Apparently, I got a letter from Jesus! He has graciously thought to send me an invitation (via e-mail, I must add) to His Grand Party!

The Grand Party

As proof, here is His letter, copied verbatim:

Dear loved ones,

As you well know, we are getting closer to my birthday. Every year there is a celebration for my honor and I think that this year the celebration will be repeated. During this time there are many people shopping for gifts, there are many radio announcements, TV commercials, and in every part of the world everyone is talking that my birthday is getting closer and closer.

It is really very nice to know, that at least once a year, some people think of me. As you know, the celebration of my birthday began many years ago. At first, people seemed to understand and be thankful of all that I did for them, but in these times, no one seems to know the reason for the celebration. Family and friends get together and have lots of fun, but they don’t know the meaning of the celebration.

I remember that last year there was a great feast for my honor. The dinner table was full of delicious foods, pastries, fruits, assorted nuts and chocolates. The decorations were exquisite and there were many, many beautifully wrapped gifts. But, do you want to know something? I wasn’t invited. I was the guest of honor and they didn’t remember to send me an invitation. The party was for me, but when that great day came, I was left outside, they closed the door in my face …. and I wanted to be with them and share their table.

In truth, that didn’t surprise me because in the last few years, all closed their doors to me. Since I wasn’t invited, I decided to enter the party without making any noise. I went in and stood in a corner. They were all drinking; there were some who were drunk and telling jokes and laughing at everything. They were having a great time. To top it all, this big fat man all dressed in red, wearing a long white beard entered the room yelling Ho-Ho-Ho! He seemed drunk. He sat on the sofa and all the children ran to him, saying: “Santa Claus, Santa Claus” .. as if the party were for his honor!

At 12 Midnight all the people began to hug each other; I extended my arms waiting for someone to hug me and … do you know … no one hugged me. Suddenly they all began to share gifts. They opened them one by one with great expectation. When all had been opened, I looked to see if, maybe, there was one for me.

What would you feel if on your birthday everybody shared gifts and you did not get one? I then understood that I was unwanted at that party and quietly left.

Every year it gets worse. People only remember to eat and drink, the gifts, the parties and nobody remembers me. I would like this Christmas that you allow me to enter into your life. I would like that you recognize the fact that almost two thousand years ago I came to this world to give my life for you, on the cross, to save you. Today, I only want that you believe this with all your heart.

I want to share something with you. As many didn’t invite me to their party, I will have my own celebration, a grandiose party that no one has ever imagined, a spectacular party.

I’m still making the final arrangements. Today I am sending out many invitations and there is an invitation for you. I want to know if you wish to attend and I will make a reservation for you and write your name with golden letters in my great guest book. Only those on the guest list will be invited to the party. Those who don’t answer the invitation, will be left outside.

Be prepared because when all is ready you will be part of my great party.

See you soon.

I Love you!

Jesus

P.S. Please share this message with your loved ones, before Christmas

Well, I thought, since He was nice enough to think of me and send me a letter, I thought I should do what any decent moral person would do; Answer his letter!

So here’s my letter to Him:

Dear Jesus,

Thank You so much for Your letter and Your invitation! You do not know how thrilled I am to hear from You! And to see that I’ve been invited to The Grand Party!That is such an honor!

However, I must ask, why are You claiming that December 25 is Your birthday? I mean, weren’t shepherds out and about when You were born in Your manger? Obviously, it was nowhere near December at the time! Probably closer to April. Are You sure Your Virgin Mom and Foster Dad didn’t lie to You about Your date of birth? Don’t worry about the “virgin birth” thingy, I can keep a secret. Plenty of couples who get pregnant out of wedlock change the DOB of their babies too to cover it up, so there’s not much to be embarrassed about.

I have to ask, why are You saying that no one invites You to “Your” birthday parties? I’m sure there are plenty of nutjobs… err… I mean… devout followers out there who DO invite You to their parties. Many of them actually leave a plate on the table just for You! But the thing is, your space is ALWAYS empty. I’m just saying, maybe You’d get more invites to even more parties if You actually attended them. You complain about the Fat Man in the Red Suit getting all the attention, but in fairness, he actually makes it to MANY of the parties, unlike You.

Now You’re saying that since most people didn’t invite You to the parties (and remember, it’s You’re fault for never ever attending any of the parties in the first place), You’re going to get back at them by making a grand party of Your own, and send an invitation only to a select few? I mean, most of my friends DIDN’T get this invitation when I asked them. Honestly, are you too cheap to send out more invitations by yourself that you need us to do the legwork for you?They even looked at me like I was crazy or something when I said: “Did Jesus Christ send you an invitation to His Grand Party?” .

Don’t you think it’s a bit childish? Isn’t that how an eight year old kid would act? You’re over 2000 years old already, for your sake! Have you not mentally grown up at all? Now that I think of it, why should I waste time and energy to attend a party that most probably will never happen anyway? I mean, you’ve been talking of this “Grand Party” of yours for almost 2000 years now, and you’ve got jack shit to show for it.

Heck, this invitation of yours DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A FRICKIN’ DATE! Because of that, many of your followers have resorted to making up half-assed guesses for the date of your “Great Party”. The generation you promised this party for is long gone, and chances are, your party STILL wouldn’t happen even after this generation of waiting followers are long dead. I guess you like the feeling of stringing us along, don’t you?

You know what? To hell with it. You can cancel this “invitation” of yours and you can take that golden guest book of yours and shove it where the sun don’t shine. Consider this my RSVP.

Regards,

Harmless

P.S. Your Real Dad is an crazy, petty, egomaniacal, murderous, misogynistic, baby-killing, tyrannical a-hole with a personality disorder. Tell him to get professional help.

Do you know what a roller pigeon is, Barney? They climb high and fast, then roll over and fall just as fast toward the earth. There are shallow rollers and deep rollers. You can’t breed two deep rollers, or their young will roll all the way down, hit, and die. Officer Starling is a deep roller, Barney. We should hope one of her parents was not.

That was a line from the movie Hannibal, with Lecter talking about Clarice Starling.  A quick search at youtube for roller pigeons showed birds flying upward and then suddenly tilting back their heads followed by the rest of their bodies into a spontaneous tumble, cartwheeling down towards the ground.

I guess roller pigeons are interesting because they do something that is not essential to survival, unlike everything else birds do: hunting, nesting, migrating, and of course, mating. But rolling? It seems so naturally foolish. It does not exhibit the regular behavior of animals. Rather, it portrays the irregular behavior of people.

Ah people. Human beings. The ability to think in a significantly higher level than the other animals. And yet we do things that seem so unnecessary. But are they?

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. The classic line from Little Prince. Maybe some things are not really unnecessary after all. In a roller pigeon, what we see is a pointless tumbling down. But if we try to see with the heart, we can clearly see the joy and fun the pigeon is feeling while it rolls, a cocktail trio of adrenaline, dopamine, and endorphins rushing into its brain. Ah, such fun.

And the things people do for fun. A 1997 Time Magazine article on Dopamine was very informative about the reasons and explanations on the things people do for fun and joy. In a nutshell, it says that the neurotransmitter Dopamine is responsible for the very good and addictive feeling people get when they drink alcohol or take drugs – or when they win in a poker game or have a very productive day at work or have sex or fall in love. Dopamine is the feel-good chemical that can be activated by natural and chemical means. It should, however, be kept within limits because too much is just as harmful as too little, just as the offspring of two deep rollers tumble all the way down to the ground. Just like some people.

There are shallow rollers and deep rollers.

innerminds.wordpress.com

The premise: a problem

It has been said over and over again, as a defense or even as a backlash, by religious men and women that religion has a curative and comforting utility to humankind like no other. It has also been said over and over again by secular people and rationalists that however comforting some belief or idea is, it nevertheless adds nothing to the truth value of the belief or idea. That secularism offers nothing more than a skinny comfort blanket amidst the cold and pouring rain at best. That may well be true, and indeed it leads me to believe that it all boils down to what we really want: happiness or the truth. Happiness may not necessarily be true or what’s really happening, and having the truth may not necessarily make one happy. This conflict reminds me of the doggedly proverbial “The truth hurts” and The X-Files’ “The truth is out there”. This conflict also reminds me of the struggle in the movie The Matrix, wherein to know the truth, one has to be ‘removed’ from the confines of the complacency brought about by the virtual reality of the machines who have taken over. Once one has learned the truth, which involves living as a fugitive or freedom fighter wearing mostly ragged clothing near the center of the Earth, one is left to wonder if it would have been better to have stayed in the fantasy reality, even though it’s all make-believe. I guess it wouldn’t be so surprising considering the fact that human beings, like almost every other animal, are predisposed to follow what is certain to help in the continuation of its species. After all, speaking in ageological time scale, homo sapiens are but cells that have just fertilized, and are beginning to undergo cell division to form a larger animal.

The question

So then, if you will humor my ponderings, what could secularism possibly offer as an answer to one of the most profound questions we humans have asked since the dawn of our consciousness: What is death or what happens when we die? Do we survive death in some form or is there nothing after it?

Setting the mood

Quite a mouthful of questions, and ones that have plagued thinkers or philosophers for centuries upon centuries. But I think before I even begin to give my answer to those questions, a little ‘mood setter’ is in need. Some questions are too frank or too blunt in manner, which sometimes has the effect on the listener or the questioner of making one lose focus on the more relevant and apparent details. The mood setting quote is from the book Unweaving The Rainbow by prof.Richard Dawkins. It’s his reply to people who keep on ranting or complaining or fussing about their deaths. Everytime I read it, especially when I watched and heard prof. Dawkins read it with emotions in a talk at UC Berkeley, I cannot help but be moved by it’s message, wrapped around in romantic scientific prose:

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

And continuing this passage in his talk:

We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state, from which the vast majority have never stirred.

Makes one (or at least myself) wonder if we even have the right to feel anger or guilt or even sadness by our undeniable demise.

Physics on death

An episode of The X-Files has agent Mulder talking to agent Scully about starlight. He says that starlight as we see it here on Earth is already billions of years old, and has traveled unimaginable distances (light-years). Stars that are now long dead, but whose light is still traveling through time. Mulder continues that perhaps that’s where souls (our souls, after we die) reside. Today, we know from physicists that the premise is correct (that starlight is very old and still keeps on traveling), but we can’t be certain (or perhaps not at all) about the succeeding statement of Mulder (about souls). Scully, Mulder’s partner, continues Mulder’s statements by saying that the light doesn’t die, and that maybe that’s the only thing that never does. Speaking in a purely Einsteinian fashion when dealing with spirituality and such, perhaps our ’souls’ do reside in starlight, and in that sense our ’souls’ do continue on forever.

Mulder’s statement

Taking the first statement into consideration, that ’souls’ do reside in starlight, to be technical about it, we can probably say that it’s actually not starlight in our case but ‘planetlight’. We know that in order to see an object we have to shine light on it, after which the light bounces back, illuminating the object, back to our eyes. In the same sense, the Sun illuminates Earth at daytime, and at nighttime the Moon or our electrical/electronic devices light us up and our surroundings. In that sense light is shined on us, and so it is reflected back, which eventually reaches outer space and into the vast cosmos. In this way our ’souls’ which in this case means our whole lifetime under some source of light, is ‘framed’ in a ‘wave’ of light cruising the universe. If there are intelligent lifeforms out there in the universe and they can’t come here due to technological constraints (same as our case), once they try viewing our part of the universe, what they’ll be seeing is planetlight (which is reflected starlight, the star being our Sun or light from some other source) containing us, our lifetimes, and our history. What they’ll be seeing of course depends on many factors such as how far they are from us, how sensitive their viewing instruments are, what time they tried viewing us, among other things.

Scully’s statement

As for Scully’s statement, that starlight doesn’t die, technically speaking that can be true, since as long as photons don’t get smashed or absorbed, they keep on travelling in space, most likely till the edge of the universe and (our) time itself. However there is a limit to how long light can travel for one to be able to ‘reconstruct’ the data (in this case our ’souls’) it carries with it. This is because as light travels, similar to a wave, it spreads across time and space. As the light spreads, at some point in the universe very distant from the light source, it will be nearly to absolutely impossible to know what information that light brought with it. In a word, the light will be too ’stretched’ to make any sense out of it. This is similar to research being done on the Big bang. We are in an epoch of the universe where we can still study ‘cosmic background radiation’ (electromagnetic radiation, same as light) leading back to the Big bang. If we were a few millions of years late, we might not be able to analyze the data that comes along with the cosmic background radiation. And so Scully is partially correct since light can possibly not die, but the information in the light may become lost to us or someone viewing us.

Finally, physics on immortality

In essence, our ’souls’, most of our memories, achievements, feats, and other things in our light-stricken lives continue to propagate into inter-stellar space. The propagation duration many orders of magnitude longer than any of our lifetimes combined, which could be treated as practically infinity, and in some ways, immortality.

Originally posted last September 16, 2008 at f241vc15.wordpress.com.

This was the scene last year in the Capitol of Washington State. Personally i applaud the handful of atheists who launched a counter-rally against the Christians, risking their security in the face of a literal mob of angry fundies.

RSVP

Time:

• December 19
• 1pm to sawa (sawa is probably 2am)

Location: Makati City

• Unit 16A Tower 1,
• Salcedo Park Condominium,
• 121 HV De La Costa Street, Salcedo Village, Makati City
• Google Map Coordinates: 14.561729, 121.024359 (Map below)
  

Food: Pot Luck (details in the forum)

Expected Turnout: 30ish

Crash Option: available (but limited to mats, and couches)

Host: Justin Aquino (Inquiries; post on the forum)

Activities:

• Meet Up
• Have Fun
• Celebrate Life

Activities:

• Wii Games
• IQ and Trivia Games
• Improvisational Games

View Larger Map

Two stories. A well-meaning friend of mine hurt me badly this year when she said, after I shared that my marriage was over and I was getting an annulment – “Leons, you know it still means you can’t ever get married”. First thought that popped to mind was – “What?! You’re going to consign me to a life of solitary confinement, of being alone till the end of my days, coz I made one lousy mistake?!”.

Fast forward to another close friend telling me last week: “What’s the point of getting an annulment if I’m not getting married again?!”

I could speak volumes about this topic. And believe me I will. Or rather what could fit in one Facebook note.

I’m not getting an annulment because I want to get married again. I’m getting an annulment because I want a legal document stating my marriage is over. I want my name back. I want the assurance that no man has ever the right to dictate the way I live my life. I want to be free from his clutches. I want not to have to submit myself to anyone ever again. I’m doing this for myself and not for anyone else.

So of course I don’t want to get married. Why should I, when the only marriage I’ve known is one where I knew so much misery and pain for eight long years. For this is what I’ve known marriage to be:

A regimented life. It’s about being at home at a set time so one can fit into the image of a perfect wife. Women in this century have it far worse: they’re also expected to put food on the table (work during the day) and be Suzy homemaker when they get home. It’s doing the laundry, and the housework, taking care of the kids, dealing with dirty diapers and midnight feedings.

Being used. You can’t let me talk about marriage and not talk about sex. After all, marriage is the only arena where it is socially acceptable to have sex. It’s a bit hypocritical to tell women they have to say no to men when sexual overtures are made when they’re single, and then say, you can’t tell your husband “No” when you’re married (as a best-selling Christian book on marriage advised). Most nights it was just easier to say yes than to have to endure a grumpy husband for days on end.

Subjugating one’s needs for the other. Marriage is about putting your needs on the shelf, and relegating yourself to a far priority. It’s keeping your dreams on a leash so you won’t have your husband think he’s being overshadowed by you. It’s living Sandra’s life in Barry’s popular song: “I wanted to be like my mother But if I hadn’t done it as soon as I did Oh there might have been time to be me For myself, for myself There’s so many things that she wishes She don’t even know what she’s missin’ And that’s how she knows that she missed.”

So yes, that’s why I’m running scared. And I think I have every right to be.

Perhaps someday I’ll know marriage could be more than this — that it’s about sharing a life, bearing financial burdens together, having someone to be there when you panic when your daughter breaks her arm, or your autistic son falls down, hits his head and is rushed to the hospital. It’s making dreams come true, and growing old and having someone hold your hand. But that’s still a concept of marriage I’m altogether unfamiliar with.

Maybe someday.

The FF will be having its First Regional Meet-up in Davao City.

Meet-up agenda:

• Introductions
• Inspirational talk by Mikong, Ambassador for Davao
• Miscellaneous discussions related to freethought and the vision/mission of the FF and FF Davao
• Others (suggestions please)

Harley Blvd. Motor Cafe serves burgers: P60 for the ‘regular’ cheeseburgers with half-inch thick patties and P90 for their big burgers with 1-inch thick patties. They also serve rice and Filipino dishes. Most important of all, they serve beer and hard liquor.

Generally we’ll go dutch, but it would be nice if those financially-able freethinkers would add a little more to their share of the bill to lighten the load of our less-wealthy freethinking brothers and sisters.

After about two hours at Harley Blvd. we could transfer to Lyndon’s (along Roxas Ave.) and continue our bonding (and drinking) there while feasing on seafood and other pulutan (baked scallops, barbeque ribs, crayfish, grilled tuna belly, sashimi, etc.). Again, although we’ll generally go dutch, I would like to request the wealthier members to take care of some of the pulutan, which are very cheap at Lyndon’s by the way. I’ll personally sponsor 2 kilos of scallops.

We’ve been discussing this at the FF forum. If you have other suggestions, you may post it there.

Here’s what the presidentiables think about the RH bill.

Here’s Ryan giving a Solidarity Statement from the Filipino Freethinkers at Gay Pride 2009.

“The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another’s labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live.”
- Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

It was in March that I first wrote about the “irregularities” I experienced as a medical resident in training in the hospital.  Perusing the post, I feel that I’ve stated much of my views already on what is needed to be corrected in the system.  And in a way, a lot of events have already occurred since then.  Sadly, however, nothing much have changed.

A number of unaccomplished discharge summaries are still there.  It took several months of having to stay overtime just to finish writing and even asking help from other co-residents.  An agreement was made that the more senior residents can help the junior residents finish the number of charts, in time for the next Philhealth accreditation, provided that a certain amount of the junior residents’ salaries will be split among those who helped write the discharge summaries.  A large volume of the unaccomplished charts soon diminished and it was, for a time, fair and well, as the junior residents begin receiving again their monthly salaries.  However, because we still continue with our duties (everyday 8 hours or more in the hospital and 24 hours every 3 days), the charts began piling up again.  Some had to resort to “other means” just to finish writing the charts.  However, I do not have financial means to go that way.  So I remain buried in those unaccomplished charts, and currently, without salary. My ATM card (the one used to receive salary from the hospital) was blocked and they did not even consider that I STILL HAVE THE REST OF MY MEAGER SALARY OF THE PREVIOUS MONTHS IN IT THAT I HAVEN’T WITHDRAWN AND OF WHICH I’VE ALREADY RIGHTFULLY RECEIVED.  And the 13th month pay, which is not actually a salary, but a bonus, IS ALSO PUT ON HOLD.   The condition, of course, for being able to get back all these “benefits” is that I should finish all said charts.

But what is it again that I’ve read in the Labor Code?

In Presidential decree no. 851, Section 10:

Sec. 10. Prohibition against reduction or elimination of benefits. – Nothing herein shall be construed to authorize any employer to eliminate, or diminish in any way, supplements, or other employee benefits or favorable practice being enjoyed by the employee at the time of promulgation of this issuance.

I’m certainly not a lawyer, however, I think that’s already a clear statement that the 13th month pay, for no reason, should be put on hold.  And to put this in perspective, the charts isn’t the summation of a medical residents work; it is only a menial part of it, done to provide the hospital the means to its insurance claims.  It would be fine by me, getting buried in all this chart work, if only we weren’t also burdened with the things that isn’t part of our job, like the job of interns.  Rumor has it that soon, we’ll be part-time medical technologists too, at the ER, because the hospital is planning to buy a laboratory equipment that enables one to run lab tests with results in minutes.  Okay, so the hospital is so much willing to shell out a few hundred thousand pesos for this one tiny machine, but isn’t willing to expand its laboratory staff and would rather put on the additional burden on medical residents (which is helped by the fact that we come in almost FREE of charge since we don’t get paid for work outside the job description)?

Do I really need to emphasize the reason for undergoing specialty training?  IT IS BECAUSE WE WANT TO LEARN A SPECIALTY, NOT END UP DOING EVERYBODY ELSE’S JOBS BECAUSE THE HOSPITAL DOESN’T WANT TO PAY FOR THEM.

However, I think the strongest argument by the hospital, so far, is that residents-in-training are just trainees, not employees.  In section 15 of Rule X of Conditions of Employment, it was said:

SECTION 15. Resident physicians in training. — There is employer-employee relationship between resident physicians and the training hospital unless:
(1) There is a training agreement between them; and
(2) The training program is duly accredited or approved by the appropriate government agency.

And thus, as the medical director said, “you are just trainees (insert sarcasm here).”

I think there is much confusion still as to the right status of resident physicians in training and this should be resolved soon.  It affects much the way the training hospitals treat their resident physicians.  The work is almost 24/7 and it’s more than definite that the absence of resident physicians in such training hospitals would greatly affect the hospital business.  Who would attend to patients in critical condition in the ward or at the ER?  A house or ER officer?  The hospital do not even want to pay the salaries of residents.  What more of an ER consultant?  Who can update consultants regarding the status of their patients in the ward?   And yet, we, residents, are considered “just trainees”?

However, as I’ve said in the first part of this Hospital Slave series (yes, I think this is going to be a series), nobody has raised this issue in the proper forum.  Although Batanes Representative Dr. Carlo Diasnes has authored a house bill aimed at managing medical residency in the country (HB 05222 or Medical Residency Act of 2008), it is still pending at Committee of Health since October 2008 and nothing has been heard of it since.

Is this because the current system of enslaving the younger doctors in training more beneficial to health care?  Is this a rampant practice or just limited to several hospitals?  Are they forgetting that we’re already LICENSED medical doctors?  Licensed professionals?

So, for now, stop wondering why some doctors would choose to shift to a different career, health-related or not.  It’s not selfishness; it’s a means to survival.

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo amongst the Freethinkers over the Reproductive Health Bill being stopped dead on its tracks because of the meddling of the Catholic Church.  And why not?  It’s not everyday (or maybe it is) the Church manages to run over “Secular” and “Humanist” at the same time.  Now everyone’s practically screaming about how overpopulated the country is and how people should stop making babies they can’t feed.  Fact is, however, population control isn’t a one-shot solution for poverty (which is really the heart of the matter).  It’s only PART of the solution.

Poverty is a rather complex beast and solving it is no simple matter.  In fact there are volumes of books dedicated to the issue and it’s practically an entire course in Development Management.  Luckily, it’s very nicely illustrated in this little gem that I found called Ayiti: The Cost of Life.  In the game, you control the lives of Jean, Marie, Patrick, Jacqueline and Yves – a small family in Haiti struggling to for a better life. It’s amazing how complicated it still is considering that it’s meant to be a simplified model of real life. Go ahead and attempt to beat it.

In the game, you’ll find yourself balancing the health, wealth and education of each family member. The goal is to reach a steady income level with enough security to withstand sickness, epidemics and natural disasters. The key to winning is to squeeze in as much education and productive investments while keeping the family healthy and financially afloat. It’s no small task.

Now why does this matter? Because while we rally for Secularism and push for an enlightened society free from religious dogma, we can never really pull it off while a quarter of our countrymen are starving.  The Catholic Church is interferes simply because it can.  They are no different from the wealthy, or the powerful, or the influential asserting themselves.  We all know they shouldn’t, but they do it anyway.  And they will continue to do so while the general public supports them.  And general public will continue to support them as long as they are hungry and uneducated.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theorizes that until a man’s basic needs are met (the bottom rung), he will not be motivated to seek self-actualization (the top rung).  That is the difference between Our World and the First World – they have full stomachs to think about the bigger, heavier things.

That being said, our priority should already be clear – to raise the quality of life of Filipinos.  Easier said than done, certainly, which is why Secularism will have to take a back seat.  The RH Bill is only a small battle in a much larger war against poverty, and should we lose it, there would still be so much to do. Indeed, there is still so much we CAN do regardless.

from the mailing list:

The Philippine Science Centrum is currently conducting workshops for science teachers on using everyday materials to create science experiments. This Saturday (Dec. 12) the topic will be on creating exhibits (a la Science Centrum) using household items. They are inviting bloggers to join in the afternoon session to observe and participate. If anyone is interested, please send an email to cognitioncreative at gmail dot com or psalamat at gmail dot com.

Here are some pictures from the recent Pride March held last Saturday. Enjoy!

See? I told you if you look and examine really close, that God most likely doesn’t exist. Now let’s do something more productive with our lives eh?

Finally, here’s a wonderful quotation from George Smith:

“It is not my purpose to convert people to atheism…(but to) demonstrate that the belief in God is irrational to the point of absurdity. If a person wishes to continue believing in a god, this is his prerogative, but he can no longer excuse his belief in the name of reason and moral necessity.”

– George Smith, Atheism- The Case Against God