August 10, 2009 – 8:18 am
I haven’t posted for sometime because of a busy schedule — nine hours a week as an MA Economics student, and six hours a week as a Math lecturer at the University of the Philippines. I applied for a teaching position, and was accepted, because I wanted to try out teaching ideas which came to [...]
For a new twist on the classic “Who’s on first?” Abbott and Costello dialogue, watch this video on Bush.
I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.
You can find the hilarious original Abbott and Costello dialogue here.
I’ve written several posts earlier about how I would teach math if I had a chance.
Well, I’ve been given the chance. When classses start June 16, I will be handling two Math 2 classes at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. I will be using the method I described in previous posts.
If you want [...]
Rep. Mark Cojuangco’s pet bill H.B. 6300 on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) has been scheduled by the House of Representatives for plenary debates when it reconvenes in July.
Incongruously, while the bill appropriates P100 million “for the conduct and completion of a validation/feasibility study to determine the viability of rehabilitating, commissioning and commercially [...]
[This response by Rep. Mark Cojuangco to earlier articles opposing the recommissioning of the BNPP was published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 6, 2009.]
Why we need Bataan nuclear plant now
I write in response to the erroneous remarks of Lea Guerrero, Roberto Verzola and Etta Rosales, in the Talk of the Town. (Inquirer, 3/15/09)
I [...]
Yes, I did try to teach algebra in 15 minutes, before a panel of about a dozen math professors at that of the University of the Philippines Institute of Mathematics.
In previous pieces, I had expressed frustration at the lecture-based method of teaching math and math-related subjects. Having gone back to school for an MA in [...]
According to a U.S.-based Brazilian literature professor who has expressed solidarity with Argentinian philosophy professor Horacio Potel (see the full Potel story here), the complete Derrida site of Potel is still available from the archiving project called Internet Archive. Hence, those who still want to access the Derrida site, which had been shut down by [...]
A move is afoot in the House of Representatives, initiated by Rep. Mark Cojuangco of Pangasinan, to rehabilitate for commercial operation the Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP). The BNPP has been sitting idle for the past 23 years, a monument to government corruption and nuclear folly.
The cost of rehabilitation has been estimated at $1 billion. [...]
The CopySouth Research Group (CSRG), an international network of activists and academics studying the impact on the global South of copyrights and related issues, has taken up the case of the philosophy professor whose Web site was shut down for posting Spanish translations of works by Jacques Derrida, the founder of “deconstruction”. Here is the [...]
Having become a student again, I recently got this urge to teach, and have been applying around for a teaching position. If I were to conduct a class in math (or a subject that uses math extensively), I’d keep reminding myself of the following, which all came to me sitting through lectures:
1. I’d choose a [...]
Major controversy has erupted after the French and Argentinian governments went after a philosophy professor for popularizing Spanish translations of philosophical texts. Prof. Horacio Potel is accused of violating “intellectual property rights” and faces a prison term of one month to six years. Much of the discussion is in Spanish and therefore inaccessible to the [...]
March 16, 2009 – 12:54 pm
This song is dedicated to all farmers who have successfully tried the System of RIce Intensification (SRI) and are now trying to convert their neighbors to the method. Sing to the tune of “Magtanim Ay Di Biro”.
Awit ng SRI-Pilipinas
isinulat ni Roberto Verzola
(sa himig ng Magtanim Ay Di Biro)
Refrain:
Halina, halina, mga kaliyag,
tayo’y magsipag-palay lahat.
Magbago tayo [...]
[A shorter version of this article was published on March 15, 2009 by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Talk of the Town Section, p.A14. I am posting here the full article as submitted. The portions left out by the PDI editors, presumably to fit the piece into the available space, are marked in blue.]
Rep. Cojuangco failed [...]
We must thank the Philippine Daily Inquirer for printing Rep. Mark Cojuangco’s article in their March 8, 2009 issue, Talk of the Town Section. In that article, Cojuangco publicly defends his position to rehabilitate the Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP) for recommissioning.
There are many questionable claims in Cojuangco’s Inquirer article. But I will only focus [...]
Last March 5, the Committee on Appropriations of the Philippine Congress approved an amendment to the proposed bill that will rehabilitate and recommission the mothballed Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP).
The amendment funded a “feasibility study” or “validation process” that will determine through technical, economic and financial studies if the BNPP can indeed by operated safely [...]
February 26, 2009 – 12:20 pm
Working Paper
Less wants mean more abundance
by Roberto Verzola, rverzola@gn.apc.org
If we make the realistic assumption that people can be satiated, saturated or satisficed when meeting their needs and wants, we can show that wants have a finite bound and are not “infinite”, as many economists tend to assume.1
If wants are finite and their satisficing levels can [...]
February 25, 2009 – 9:48 am
Rep. Mark Cojuangco of Pangasinan and Dr. Carlos Arcilla of the National Institute for Geological Sciences of the University of the Philippines (NIGS-UP), in their Feb. 2 presentations at the Congress hearing on the Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP), both claimed that the BNPP site had already been hit by an earthquake greater than magnitude [...]
February 25, 2009 – 8:54 am
At the Feb. 2 hearing in Congress, when Rep. Mark Cojuangco of Pangasinan defended his proposal to recommission the Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP), he claimed that no deaths have occurred in a nuclear power plant accident outside Chernobyl.
As a resource person in the same hearing, I had called his attention to this wrong information. [...]
February 24, 2009 – 2:04 pm
Rep. Mark Cojuangco of Pangasinan, sponsor of the bill that will rehabilitate for recommissioning the Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP), claims that electricity from a rehabilitated BNPP will be cheaper, although he hasn’t done any real feasibility study on the economic and financial aspects of BNPP rehabilitation.
What he cites are figures from countries like France, [...]
