Thursday, March 20, 2014

Imelda(2013-61222)

Mañalac, Ed Joshua G.
Student Number: 2013-61222
Section: THY
Reaction on Imelda

                Have you ever wondered how Imelda made the people around her to believe her or how did Imelda influenced the people around her? The answer is simply because of her charismatic character. Maybe this is one of the reasons why Imelda thinks that everything she does is fine. Maybe this is also a reason why she gets everything she wants. Because of her, there is a great impact on the society of that time. If only the people have recognized and not fall under the charms of Imelda, then I think that the society from that time until now will be better.


                Because of this, I can say that the society of that time can fall under the hands of some powerful people. Because they fall under the hands of Imelda, many things happened but the most unforgettable thing is that our debt to the World Bank grew. If only we realized and had the courage to stand out then I think that the society will be much better than the society today.

Imelda reaction paper

Jayvee R. Marjes
2013-13902
THY

Imelda
Imelda Marcos was once the First Lady of the Republic of the Philippines. She was known for her elegance and beauty when she was a lot younger. She was a great example of beauty, elegance and charm. But despite of this, she can also be a model of power, greed and illusion.
As I watched the film about Imelda Marcos, only one thing comes in my mind; Imelda is very full of herself. Every line that she spoke irritated me, but it also made the whole class, including me, laugh. I think what made us laugh was her foolishness. She looked at herself as the woman of the Philippines, or the most valuable person in the Philippines. “Whenever I’m happy, the people are also happy.” This is one of lines of Imelda that I will never forget. This line already described what kind of a person she is.
But there is a part of the film that really made me laughed; the part where she explains her theory about cosmos and galactic order. She has a lot of symbols for different aspects of life such as peace, love, etc. These things made me laugh hard.
The film also talked about the killing of Ninoy Aquino. Up to now, I think Imelda is still clueless why a lot of people accused her and his husband, Ferdinand Marcos, criminals and the reason behind Aquino’s death. She explains that they won’t have anything to achieve and gain after killing Ninoy.

After watching the film, I can describe her in one word, a fool. She is not aware of the things that is happening around her, she only thinks of her well-being, she is very self-centered. And only a fool and a big-headed person will say this, “I am both a star and a slave; a star for the poor, and a slave for everyone else.”

Time travel

Jayvee R. Marjes
2013-13902
THY
Science of Time Travelling
            Time travelling has always been an issue in science. As time goes by, a lot of hypotheses and theories has been made on how we can travel in time. They have high hopes on achieving this kind of experiment. They’ve made a lot of experiments to know what we can do to travel in time or to control time. In the very end, scientists have made a conclusion; we can travel in time if can achieve a speed faster than light. But this phenomenon is not yet possible. We can’t barely reach the speed of sound, which is a lot slower than the speed of light. But I believe, our scientists will find a way to make this thing possible.
            I was amazed on how scientists form such hypothesis. This topic has really impressed me a lot. I’ve been really curious on how we can achieve the speed on light to prove their hypothesis. I’m getting excited how it will turn out. For now, they believed that we can make a disturbance in the 3-dimensional plane to go to a different dimension, which they thought will be the past and the present.

            With all of this hypotheses and theories on time travelling, I’m getting a lot more excited on the outcome. I want to see persons travel back or forward in time, or better yet, I want to travel in time myself. This would be a major breakthrough in the field of science, though it will took a lot of time for this to happen, maybe a decade, or a century. But I’m hoping that I will witness such breakthrough in my life.

Futurama Reaction

Jayvee R. Marjes
2013-13902
THY
Futurama
                Futurama is a comedy and a science fiction story about Fry, a delivery boy in the past. Fry was a loser. We can say that he didn’t have anything. He’s job was a bust, her girlfriend found a new one, and he didn’t have anywhere to go. Fry had a miserable life. After one day, he accidentally got himself into a freezing machine, freezing him for a millennium. And when he unfreezes, he was on the year 3000.
                Fry was enjoying what he saw on the year 3000, robots, high-tech vehicles, and a lot more. I think, the show is telling us that in the near future, we will also achieve this kind of inventions and economical state. With the help of technology, we will always progress. With the rate of development of our technology now, we can say that it will not be long before we can make those kinds of inventions.
                On Futurama, even though they have this kind of inventions and robotics, the people on that time lost their freedom, in a way that they can’t choice who they want to be. Each of them is assigned on a specific job without having any choices. Fry disgusts with this kind of law bestowed on the people of the future. And I think we can all agree on this. What is the use of high level of technology if we are the ones who will be slave under them, the ones who won’t get any freedom?
                As future scientists of this world, we are challenged by this show to make an ideal future, a lot better than that of the show; a future where we are free to choose what we want to be.

                

Living Through

Jeric B. Bonostro
2013-23838
STS THY Group 7
Reaction Paper: Rhetorics of Cancer

Cancer has been one of worst diseases suffered by the human race. It is dangerous, destructive and it still does not have a cure. Although it has already been discovered for a long time, it still only partially understood. The disease lives within the person. The person lives with it for the rest of his or her life. The person struggles everyday to fight it, to get cured and to liver longer. But when one says a person is battling it or fighting it, it sounds like the person is fighting himself as well. In the podcast of Rhetorics of Cancer, the speaker, Andrew Graystone,  talks about the language used to describe what cancer is. He does not  use fighting or battling cancer, rather, he refers to to having the disease as "living with cancer." Since he has also lived with cancer, he believes that one should not have to fight it. In this way, one does not need to fight what is within. One could live his life better by thinking that this disease is within him and lives him even if it kills him. Life is tough, it is tougher with cancer and I agree with Graystone that one does not need to look at it as a war against one's self but should see as something that one lives through.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

We Don't Know: A Reflection on The Rhetoric of Cancer

We Don’t Know
Nicah Santos
2012-63269

I never know how to act around and talk to cancer patients. Sickness is such a sensitive topic that I’m afraid of saying something that might offend people who have suffered or are suffering from it. I didn’t realize that cancer patients also go through the struggle of finding the right words to describe the ordeal they are going through to cope with it and talk about it. I haven’t thought about it much, but I now realize that the language of cancer is something worth discussing, just like Andrew Graystone did in the podcast “The Rhetoric of Cancer”.

While listening to what was discussed in the podcast, I noticed that people who have had a personal experience with cancer have a different perspective on the language of cancer compared to those who haven’t.

Those who haven’t had a close encounter with cancer, like the woman in the business of promoting cancer research, can be unintentionally insensitive in the way they talk it. They propagate the perspective of cancer as a battle or as a war. Others who promote this point of view are the friends and relatives of cancer patients. These people don’t intend to offend or bring discomfort, but somehow they do because they don’t know what it feels like to be in the patient’s situation. They think that “war” is an appropriate metaphor for the healing process of these patients because they see the illness only as an enemy. They have no way of understanding the emotions that a patient goes through, so they cannot really be blamed for their choice of words.

On the other hand, cancer patients and those who work closely with them, their doctors, view cancer on a more personal level. To them, cancer can be a companion that brings pain but also appreciation for life. It’s a part of their bodies, and they do not wish to wage war with their own bodies; they want to befriend their illness and say farewell. Patients find it helpful to view their cancer not as an evil, but as a part of life that they can overcome, an extra burden on an extra strong individual.

Doctors too, view cancer more benignly. Doctors find it beneficial for their research to perceive the illness as a mistuned instrument in an orchestra that they must tweak for the body to create beautiful music. They see how the cells in the body work. They don’t see a battlefield; they see the wonder of the body and a patient whom they must cure.


My main takeaway from the podcast is: in spite of our good intentions, we really have to be careful with our choice of words around patients. Let’s try to see the situation from their point of view and stop pretending we know what they’re going through. The best we can do is be there for them and listen to them so we can learn more about their struggle and appreciate how they want to treat their illness.

Hate is a Strong Word



Jeric B. Bonostro
2013-23838
STS THY Group 7
Reaction Paper: Imelda

There are some people who are just full of themselves. They are conceited and they think that everything is about them. Maybe they don't realize this and maybe the people around them have a fault in not pointing it out for them. Imelda was like this. Probably it was natural for her and she did not realize this. The worst thing about it is that she had charisma and people believed her. She was somehow able to influence the masses to succumb to give her what she wants. She was tolerated and this had a big impact to the society. It is just sad that for Imelda to be this “thing” in the media, people just let her get away with this. Society can really be weird sometimes.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Music, Science, and Me

Music, Science, and Me
Nicah Santos
2012-63269

I consider myself to be a musician. I’m a singer, and I sang in a choral group for 8 years before entering college. I’ve written a few songs in the past, and I’ve conducted my own choir. On the other hand, I also consider myself as a young lady with a scientific mind. I excel at the sciences; for some reason, I just GET it. However, I’ve never imagined that these two facets of my life could ever come together.

After the STS session on music and science, I think it makes a lot of sense for these two things to come together. After all, new mothers make their newborns listen to classical music to boost their IQs. Perhaps the greatest scientific minds in history were molded by music! I also think that music is cerebral. You need brains to create good music, as can be seen in Gustav Holt’s “The Planets”. Just like how a chemist needs to know how different elements react to each other, musicians need to know how notes and rests work with each other to create beautiful sound.


I especially liked listening to the full theme song of “The Big Bang Theory”. I’m an avid fan of that television series, and I memorize the first verse by heart. I was so pleased to hear that there was a continuation to the song! I think that song is a good example of how music can educate us on science, and how well they can work together to make a catchy song. What’s great about the song is that it’s scientifically accurate and gives the listeners something to think about. I can’t wait to download the full song myself and memorize that, too.

"Imelda" - A Reaction to the Steel Butterfly

What is Imelda Marcos made of? What irrational force made people love her unconditionally? What made them emulate her and disregard her questionable deeds?

It's charisma.

Imelda Marcos has always been known to be beautiful. She also knew (that's why she demanded a reconsideration when she was not awarded "Miss Manila"). She had natural charm, a mass-attracting magnet, a way with every person's heart. This was exactly the reason Marcos married her.

To put Imelda Marcos in either of two boxes labelled "good" and "bad" would be impractical. To judge her is also presumptuous. To weigh her actions to finally decide our verdict would make us question our basis for doing so, a basis which will be heavily affected by our bias and prejudice (But we are natural judges of people, and Imelda is a good subject, so we will continue).

The Marcos dictatorship is the main cause of the Philippines’ debt, brought about by massive borrowing of money from other states to serve Marcos cronies and “Imeldific” wants. Imelda was called an imitator for building all sorts of medical centres whenever there was one in other countries, and too extravagant for having thousands of shoes, costly jewellery, and numbers of clothes she’d only worn once. She was also famous for burying a lot of construction workers alive in her haste to get the Manila Film Center built. It was also said that the Marcoses ordered for the assassination of Benigno Aquino, Jr—an event which eventually sparked their ruin.

But alongside this was the order that Martial Law gave to the people, the low prices of commodities during their time, the building of these cultural centres and medical centres that are still in use today. Imelda lowered the birth rate by promoting contraceptives. She justified her actions of extravagance and her cultural buildings by saying that she was a natural lover of beauty, and she wanted the world to see the beauty of Filipino culture and art. Of course, a staunch hater would not be swayed by such words, but did Imelda actually believe what she said?

Apparently she did.

Mrs. Imelda Marcos, it seems, has a rather eccentric mind. When all around her was poverty, strife and dissatisfied citizens, she only chose to see beauty. She proved her arguments with drawings of overlapping, unrecognizable figures that according to her, ends in a symbol of peace. When she was stabbed with a bolo, she only thought “Why a bolo?” When she lived through it, she conjectured that God must have seen her goodness, and went on enumerating her works of charity. When she was asked about the dictatorship, she stood up for her husband, firmly attesting that they did nothing wrong. What made her think like that? Who is she?

Imelda was a child who went through poverty, grew through hunger and wearing sack dresses. She sold a diamond out of her dead mom’s necklace whenever they needed money. When Ferdinand noticed her, he married her after eleven days. She was the help Marcos needed to close off any diplomatic deal he had, and he enforced strict measures on her eating, her clothes, and the places she go to. Some even say that Ferdinand only gave in to her whims as a way of giving back whenever she was sent to Marcos’ associates.

Perhaps her life of poverty produced her peculiar thinking.  And her innate charm let her get away with it. A professor of mine who grew up in a household of two parents who actively opposed Marcos once sat across Imelda in the Marcoses’ dining table, and he forgot that he was supposed to hate the person. This was why she still appealed to the masses regardless of what she has done.


All in all, Imelda wasn’t totally good. She wasn’t completely evil either. Instead, she was a very curious mixture of charm, twistedness, and obliviousness. She is an enigma.

Music and Science reaction Paper

Student Number: 2013-68149
Music and Science Reaction Paper


            Who knew that music could be related to science? Most of us perceive scientists as nerds or people who actually do not do anything except study. But this lesson proved people wrong. Some of them actually used science as a tool to express their love for music and vice-versa.

            The orchestral pieces were good. Although to be honest, I did not really get the connection of the “astronomical/astrological” theme to the actual piece. And as times passed by, the “science and music” relation started to sound weirder. The songs’ lyrics actually talked about science and to tell you the truth, I found it quite funny. Maybe because it is quite different from the usual songs. Or maybe there was a generation gap since the songs today differ from that of yesterday.

            I realized that music and science are the same in terms of evolution. From the retro vibe of the 70’s to the “One Direction” music nowadays, music has truly evolved. Just like science, that went from the orchestral pieces to glam rock to the comedy TV show The Big Bang Theory.