Thoughts on Education from Bonn

Bonn World Conference Center, Bonn, Germany: As the 700 delegates from 151 countries leave the conference plenary, a mixture of optimism and pessimism about the possibility of realizing the items enumerated in the declaration adopted by the plenary can be felt. The same can be said of the NGO conference I was part of last week where we also made our own declaration coming from the NGO perspective.

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Vegetarianism to End Global Climate Change?

A new global strategy that seeks to end global warming has been recently launched which leaves more questions than answers and has left meat lovers to environmentalists or just plain observers like me still perplexed and intimately curious. I have had the opportunity to partake in what is now known as World Meal program when I was in the Netherlands for the Development Summer School and so this is not the first time I heard of such reports and advocacy.

The main argument of the World Meal program essentially goes along the same way – that if people eat less meat and more vegetables, it is not only good for eradicating poverty and world hunger, but also good for mother earth. But are we ready to give up on our hamburgers and steaks? And as a friend curiously noted, strict vegetarian diet actually increases the incidence of flatulence. There goes the methane argument of the report…

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Musings in the Alps

Its been almost two weeks since I left the Philippines. A week in Development Education Summer School in the Netherlands rekindled my passion to do development work. The inspiration we all got from each other from participants coming from four corners of the world fuelled our imagination to do more and do better.

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When the Price is Rice – A Filipino Analysis of the Global Food Crisis

When I was a kid, we used to play this game where we do a parody of the famous US television game show “The Price is Right.” That was a time of childhood innocence and we usually let the losing bidder eat rice as much as he/she can until he/she gives up. It was hilarously funny then to do such a thing to a playmate. It is deplorable, if not immoral, now.

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Day of Reckoning in US, (How)Will it Hit the Philippines?

During one of our drive-thru conversations in Cagayan De Oro, I asked former Congressman Nereus Acosta about the possibility of the US recession hitting the Philippines. Today, a teaching colleague sent me via email an article by my favorite author Joseph Stiglitz scrutinizing just how this problem, which has gotten many in the world debating and worrying from some time now, is shaping up and how it is starting to shake things up.

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Why I am Campaigning For Mar Roxas in 2010

Why Mar Roxas? Lots of friends and acquiaintances ask. Well, why not?

Why Mar Roxas? Well, let me state one reason for now. There are many of course and these will be spelled out later — after I hear your reactions.

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Gaps in Nation’s Progress (GNP) in the Philippines

This is one of those times when I am not entirely happy being right. In my earlier post titled “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” I emphasized the general observation that while the Philippines is getting richer as a country, Filipinos in general are getting poorer.

Recent statistics from the National Statistics Office (NSO) as well as from the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) confirmed this depressing truth. Using recent statistics from the NSO, one can see that while the Gross National Product (GNP) — any modern nation’s barometer of progress — continues to  go up, family income as measured through Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) showed that Filipino families in general have been earning less for the past four years.

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Inday and the Left

Inday is making waves. And those from the left are not surfing.

In the recent Inquirer story, our friends from the left do not find the Inday jokes funny at all. I wonder what is Inday’s take on this latest attempt to discredit her growing popularity. Maybe Inday herself should explain why the left does not find her amusing. Taking note of one of Inday’s most recent encounters, my friend Sam Zarcas notes:

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