Far From Neutral Notions - Philippine politics, culture and stuff

Image courtesy of PMJR’s Pugad Baboy, published daily on the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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Someday, probably, I’ll tell you a story. His story. The patriarch, the guerilla, the engineer, the public figure, the private man. Napoleon Altavas, but everybody always called him Poling. He was my grandfather. He was born on this day.

Someday I’ll tell the stories of his life, when I know them myself. He died when I was barely four years old, and the only vivid memory I have of him is of his funeral.

Happy Birthday Lolo.

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Author Lewis Perdue has been in the midst of a legal battle over alleged plagiarism and the best-selling DaVinci Code. Dvorak Uncensored.

According to John Olsson, Director of the Forensic Linguistics Institute, “this is the most blatant example of in-your-face plagiarism I’ve ever seen. There are literally hundreds of a parallels.” Amusingly, both novelists make the same factual error about the famous work. Da Vinci wrote the book - now known as “Codex Hammer” - on 18 double-sided sheets of linen loose-leaf paper. Perdue and Brown both mistakenly state that it was written on parchment. The New York Post.

Reading Perdue’s blog, it seems the similarities are significant, indeed, although I must admit I haven’t read Daughter of God, The Linz Testament, or the Da Vinci Legacy (all of which predate Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code). Seems as good a time as any, though; the synopsis can be found at the Da Vinci Legacy website.

It is interesting to note that the similarities aren’t merely thematic, as may be the case with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and any number of fantasy authors’ work (Terry Brooks’ Shannara series, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth, etc…) Aside from the similarity in the characters and specific scenes, Perdue argues that the very foundation of Code is taken from his series of books.

According to Random House, publisher of the Da Vinci Code, “Dan Brown and [Perdue] relied on the same historical documents and thus it would be reasonable for some parts to be similar,” (these historical documents being the Gnostic Gospels) to which Perdue replied: “The simple fact is that the version of history that I created by sampling various of the Gnostic Gospels cannot be found in any single Gnostic Gospel….The matters regarding the Gnostic Gospels that Brown used in his novel constituted my unique view of those Gospels. They are a synthesis created by me of matters from the Gnostic Gospels. My synthesis cannot be found in any single Gnostic Gospel. Furthermore, I embellished on matters found in the Gnostic Gospels. To the extent that Brown’s expressions are identical to mine, the conclusion is compelling that he could only have copied from me.”

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Hi, my name’s insert name, from insert company name, calling on behalf of another company name, and I’m an outsourced employee from the Philippines. Yes sir/ma’am, that often means I get paid less than folks with the same job on the other side of the Pacific, because we sell our labor cheap so we can get the jobs you gave to India and Mexico.

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Poodle, that wild and zany crepuscular hamster of mine, is spending some quality time with his adoring (and adorable) mumsy. From the way things are going, and by the amount of sunflower seeds Poodle seems to be consuming, I’m expecting a very fat and lazy Phodopus Sungoris Sungoris when it becomes my turn to take care of Poodle again I’m really glad they’re spending all this time together, and I can barely contain my grin when Jean starts to talk about how cute and fluffy and adorable Poodle is.

I’m a sucker for the adorable, what can I say?

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Pope Benedict XVI, officially in Latin Benedictus XVI, born Joseph Alois Ratzinger (Latin: Iosephus Ratzinger) (April 16, 1927), was elected Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005. As such, he is Bishop of Rome, rules Vatican City and leads the Roman Catholic Church including the Eastern Rite Churches in communion with the Holy See. He will be formally installed as pontiff during the Mass of Papal Installation on April 24, 2005. WikiPedia.

Though he has yet to explain his choice of names, some theologians speculate that Pope Benedict XVI is more inspired by the saint, rather than the previous pontiffs, that share his name. The previous Pope Benedict, XV, whose tenure was after the First World War, was known as a “reconciler” and “bridge builder”, so either way seems good with regards to which direction the new Pope wants the Catholic Church to take. Still, there are those who wonder whether he’s be more a pastor or enforcer. Centre Daily, Financial times, Star Tribune.

Some were lucky enough to hear the new Pope give the blessing “Urbi et orbi”. StephenCuyos.com.

It didn’t take the College of Cardinals long to elect the new pontiff, which pleased more than a few peoplen and surprised others. Maysville Online, ABC News Online.

Closer to home, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the Filipino Catholic Bishops hail Cardinal Ratzinger on his election as Pope Benedict the XVI. ABS-CBN News.

Called God’s Rottweiler by his critics, the new Pope is said to be a conservative and the ultimate Vatican insider, and is projected to continue along the same lines as his predecessor. News Telegraph, Guardian, Kansas City Star.

The only thing that put a damper on the good news is the possible health issue. He is, after all, 78 years old; had he been 80 he would not have been eligible for nomination as the supreme pontiff at all. The Aga.

Mixed Reactions

Barely a day into his Papacy, Pope Benedict XVI is already facing mixed reactions from conservatives and liberals alike. What looks like a tough job is just about to get tougher with everybody trying to second guess him. More liberal Americans would have wanted the new pontiff to be more open to change regarding the issues of abortion, women priests, divorce, and stem cell research. Which is something I never understood about liberal theologians: for the most part, they treat faith and religion as something that bends to their will (just as they expect everybody else to bend to their will), not the other way around.

Call me conservative if you will, but while the religion and organizational structure may be man-made, the object of that religion and faith (read: God) is not.

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Spammers are a pain in the neck; they can kill your email, blog, forum, guestbook, tagboard and just about anything that allows for any modicum of interactivity. Even if your blog has spam protection, like WordPress or MovableType, they can still slow down your site. Web email services like Yahoo! are terrible at filtering spam, and even GMail sometimes lets these pesky intruders in. Makes me want to scream, sometimes. And I have. I had to say goodbye to my share of Yahoo! mailboxes because of spam, and my previous blog as well.

There’s a plethora of information about how to combat spam, but don’t you sometimes wish you could just walk up to them and knock their teeth off? Well, here’s an open letter I came across, dedicated to all you spammers out there More power to this guy.

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I love Gary Larson’s The Far Side, and since my client’s too busy to approve anything I’ve done yet, I decided to spend some of that free time in this not so funny Anime/Far Side Tribute…

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I was late for work for the first time ever today. I hate coming in late, mostly because it means I’ll be going out late, too. In fact, I’d rather be absent than late, but sadly, that wasn’t an option. My body must have been trying to recapture the energy I lost - I’ve only had six hours of sleep in two days - and was making up for lost time. So anyway, I woke some time up past 7, to the ringing of my cellphone. Somebody at the office was trying to confirm if I was gonna be absent. I groggily opened my eyes and saw sunlight streaming through my windows, a phenomenon I’ve sadly become unfamiliar with. Needless to say, my first few words for the day were “Shit! Oh Shit” and some other choice expletives; the reasons being that I was late, and that I’d be dealing with my client from hell again.
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It’s nothing more than an odd coincidence that I picked up Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons a few days after the death of Pope John Paul II. After all, I didn’t even know what the book was about, or that it was by that guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code. Now over a week later, I’m almost halfway through Mr. Brown’s more famous book - the aforementioned Da Vinci Code - and I’ve started to notice a few startling things.

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