest hide tree leather and printed on papyrus. He prefers to read the over-one-million-year-old text on paper instead of from a tablet. He has probably read it fifty times since his father gave him his old copy, and worn out the cover. He had the cover restored by the artisans on Greidi. The book made him want to join the Space Marines. He read it cover to cover five times on this ten year trip, and re-reads favorite parts of it from time to time. It amazes him that the trip that took his ancestors over ten millennia would take them ten years. It was only a stroke of luck that they got to Earth2 in the first place. If they hadn't stumbled on the wave caused by the collision of two massive black holes, the trip to Earth2 would have taken them millions of years at the rate they were going. Working from the records left behind by the first Popotchik, scientists were able to piece together where the short cut was and they trained their instruments on the general location, looking for sections of space that weren't expanding as fast as they should be away from Strelle, the star Earth2 was revolving around. By some stroke of luck, the wave caused by the collision of the black holes was heading towards them at the exact same rate space was expanding away from Strelle had the collision not taken place. The wave therefore had the appearance of making stars in that area of space seems stationary relative to Strelle. Those stars are several million light years away, even though it takes their light 3 to 4 light years to reach the instruments in Earth2 that detected them.

Luck?, Wedlen asked himself. Or is it possible that all this was meant to happen? Out of the vastness of space, this lone ship from Earth just happened to find that hole that would take their ancestors to their new home where they thrived, seeding it as it were. The odds against that happening are tremendous. But then again, odds are just numbers we give meaning to when no meaning exists.

He had some time in his hands. He opened his book and read.

They taught us in school that the wanderer struck Earth fourteen thousand years ago. The wanderer was called M2237-62A, but the press started calling it DeathMetal because it was mostly iron. It wasn’t alone either. In its wake were thousands of smaller wanderers aimed at the Earth, the moon, and Venus. My teachers said they never found out what happened to Earth after that, whether anybody survived; whether anything survived.

The Popotchik is just one of twenty three ships that were capable of escaping this catastrophe. Earth’s scientists knew DeathMetal was going to hit even when it was way beyond the orbit of Pluto and so the governments at the time built these huge space ships that could carry up to a few thousand people plus cargo. The Popotchik was built for another purpose and was already in Earth orbit but its builders had the foresight to equip it with the means to get out. It had eight hundred people at first, with room for around two thousand as they anticipated the population would grow en route to wherever. Most of the other ships went for Mars, with a few going to Jupiter and Saturn, planets in Earth’s solar system.

None of the other ships who went beyond the solar system knew for sure that the star system they were aiming for had planets that could support them – it was just a possibility. They just pointed the ships in the general direction of their targets and launched leaving things to luck. Or to some divine providence for those of them that believed in that. I didn’t at first, mainly because my parents didn’t. My father was a biologist and my mother an officer in the army. I raise farm animals, by the way. Our target was the star system in 801 Procephes, six light years away which might have an earth-like planet. But we never made it there, obviously.

I saw video documentaries of the launch in Ancient History class. Popotchik was built in Earth orbit and was supplied from Earth by shuttles. Aside from its cargo — machines, livestock, plants — she also carried DNA of several species of plants and animals, as well as DNA from people. The idea was to reproduce these species whenever we found a planet that was suitable. The shuttles also made several trips to carry fuel for our propulsion system: several thousand tons of hydrogen bombs, several thousand tons of ordinary uranium fusion bombs, and enough Uranium-235 to build several thousand more if needed. If she needed more, the crew mined raw materials from wanderers and other celestial bodies they encountered along the way.

The Popotchik was an Orion type space ship and she ran by dropping modified nuclear bombs out of the rear of the craft and detonating them. The propellant around the bomb would hit a shock absorbing plate on the ship to propel it forward. The detonations were timed by computer. We don’t do that anymore. We’re running on an ion engine.

The Popotchik was one of three ships that launched from space so there wasn’t much of a light show when the bombs were detonated, although it did make Earth’s atmosphere glow a little when the blast hit it. But for those other Orion ships that were launched from Earth, it was quite spectacular as bombs were detonated every three seconds till it escaped the atmosphere. It must have been hell for those left behind though. Those blasts produced shock waves and radioactive fallout for them, but I suppose they didn’t have time to worry about them because by the time of the launch, Earth had a month, maybe less, before the wanderer hit. It was very little consolation for those left behind that the ships carried samples of their DNA on board. If they didn’t have a chance, at least their genes would, and maybe if we perfect cloning, we could bring back people with the exact same genes, not that that would make a difference to them who were about to die. Hundreds of thousands have already died in the riots when news leaked about what was about to happen and that not everybody could be evacuated. My teacher said a lot of people considered the evacuations a suicide mission, with people in it doomed to a slow death but it really came down to a choice between doing something and just sitting around waiting for the inevitable, and here we are, fourteen thousand years later.

From what they were able to find out during those first days, six of the ships didn’t make it with three failing to launch when their bombs failed to detonate properly. These three fell back to Earth. The other three had the same problem after they cleared Earth orbit. A single malfunctioning bomb would throw off the orientation of the ship’s plate relative to the next detonation, with the blast hitting the ship directly. Our ship was in touch with the others at first, then as they drifted farther and farther apart, communication was such that it would take several minutes for a message from another craft to reach us, then hours, then days, then weeks, then months, and by this time, we were only in touch with the Einstein-Hawking, and even communication with the Einstein-Hawking was lost eventually. This was just before the warp.

I liked working in the farm. It gave me a lot of free time to paint and be alone. Most other people bore me. And I liked the gravity in the farm: one gee. It’s the same as the gravity back on Earth. The animals and plants need it to grow properly. On Earth, farms were vast open areas. We have videos of them and they were beautiful; fields of green that go on forever, animals grazing on the fields, clouds against that beautiful blue sky. On the ship, the animals were kept in pens. They didn’t even have room to move, poor creatures. To think that they would be killed soon, it seems unfair that they should spend their lives in such a miserable state. I talked to them whenever I can, tell them stories, and sometimes I think they appreciated it. Northus thought they’re just dumb creatures though, and said I was nuts for talking to them. Well, fuck him. (I did, once. I was glad when he got transferred to engineering. But every time I remember...ugh! I could be so stupid sometimes. At least my animals don’t lie to me. Anyway, he’s dead now, and I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, even though he was really an asshole.)

The hospital was also in the one-gee zone. As well as the nursery. And the DNA bank. Pregnant women needed the one gee for their babies to develop properly in their wombs. So most of the people I saw there, aside from those assigned to the farm, are sick people and pregnant women. That’s how I met Brelin.

Brelin was about five years younger than I was — she was nineteen — and three months pregnant at the time and was bored out of her gourd in the hospital so she got out and visited the livestock area where I was whenever she can. This was about a month before we came to Earth2. She would come with me as I made my rounds and soon she was reading stories to the animals as well. She especially liked the hogs. I wasn’t a vegetarian like those church people, though. I was well aware that the animals I take care of are food. That was their purpose. If you want to eat, you have to kill something, whether it was a plant or an animal. That’s just the way it is. On Earth, primitive tribes used to pray to spirits before they hunt, and give thanks to the animals who give up their lives so they could live. I don’t quite believe in that, but I do appreciate these animals and give them respect, and I see to it that I treat them well. I couldn’t do anything about their cramped pens though. When we got settled in Earth2, I talked Jonshack into letting the animals roam free-range. We had lots of space, so he agreed without any arguments.

“We’re ready to go, Commander,” Portsmont said over the comm. “Bellsemer, Rudrink, and Shula will man the lab. We also have a squad of Rangers to escort us. Sergeant Polid’s.”

“Ok. I’ll be right down,” Wedlen said. Portsmont was sixteen years old, one of those young officers fresh out of the Marine Academy - most of the crew were - and has a doctorate in Biology. He volunteered for this mission when he first heard about it. He sent Wedlen his credentials and the day after waited outside his office even before Wedlen replied to grant him an interview.

“What makes you think you’re right for this? I have science officers with more experience than you,” Wedlen told him.

Without saying anything, Portsmont took out a worn papyrus copy of Fellow Traveller and stood back at attention. “My grandfather gave me that book when I was six, sir. It made me want to be a Space Marine. I’ve been dreaming about this all my life.”

Wedlen looked at him and Portsmont met his eyes. Wedlen hired him and hasn’t regretted it since. He could delegate responsibilities to him and he would always come through. This mission was as important to Portsmont personally as it was to him: a fulfillment of a childhood dream. How many opportunities for that come in one’s lifetime?

They have visited planets in the solar system where ships were stationed in orbit after DeathMetal. They were hoping some had survived, or at least left something behind to indicate what happened to them, but they found nothing. They spent a lot of time around Saturn and its moons where most of the ships went since Saturn’s moons could have provided them with raw materials, but no such luck. It had been over a million years of course. Maybe they moved on. Or, most probably, they all died. Wedlen didn’t feel anything for them at the thought of that. Everybody dies.

There were no signs around Jupiter or its moons either. On Mars, they left a team to investigate after it was reported to him that they might have found some artifacts. The remains of a structure of some kind. No signs of life.

When they got to Earth, they found it teeming with life. Life was everywhere. The planet was literally covered with them. After a ten-year journey seeing nothing, life on Earth left him with a sense of awe at how tough it is. Earth scientists expected DeathMetal to wipe everything out, with nothing but the hardiest bacteria surviving, but here it was. The scouting party said it had plants, what looked like mollusks and crustaceans, marine vertebrates, and insects, some as large as a metrobus. They reported small mammals that were probably descended from rodents.

And in a craggy outcrop in one of the islands in an archipelago southeast of the landmass that the chronicles called Eurasia, close to shore, the scouts reported what looked like primates: forward looking eyes, opposable thumbs. They walked upright, moved in groups, and seemed like they were communicating with each other. What are the odds that those are humans?, he thought.

“Everything all set?,” Wedlen asked as he reached the shuttle that would take them to Earth.

“Yes sir,” Portsmont said. “We’re just waiting for your go- ahead.”

“Well, then let’s go ahead.”

The warp made the ship’s main computer go bonkers. We were headed for 801 Procephes one moment, then the next it just disappeared, although I didn’t know it at the time. It tried to get our bearings back, but when it failed, it just shut itself down. The power went out through the entire ship as the computer shut everything down. Everything just went dark and quiet as the generators stopped humming. Even the animals were quiet.

Brelin was a few feet away from me on the bridge over the fishpond and called out to me scared. I assured her that I was still there. I was scared of course. You get used to the hum of the generators that you don’t really notice them anymore so when they shut down, as the cliché goes, the silence is deafening. And those generators were responsible for keeping us alive. You don’t want them to stop humming, trust me.
Several people with torches came and were calling out to anyone. I called out to them and asked them what was going on. A man said — I didn’t see his face as he was pointing his torch right at me — he said there’s nothing to worry about. Just a computer glitch. Everything will be back to normal soon. The engineers are working on it. I don’t know much about the computer but I know it doesn’t glitch, hasn’t glitched for thousands of years. Maybe those geniuses at engineering wrote a new routine for it and ran it without the proper tests. But soon the generators were humming again and the lights went back on and air started flowing. I told Brelin to stay put while I try to find out what’s going on.

I found my mother talking to the Captain and waited impatiently as they finished their conversation, standing a respectful distance away. I suppose I was fidgeting because my mother gave me an annoyed look. I went up to her as the Captain disappeared through the door to the conference room.

“Short answer? We’re lost,” she said. “The computer has no idea where we are.” I gasped, but my mother continued, “And there’s nothing to worry about. We’re just drifting through a different part of space, that’s all. It’s not as if we’re not used to drifting by now. The computer kept trying to shut itself down when it couldn’t get a fix on our location, so the engineers deleted its star map files and rebooted. That seemed to work. Go back to your station. Everything’s fine. Wait for the Captain’s announcement. I’ll see you later.” She kissed me on the cheek and went into the conference room.

The announcement came an hour later. The Captain said pretty much the same thing my mother did with more details the navigation people supplied him with. “As far as we can tell, we were caught in some kind of wave of warped space,” he said over the comm. “As such we have no idea where exactly we are in relation to where we used to be. One thing is sure, we are not heading for 801 Procephes anymore.” I heard a lot of groans, then the Captain continued, “Our navigators have picked up another star system that could have planets similar to the ones in 801 Procephes, and we are heading for that instead. We are lucky to end up where we are since we will be in this star system in 400 days if we initiate a two-gee burn. The burn will start at 0900 ship standard time and will last for 10 minutes. Take all necessary precautions. That is all.”

A burn. That means dropping bombs out the back. Brelin held my hand.

It stood on a mound. It couldn’t have been more than a meter tall and was carrying a staff with ribbons of what looked like strips of hide tied to it. The ribbons were flapping in the wind like a banner. It was scanning its surroundings using its free hand to shield its eyes from the sun. It then raised its staff a few times then continued scanning the horizon. Soon others joined it on the mound.

“We estimate at least 300 individuals in this community,” Silius said. “Maybe more.”
“It’s a foraging party,” Portsmont said still looking through his binoculars as the group on the mound separated. Then to Silius, “Let’s go catch one.”

Back at camp, Wedlen was continually updated by Portsmont’s team. He still can’t believe it. To be here, now, a million years since their ancestors left. Humans! Of course they still had to verify that but in his gut he knew, and he can’t get his mind around it. Once they dominated this planet, and now here they are, living underground, hiding from predators, insignificant it seems... but surviving. Against tremendous odds, they survived.

The last human in the universe. That couldn’t be me. I refuse to believe it. Not after what we’ve been through. To drift in space for fourteen millennia, to find this planet against all odds, I was beginning to believe Brelin; there is some master plan somewhere and we’re part of it. Humans are destined to spread throughout the universe, planting seeds of humanity all over. We’re the seeds, she said. We’re supposed to give the human race a new start here.

Earth was a mess even before the wanderer hit. Generations of mismanagement and greed made her unlivable. The people then were divided into what they called the Rich and the Poor. It seems strange to us now but back then most of the Earth’s resources were in the hands of very few people, the rich. More and more people were living in civilization’s refuse breathing foul air and drinking foul water and those with the means – the rich, the haves, the beautiful ones - isolated themselves in their cosmopolitan cities and pretended that billions of people outside of them didn’t exist in the conditions they existed in. I remember my teacher saying that Earth scientists once warned that human activities were causing the climate to change with disastrous consequences. The rich, the haves, the beautiful ones, with hearts ostensibly bleeding for the Earth’s poor, drafted a program to prevent the disaster and it was this: You poor folk, you downtrodden masses, reduce your consumption of the Earth’s resources so that we the rich, we haves, we beautiful ones, could continue living as we have been.

The pressure mounted such that the rich folk knew sooner or later, as millions of people moved in looking for work, looking for food, looking for a chance to live like humans, that these people can’t be ignored anymore. They gave them work in factories outside the cities and in services in the cities, housed them in camps where they were taken care of as long as they kept providing the cities with what they needed. The countryside was spent, its resources dwindling. Farms were dying and the only way to grow food was through industrial factories with huge climate-controlled greenhouses run by computers. Farmers and ranchers who used to own their own farms went to work for these factories for survival wages. That was the way of the world then before the wanderer. The Popotchik was built to escape from the inevitable, a haven for rich people: Live in Earth orbit. Spectacular views of the planet from your luxurious apartment. Golf, spas, and the hottest hotspots in the universe all waiting for you. It was called Celestia then, not Popotchik. They had no idea she would turn into a lifeboat. The owner, some faceless corporation, didn’t count on her making the journey she eventually made so soon.

There was chaos in the cities when news of the wanderer broke. The workers from the camps rioted and took over the factories and went into the cities and looted everything they could get their hands on. First police, then soldiers were called in to stop the mob. But as the streets of the city became awash with blood, even the soldiers refused their orders, abandoned their posts, and joined the rioters.

The crew took over the Celestia in the chaos and there was nothing the board of directors on Earth could do about it. What could they do? Take them to court? The crew – scientists and engineers with ties to leading universities on Earth - knew however that they couldn’t stay in the solar system where other humans would be scattered about in orbiting settlements. They were outlaws after all. If enough people survived, the authorities, whatever of them that were left, would go after them. With the help of the universities, they transported entire laboratories and libraries on board the Celestia: digitized books and documents, equipment, DNA samples of numerous species from pachyderms to protozoa, bacteria to baleen whales, and people of all races. They sent the former occupants home to the mercy of the mobs and replaced them with the universities’ faculty, some students, soldiers who joined the revolt, and their families, a little over 800 people. They renamed the ship Popotchik, and aimed for 801 Procephes. They’d like to think that it was as simple as a wing, a prayer, and they were off in glowing clouds of radioactive propellant, but the soldiers had to put down a horde of rioters to be able to load and board the ship. Life, what else is new? To live, something else has to die. The killings were justified, they thought, as they were mankind’s last hope.

Not really. There were other ships. Einstein-Hawking said they will head for 801 Procephes, too, if their original target in Tau Grius didn’t pan out. See you in a couple million years, Einstein-Hawking. These were extremely long trips and those on board knew and accepted that they, their children thousands of generations hence, would die in space long before they reach their destinations. The pirates of Popothcik, the outlaw ship, was a seedpod drifting in the interstellar winds, hoping for fertile soil in which to grow.

“They’re human. DNA confirms it. We have a 99.54% match to the genome template we have.”
Wedlen leaned back in his chair and said nothing for several seconds, just looking at Portsmont. Inside, his mind was reeling and his heart was racing. These he placed under control by taking a couple of deep breaths without, he hoped, Portsmont noticing. Portsmont himself was a picture of calm and he could do no less than try to match it. Finally he said, “Write a message to Center. Give them a full report. I’ll add my recommendations later before we send it.”

Brelin and I used to hang out with the animals before she died. Her baby died not long after we landed and she was understandably depressed. Taking care of the animals got her mind off her loss I suppose and it visibly cheered her up. She even took a piglet for a pet, a weak runt, and named her Vorla. On the ship, we usually destroyed sick or underweight animals so they don’t have to use up resources that would otherwise go to the healthier animals, and I was about to do that to Vorla. I had the syringe in hand to euthanize the poor thing when Brelin saw me and asked me where I was going. I told her and she grew quite upset, but she went with me anyway. When she saw the little pink piglet, she begged me not to put her down and said she’ll take care of it herself and we don’t have to worry about anything. I thought about it and finally said yes. We had a planet full of resources and the rules on board a cramped ship didn’t have to apply here. Besides, we fed the animals with the ‘vegetables’ that grew on the planet and they seemed to be doing fine. We didn’t have to feed them with the feedstuff we used to have on board so we weren’t about to run out of feed.

On nights when the moon was full, Brelin and I would stay up all night on the roof and talk and watch the animals frolic under the beautiful blue moon. The open space really did them good and they ran around and played. I don’t know if that was normal behavior back on old Earth, but they seemed right at home here. They were happy, I daresay. Damn if the pigs weren’t singing to the full moon, with Vorla joining in from her bed on the roof beside us as if squeaking the chorus. They never did that on the ship, but then again they never saw anything beyond the ship’s walls before.

Brelin was a member of the Church, one of those who believed that the Universe is alive. Not alive in the sense we are, but conscious and could listen to us, and that the planets are also conscious and are the ones who directly create life. The Earth created us, she said. She calls us children of the Earth, and that one day we’ll join the Universal Consciousness - yes, capitalized. Church members are dualists. They believe life is chemistry and information. When we die, only our bodies die, but the information that made us, plus the data we gathered, doesn’t die. It lives on in the Universal Consciousness, not conscious of itself as a separate entity, but as part of the Universal Self. As an analogy, she compared us to a book. She said, “You threw your copy of The Complete Works of Nubelig in the fire, did you in fact destroy it?” I said yes. “No you didn’t. All you destroyed is the medium it’s written on. The Complete Works continue to exist. As long as it’s in someone’s mind it exists. And as long as there’s a Universe, there is a mind that it exists in.” O-o-oookay, I said, so we were written. By the Universe. “Yes,” she said. She said our DNA is a book of instructions written in the language of the Universe. It’s no surprise that a lot of the Church members are molecular biologists. The language in DNA is a sacred thing to them. Life on Earth, and elsewhere, all exists in the mind of the Universe, and are written in and transmitted across the galaxies. “How do you think life began on Earth,” she asked, “if nobody wrote the instructions on how to do it?” She said new information, much like computer code, from the vastness of space, were sent to Earth with instructions on how to create consciousness that could communicate with the Universal Mind. That’s us. Humans. Why us?, I asked. She said she doesn’t know. It could’ve chosen other species, but it chose to gift humans with the means to understand it, one step closer in our evolution towards being Universes ourselves. (For a complete study on the beliefs of the Church, I refer you to Mulwadi’s Catechism. It’s in the library.)

People started dying a few months after we landed. We didn’t know exactly what was causing it at first. Later it turned out that the native food we were eating was somehow ‘incompatible’ with us at the genetic level. It was altering our genes in such a way that some instructions aren’t running such as those for protein synthesis. We tested the food with the animals and they were doing fine so we thought the food was safe. We never thought it would disrupt our DNA. Those who had a larger proportion of the native foodstuff in their diet were the first to fall, and they fell by the score, then by the hundreds. Until the lab found a cure, we ate exclusively terran food. The Captain ordered the livestock back in the pens and fed exclusively on terran feed, Vorla included. Eating exclusively terran slowed the death rate down, but it didn’t stop it. Somebody would succumb to a failure of the body to produce insulin or antibodies or hemoglobin. And we checked; none of us would be able to reproduce. We knew it was only a matter of time before we, too, fell, and we were just waiting for our time to die.

We were on the roof, and the full blue moon was just a meaningless orb, and I couldn’t help thinking about the end.

“This isn’t the end,” Brelin said. Count on the Church people to remain optimistic even as everything falls apart around them. They were the ones on burial duty. They volunteered. Most of us were either on the edge of a nervous breakdown or catatonic with depression.

We were sent here for a purpose, she said. The Earth knew what was going to happen, probably even before our species showed up. She knew the wanderer was coming, was talking to it, knew when it would hit. The Earth made us so she could seed some other world. Some seed we turned out to be, I said. We lived, we learned, we’re probably smarter as a species now than when we left. We certainly could avoid the pitfalls of the old human civilization, their wars, their greed, and for what? So we could die here?

I was hoping she would be the one to bury me, but that was not to be. It turned out I outlived them all, and I still had the crops, and the livestock. The computer takes care of them with very little help from me. I had enough food to last me the rest of my brief life.

I took Vorla with me when I buried Brelin - the blue moon was full when she died - and it was as if Vorla knew what was going on. She sniffed and snuggled her until the time came to put her underground. I said a little prayer to the Universe, asking it to take care of my friend, and I didn’t feel silly doing that at all. It was apt. Then I sang, or rather I tried to sing that song Brelin said her mother taught her. It was an old, old song from Earth she said. She sang it when we were on the roof on nights when the moon was full, but I forgot the lyrics. It’s called Blue Moon, she said, and it was about having someone thanking the moon for giving her someone to love and how great it was. I hummed it as best I can, and Vorla sang with me, trying to squeak the chorus. Then it was time to go and Vorla wouldn’t leave Brelin’s grave. I left her there and went back to the camp, and opened the pens, and let all the animals out. This was their home now. Earth2 has welcomed them as her own. I said a little prayer to the new planet. Take care of them for me, I said. It was apt.

“We’re going to teach them?” Portsmont asked as he read the message they were going to send Center with Wedlen’s recommendations. “Sir, our mission was just to reconnoiter and report on the status of Earth.”
“And we did that,” Wedlen said. “Im recommending that we take some of them with us, teach them what we know, and send them back here so they can teach the rest. I feel we owe it to them. Send the message, Portsmont. We won’t wait for a reply. Round up some subjects to take with us and enough supplies for them.”

“They might not survive,” Portsmont said as he sent the message. Millions of light years away, Center’s paired particle EPR comm link with the ship was receiving the message instantaneously.
“I think our genetic engineers can do something so they can assimilate our food with no adverse effects. They have their genome templates. It should be easy.” Wedlen leaned back in his chair. “Who would’ve thought? Humans!”

“May I ask why we’re doing this?”

“We owe them everything, Portsmont: our culture, our technology, our very existence. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here. You’ve seen the reports of the recon teams. None of our ancestors here survived the wanderer. And from what we’ve seen, these humans wouldn’t last long in this hostile environment. Not without our help. They took us to Earth2. That’s why we’re here.”

“Sir, they took us with them for food. They ate our ancestors.”

“That hardly matters now, does it? How could they have known that the Porcine race would thrive, that Earth2 would change us the way it did?” Wedlen sighed. “Earth2 might have sent us here to give them another chance. Take Silius’s team and round up some hardy specimens. We leave tomorrow.”
They rounded up ten humans; five male and five female. “The bastards,” Silius said. “I hope they make it. Look at them. They’re scared shitless.”

“I didn’t figure the Commander for the sentimental type,” Portsmont said. “But this could be an interesting project.”

“Stupid monkey bastards. They brought us with them so they could snack on us.” Silius chuckled. “What do you suppose they taste like?”

He grinned back at Silius. “Probably like chicken.”

Story time

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 03:00:00 +0000

A work in progress (lying dormant for years, hasnt progressed beyond preliminary drafts phase) but might as well leave this here. My take on the whole 'Rapture of the Nerds" thing: Transhumanism, Singularity, etc. With this, I welcome myself back to my blog. This is cheating of course since this isnt a new piece, but whatre you gonna do?

Graven Images

His mother called it The Eye, and Guzman remembers being scared of it when he was a child. It was portrait of a pale, un-Semitic-looking Jesus, smooth-faced, narrow-nosed, with a wispy beard, long shoulder-length hair parted in middle. Jesus had a sorrowful stare that followed him wherever he went. The painting always seemed to be looking disapprovingly at him and he didn't like to look at it if he can help it but he’d steal glances at it from time to time and sure enough, Jesus would be looking at him, sadness in his baleful stare, disappointed at him for some reason, and there was always a reason – he was a naughty boy whose curiosity always got the better of him. He remembered The Eye was the first thing anyone saw when they walked into that room, the room where all the antique religious figures and paintings were in their old house in the country, the house where they lived until he was seven when they moved to the city. The Eye was right on top of a wooden altar where candles in red glass were always lit. On the altar were a small free-standing crucifix and a small Virgin Mary figurine about sixteen inches tall that his mother called Lourdes, the mantle on the altar made from crocheted cotton yarn with little red doilies woven into it. Also in that room were antique religious figures in wood, stone, and plaster of Paris, family heirlooms over a hundred years old, some of them life-sized. There was the angel Gabriel, a Blessed Virgin Mary, and a dead Jesus beneath a purple blanket with gold thread edging lying in state in a glass coffin that they lent to the Church for Lenten processions. There was a Santo Niño, the baby Jesus, holding a scepter in one hand and a globe in the other, clothed in a tunic adorned with gold thread. Old ladies would come to the house and pray before those figures, his grandmother and mother serving them refreshments of coffee and small biscuits that came out of a bucket-sized can.

All these religious figures were in a room in his penthouse now, in what he calls the antique room, each in its own glass case and lighted from above with little halogen bulbs that gave them their own haloes. He didn't pay them much attention before – he has severed his ties with the Roman Church – but now, after the aneurysm that left him in a coma for several days, he looks at them and it triggers memories of his childhood. And not only does he remember them, he remembers them as if the memories are still fresh in his mind. He remembers everything: what the old room smelled like and what old ladies who prayed there everyday looked like. He even remembers their perfume that smelled of roses and how it made his head hurt. The aneurysm probably unlocked those memories, and several others but for some reason, he couldn't remember the aneurysm itself or what happened in the days just prior to that. He came out of the coma in his home where he had a specially-built room with hospital equipment. The room was for his mother who in her later years suffered from various ailments that old people were often afflicted with. No sense sending her to the hospital when he could well afford to have her at home where he could be with her so he hired a nurse to take care of her and her doctor visited her everyday. He never thought he’d get to use that room himself.
Also in the antique room was an old dresser with a mirror framed in dark hardwood carved with flowers and fruit. The mirror had four cracks in it that ran right through the middle and met at a point at the bottom of the mirror. He looked at his reflection through the cracks and he thought it made him look like a cubist painting. He remembered how the mirror got those cracks and how his mother punished him by hitting him repeatedly with a wooden hanger. She hit him so hard that the hanger broke, and he laughed despite his tears when that happened – he thought it was funny – which infuriated his mother even more, and she had him kneel for two hours in front of The Eye with his arms outstretched to his sides like Jesus on the cross, and Jesus looked at him disapprovingly from the framed portrait. But more than that punishment, he was scared about the seven years of bad luck he was cursed with for having broken the mirror. He knew that was the fate of someone who had broken a mirror because he saw it in a cartoon on TV. He would be cursed with bad luck, he knew, till he was fourteen, and so he spent the next seven years mostly alone with books his father bought for him – a 24 volume Collier’s Encyclopedia and the 12 volume Collier’s Classics – and his watercolors and crayons. All these vivid memories came flooding out of the folds and creases of his brain where they remained stuck for years until the popped vein in his head brought them up to his consciousness again.

“Sir, Mr. Takada is here to see you. I asked him to wait for you in the study,” his personal assistant said on the intercom.

“I’ll be down in 20 minutes. Make him comfortable. Thanks, Susan.” Guzman showered and dressed and went down. Ben Takada was having coffee and reading a magazine when he walked into the study. “Hello, Ben,” Guzman said.

“Gus, how are you? Ready to go back to work?” Ben said and he shook Guzman’s hand heartily. Ben is Guzman’s right-hand man at Biocore. They built the company together, mostly through Ben’s genius, but he liked to think he helped. Ben is a highly respected medical doctor and neuroscientist who has done pioneering research on the brain’s inner workings. But even though they started Biocore together, their relationship is purely professional. He’s just not the kind of person Guzman could get close to. In fact, Guzman is close to very few people.

“I’m feeling all right,” Guzman said. “Except that for some reason, I don't seem to remember much about what’s been going on back at Biocore. You have to bring me up to speed.”
“All right, where do I start?,” Ben said as they sat down. “Do you remember anything about the joint venture with Lambda Technologies?”

“Barely,” Guzman said. “I remember we were talking to them about developing supercomputers.”

“Modeled on the human brain, yes,” Ben said. “They’re interested in our research on our memory storage systems and our nanotechnology, and we were in talks with them about starting a new company to develop computers that can process information much like the human mind can. It's pretty much a done deal. You were in all the meetings with them before your ... I’ll send you the paperwork so you can look them over. They’re willing to give us some more time given the circumstances.”

“Ok. What else are we working on?”

“Well, we might have a breakthrough with that research I was telling you about – the one about storing the brain’s memories electronically onto one of our 3-d memory storage devices?”

“I remember you saying that we’ve solved all technical obstacles to achieving that.”

“Yes we have. There’s just the ethical ones.”

They talked some more, about Biocore mostly, but also about other things as well: sports scores, gossip about other executives. Guzman remembered enjoying sports and gossip, but they didn't seem enjoyable now. He let Ben keep talking, though. He seemed to be happy to do so.

Ben stayed for dinner on Guzman’s insistence. Before he left, Ben said, “Gus, you know Biocore is everything to me. It’s my life. Unlike you, I don't have much of a life outside its offices and its labs.” Ben paused. Like Guzman, he also had trouble connecting to people; at heart they were two nerds – an appellation they carry with pride, by the way – and occasions like this, where anything close to their true feelings would be shared, are marked with almost autistic awkwardness. Finally, he put his hand on Guzman’s shoulder, “What I’m saying is, I’m glad you’re okay. I can’t run Biocore without you.”

***

He sits in the antique room. He has a new fascination with memory after that conversation with Ben, and looking at all the graven images in it triggers memories of a childhood he thought he had left behind. Being able to record all memories in a man’s brain by copying the entire brain molecule by molecule, atom by atom, storing the information… it’s fascinating. They use the nano machines Guzman developed to copy the brain’s circuitry and these nanobots send electronic signals that enable the entire brain to be stored as an electronic copy with all its memories stored within. It’s a perfect copy, with all the connections intact.

“But you’d have to create an entire world for the virtual person to be in. Aside from that, you’d have to store other virtual entities – other virtual people – for it to interact with. I imagine it would be mighty lonely if you didn't do that,” Guzman said.

“You don't have to. The mind could create everything itself, including other people, and it wouldn't know the difference. It will shield itself from the knowledge that the environment and all the other conscious entities in it are its creation,” Ben said in full lecture mode. Ben inadvertently lapses back to his roots in academia from time to time.

“You mean like when we dream,” Guzman said. “Everything we interact with in a dream exists only in our heads, but we won't know it until we wake up.”

“Exactly like a dream,” Ben said. “But in this case, the dream is real to the mind stored electronically. It's a dream it never wakes up from, created from what’s already in the mind. And even if it isn’t in the mind, the mind will be able to create it. If you haven't been to Zimbabwe for instance, and you go to Zimbabwe in the virtual world, your mind will create Zimbabwe.”

“And if he dies in his virtual world?,” Guzman asks.

“Then that virtual world is finished. We on the outside will be able to tell when that world has flat-lined. We’ll just run it again, and the stored memories will be able to create an entirely new virtual world, different from the previous one perhaps, but still based on what he recognizes as real. That’s what’s great about it. It’s virtual immortality, albeit a serial kind where you can lead one virtual life after another ends. And you know what is really fascinating about this? We might be able to take those recorded memories, and store them in a real human brain.”

***

Guzman looks at his wife Vera lying asleep beside him and it’s like looking at a stranger. He remembered seeing her at his bedside when he first came out of his coma. She was holding his hand and smiling with tears in her eyes and he remembered how he recoiled in horror. She looked exactly like Vera but it was like looking at an impostor. He asked her who she was and what she has done with his wife. The look in his eyes upset her and she turned to Ben who told her to give him more time to recover.

He looks at her now and he can’t help thinking that this isn’t his wife and he knew that to think that was crazy, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't her. But she looked like Vera, she sounded like Vera, she even smelled like Vera, and had all her quirks and mannerisms. If this were an impostor, then she was an extremely gifted one. But he remembered loving his wife and he can’t seem to feel anything for this woman lying asleep beside him. He lay beside her and smelled her hair. He remembered doing that, just lying beside her and smelling her hair, and he remembered that the scent of her hair, of her neck, made everything right in the world. Things could be falling apart outside but he could lay beside Vera and smell her hair, and everything would be fine. He tried doing that to try to trigger memories, and with those memories maybe the feelings will come back. He put his arm around her like he used to do and buried his face in her hair like he used to do, and inhaled. She smelled right, of jasmine and lavender, and her own unique scent that reminded him of a baby’s; caramel and cream and coconuts. Nothing. All it triggered were memories of what he felt then but couldn't feel now.

Vera stirred beside him and purred like a contented cat. She turned to him and smiled with her eyes still closed and stroked his arm, then his back, then his thighs and buttocks, until finally her hand came between his legs. Vera sighed and that triggered something in him, but it wasn't what he was looking for. He gave in nevertheless.

He came to work that same morning. It was raining outside and he waited for his car in the lobby. His car pulled over and the doorman walked him to the car with an umbrella. “Fine weather we’re having, eh sir?” he said. Guzman stared at him for a couple of seconds not quite knowing what to make of what the doorman said, but he smiled at him and got into the car.

The trip to the office took about 15 minutes in the traffic and he spent that time wondering about that woman who looked like his wife – who is his wife, he decided, or at least tried to convince himself. He decided to be nice to her since she was clearly upset when he treated her like a stranger. Her name is Vera and she is my wife, he thought. It’s the aneurysm; my brain hasn't fully recovered.

The office lobby had a huge streamer welcoming him back, executives lined up to meet him to shake his hand and wish him well, telling him how happy they were that he was okay. He returned their smiles and handshakes and went to his office. He asked that they take the streamer down.

On his desk was a folder with a yellow Post-It note stuck on it that said, ‘The Lambda proposal’ and it was signed ‘Ben’. When he finished reading it, he stretched out on his chair and looked around his office. It was all dark wood and it reminded him of his antique room, and on the wall to his right, above the round meeting table, was a painting he bought in Spain that was supposed to be by Juan Luna although it was unsigned. It was a painting of Jesus and his apostles Peter, James, and John, with Jesus standing before them with arms outstretched and they were seated in front of him, except that instead of human heads, they had animal heads on the human bodies. Jesus’ head was the head of a ram, and he has his heart exposed outside of his chest in the manner of the Sacred Heart paintings, although it didn't have the lance wound and the crown of thorns yet. The apostles’ heads were of a lion, an eagle, and a bull. He remembered being moved by this painting when he first saw it, and at the same time amused by the artist’s quirky treatment of his subject matter, but looking at it now, he feels nothing for it, like he feels nothing for Vera, and it upset him. He remembered walking in the great galleries of the world and it was like being in church; there was something spiritual he felt about the Da Vincis, the Botticellis, the Poussins he saw there, a sense of reverence he felt. He walks over to the bar, pours himself a cognac, and drinks. He let it warm his mouth, then his chest as he swallowed; the taste of grapes and flowers and oak lingered in his mouth as the alcohol hit him. That tastes good, he thought, and relaxed. He wasn't going to let things worry him. He’s alive when he could’ve been dead. That’s enough.

***

“Would you do it?” Ben asked. They were having cognac in Guzman’s office at the end of the work day like they always did. “If we could make a replica of your mind and store it, you could in theory, live forever. As long as the plug isn’t pulled of course.”

Guzman thought about it. Having been near death, he thought the answer was obvious. He almost died, and he could drop dead any moment from another vein popping in his head, and he’s convinced he’d rather be alive than dead. “Yes,” he said. “In a heartbeat. You?”

“I don't know,” Ben answered. “I’d like to think one lifetime on this earth is enough, then I’m ready to move on. I know you don't believe in the afterlife, but I do. And I’m expecting something different from life here. Living forever here, well, it's just not the kind of immortality I’m looking for.”

“Fair enough. You want to live forever with God,” Guzman said. “But let me tell you something: all those stories about near-death experiences – floating, seeing your departed loved ones, your life flashing before your eyes, and the loving presence of a being of light? I didn't experience any of those. Nothing. It’s quite possible that there really is nothing after this.”

“Even if that’s true, I’d rather be dead,” Ben said. “Life here, it sucks, man. Wars, disease, famine, Britney Spears...” Ben deadpans.

Ben’s rare attempt at humor elicited no reaction from Guzman. He said, “You mentioned being able to input those recorded memories into a real brain. How close are we to that?”

“We’re practically there. We can use the DNA code as a template. We use our nanobots to copy the brain onto an electronic medium, then we can translate the data into an actual DNA sequence. And with our advances in cloning, we can keep transferring memories onto a new body as the old one ages or wears out. We’ve solved all the technical problems. Like I said, all that’s left are the ethical ones, and they’re still arguing about those in Congress.”

When he got home that night, Vera was waiting for him. He still felt uneasy about her, feeling like he couldn't trust her, but he fought the feeling, and smiled at her. “I made adobo. I hope you’re hungry cause I made a lot,” she said laughing nervously. Maybe he seemed like a stranger to her, too.

“Yes, I’m starving,” he said. They ate and Vera did most of the talking but Guzman tried his best to seem interested and kept his end of the conversation up. If I go through the motions, he thought, maybe it’ll all come back. He couldn't help noticing the pained look in Vera’s eyes. One part of him didn't like to see Vera sad, but another part of him doesn't seem to care, and he’s afraid the part that doesn't care is winning. But he was determined to fix that. One thing unmistakable is that this woman, who looks like his wife, who is his wife, he says to himself, loves him. And he wants to love her back, because that was what he remembers doing, because that was what made his life worth living.

***

“So what do you say, Blessed Mary ever Virgin?,” Guzman asks the wooden figure under the glass with the peeling paint. “Should I agree to the Lambda proposal?” He doesn't find it odd that he who has disavowed all belief in the supernatural has all these religious figures in his own home. There was a time when he ascribed to these figures some kind of godly power, since that was what his mother told him. They would pray to them everyday, kneeling in front of them, and he would peer at The Eye, and it would be looking at him and he was careful to not let The Eye show that his knees were hurting lest The Eye gets mad at him. But now he knows they’re just figures of wood and stone and plaster. He keeps them here, in the antique room, encased in glass so that none could touch them, not even the little old ladies with their rosaries who wore out the Virgin Mary’s paint job could touch them. He keeps them here as his prisoners just as they have imprisoned him. Prisoners, hah! They’re inanimate objects! They neither know nor care whether they’re imprisoned or not. They hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing. They’re just empty soulless lumps of inanimate matter. The Israelites had the right idea when they forbade the making of images, the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or of those things that are in the waters under the earth, lest the people bow down and worship them.

He remembers worshipping art, if one could call it worship. He was moved by works of art. But earlier this morning, he was viewing the art collection at the Biocore gallery, and he felt then as he feels now about these figures in the antique room. They’re just soulless inanimate objects, bits of paint on canvass.

And Vera? Was she a soulless inanimate object, too? He certainly didn't feel anything for her. Nothing of what he knew he used to feel for her, and it troubled him that he couldn't since he remembered the pleasure, the exhilaration he felt at the sight of her, at the sound of her voice, at her scent, the ache and longing he felt whenever he thought of her. It troubled him, but he didn't care. He can’t explain it.

He looked at The Eye and it returned his stare, with its empty stare that was really looking at nothing at all he knew, and he wondered if he has the same empty stare when he looked at Vera. He looked at the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she too was looking at him. And so was the Angel Gabriel and the Baby Jesus. The dead Jesus had his eyes open and was sitting up and looking at him, too. Then everything went white and he closed his eyes. The light of their haloes blinded him.

***

He opened his eyes and the white light was still there and he could see nothing else. Then there was an eclipse as a dark orb covered the light, and the dark orb moved closer. He heard the dark orb saying, “Yes, he’s waking up now.” Then the dark orb said, “Gus?” Faintly at first, then louder and clearer. “Gus?”

When his eyes had adjusted, he saw – he couldn't remember for a second – he saw... Ben. It was Ben. There were others in the room as well; doctors and nurses, he assumed, although they weren’t wearing the white coats doctors and nurses usually wore. “Where am I? What happened?,” Guzman asked.

“You’re home now. You had an aneurysm. Susan found you in the antique room. You have been in a coma for five days.”

“Another aneurysm?”

Ben looked at the doctor for a second, wondering if Guzman heard him correctly. “What do you mean ‘another one?’ You had an aneurysm. It was your first. You’ve been in a coma for...”

“I just recovered from an aneurysm, what are you...?” Confused, Guzman looks at the faces of those around him. “But I... This can’t be my first. I remember waking up and you telling me I had an aneurysm. I was in a coma and I woke up and you were there and...”

“Just take it easy,” Ben said. “Get some rest.”

Guzman put his hands over his eyes, willing himself to make sense of all this. “Where’s Vera?,” he finally said. It troubled him that she wasn't there.

“She had to go out for a bit. I called her. She’s on her way. She never left your side, Gus.”

That sounded right, he thought. That sounded like what Vera would do. She wouldn't leave his side just as he knew he wouldn't leave hers. Everything was a dream, he thought. I was in a coma and everything from the last several days was all in my head. He felt a sense of relief that what he felt, or rather didn't feel, for Vera wasn't real. He grabbed Ben’s arm hard. Ben winced. “I want to make sure you’re real, Ben. I had a weird coma.” Guzman smiled.

Ben returned his smile. “Well you’re going to be fine now. The doctors did a great job. And by the way, this is as real as it can get.”

“Gus?”

He knew that voice. He looked in the direction of that voice and he saw her. She came to his side and held his hand and she was smiling at him with tears in her eyes, and he recoiled in horror. “Who are you? What have you done with my wife? Ben! Where’s Vera? Who is this woman?”

“Gus, it’s me.”

Guzman looked at the woman wide-eyed with fear and rage. She looked like Vera but he knew it wasn't her. “Ben, is this a trick? What have you done with my wife, Ben?”

Vera buried herself in Ben’s arms, while the doctor injected something into his I.V. drip. He grew light-headed and calm. He went to sleep.

He was in the antique room amidst those soulless prisoners in glass which has become his refuge since he recovered from his aneurysm. He looked at his reflection through the broken mirror, the one that made him look like a cubist painting. Seven years bad luck, he thought. He remembered where the superstition came from. The Romans thought that the mirror captured a part of you and the reflection was your soul. Breaking the mirror then means breaking your soul and it traps it in the mirror. And since they believed it took seven years for the soul to renew itself, to make itself whole. Silly Romans.

In the mirror, he saw The Eye’s reflection. He turned to look at it, and Jesus returned his soulless stare.
He came to work that day. The office lobby had a huge streamer welcoming him back, executives lined up to meet him to shake his hand and wish him well, telling him how happy they were that he was okay. He returned their smiles and handshakes. He asked that they take the streamer down.

He headed straight to Ben’s office. Went inside without knocking. Ben stood up to meet him. “When were you going to tell me?,” he asked Ben before he could even start with the pleasantries.

Ben searched Guzman’s eyes and they were burning through his. He sat down heavily like the weight of the world were suddenly dumped on his shoulders. “Forgive me,” he said. He couldn't look at Guzman.
Guzman turned around and left. “It was what you wanted,” he heard Ben say before he closed the door behind him.

***

Guzman sat in the antique room and rested the gun on his lap, feeling its dead weight there for a minute, then he lifted it, checked the safety then he let it dangle at his side, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum on a grandfather clock, ticking away the time. He looked at The Eye and saw Jesus looking at him, but he didn't see disapproval in his eyes. He was just watching him, his pale face non-judgmental. Then with both hands he pointed the gun at his forehead, his right thumb on the trigger. He was looking down the gun barrel and he could see the rifling in the barrel spiraling down into the darkness and he got ready to pull the trigger so he could spiral into the darkness himself. He thought of Vera. The Vera that was before this… Before this.

He put the gun down. He stood up and looked at The Eye and Jesus looked back at him still non-judgmental and he looked around at the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel and the Baby Jesus with the world in his hand and all the other smaller figures in glass cases with their halogen haloes and they didn't seem to judge him either, were ignoring him in fact. The dead Jesus was still quite peacefully dead. He felt a sense of belonging: I am that. He looked at his reflection in the broken mirror and the cubist painting looked back at him and it was nodding its reassurance. Seven years bad luck, he thought. Jesus rose again after three days. Just seven more years then we’ll take it from there.

He walked back to the bedroom, unloaded the gun, and put it in the safe behind the framed canvas with bits of paint on it that he knew was a Hernando Ocampo painting he was once fond of. Then he went to dinner.

I maliciously malign your sorry ass, you ugly frassum-wassum!

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 08:13:00 +0000

Libel, or more accurately, cyberlibel, has been in the news for the past several days now due to the passage of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 (Republic Act No. 10175). To date several petitions questioning the law's constitutionality are before the Supreme Court and the court has issued a temporary restraining order on the implementation of the law as they study these petitions. From what I gather, the main point against it is not its unconstitutionality but its vagueness, that is, it could be lacking in the requirements as to form (if there is such a requirement). In other words, it is poorly written.

Now there are other issues with the law, but it's the libel provision that has netizens' panties in a bunch. It seems that in their interpretation, merely liking a Facebook status message could land one in jail. The Aquino administration has assured the citizenry that the implementing rules and regulations of the law will see to it that this does not happen. Okay. Aquino however voiced his opinion that the provisions against libel over the internet is needed. Not so okay.

Senator Sotto (him again) has been accused of inserting the libel provision into the law. He has denied this accusation, but whoever was responsible hardly matters anymore. It's there, it has been signed into law by the President, and insufficiency in form notwithstanding, I am betting the Supreme Court will find it constitutional. It is very easy to defend the logic of Tito Sotto (and President Aquino) on the need for law on libel to cover the internet:

1) We have press freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. We have freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution.

2) We are all equal before the law, that is, no special privileges for any sector of society under the law.

3) Any citizen who publishes information for dissemination, whether a journalist or not, is de facto a member of the press, and therefore has press freedom.

4) Members of the press are subject to libel laws.

Therefore

5) Anybody who publishes information for wider dissemination, even on the internet, is subject to libel laws.

Netizens' claim to exemption from a law that covers other citizens is claiming some sort of special privilege not available to other citizens. Why should, for example, Mang Juan the magtataho, who doesn't have internet access because he can't afford it, be sued for defamation (maybe he wrote on a wall or something, I dont know), and John Sossy can't be liable because he wrote his defamation on a Twitter app on his iPhone 5?

Netizens lament the chilling effect of the new law, but as blogger and now government official Manual L. Quezon III has said, this is the sort of thing a member of the press has to live with -- the libel law over his neck everytime he writes something for public consumption. Why should Blogger, Facebooker, or Twitterer be exempted from the discipline the libel law imposes on somebody who wants their views out there for everyone to read?

Now lest anyone think I am a flunkie for the ruling class in whose interests the libel laws of this country were crafted, let me assure you that I am not. I affirm the citizen's right to free speech and reject the ruling class's notion that it is 'not absolute'. That's like saying the right to life is not absolute. I recognize that with free speech comes the license to offend, to insult, and even to blaspheme, in short, to be a jerk. No, I am not defending the rightness of law on cyberlibel, merely the logic of the crafters and defenders of the law, which to reiterate is this: Libel is a crime for everybody else. What makes you so special?

On the contrary. My thesis is that the libel laws of this country are absurd and inimical to the best interests of its citizens. It is a tool of the powerful to harass. It is used to silence critics. It is time that libel is decriminalized. And to be fair to our lawmakers, a couple petitions to do just that are pending in Congress. These seek to get rid of the jail time associated with a libel conviction. Laudable, but futile. The loss of jail time may dull some of the sharpness of the axe over everyone's neck. in that there will be no more incarceration, but its power to harass when wielded by the powerful is still there; a blunt axe can still hurt your noggin. When used in this way, a hapless journalist or blogger, aside from being bogged down by court appearances and legal fees, also can face punitive damages if convicted.

Decriminalizing libel is not enough. That just takes care of the jail time. A decriminalized libel will not prevent, say, the secretary of DSWD from suing a blogger for her reporting. The law on libel must be changed fundamentally. What does libeling entail anyway? It operates under the assumption that we have reputations to protect. That's silly. We don't have reputations, that is, we don't own reputation. Our so-called reputation is contained in someone else's head. It is what other people think about us, their thoughts. I'm sure you agree that we don't own other people's thoughts. Libel law therefore is control of other people's thoughts. Seen in this light, we can change how we see libel.

Malice is a given when determining libel, however, there should be no libel when the alleged libel is true. Truth must be a defense. Even if done in malice, if an allegedly libelous article is demonstrably true, there could be no libel. A person running for public office for instance cannot sue a writer for libel even if the said writer was explicit in saying that his purpose for writing the article is to destroy the candidate's credibility -- destroying his reputation -- before the voting public if what he is writing is demonstrably true.

The complainant must show actual losses. For instance, the libel caused the complainant to lose revenue or a contract directly because of the libel. That is, if an untrue article done in malice results in actual losses, the complainant can file a case. Of course this could result in cases wherein complainant will claim medical costs due to stress, etc., but I suppose we can live with that. If an untrue article merely results in hurt feelings or 'emotional distress', there can be no libel. The best weapon to fight untruth is truth; the best weapon to fight misinformation is information. And in this information age, getting truth and information out there is no longer difficult.

In summary, for it to be libel, it must be 1) malicious and untrue, and 2) show actual losses. Any complaint that doesn't show these two criteria, the court gets to throw out.

Ang Mga Liham ni Screwtape ni C.S. Lewis, Liham Blg. IV

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Notes: First of all, my apologies for neglecting this project. But thanks to Senator Sotto's translation work on one of Robert F. Kennedy's speeches, I was inspired to revive it. I will provide links to the previous chapters later but for now, feel free to use the label Screwtape at the bottom of the post. As always, this attempt at translation will be tinkered with.

Letter No. IV in its original language is here.

Mahal kong Wormwood,

Yung mga mungkahi mong puno ng iyong pagkabagito ay nagsilbing hudyat na panahon na upang lumiham sa iyo tungkol sa napakasakit na paksa ng pananalangin. Hindi mo na sana binanggit na ang payo ko sa iyo tungkol sa mga panalangin niya para sa kanyang ina ay “napatunayang walang kinahinatnan”. Ang mga bagay na iyan ay hindi dapat nililiham ng isang pamangkin sa kanyang tiyuhin – maging ng isang mas manunuksong may mababang ranggo sa pangalawang kalihim ng kagawaran. Pinakikita rin nito ang hindi kaaya-ayang pagnanais na ibaling sa iba ang reponsibilidad; dapat kang matutong pagbayaran ang iyong mga pagkakamali.

Ang pinakamainam mong magagawa, hangga’t maaari, ay pigilan ang iyong pasyente sa kanyang taimtim na pagnanais na manalangin. Kung ang pasyente ay nasa wastong idad at kakapanumbalik pa lamang sa partido ng Kalaban, tulad ng tao mo, ang pinakamabisang paraan ay hikayatin siyang alalahanin, o ipagpalagay na alalahanin, yaong mga mala-lorong pamamamaraan ng pananalangin noong siya’s paslit pa lamang. At bilang pangontra sa mga ganitong uri ng pananalangin, maaari mo siyang mahikayat na tumbukin ang paraang hindi planado, tumitingin sa kaloob-looban ng kanyang sarili, hindi pormal, at walang sinusunod na patakaran; at ang kahulugan nito sa isang baguhan ay ang pagpupunyagi na mabuo sa sarili ang isang tila baga mapagpanalanging lagay ng loob kung saan ang buo ng kanyang kalooban at talino ay walang kinalaman. Isa sa kanilang mga makata, si Coleridge, ay naisulat na hindi siya nananalangin “na kumakawag na mga labi at nakamanikluhod ang mga tuhod” bagkus mayroong “paglinang ng kaluluwa sa pagmamahal” at palayawin sa sarili ang “pakiramdam ng pagsusumamo”. Iyon mismo ang panalangin na nais natin; at dahil sa panlabas na anyo ay tila may pagkakahawig ito sa tahimik at taimtim na panalangin na siyang gawi ng yaong mga malalim na ang pagkadalubhasa sa paglilingkod sa Kalaban, yaong mga pasyenteng mautak at tatamad-tamad ay maaaring malinlang nito sa matagal na panahon. Ang pinakamababang mahihita natin dito, maari natin silang mahimok na walang kinalaman ang asta ng katawan sa kanilang mga panalangin; pagka’t madalas nilang nakalilimutan, na siya mo naming dapat laging naaalala, na sila’y mga hayop at kung ano man ang asta ng kanilang katawan ay nakaaapekto sa kanilang kaluluwa. Nakatatawa na pinapalagay ng mga mortal na ang ginagawa natin ay ang maglagay ng kung anu-ano sa kanilang isipan: sa katotohanan, ang pinakamahusay nating ginagawa ay ang pagpigil ng kung anu-anong pumasok.

Kung ito man ay mabigo, kailangan mong bumalik sa mas pinong paraan ng panliligaw ng kanyang hangad. Kung sila man ay umaasikaso sa Kalaban mismo talo na tayo, nguni’t mayroon pang paraan upang mapigil sila. Ang pinakasimple ay sa pamamagitan ng pagbaling ng kanilang tingin palayo sa Kanya at tungo sa kanilang mga sarili. Panatiliin mo silang nakapako ang kanilang mga mata sa kanilang sariling isipan at bumuo ng damadamin dito sa pamamagitan ng kanilang mga kalooban. Kung ang layon nila ay humingi sa Kanya ng pagkakawanggawa, hayaan mo silang bumuo ng damdaming makapagkawanggawa para sa kanilang sarili at huwag mapansin na ito ang kanilang ginagawa. Kung ang layon nila ay manalangin para sa katatagan ng loob, hayaan mo silang bumuo ng damdaming matapang. Kapag ang sinasabi nila’y nananalangin sila para sa kapatawaran, hayaan mo silang buuin sa kanilang sarili ang damdaming sila’y napatawad. Turuan mo silang ihanay ang halaga ng bawat panalangin sa tagumpay nilang bumuo ng katumbas na damdamin; at huwag na huwag mo silang hahayaang paghinalaan na ang tagumpay o pagkabigo nila patungkol dito ay depende sa kung sila ay malusog o maysakit, nakapagpahinga o pagod, sa mga sandaling iyon.

At asahan mo na ang Kalaban ay abala rin habang nangyayari ang mga ito. Kapag mayroong panalangin, may panganib ng Kanyang agarang pagkilos. Siya ay buong mapagmataas sa pagkawalang-pakialam sa karangalan ng Kanyang kinalalagyan, at ng kinalalagyan natin, bilang purong espirito, at sa mga mortal na hayop binubuhos Niya ang kamalayan sa paraang kahiya-hiya. Subali’t kahit na matalo Niya ang iyong unang tangkang panliligaw, may mas tuso tayong sandata. Ang mga tao ay hindi nagsisimula sa tuwirang pagkakakilala sa Kanya, na siya namang, sa kamalasan natin, hindi natin maiiwasan. Wala silang kamalay-malay tungkol sa kalagim-lagim na liwanag, yaong nakasisilaw na liwanag na tila mga punyal na tumatagos sa atin at siyang bumabalot sa ating buhay ng walang humpay na hapdi. Kung pagmamasdan mo ang isipan ng iyong pasyente habang siya’y nananalangin, hindi mo iyon matatagpuan. Kung iyong susuriin ang pinagtutuunan niya ng pansin, makikita mo na ito’s isang bagay na puno ng di-iilang katawa-tawang mga sangkap. Mayroong mga larawang hango sa mga larawan ng Kalaban noong Siya’y nagpakita noong kahiya-hiyang kabanatang kilala bilang Pagkakatawangtao: mayroong mas di malinaw – marahil tunay na mabangis at di pinag-isipan – na larawan nauugnay sa dalawa pang Persona. At maaaring mayroon ding larawan ng kanyang sariling pagpipitagan (at kaakibat nitong mga damdamin ng kanyang katawan) kinatawan at ipinangalan sa bagay na pinagpipitagan. Mayoon akong alam na ilang kaso kung saan ang tinatawag ng pasyente na kanyang ‘Diyos’ ay matatagpuan – sa taas at sa kaliwang kanto ng kanyang silid, o sa loob ng kanyang kukote, o sa isang krus sa pader. Nguni’t kung ano man ang katangian ng pinaghalo-halong bagay na yaon, kailangan mong panatiliing doon siya nananalangin – doon sa bagay na kanyang ginawa, at hindi sa Pagkatao na siyang gumawa sa kanya. Maari mo ring himukin siyang kabitan ng malaking pagpapahalaga sa pagtama at pagpapabuti ng kanyang pinaghalo-halong bagay, at panatiliin ito sa kanyang imahinasyon habang siya’y nananalangin. Pagka’t kung sakali mang pumasok sa isip niya ang pagkakaiba, kung sakali mang sadyain miyang manalangin “Hindi ayon sa aking pagkakakilala sa Iyo bagkus ayon sa Iyong pagkakakilala sa Iyong sarili”, ang ating kinatatayuan, sa sandaling ito, ay gipit. Sa sandaling lahat ng kanyang pag-iisip at anyo ay isinantabi, o kung sakali mang pinanatili, pinanatili na may buong kamalayan na ang katangian ng mga ito’y pansarili niya lamang, at pinauubaya niya ang kanyang sarili sa ganap na tunay, labas-sa-sarili, at hindi nakikitang Presensiya, doon kasama niya sa kanyang silid, at kailanman ay di niya lubos na makikilala tulad na pagkakakilala nito sa kanya – isang kaganapang di natin matatantiya ay maari ngang magyari. Sa pag-iwas sa kaganapang ito – itong tunay na pagkahubad ng kaluluwa sa pananalangin – makatutulong sa iyo na ang mga tao mismo ay hindi ito ninanasa ng mas higit pa sa inaakala nila. Yaon bang tila mas malaking problema pa ang idinulot ng bagay na inaasam nila.

Lubos na nagmamahal,
Ang iyong Tito Screwtape

Plagiarism is not theft

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 09:06:00 +0000

By now you've probably heard that Senator Tito Sotto has been exposed as a plagiarist because a speech he gave contained sentences lifted wholesale, copy-pasted, from an American blogger's blog post, one Sarah Pope. Asked for comment, Ms. Pope accused the senator of being a 'lying thief'.On the lying bit, Tito Sen's pronouncements in the aftermath certainly demonstrated evasiveness, outright condescension ('Blogger lang yan.'), and dishonesty when he initially claimed he didnt plagiarize. But what exactly did he steal?

First, let's try to define what plagiarism is. Dictionary.com defines it thus:

pla·gia·rism [pley-juh-riz-uhm, -jee-uh-riz-]
noun
1.
an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author: It is said that he plagiarized Thoreau's plagiarism of a line written by Montaigne. Synonyms: appropriation, infringement, piracy, counterfeiting; theft, borrowing, cribbing, passing off.
2.
a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorized use or imitation: “These two manuscripts are clearly plagiarisms,” the editor said, tossing them angrily on the floor.

Ok, lots of gray areas there because the dictionary definition omitted the element of malice, but anyway... include malicious intent (to defraud, to mislead) into that definition and we're all set. What is clear at this point is that Sotto's staff-member did a copy-paste of paragraphs from Ms. Pope's blog post. If, as Senator Sotto claims, he made 'an umbrella attribution', that is, if he did not intend to pass off the ideas or words as his own, in my opinion he's off the hook as far as the 'representation of that author's work as one's own' bit is concerned, if just barely. Let's give the senator the benefit of the doubt. But even if he didnt make that umbrella attribution, even if he passed off the words and ideas as his own, in other words, even if he is guilty as hell of plagiarism, what exactly did he steal?

Let me illustrate. Suppose I wrote a blog post, maybe this very one, and someone else sees it on the web, copies it, tacks his name on it as author, and posts it on his own blog site. We can conclude two things: 1) He is a dick, and 2) I didnt lose anything. We can call him a liar -- and lying is not a crime unless youre committing perjury -- but we can't call him a thief because I didnt lose anything.

Suppose further that said dick copies my blog post, tacks his name onto it as author, sells it to a magazine, and gets paid 1000 pesos for it. In this case, we can conclude that he is both a liar and a thief. But still the fact remains that I did not lose anything. The magazine publisher did. The plagiarist defrauded the publisher and stole 1000 pesos from him, but not from me. In other words, he plagiarized me, but he stole from the publisher. I have no claim to that 1000 pesos, the publisher does.

Now this whole plagiarism affair in the Senate, where it seems not only Senator Sotto is guilty, has got that august body thinking of ways to protect bloggers from plagiarism through some sort of law. In other words, theyre mulling ways for making plagiarism a crime. When Senator Sotto in a privilege speech said that plagiarism is not a crime in this country, our lawmakers, true to their busybody nature, took that to mean it should be. To protect bloggers, they said.

For all its good intentions, a proposed plagiarism bill is not only unnecessary, but it could be inimical to the free flow of ideas. It is the nature of ideas to have sex, to combine with other ideas and spawn new ideas. Ideas, in other words, are sluts. It is possible to overprotect the so-called 'intellectual property' of some person or corporation such that it is prevented from boinking with other ideas. There is nothing new under the sun. Every so-called new idea came from something else. The Lord of the Rings borrowed heavily from Der Ring des Nibelungen. Darna was 'plagiarized' from Wonder Woman. In an episode of The Simpsons, Itchy and Scratchy studio head Roger Myers had this to say:

“If it weren’t for someone plagiarizing the Honeymooners, we wouldn’t have the Flintstones. If someone hadn’t ripped off Sgt. Bilko, there’d be no Top Cat. Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear? Hah! Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney! Your honor, you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from?”

There is of course a difference between taking ideas from someone else and doing something creative with them, and maliciously taking ideas with intent to defraud. I suppose it is the latter that the ladies and gentlemen of the Senate want to protect bloggers from, but there is no need for that. We already have laws against fraud. A law criminalizing plagiarism will only result in confusion and claims of plagiarism that could lead to unjustly impugned reputations and court backlogs. The issue of plagiarism is something for ethics committees and not courts of law, something for society and not the State. The blogging community has dealt with plagiarism with the age-old method of shaming scoundrels in public, be they unknown Joe Schmoes or 'literary giants'. Even if I suspect more than a few bloggers would welcome a plagiarism law, I say they would be better off without it. The plagiarist after all is harming himself more than anyone else.

Beasty Accompany

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:09:00 +0000

(Or 'It's been a year since I had something to say and I still don't')
(Or 'Is this plagiarism?')

iPad Fat Toward Mow
iPad fat toward mow aching cafe-ing a Hassan
Bunny beanie co-signer main tinder Hun
Harlem conga youngling Zion nag cat tugboat
Moneyed fire ants a yore aye awning lore mayo
iPad fat toward mow, hark a myna goo glue Hun

Jicamas easy narra coy pegged act Hun
Genie doff hatter corps pad tea walla Hun
Harlem conga youngling Zion nag cat tugboat
Moneyed fire ants a yore aye awning lore mayo
iPad fat toward mow, myna hark guitar agog.

Ahh, myna hark guitar agog
Aah, myna hark guitar agog
iPad fat toward mow, ohh

Myna hark guitar, ahh
Agog agog, ahh

Sun anemone pad fat toward mow
Hang molar bees knack abolition core
Moneyed angle hat nanny toyed ought to owe

iPad fat toward mow
Ahh, myna hark guitar agog
iPad fat toward mow
Ahh, myna hark guitar agog

A Wee Thing More
Oolong give up hangs a sheriff
Surf add teething in a nothing
Shunner eye dinner mag workers
A thong a whitening Porky Pig

A whit nothing eye wagging wag monk alley mutant
Panarcho-core no manner laggy gang punky kingdom
Mug parquet land man

Angle sang Porky Pig
Hyperion lung Sagan
Napalmed allower Hun
Kayak sour thing a whit
Tie away mug be Gaean

Oh-oh-oh, ahhh a wee thing more
Up I saw Sawyer go
Oh-oh-oh, ahhh a wee thing more
Up I saw Sawyer go
Ahh, ahh, ahh... Ohhh

Bonus: Bucket Bag Onion (also recorded by Beasty after being recorded by Dinner Boner Bee)

Bucket bag onion
Honey beg coil orgy camp vagueness stand
An umlaut tamaraw airing defrags a sour ant
Anion gutter neon
Dumb damning curly bungee bar
Bastard coffee link cursing tar

Erehwon core, bucket bag onion
Dumb damning coiled a Mayan tinder Hun
Kale an anon Porky Pig maw
The hills are a coin dug mama halls o'yore
Bug Mulan hunky time a killer law

Bucket bag onion
Convention I know who hotels Aqaba
Corps Peggy caker usurp gnaw
Moneyed lumber lurkers Anglo of Coney cay knocker tower

Erehwon core, bucket bag onion
Dumb damning coiled a Mayan tinder Hun
Kale an anon Porky Pig maw
The hills are a coin dug mama halls o'yore
Bug Mulan hunky time a killer law

And the hype around tawa-tawa is back

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:02:00 +0000

A good a time as any to repost a piece I did on this blog about a year ago.

It turns out that components in tawa-tawa actually inhibit platelet aggregation. This could be useful in other diseases, but this isnt what you want when you have DHF. You want your platelets aggregating. It may be fortunate that the decoction of tawa-tawa given to DHF patients doesnt have the concentrated amount of the platelet suppressants that the extract form contains, or else it may have done more harm than good.

Like I said, the evidence for the efficacy of tawa-tawa presented in the articles by Aspiras and Yuson, and the blog post by Zafra are anecdotal. Although I do hope that there is indeed something in tawa-tawa that alleviates the symptoms of DHF, at this time I strongly suspect that the evidence presented are of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety. Person had DHF, person takes tawa-tawa tea, person feels better. Ergo, tawa-tawa cures DHF.

Still no studies are being cited. (Oh, wait. 'Studies' are being cited. Unnamed and unattributed mystery studies, that is.) No clinical test results. Nothing.

We need these studies. For all we know, E. hirta is the medical breakthrough the world has been waiting for, or is just a poppycock potion. We either confirm it as a cure (or at least a palliative) or junk it altogether. Either way, we need it confirmed scientifically. Don't these hospitals like St. Luke's and Makati Med which none of us can afford have labs? Surely they'd have the wherewithal, the facilities, and the personnel to take the lead in this.

In the meantime, 2.5 billion people worldwide remain at risk.

Why Catholics should stand up for freedom of expression

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 05:13:00 +0000

All in all, a good couple of weeks with the Philippine online community offering their views on art and freedom, topics that very few people cared about in their day-to-day existence before, let along understood. This was of course triggered by the Kulo exhibit which included Mideo Cruz's Poleteismo piece at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CPP). It all turned ugly when someone tried to destroy the piece. Eventually, the exhibit was shut down due to, in the words of the CCP, "numerous emails, text messages and other letters sent to various offficers of the CCP, and to the artists themselves, with an increasing number of threats to persons and property". And if that wasnt enough, cases were filed against Cruz and the CCP citing Article 201 of the Revised Penal Code with its provision against offending any race or religion. Artists are of course upset about this whole development crying 'censorship' and 'repression'.

Let's get one thing out of the way first. Although artists have freedom of expression, they do not -- do not -- have the right to be exhibited at the CCP, or any other gallery for that matter. It is absolutely abhorrent of course that the CCP had to shut down the Kulo exhibit because of threats, but let's get rid of the notion that getting kicked out of the CCP constitutes censorship and repression. (In fact, if one national artist had his way, Mideo Cruz's work wouldnt have made it to the CCP at all.) Censorship and repression are charges more properly leveled at the actions of the State, and in this case, although the head of state and therefore CCP's boss President Aquino expressed disapproval at the Cruz's piece, he didnt order the exhibit shut down. But even if he did, that doesnt constitute censorship nor repression. It's just saying, 'Exhibit somewhere else'. Poleteismo continues to be free to be exhibited elsewhere, complete with ashtray dick on the Jesus icon's forehead. This is not of course to excuse the vandals who tried to destroy the piece and issued threats against the person of the artist.

Now then... As with Carlos Celdran's Damaso stunt, Catholics have every reason to be outraged by the desecration of a revered icon. In fact I question the Catholicism of any Catholic who wasnt outraged by Poleteismo's execution of whatever it is it intended to say. But to use the power of the State on one man, to actually wish the artist jailed, is over the top and inimical to Catholic teaching on the gift of freedom and all God-given rights for that matter. The CBCP for instance, maintains that 'that freedom of expression is not absolute, especially if his method of expression offends other people.' This betrays a grave misunderstanding of the right to free expression because the right to free expression is absolute. To say that it is not absolute is to say that all other God-given natural rights are not absolute as well, and subject to State control, as they want the freedom of expression to be. This includes the right to life. Is the right to life not absolute? The theologians of the Salamanca school for instance, in asserting that freedom is a gift from God, recognize that one of the consequences of this gift is that it is not assured that man will freely choose good over evil. What the CBCP wants perhaps is for the State to step in and ensure that man will only choose the good on pain of being subjected to a lengthy jail sentence. It is the powerful that has a vested interest in controlling the right to free expression, and the Catholic Church in the Philippines does exercise a lot of power. The State welcomes this freedom-of-expression-is-not-absolute interpretation and will run with it, use it as justification for its various anti-sedition laws, and national security restrictions on people's access to information. In fact in his statement regarding the CCP exhibit, President Aquino said, 'There is no freedom that is absolute' implicitly admitting that all God-given freedoms are subject to State control, and if need be, suppression. The Church itself had a taste of this when President Aquino threatened anti-RH citizens with sedition charges for calling for a civil disobedience campaign if the RH Bill passes. So by their stand in limiting freedom of expression, the Church is shooting itself in the foot.

If that weren't enough reason for the Philippine Church to stand up for Mideo Cruz's rights, consider these cases in the UK:

A Christian woman working for British Airways who wears a cross round her neck is asked to remove it for fear of offending other people. A nurse who prays with a patient in hospital is committing an almost criminal act. Catholic adoption agencies which disapprove of gay adoptive parents on religious grounds have their licences taken away.

Filipino Catholics have it easy. They constitute a powerful majority here. What if one day they find themselves in the minority? What would they think of their own bishops' statement that 'the freedom of expression is not absolute' hurled right back in their faces? One could imagine the glee they felt when Aquino issued his statement on the CCP exhibit that probably put the nail in the coffin of its expulsion: "You have rights but when you already trample on the rights of others, there’s already something wrong." They probably didnt question exactly what those rights are that were being trampled upon. The fact is the CCP exhibit was trampling on some people's sensibilities but it wasnt trampling on any rights. By agreeing with Aquino's statement, they implicitly agree that the State can invent all sorts of rights like what the RH Bill does in their elevation of reproductive health as a basic human right (which it isnt -- it's an entitlement) which implies that any health professional who refuses to dispense artificial birth control methods said health professional doesnt approve of because of the dictates of conscience is a human rights violator and could lose the license to practice. Catholics have to realize that by fighting for Mideo Cruz's rights to free expression, they are fighting for the rights of all, including Catholics everywhere in the world. They can do this by asking those lay organizations who want to see Cruz jailed to stand down and offer to pray for him instead. The use of State power to harass one man who could not do any harm to them is just distasteful.

The case will probably not prosper anyway. In its ruling on Ang Ladlad's petition against COMELEC's disqualification, the Supreme Court said:

Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, and this freedom applies not only to those that are favorably received but also to those that offend, shock, or disturb. Any restriction imposed in this sphere must be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. Absent any compelling state interest, it is not for the COMELEC or this Court to impose its views on the populace. Otherwise stated, the COMELEC is certainly not free to interfere with speech for no better reason than promoting an approved message or discouraging a disfavored one.

If for no other reason than to spare itself of the embarrassment when the courts throw its petition out, the Catholic hierarchy should tell its most zealous adherents to withdraw the case and end this bullying, but I'd rather they withdraw it for the right reasons: that the freedom of expression is God's gift to us.

The libertarian ideal

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 04:52:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, a news report came out wherein firefighters in Tennessee refused to come to the aid of a homeowner whose house was burning down because the homeowner hasnt paid the annual fee of USD 75.00. (The fire department serviced a particular community for 'free'. For those outside it, they charge an annual fire services fee.) Even after promising to pay whatever fee is due after the fire has been put out, the fire department refused. As a result of this callous act, one family lost their home. Statists from all over weighed in warning that this is what would happen if limited government people, libertarians, anarchists, and Randians had their way. "The free market is evil," they cried. "We need government to provide these services. Only government could be trusted to protect our lives and property."

"The libertarian ideal," said a pal on my plurk timeline. That's what they say this illustrates, implying that those who hold libertarian views are amoral, selfish cranks. But is it the libertarian ideal?

Let us forget the fact that the fire department was a government agency, not a private one. The fee has been in place for 20 years. The fee in question was a government fee and the charging of the fee was government policy. Leaving that aside, why is this being used as an illustration of the 'libertarian ideal'? It is because we grew up thinking that government is good. That's what they teach us in school. So we better let them confiscate a huge chunk of our earnings to spend on whatever it is they deem for 'the common good'. And woe unto those who refuse.

In the libertarian ideal where the market is free, there would be no monopoly. Here was a homeowner who was irresponsible enough to forget to pay for fire insurance. A fire begins to destroy his home. Before the fire does a lot of damage, he calls his fire protection service provider, who refuses to help him. He then promises to pay whatever fee is due. The provider still refuses. In the present system, that's the end of that. His house burns down, his family loses a home. This will not happen in 'the libertarian ideal'. In the libertarian ideal, the homeowner simply calls another fire protection agency and tells them of his plight. This provider wouldnt have refused simply because he would welcome the opportunity to get another customer for his services and wouldnt want the bad publicity of refusing to help a family to get around the market-place. The house would be saved, the provider gets a new customer and adds to his income (and continues to employ firefighters), and after word gets around about how the previous provider refused to aid the family in dire need, they would begin to lose clients to other providers and eventually closes shop. That is the libertarian ideal.

More on the penal code's archaic Article 133

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:22:00 +0000

First of all, I apologize if this post is unformatted or looks weird in any way. Im sending it though email and I can't see if it came out right. In fact I can't see if it came out at all. You see Im in a country where blogger is blocked (along with Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, etc. -- a good reason to switch to WordPress which isnt blocked). Chi-cough-na, cough.

Anyway, an interesting piece by well-known lawyer Jose C. Sison came out in the Philippine Star site today in which he defends Article 133 of the Penal Code. He does this by arguing that the law is right in affording special status to religious rites in the eyes of the law so disruption of religious rites, in this case Catholics' view of the mass, is especially reprehensible.

Anyone who disrupts the mass like that Intramuros tourist guide (his name is not worth mentioning) certainly deserves to be imprisoned. His act can never be justified by his deep resentment against the prelates who oppose the RH bill. It is willfully, willingly and feloniously done during a rite most sacred to Catholics and therefore punishable under the RPC. Muslims and Buddhists would also feel offended if such disruption was committed against them. There is no reason why disruption of a Catholic ritual should be treated differently.

First of all, I agree. As a former Catholic, I recognize that the holy sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the centerpiece of Catholic faith and worship -- lex orandi, lex credendi. It is where the bread and wine is changed into the real and actual substance of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ and where Catholics remember his sacrifice for all mankind. Disrespecting the mass is more than insulting to the Catholic; direspecting the mass is an insult to Jesus Christ himself. As a former Catholic I felt the insult. The Church's outrage against Carlos Celdran's act (he says it wasnt premeditated, let's give him the benefit of the daw) is in my opinion, more than justified; it was absolutely warranted. Any Catholic who wasnt outraged by that act does not deserve to call himself Catholic.

But that is neither here nor there. According to Atty Sison's piece, there is no reason to remove Art. 133 from the Code because religion is special, and that the law should recognize that it is special. I disagree. I believe the law should be neutral when it comes to religion. I do not have to remind anyone that there are different religious and irreligious beliefs in our country and our law guarantees these beliefs and protects the right of its citizens to hold them. That is why there is Article 153 in the Code which punishes any disruption of peaceful assemblies and meetings. But here Atty. Sison is arguing that a disruption of religious service deserves a greater punishment than a disruption of, say, a homeowner's association meeting. Section 5 of the Constitution is clear: No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights. No religious test. In looking at a disruption of a peaceful assembly, the law should not ask what kind of assembly was disrupted, whether it was religious or secular. It should not care.

Let us look at the spirit of these laws. Why were the laws created? It is so that the powerless can be protected from the powerful. The citizens for instance should be protected from the abuses of the State, a peaceful man from a violent man. Section One of the Penal Code, to which Article 133 inexplicably belongs, contains prohibitions against public officers and employees. In the comment section of one of his blogposts, Manuel Buencamino (he doesnt think 133 is archaic either) surmised that Article 133 was enacted to protect smaller denominations from disruption by bigger ones; for example, if Catholics disrupted a religious service of Rizalistas. Let's take a look at Carlos Celdran's case. Atty. Sison thinks he deserves to be imprisoned and certainly the letter of the law says he deserves, according to Atty. Sison, imprisonment from 6 months to 2 years and 4 months. (In my previous post, I said the punishment was 6 months. I defer to the member of the Bar. It is up to 2 years and 4 months, which makes it all the more draconian -- a law enacted by tyrants. We'll get to that in a bit.)

But is this a case of the powerful oppressing the weak? Carlos Celdran was one unarmed man in a Rizal costume (Manuel Buencamino said he was in a Charlie Chaplin outfit). He was yelling against a powerful organization. He did not prevent his fellow Catholics from worshiping. Indeed he didnt have the power to. The Catholics' freedom of worship was not harmed one iota. Officers of the State took him away and the Mass went on. What he was guilty of was offending them. Just that. He did not damage Church property, he did not physically harm anybody. Atty. Sison believes this is sufficient reason to take Carlos Celdran's freedom away for 2 years and 4 months. And if the Church leaders do not withdraw the charges, they agree. In fact, 230 bishops think this deserves to have a man lose his livelihood. As mentioned earlier, Manuel Buencamino thinks that the Article 133 is there to protect small sects from bigger sects who might do them harm. I dont know about that. What is more plausible to me is that this law was used to 'protect' the powerful Spanish Catholic hierarchy from being offended by those pesky Indios.

Atty. Sison then turns to the subject of rights:

They may have the freedom to express their own views but they must also respect the customs, practices and the rights of others to express contrary views. They have no right to denigrate, defile and blaspheme those who do not agree with them.

Actually there is an abuse of freedom in our society today. People now think that they have the absolute right to act and speak freely even to the extent of trampling upon the rights of others or of imposing their individual rights over and above the rights promoting the common good.

One doesnt have the right to be free from being offended. On the contrary. The freedom to express views comes with the license to offend. One may use or not use that license as one sees fit, but the license is there, the license to denigrate, defile, and blaspheme. Imagine how offensive Rizal's writings were to the Spanish authorities or indeed Jesus' words were to the Pharisees and Sadducees. If the freedom of speech did not come with a license to offend, if we only spoke agreeably, if we dont have the license to satirize and insult, if we only had the right to speak in a politically correct manner, then speech wouldnt have sparked revolutions that set us free. The powerful can insult us, denigrate us, and blaspheme our beliefs. We the weak must have the right to do likewise to them. Rightly or wrongly, this is the right that Carlos Celdran claimed: that of the weak speaking to the strong. Of course common decency behooves us to behave with respect towards our fellowman and the views they hold, no matter how disagreeable they or their views seem to us. But common decency cannot be legislated without curtailing freedoms as well. And yes, freedom of speech has its limits. There's this famous saying by that famous Greek philosopher Anonymous that goes, "Your freedom ends where my nose begins." Freedom of speech should not cause harm to one's person. Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater for example. Everything else is fair use of rights.

Im with Atty Sison's view of religion. Religion in society at its best is important and it is indeed special. While it is true that -- to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens -- religion poisons some things, at its best it allows the flowering of our society. Our rights and freedoms came from the grand notion that God createdl Man in his own image and are therefore all equal and have inalienable rights, a patently unscientific belief. It is atheism -- the idea that no authority is higher than the authority of Man -- that poisons everything. The only reason to trust secularists today is because they have been imbued with ideals that came from religious faith. Once they unshackle themselves from these 'irrational' beliefs, that is the time we can view them as the enemy of society. Carlos Celdran is not the enemy, and he does not deserve to go to jail, no matter what the letter of the law says.

The aberration that is Article 133

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 05:29:00 +0000

When I heard that Carlos Celdran of the walking tours fame was arrested for disrupting an ecumenical service at the Manila Cathedral by protesting, I thought it would be an interesting case study. I heard about it via a plurk pointing to a tweet from @inquirerdotnet from before any details were available on the news sites. It just said Celdran yelled 'Politics' in front of the altar during an ecumenical service.

Surely, I thought, he wasnt arrested for protesting. Speech is protected in this country. Unless he did it in a disruptive manner in the middle of the mass in which case he'd be running smack dab into the 'disturbing the peace' provisions of the penal code. Chapter 5 of the Revised Penal Code says

Art. 153. Tumults and other disturbance of public orders; Tumultuous disturbance or interruption liable to cause disturbance. — The penalty of arresto mayor in its medium period to prision correccional in its minimum period and a fine not exceeding 1,000 pesos shall be imposed upon any person who shall cause any serious disturbance in a public place, office, or establishment, or shall interrupt or disturb public performances, functions or gatherings, or peaceful meetings, if the act is not included in the provisions of Articles 131 and 132.

Arresto mayor as defined in the Code is imprisonment of from one month and one day to six months so a medium period would be somewhere in the middle of that timescale. As details of the protest came online, it became clear that Celdran might have behaved in a disruptive manner, parading in front of the altar with a placard with the word Damaso on it and screaming at the top of his voice while the ecumenical service was going on. In his words:

"I started screaming, ‘Stop getting involved in politics!’ I kept screaming until I could not scream anymore, then they took me away."

That mustve been some pretty loud screaming. But Carlos Celdran is such a harmless bloke that I was expecting he would be kept in prison til he cooled down, reprimanded, then sent home lesson learned. And besides, this is the Church, arguably the most powerful non-government organization in the country with a membership numbering in the millions. What can a lone tour guide do against a force like that? His continued detention depended on the Church filing a complaint. If there is no complaint, then he would be released. One word from Cardinal Rosales wouldve ended it yesterday and the Cardinal and his buddies would have a good laugh about it. But apparently, he was to be made a lesson. He spent the night in jail and is still in jail as of 1:00 pm today, 1 October.

That's the law. But wait! It turns out that he wasnt charged with disturbing the peace or disruption of public order. He was charged with violating Article 133 of the Revised Penal Code which is -- seriously -- offending the religious feelings.

Art. 133. Offending the religious feelings. — The penalty of arresto mayor in its maximum period to prision correccional in its minimum period shall be imposed upon anyone who, in a place devoted to religious worship or during the celebration of any religious ceremony shall perform acts notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful.

It's bad enough that 'disturbing the peace' can get you in jail for over about 3 months minimum as per Article 153 of the Code which covers what Celdran did, a draconian punishment just for being an annoying prick, but the Code has to have a special provision against religious feelings -- religious feelings! -- with a jail time of six months.

Now the Penal Code is supposed to be a list of crimes against person, property, public order, and State. Article 133 is under the general heading of Section One. — Arbitrary detention and expulsion, which covers Articles 124 to 133. If you'll notice, Articles 124 to 132 covers prohibitions against state officers or employees. Article 126 for instance says

Art. 126. Delaying release. — The penalties provided for in Article 124 shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who delays for the period of time specified therein the performance of any judicial or executive order for the release of a prisoner or detention prisoner, or unduly delays the service of the notice of such order to said prisoner or the proceedings upon any petition for the liberation of such person.

Here's Article 132.

Art. 132. Interruption of religious worship. — The penalty of prision correccional in its minimum period shall be imposed upon any public officer or employee who shall prevent or disturb the ceremonies or manifestations of any religion.

If the crime shall have been committed with violence or threats, the penalty shall be prision correccional in its medium and maximum periods.

Section One contains prohibitions against public officers and employees except inexplicably Article 133.

Article 133 covers everyone, and this is the provision thrown against Celdran. Notice that Articles 124 to 132 protects citizens from actions of employees of the State while Article 133 protects religious feelings which runs perilously close to the Church and State clause of the Constitution. Article III, the Bill of Rights says

Section 5. No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

So Article 133 of the Code is on its face unconstitutional and in light of Article 153, totally not needed. And one more thing, the principle of free expression, along with the liberties recognized by the Bill of Rights transcends any written law or constitution. We do not have these rights because the constitution says so. We have these rights because we are human. The State is there supposedly to protect the defenseless members of our society. When the law is used to protect a powerful institution such as the Church from being offended by a peaceful albeit disruptive protest, something is fundamentally wrong with the way the law is implemented, but such is the society we live in. Article 133 is an affront to a free society since propriety is supposed to be society's own sense of right and wrong imposed not because of the threat of penalty but because decency demands it if one is to live with other people, some of whom may not share the same beliefs. Carlos Celdran's act, for which he has already apologized, did not do a whit of harm to the Church's private property nor to its members; they just didnt like his message. That Article 133 is still there as part of the law of the land is a sign of the weakness of that society.

On a personal note, I disclose that I am a non-Catholic Christian but I have been on record on the internets in defense of the Catholic Church, especially its right to participate in discussions of public political issues. Separation of Church and State does not take away the church leaders' right to express their political opinions in the public sphere and to try to influence public policy. Celdran is wrong in using separation of Church and State this way. Indeed trying to influence public policy is what we all are trying to do in our own ways and we should not begrudge the Church this right. They do contribute something to the public sphere. Suppressing their views no matter how wrong we think they are narrows our democratic space by that much and we will rue the day when their stand on issues is silenced. No religious test shall be required for the exercise of civil or political rights, and this includes the rights of the Church's leaders as Filipinos.

One more thing before I close. The God I believe in does not need me to defend him. I do not take offense at the incredulity, even the 'blasphemy', of others against my faith and those who share it, and to the God who is at the core of that faith. I will defend my views and my person when attacked or challenged but if anyone expresses disrespect for God himself, I'd rather stay out of the way. God can very well take care of himself. That an institution such as the Catholic Church would seek the protection of the State from somebody like Celdran (or at one time the gay party Ladlad) shows some kind of crisis of confidence they have in the God they serve.

Update 1 Oct, 6:26 pm: Carlos Celdran posts bail.

Barristers injured by pillbox during bar ops

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:27:00 +0000

Pinoy English FTW

(with updates -- 28 Sep 2010)

By now you would have heard of the explosion outside the DLSU last 26 September injuring several people during the Bar examinations. If you havent, here's a link. This post is only tangentially about that tragedy.

The title of this blog post is remarkable because anybody who is not from these islands would find it incomprehensible. The words are recognizable as English, sure, but they do not mean what a non-Pinoy would think it means. It is in fact Pinoy English.

A barrister for instance means a lawyer in the UK and several other mostly British Commonwealth countries, whereas here it is someone who is taking the bar exams. This is the word as used in a Malaya report.

Initial police investigation showed that the blast took place between 5 and 5:30 p.m., just after the bell signaling the end of the examinations, and as the barristers were preparing to leave the school premises.

I started seeing the word used in this manner last year in mainstream media. I dont know if it was used in this way prior to that, although Ive seen references to it in blogs and other online material. So as far as new word adaptations go, this one is pretty new. (Update: a link is provided below, dated February 2004, to a Supreme Court resolution wherein the term 'barrister' is used for bar examinees.)

This is what a barrister looks like outside the Philippines

(Photo nicked from the Wikipedia article Barrister)

And this is what barristers looks like here.

(Photo nicked from Philstar.)

As for pillbox, outside of our islands, it can refer to several things: a small box for pills, a small brimless hat usually worn by ladies, or a concrete bunker that usually houses a machine gun or two. See below. (Photos below nicked from their respective Wikipedia articles.)

This is a pillbox.

So is this.

And so is this.

In the Philippines, a pillbox is a small homemade bomb. I first heard of these devices as a child growing up during Marcos's time (70s -- yes I was already around at that time) when student protesters hurled them against riot police. Here's the word as used in a Philippine Information Agency report from an incident in 2008:

The blast, believed to have been from a pillbox, tore at least three middle fingers of the arresting officer, PO3 Alfonso Villamil and wounded him in other parts of the body. An unidentified barangay tanod who helped bring in the suspect, Albert Alvarez, for investigation and custody was also slightly injured as he stood nearby.

And here's one from 1970 from a Philippines Free Press article:

By then, their brothers in militancy were ramming Gate 4 open with a commandeered fire truck whose driver they had first mauled. They set fire to another parked car inside the gate. They threw Molotov cocktails, pillbox bombs, and stoned the windows of the Malacañang clinic.

Notice that the 1970 article called them 'pillbox bombs' which is probably the proper term since these were small explosive devices the size of pillboxes but colloquially they were simply referred to as 'pillbox'. Later, 'pillbox' was showing up alone in written pieces in media without the 'bomb' and the device was called simply pillbox, and although they are still referred to as 'pillbox bombs' in reports today, that is slowly giving way to the shorter term. Here for instance is a Supreme Court decision referring to the device as 'pillbox'.

That on or about the 21st day of December, 1994, in the Municipality of Las Piñas, Metro Manila, Philippines and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, the above-named accused...with intent to kill and without justifiable motive and evident premeditation and by means of treachery and use of explosive (pillbox), did, then and there willfully, unlawfully and feloniously attack, assault and throw a Pillbox to one Jose Mesqueriola y Labarosa, thereby inflicting upon the latter serious and mortal wounds, which directly caused his death.

I coudlnt find a picture of one but I could describe how we used to make them. But I won't. Suffice it to say theyre very dangerous and we were very, very stupid for making them and actually using them as noisemakers for New Year's. You hurl it in the air as high as you can and run the heck away as fast as you can. It explodes on impact. It usually doesnt need more shrapnel than the stuff that's already in there to make it explode but people actually put more stuff in there to make it more lethal. That's what those crazy/stupid college kids did to their device.

Which brings us to bar ops. Here's a Supreme Court resolution, dated 2004, that uses the term (it uses the term 'barrister' as well):

Bar Ops are the biggest activity of the fraternity every year. They start as soon as new officers of the fraternity are elected in June, and they continue until the bar examinations are over. The bar operations consist of soliciting funds from alumni brods and friends to be spent in reproducing bar review materials for the use of their ‘barristers’ (bar candidates) in the various review centers, providing meals for their ‘brod’-barristers on examination days; and to rent a ‘bar site’ or place near De la Salle University where the examinees and the frat members can convene and take their meals during the break time.

I suspect this is another one of those uniquely Pinoy traditions you won't find anywhere else and would leave even a Pinoy scratching his head in wonderment. I havent found anything on the net as to when the tradition started though. In bar ops, during bar exams conducted over four Sundays, law schools and law fraternities each send a delegation to the exam venue and cheer the examinees on with parades and such. The atmosphere is festive and is indistinguishable from the hoopla that accompanies college sporting events like the UAAP or NCAA. Different schools and fraternities stake out different areas surrounding the exam venue while the bar examinees -- the barristers -- take the exams. No other professional licensure examinations has this (although I suspect engineers and accountants would want one too after seeing how much fun the law fratboys are having). That's what we see, we meaning those of us who generally dont give that much of a hoot. It's all good, clean fun. The ole college spirit. Hip, hip, hooray! There are even moms there.

But there's another side to the fun and fanfare as reported by several sources on the web. Lawyer Connie Veneracion writes this in her blog:

The boisterous celebration is often accompanied by beer (champagne, for the more affluent groups). The males, especially members of fraternities, would occasionally get doused with beer. All in jest. But, sometimes, the jesting went too far. There were occasions in the past when these cheerers and supporters — drunk by the time the last exam is over — would hurl beer bottles right in front of the gate of the exam venue. I know. As a law student waiting for friends who took the bar exams, I have witnessed a few of those.

But there is a darker, more sinister side to the bar ops. Apparently, and this is spoken of only on the QT, part of the 'ops' is the distribution of 'tips' that law school or review school operators give their examinees, and these tips sometimes are the actual exam questions illegally obtained. Bar exams have been controversial in the past because of these tips such that the Supreme Court which supervises the exams have ordered results to be nullified and a retest be taken. To be fair, there are no reports of leakage (another Pinoy Englishism, btw -- other English-speaking countries just use leak) in the 2010 exams. The Supreme Court has announced new security measures to the exams starting 2011.

Connie Veneracion laments the fact that those involved in the violence during the bar exams are future lawyers. She didnt go far enough. The Law profession is the King Kong of all professions in the Philippines because it is usually from their ranks that congressmen, senators, justices of the Supreme Court, and presidents come from, and that, my friends, is a scary thought indeed.

In any case, Filipino English marches on. Mabuhay!

(Updates include references to 'pillbox' and 'bar ops' in Supreme Court documents and other sources.)

This isnt funny

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:27:00 +0000

We're in the middle of a deadly dengue season and I've come across several reports pointing to a local herb called tawa-tawa (Euphorbia hirta) as a 'cure' for dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF). Apparently, it's supposed to raise the platelet count in patients afflicted with DHF. This report by Reggie Aspiras for instance quotes former DOH secretary Jaime Galvez Tan saying, “The first evidence that it increases the platelet count came from doctors in Cebu.” (I must note here that the article linked is not a scientific article. It was written by a chef writing a food column. No citation was given for this alleged claim by Dr. Tan.)

Another article, this time by renowned poet Krip Yuson recounts his experience with tawa-tawa. His son was stricken with dengue and he attributes his recovery to several herbal remedies, including tawa-tawa. "There should be no harm in trying tawa-tawa capsules," he writes. This popular blog (Jessica Zafra's) also extols the virtues of tawa-tawa, claiming that it is a hemostatic. Again it must be noted that neither Mr. Yuson's article, nor the blog post by Ms. Zafra, is a scientific article so aside from the odd mention of the internet, they provided no citations for the claims in the articles. As such they offer anecdotal support for the claims of its anti-dengue properties.

This is amazing, I thought. Could we be on the verge of a medical breakthrough? Can a lowly little native weed hold the key to licking this killer disease? I had doubts that it could kill the virus that causes dengue, but maybe it did something. Maybe it did help raise platelet count. I did some googling of my own.

According to this study, a feature of DHF in its acute phase is the inhibition of platelet aggregation. Platelets are cells in our blood responsible for clotting. From the abstract of the article Platelet function during the acute phase of dengue hemorrhagic fever, Srichaikul T, Nimmannitya S, Sripaisarn T, Kamolsilpa M, Pulgate C.:

Platelet aggregation, plasma betathromboglobulin (BTG) and platelet factor 4 (PF4) were studied in 35 children with dengue hemorrhagic fever. The suppression of platelet aggregation was demonstrated during acute phase of DHF in both shock and non-shock patients. Simultaneous with abnormal platelet aggregation, there was increased release of BTG and PF4 from platelets into plasma during the acute phase which lasted only 3-4 days after shock or subsidence of fever.

I'm not a virologist, nor am I an epidemiologist, nor any other -ist that has any relevance to this subject, but if there's anything I know it's that suppression of platelet aggregation = bad. The platelets have to be able to cause blood to clot and they do this by aggregating. That suppression of platelet aggregation is a feature of DHF in its acute phase indicates to me that suppression of platelet aggregation isn't what you want when you have dengue. So, is tawa-tawa a hemostatic as claimed in that blog post by Ms. Zafra? I went to the International Center for Science and High Technology - United Nations Industrial Development Origanization (ICS-UNIDO) website and looked up Euphorbia hirta. It does have a lot of medicinal properties:

It is regarded as medication for gastrointestinal disorders, particularly intestinal parasitotosis, amoebic dysentery, diarrhoea, and ulcer. An aqueous decoction is used for the treatment of acute enteritis and dysentery. The plant is also used in bronchial and respiratory disorders including asthma, bronchitis, and hay fever. Other uses are in diseases of the urinary system for example as diuretic; diseases of the genital apparatus (metrorrhagia, gonorrhoea, urethritis, agalactosis). It also has lactogenic properties. In ocular diseases, the plant is used against conjunctivitis and corneal ulcer. The latex of the plant is used for warts and cuts.

Other uses of the plant are affections of skin and mucous membranes (scabies, tinea, guinea-worm), as sedative, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory indications. For externally painful stings of the large brown scorpion, Bambara in Mali alleviate pain by applying the pulverised leaves. The plant has a reputation as an analgesic in severe headache, rheumatism, pains in pregnancy etc.

Nothing there about it being a hemostatic. Dengue isn't even mentioned. Then it goes on to say this under the Pharmacological Studies section:

Additionally extracts exerted an inhibitory effect on platelet aggregation and depressed the formation of carrageenin induced rat paw oedema.

citing this study. Influence of some traditional medicinal plants of Senegal on prostaglandin biosynthesis, A. Hiermann, and F. Bucar. (Abstract only. The full paper has to be purchased.)

It turns out that components in tawa-tawa actually inhibit platelet aggregation. This could be useful in other diseases, but this isnt what you want when you have DHF. You want your platelets aggregating. It may be fortunate that the decoction of tawa-tawa given to DHF patients doesnt have the concentrated amount of the platelet suppressants that the extract form contains, or else it may have done more harm than good.

Like I said, the evidence for the efficacy of tawa-tawa presented in the articles by Aspiras and Yuson, and the blog post by Zafra are anecdotal. Although I do hope that there is indeed something in tawa-tawa that alleviates the symptoms of DHF, at this time I strongly suspect that the evidence presented are of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety. Person had DHF, person takes tawa-tawa tea, person feels better. Ergo, tawa-tawa cures DHF.

Last year, when I was in Jakarta, my daughter contracted DHF only we didnt know it was DHF at the time. My mother just told me that my daughter was running a fever and has lost her appetite. She asked my daughter if she wanted to go to the doctor and she said no, she's fine, so we didnt think it was anything serious. My mother was giving her paracetamol and I told her to keep my daughter hydrated. This went on for a few days. She developed stomachaches which my mother attributed to the fact that she wasn't eating that well. My daughter told her she was fine but my mother brought her to the hospital anyway. The doc ran a blood test and the diagnosis came that she had DHF. She had rashes all over her body and the doctor said this was a good sign that the disease was in its last legs. In other words, my daughter was able to recover from the disease on her own.

Now imagine that instead of just keeping her hydrated with water and soup, etc., my mother gave her a decoction of tawa-tawa since she saw this on TV or read it in a blog somewhere, and my daughter recovered (as she was going to do anyway). She would have attributed her recovery to the tawa-tawa. (Instead of the super-fantastic dengue-busting genes she got from me. Heh.) That's what I think is behind all this tawa-tawa hype.

Bottom line is: Be careful. Don't believe everything you read. Investigate. Try to develop an internal bullshit detector. I have to say mine is pretty acute and I wish they taught bullshit detecting in school, but it's one of those things one has to develop on one's own, since school is oftentimes just a giant bullshit factory... but that's another story.

Update, 17 September: Trawling the internet for testimonies, I came upon this one from last year. Dengue Can be Treated by a Herbal Remedy

A nurse on duty in the ICU connives with us on the use of this plant [tawa-tawa]. She even gave us instructions on how to do it, although she reprimanded us not to show our doctors we’re giving it to the patient because a patient on NGT should not be given something orally.

...

Also known as snake weed or cat’s hair, tawa-tawa has shown promising results based on the initial tests conducted by the health department.

It is interesting that tawa-tawa was given to the patient with the tacit approval of a health professional (the nurse), even doing so despite the fact that a "patient on NGT should not be given something orally." The nurse apparently did so presumably because the attending physician wouldnt have approved. There is also an allusion to an uncited study ostensibly conducted by 'the health department'. The blog post goes on to narrate how the mother administered the decoction.

In my case, I dip a cotton ball into the decoction, and slowly pinch the cotton ball and drop the liquid into her mouth. Perhaps she was very thirsty, the first time I drop off the liquid into her mouth, she grabbed my hands to ask for more.

The patient, thank God, recovered after being given a transfusion of platelets. As you can see, despite the sureness of the declaration in the title of the blog post, the effect of tawa-tawa was inconclusive. The patient was receiving other medication at the time and even a blood transfusion. It is probably a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc with the mother attributing her daughter's recovery to the herbal decoction.

This blog post from 2 years ago (Herbal Cure for Dengue?) was written by a doctor and expresses the same sentiment I do in this blog post: Caution. It ends with this (emphasis in the original):

In spite of its hype and anecdotal popularity, I still think drinking Euphorbia hirta extracts and concoctions is not safe.

I echo the doctor's frustration that studies have not been conducted as to the efficacy of this herb as a cure for DHF despite the fact that we have some of the highest number of dengue cases in Asia. So far the only study I have located with regards to Euphorbia hirta and its effects on platelets is the Hiermann and Bucar one linked above in which they used an extract of the plant, which to my layman's understanding indicates they used a more concentrated form of the plant's ingredients than one prepared in a decoction. Perhaps smaller doses have a different, more beneficial effect. We just don't know.

Mind. Blown.

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:55:00 +0000

Ive read about the genetic code and how DNA uses nanotechnology to copy itself and read instructions in the code to make proteins. It's pretty impressive, but actually seeing it represented in computer animation... It's mind-blowing! From the folks at Dolan DNA Learning Center.

I know the prohibition of the use of 'design language' is de rigueur around the biological sciences but one can't help it. Those tiny proteins that are doing what they do -- reading instructions and carrying them out -- look like and are behaving like machines. Not only machines, but programmed machines. It's what prompted Nobel Prize winner Sir Francis Crick, after taking a look at the genetic code, to remark, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. " Biologists must keep reminding themselves, despite what their instincts and common sense are telling them, that these intricate processes occurring in cells are a result of random chance and necessity. But even his resolve about this wavered a bit when he advocated some sort of directed panspermia.

DNA Replication

DNA Transcription

DNA Translation

Code, transcription, translation. There's no way around it. One has to use the language of computer programming and information technology to talk about this stuff. The genetic code is a set of specific instructions written using a 4-character alphabet (A,C,G,T) much like a machine code is written in binary. Then nanomachines read and translate the four-character machine code into a higher level code composed of 20 characters (the amino acids) which is then used to make proteins: enzymes, blood vessels, skin, hair... It's like translating this:

01010100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101

to this:

To be or not to be

so it can be performed on stage by Patrick Stewart. And of course to do that youll need something like this. Even ignoring the obvious chicken-and-egg problem this presents, the origin of the genetic information is already a doozy for scientists and is probably getting them very excited.

Some guy called Bill Gates, who I heard knew something about computer code said, "DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created." ( In this book. Not to misrepresent Mr. Gates though. I bet he'd rather keep reminding himself that what he sees in DNA was not designed but rather evolved.)

Oh, and for the record, that idea that all those nanomachines in the cell are the result of random events that somehow fell together? I think it's BS.

Real wages

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 06:06:00 +0000

As countries continue to reel from the financial crisis, the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum (AEPF) has a proposed solution: Raise real wages. Their words.

Charles Santiago, Member of Parliament of Malaysia and AEPF co-coordinator in Asia, proposes a solution to the crisis that has a much longer effect: Raise workers’ real wages.

...

“Government is subsidizing business when it bails out banks using the stimulus packages. The money should go directly to the people. This is a more sustainable option.”

How sustainable is it? First of all, the AEPF is proposing an increase in workers' nominal wages: mandating perhaps an increase in the minimum wage of workers across the board. This is fine, but does that translate to an increase in real wages? Often, it does the opposite.

How are real wages increased? Real wages are increased when workers' wages can buy more stuff. For example, a worker's 100 pesos used to buy 2 kilos of rice, then later his 100 pesos can buy 3 kilos of rice of the same quality. His real wages have effectively increased even if his nominal wages remained the same since the money he has can buy more stuff. When does this happen? It happens when more products are produced such that the demand for these products do not exceed the supply disproportionately. Does increasing workers' nominal wages lead to an overall increase in the production of goods and services? That's the theory. Here's Mr. Santiago again:

Give underpaid workers their real wages and what will they do with it? They will spend all of it. They will buy food, clothing, creating a demand for goods and services. The effect on the economy would be very fast, similar to the stimulus packages,” he said in a news release.

“Except that unlike giving money to the rich, who may buy paintings and other luxuries that create nothing, the poor will 100 percent buy useful things that create local demand for goods and services available locally.

Giving workers "their real wages" could mean allowing the market to determine their wages. The nominal wages can go up, or they can go down. This is not what Mr. Santiago means. He means only raising nominal wages even if we have an oversupply of labor.

Most likely, this is what happens when the nominal wages are increased in this environment with a labor surplus: An increase in the wages is an increase in production costs. The price of products go up naturally and as they rise, the demand for them goes down. To stay profitable, that is, to stay in business, the business owner will lower prices up to the point where he can still make a profit, but as soon as he starts losing money he'll start laying off workers or cutting their work time or close shop. A general increase in nominal wages also means that prices of production inputs also increase. There will be a general increase in prices such that the worker's 100 pesos, instead of being able to buy 2 kilos of rice, can buy only 1 kilo. The effect is a decrease in the real wages in spite of the increase in nominal wages. And since businesses are cutting costs to make a profit or closing down, there will be an increase of workers working, say, 4 hours instead of 8 as well as an increase in the ranks of the unemployed since a lot of businesses won't be able to hire workers at the mandated wage. There will be a general slowdown of business activity and a general deflation as businesses default on their loans and banks tighten up.

So no, increasing the nominal wages does not mean an increase in the real wages. To increase real wages, we need to get more people working, and more people producing stuff. We need to stop destroying the value of our currency by inflationary 'stimulus packages'. We should let deflation happen instead of fighting it. True, deflation might create a downward pressure on nominal wages but if it results in an increase in the purchasing power of the workers' peso, then that's a good thing. Mr. Santiago is correct in saying that government stimulus packages only help the banks (and government crony corporations, I might add), but mandating businesses to increase worker wages also has a detrimental effect on real wages. Businesses will be happy to bid up the price of wages if workers were in short supply, but that is not what we have.

"The banking system is a crime"

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:51:00 +0000

When I was in Jakarta last year, the subject of gold came up in a conversation with a Muslim colleague. I asked him if it were easy to buy gold coin. He said yes. These weren't issued by the government but these coins are good and are guaranteed by the coiner. He said they were a very good investment. I never thought about it again because back then one coin the size of our one-peso coin costs around 1,000,000 rupiah (around 5000 pesos) and I couldnt afford it. It probably costs about 1,500,000 rupiah now. Little did I know that the minting of gold and silver coin and the use of these as currency are deeply rooted in Indonesia's Islamic culture.

As I remarked to another colleague there, looking at the vibrant economic activity in the capital, I said I thought that Indonesia could be the next economic miracle after China and India. The next video reinforces that as the Indonesians themselves, in a repudiation of their central bank, are slowly moving towards a commodity currency. Indonesians are beginning to realize that the present system of fiat currency is on the brink of collapse and they need to return to the sound economic principles rooted in Islam. It really is about freedom and justice.

See also this post on commodity currency.

Football is Meh

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Outside the building where our office is, a gaggle of guards are gathered around outside a small window and looking in. One doesnt need to peek at what they were looking at to know what that was all about: Game 7 of the NBA finals was on -- Lakers vs. Celtics. That's all you hear in overheard conversations everywhere. Meanwhile for the rest of the planet, the World Cup was on, the biggest sporting event on earth. Now I like basketball. I played it when I was younger. I was on the team when the Manggahan Floodway Project decided to hold a league amongst all the construction companies working on the floodway. (I played a few games but -- damn you, coach, I couldve nailed that three-pointer that wouldve won us the championship -- I didnt play in the finals.) I rooted for the mighty, grand-slam winning, Ramon Fernandez led San Miguel Beer team of the late 80s. But that interest waned. Basketball became boring. It was too easy. I think the turning point came when an all-pro, all-star Philippine team was sent to the Asian Games in 1990. This was the Dream Team! Fernandez, Samboy Lim, Alan Caidic, Benjie Paras, Hector Calma. We were supposed to be the best in Asia...and we were trounced by China. I lost interest in the PBA after that. They were just a bunch of overpaid losers to me. And with that, I lost all hope that our country of short people could ever hope to produce a world-beating basketball team. Really, it's amazing to me that the PBA continues to exist!

Anyway, back to football. There has been a lot of reasons put forth as to why we havent taken to the beautiful game like the rest of the world has, and demonstrate no interest in joining the worldwide party that the World Cup is, but none of them sound plausible. "We dont have enough football fields," they say. How is that a problem? When I was in Bangkok, the kids were playing in whatever space was available: on the streets, under the bridge, on any unused lot, it doesnt matter. When I was in China, the Chinese colleagues played during the lunch hour in the small open field behind the office building, with tiny bushes as goal. How about "Equipment is too expensive"? Right, and basketball equipment isnt? Kids in our neighbor countries play football barefoot. Much like kids play basketball barefoot here. Or in tsinelas at least.

"We were colonized by the Americans so football never took off here." Ah, there. The USA was never a football nation. They had their own version of football such that they called regular football soccer to differentiate it from the helmet football variety they invented. We call it soccer too because of that even though we have no local version of football with which to differentiate it. We were under Spain, one of the giants of the modern game, but by the time football was developing into the world game that it is, Spain's power in the islands was waning. But wait! In the Visayas, especially in Negros and Iloilo, they still play it. But for some reason, despite the large Visayan population in the National Capital Region, football is practically dead in Metro Manila. It seems that only basketball-loving Visayans migrate to Luzon.

Paulino Alcantara of Iloilo, all-time leading scorer

for FC Barcelona. Yes, that FC Barcelona (Photo nicked from Wikipedia.)

I noticed something else though. True, we are a basketball-crazy nation, but not that crazy. We dont have basketball fans driven to fervor by the game. We go to the stadium separately, watch the game, and go home in an orderly fashion. When I was in Jakarta, football night is traffic night. Fans for one team arrive in droves, together in rented buses so packed that some sit on the roof. They dress in team colors, waving banners, banging drums, and singing. They were everywhere causing monstrous traffic jams as convoys of buses head home after the game and everybody accepts this as a minor inconvenience simply because it's football. It could be that basketball doesnt foster the tribal feelings that football does, but it could be something else: we are a forgiving people and we dont like war.

Football night in Jakarta. Yes, that's a moving bus.

In his article for the Project Syndicate website, Football is War, Ian Buruma, Professor of Democracy and Human Rights at Bard College writes

Even when football doesn’t lead to actual bloodshed, it inspires strong emotions – primitive and tribal – evoking the days when warriors donned facial paint and jumped up and down in war dances, hollering like apes. The nature of the game encourages this: the speed, the collective aggression.

War dances, warrior paint, war drums... that's the football fan right there. He continues

It helps to have traditional enemies, old hurts, and humiliations that need to be redressed, if only symbolically. It would be hard for Americans, who are neither very good at soccer, nor cursed by great historical hatreds, to share the joy of the Dutch, say, when the Germans were defeated in 1988, or that of the Koreans when they defeat Japan.

And there you have us, the Pinoy. We have no enemies whom we wish to get back at. We dont wish to get back at Spain, America, or Japan for what they did to us when they came over for their respective extended stays in these islands. On the contrary. We admire our former conquerors. We wish we could be like them. We therefore have no interest in participating in the World Cup wherein we, a country of no technological advantage to speak of, can wage war with our former masters as equals. We're just not that kind of people. While the Chinese still harbor resentment for the Japanese for what they did such that a Japanese history textbook could offend the Chinese, we just go, 'Meh, whatever'. We have no desire to settle scores with Spain, the US, or Japan on the pitch. We have no desire to beat Malaysia even though they appropriated Sabah from the Sultan of Sulu. We just dont feel competitive with them. (There was a time when they felt competitive with us when we were their rival in intellectual and economic fields in Southeast Asia, to which we responded with our usual 'Meh', instead of 'Oh yeah? Let's settle that on the pitch.' But those days are gone. Malaysia won that fight long ago and now have no desire to beat us at anything anymore.)

Maybe we have no desire to do battle with other countries. We just want peace. We're that kind of a people and that is good. It's either that or we're a people who can't be passionate about anything. So what if we can't develop a passion for soccer? At the end of the day it's really just a game, right? Maybe it isnt and we're missing one hell of a party and we're not showing interest in wanting to join. Besides, I want to play and I can't find anybody to play it with.

Update: An officemate pointed me to this post on a new book on basketball in the Philippines. Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew. It sounds like an interesting book that tries to explain the inexplicable: Why basketball?

Summer's over. Pasukan na naman.

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:42:00 +0000

At a political rally

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 06:01:00 +0000

Candidates are expected to dance on stage. Or sing at least. It's a requirement, especially for local government positions: mayors, vice mayors, councilors. It has evolved into a ritual, something done to fulfill all requirements of righteousness. The candidate goes on stage, introduces his or herself, highlights credentials and qualifications, outlines plans and programs when in office, trying hard by means of flowery speech or sheer bombast to stick in the minds of voters, and perhaps inspire them even -- who knows? Then the candidate hands over the microphone to the emcee or whomever, the music is cued, and the candidate dances. No matter how stellar the candidate's credentials are, no matter how well the candidate has spoken in front of the voters, the candidate dances.

Someone who looked like a veteran in local politics was the first to step on stage to speak. You can tell he's done this before by his relaxed demeanor. He has mastered the art of political speechifying in front of this kind of audience of low-income workers, housewives, and students, alternating between a conversational tone and rallying cry. Rights of workers! Minimum wage! Protect the jobs of workers and give priority to the city's residents in hiring! I listened to him and I just knew he was going to dance. He did. He called his lovely family onstage with him and they danced together. "See how I dance for you. See how my family and I exist for your pleasure." By dancing they are offering themselves up as a sacrifice at the altar. The dance seals the deal.

Next on the stage, after the obligatory song-and-dance numbers from local groups and singers to keep the crowd from leaving (except for the pros, the singers and dancers are from the neighborhood, I reckon), the next candidate goes up the stage. She wasnt a surefooted on the platform as the first one, and her speech had none of the bombast. Her credentials were impressive enough and she was a prim and proper mom type. I just knew she wouldnt dance. She didnt need to. Voters like good-looking mom types with impressive credentials. She wound up her speech and I thought that was it, but she handed over the microphone to the emcee, the music was cued, and she danced. Jai ho!

The next one... I didnt even listen to the next one, but he sure didnt look like he could stay balanced on the stage if you propped him up with guy wires. He didnt have the stage savvy as candidate number one either. He didnt connect to the crowd. So I thought he won't dance. Surely he wouldnt be so foolish as to attempt to try to dazzle the crowd with his terpsichorean skills. But as sure as day follows night, he signals the deejay and Louis Johnson's immortal bass lines come flooding out of the speakers. He was going to dance to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. If youve ever seen FPJ's version of Billie Jean on TV, this was exactly like that in dance form.

The next candidate arrived with his family. He has a lovely wife, a former artista, I heard, and good looking kids. He was also disabled. He arrived in a wheelchair, and got up on crutches. By this time, I have given up trying to predict who would dance or not. Surely candidate number four would not dance. He could barely walk and had to be helped on stage, and he didnt look like he watched Glee. But he had his family with him and they would do the dancing for him. I turned to a friend and said, "You know what music they'd dance to? Footloose." Ha ha ha!

Guess what. Kenny Loggins's guitar licks come out of the speakers.

jejejeje

Huddle

Fabulous.

Sinong mayor mo?

Philippines' next top model? Yan ang pose.

These are the real dancers. As in they get paid to do this.

Kids get a kick out of getting their pictures taken.

Work it.

Once more with feeling

More photos here.

In which I present a case for commodity money for our friend cvj (and for whomever else that happens by)

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:13:00 +0000

This post was borne out of a discussion cvj and I had over at plurk, and although I like plurk, the 140-character limit doesnt allow me to do stuff like this.

The choice is between the status quo, in which the State issues money by fiat out of nothing, and a free monetary system in which the market determines what their medium of exchange is. For centuries, that market seems to have chosen gold as their universal medium of exchange until the State put an end to that and forcibly imposed fiat money, something the market hasnt chosen. But first,

a little history. How did gold get to be the erstwhile medium of exchange?

No one person decided it. Not one all-powerful monarch declared by royal edict that henceforth gold shall be the medium of exchange in all dealings throughout the realm. It was chosen by the market itself. It came about like this:

When people began trading for goods and services, at first they did so by direct exchange. Juan the fisherman wants butter, but all he has is fish. Pedro the dairy farmer has butter, so Juan goes to him and offers his fish in exchange for butter. If Pedro wants to eat fish today, he'll trade his butter for Juan's fish. This is barter or direct exchange. If you have a product A and you want product B, all you had to do was go find someone with product B and see if they want product A. Easy. (Let me digress a bit to disabuse you of the notion that if Juan trades two fish for a pound of butter, that means to Juan, the value of the two fish equals the value of a pound of butter, and since Pedro traded his butter for fish, Pedro also thinks the same. This isnt true. For Juan, the pound of butter is worth more than the fish, and to Pedro, the fish is worth more than the butter. If they were equal in value, why make the exchange at all? In this kind of free trade, both men are trading for things they value more. This is the subjective theory of value.)

Later, Juan wants a chair and so he goes to Jose the carpenter to see if he wants fish in exchange for a chair and so he prepares to negotiate how much fish Jose wants for the chair. But it turns out Jose doesnt want fish at all. What he wants is butter in exchange for the chair. What does Juan do? Does he go home chairless? No. He knows Pedro has butter and Pedro likes fish so Juan asks Jose how much butter he wants for the chair. He then goes to Pedro, trades his fish for butter, takes the butter to Jose, and goes home with the chair. This is indirect exchange.

After numerous transactions of this sort, everyone finds out that a lot of people like butter and almost everyone would accept butter as payment for whatever goods or services theyre offering. Butter then becomes a medium of exchange. Soon people begin storing butter in their larders not to eat it, but to use it for trade. It has turned into money. Butter is a convenient medium since 1) people accept it, and 2) it is easily divisible so one can easily cut it into the proper weight that another wants in exchange. But they have this nasty habit of melting or turning rancid in the summer, and no one wants rancid butter. Butter therefore isnt a good store of value. (Let me remind you that Im only using butter as an example. It could very well have been any other commodity like bat guano.)

Eventually, after numerous trials wherein different media of exchange were tried in the marketplace (salt, cowrie shells, copper, silver, etc.), the market settled on gold. Gold, according to the market, is perfect since 1) People accepted it for some reason, (maybe because it's so pretty -- who knows?); 2) It's divisible and malleable and can be formed into convenient shapes; 3) It's durable -- they dont corrode for instance; 4) It's relatively rare, that is, you can't just pick them off of the street or manufacture it, and the rarer something is, all things being equal, the more valuable it is in the market.

So for centuries gold was the medium of exchange and all was well until some royal frassum-wassum decided that it would be a good idea for him to have a monopoly on coining such that only 'government-issued' coins were accepted. And as is their wont, kings waged war on their neighbors mostly because of some property dispute* and gold being rare, they had this good idea to mix it with some other metal like copper, while stamping it with a number that fixes its value. So this coin is Five Florins or whatever no matter what its weight is or its gold content. And it all went downhill from there. Even if governments turned 'democratic' after the WWI, the government monopoly continued. First they gave us the gold standard wherein they issued paper redeemable in gold. Then they gave us the gold exchange standard wherein only governments were permitted to redeem their paper in gold, then finally to the full fiat currency, where the government forces you to accept their paper currency with nothing to back it up. Thus freed from their commodity tether, governments can print money at will, and with the electronic age, they didnt even have to do that; they can create new money with a few keystrokes thereby dooming us all to an endless cycle of booms and busts until, inevitably, the currency collapses. When private individuals do this, it's called fraud. When governments do this, it's called monetary policy.

Why a commodity-backed currency is better than fiat currency

We'll get to that in a bit, but first I'd like to acknowledge that cvj is making a good point when he says there really is no difference between commodity money and fiat money if both are issued by the State. I agree. Whether or not the State-issued money is backed by a commodity or not is irrelevant if the State continues to have a monopoly on its issuance. States, for whatever reason, but war being its most egregious reason, routinely inflated its currency even when they were nominally backed by gold. So having the State have a monopoly on the issuance of money, whether backed by a commodity or not, is practically the same thing. The solution therefore is to institute free banking. But even with commodity money being a monopoly of the state, it's still better than fiat money. Ive written on the effect inflationary government policies cause the business cycle here.

cvj in one of his plurk comments said "and if a person accepted fiat money, then same principle applies" meaning a commodity-backed currency is no different from fiat currency since people accept fiat currency. This is wrong. Let us ignore the fact that people are forced to accept fiat currency. (In fact rejecting government-issued fiat currency is a crime.)

An untethered fiat currency allows the government to increase the money supply at will. What's wrong with that? In fact, cvj, in one of his comments makes the surprising assertion: "An economy can grow only if the money supply expands." Gold is too rare, he implies, to allow for an expansion of the money supply. What is wrong with that is an increase of a supply of something lowers its value. I think cvj is coming from a Keynesian-Friedmanite mindset which seeks to steer the economy by monkeying around with the money supply. This view puts a premium on nominal value and ignores real value. (Mandated minimum wage, for example, does this. It increases nominal wages while reducing real wages due to the inevitable higher prices, as well as tending to increase the ranks of the unemployed.) Increasing the money supply means that the 100 pesos I have could buy less stuff today than it did before the government increased the supply of money. The money I have in the bank is now worth less than when I deposited it, and the money I put away for my retirement would be worth less when I finally decide to retire. With untethered fiat money, value is destroyed. It punishes savers and rewards borrowers thereby discouraging savings and enticing people to get things on credit. (On the other hand, if I put away one ounce of gold 10 years ago, it's still one ounce of gold now.)

Granted, even with a commodity-backed money, governments, evil as they are, can still inflate. In fact governments routinely did this especially when they waged their wars, but the commodity provided a check on the extent governments inflate. For example, in the government of Engkantasia, one ounce of gold is worth one Engkantasian dollar (ED), but it was at war with its neighbor Kosmekistan and so to finance the war it inflated its currency such that there were now twice the amount of EDs for every ounce of gold they had. They used the EDs to buy weapons and other war materiel. The holders of the EDs, many of them foreign governments, when they try to redeem the EDs for gold, will find out that there is not enough gold to cover their EDs and so will try to redeem their gold while it's still available; a sort of bank run. When news of Engkantasia's financial situation gets around, no one would be willing to trade with Engkantasia using EDs. Perhaps theyll demand to be paid in some other sound currency depleting Engkantasia's foreign reserves, or they could demand to be paid in gold bouillon. Either way, Engkantasia and the ED will be screwed. Knowing that, they will limit the extent to which they inflate if they want to continue to trade with other countries. (It must be noted that in the real world, most if not all countries have the US dollar as their reserve currency and the US dollar is backed by nothing tangible except the hard work of the Americans whose government routinely confiscates their earnings in the form of taxes and inflationary monetary policies and uses these confiscated earnings to bail out financial institutions that couldnt survive in the free market and to invade other countries.)

Freed from central banking or State monopoly, commodity money is even more powerful as a regulator. Free banking is when private banks can issue tradeable paper by themselves. (I believe Hong Kong did this once.) If for example Bank A has assets worth 1000 ounces of gold they can lend out, they can issue paper representing that 1000 ounces and anybody holding this paper can redeem it for gold. Dispersed in this way, if in case some rogue bank were to issue paper in excess of how much assets they have, the resulting malinvestments (boom-bust cycle) are local and will not cover the whole country or indeed the whole world. And other banks can check the extent to which Bank A has over-issued paper when they redeem Bank A paper deposited with them by their clients.

Financing with fiat money

cvj also has put forth an interesting premise: "Without finance, there won't be capitalism. Finance preceded capitalism." And by finance Im assuming he meant people willing to lend money to other people at interest. Let's not quibble over the details of whether or not capitalism would have happened if it werent for finance and assume it is true for the purposes of this blog post.

I have already discussed the dangers of fiat currency on the economy in the post linked above but to reiterate, government increasing the money supply lowers the interest rates artificially making people invest in things they wouldnt normally invest in if the interest rate were allowed to go to their true levels. And with inflation destroying the value of stored or saved money, people are less inclined to save. This is tragic because savings is the only legitimate source of investment.

A fundamental difference

The fundamental difference between my position and his I suspect is this: I tend to trust people's decisions on what they think is good for them, while cvj thinks that government (or any enlightened authority figure -- scientists, academics, whoever) knows better or at least is necessary in the cycle of people's decision-making. Whether Im right and he's wrong or vice versa is beside the point. Maybe people are idiots who'd sooner poke themselves in the eye if you hand them a butter knife so they need the government to hold their hand and tell them what to do. Or that the primary motivation of Homo economicus is to screw his neighbor out of all his wealth and so government is needed to protect man from his fellow man. But the fact is, government cannot be trusted to make economic decisions, not because theyre evil or because theyre stupid, but because they can't know everything. Information is dispersed throughout society. Millions of brains making individual decisions and value judgements, and the only thing coordinating these individual decisions is the market. And the market is all of us.

=====================

*Kings waged wars for real estate mostly, and they were limited wars. Wars waged by democratic societies tend to be bloodier and waged for such reasons as 'spreading democracy'.

Paputok. Mall of Asia Pyro-Olympics 28 February 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:46:00 +0000

"Why can't we go to the waterfront?," I asked the guard. The walkway toward the beach was closed off. It was filled with tables and chairs in a snooty restaurant setting.

"May pyro Olympics, sir," he answered.

Bread wrapper. Nanjing.

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:15:00 +0000

It's poetry!

Hayek vs Keynes rap throwdown

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:06:00 +0000

LOLness. A great video from the guys at EconStories.

Keynes has been the dominant force in world economy since the 1930s with his General Theory and his legacy is deeply felt today: the Bangko Sentral, NEDA, and various government economic institutions and regulations. Hayek on the other hand believes you can't plan an economy. Information is dispersed thoughout society; millions of people making individual decisions on what theyre going to do next. As we can see, Keynes has won the debate by acclamation and very few people know who Hayek and Mises are. For Keynes, the boom-bust cycle is caused by 'animal spirits' (which is academic-speak for 'I dont have a clue'). Hayek on the other hand says it's caused by artificial low interest rates caused by government manipulation. The cure for the boom-bust cycle? Keynes: increase aggregate demand -- if consumers stop spending, the government should pick up the slack. Stimulus packages and bailouts are Keynesian solutions. Hayek's solution is to prevent the boom in the first place by letting interest rates go to their natural levels: what each individual making individual decisions determine the price of credit to be with no intervention from the State. No stimulus packages, no bailouts. If a company can't survive in the free market without government help, the government should not use public money to save it as this creates a moral hazard. Anyway, enough of that. Here's the video.

See also an earlier blog post: Boom!

AVATARIZE YOURSELF

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 10:39:00 +0000

The curse mascara all addition

noreply@blogger.com (Jego) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:06:00 +0000

Try to decipher these:

Dazzle intruder snore
Dazzle intruder snore Erehwon Norse often slay
Order feels wee gore lapping older whey
Bull zone bulb tales wing marking spear its bride
Wart funny tester lapping sinner slaying zone denied

Jungle bulls, jungle bulls, jungle hall Dewey
Oh wad fanny this deriding Erehwon Norse often slay, hey!
Jungle bulls, jungle bulls, jungle hall Dewey
Oh wad fanny this deriding Erehwon Norse often slay

Soil and gnat
Soil and gnat, hoary gnat
Holler scum, hollers blight
Randy on verging murdering chide
Hoary impasto tend erring mind
Sweeping evenly piss, sweeping evenly piss

Soil and gnat, hoary gnat
Share first wake adder side
Gory steam form having a fart
Evenly hostessing holler lawyer
Cries their savories burn, cries their savories burn

Soil and gnat, hoary gnat
Sun ergot, loaves perlite
Radian beans formed aioli pace
Weed adorn ovary demon glaze
Chases load a dive earth, chases load a dive earth

Would've dread dozed ranger
Would've dread dozed ranger header varies hiney doze
End of view nether shore at hewer divans harried globes
Holiday order rangers youths a lapping column aims
Dane ethernet poo would've journey nanny ranger gains

Denoument pocky curse massive, sander caned assay,
"Would've witcher nurser blight, wench egad masse denied."
Den hour deranger slow vim Asti shattered at wiggly
Would've dread doze ranger, yawl gird darning easterly