"NGCP to Mindanao: Expensive or none."
What NGCP executive Edgardo Calabio is really explaining is how his crowd, various energy secretaries and all the other organizations which have a finger in the power pie, have failed in their job to develop Mindanao's natural power sources -- hydro, geothermal, etc -- and are now passing the buck and the cost onto the people.
And this shouldn't be. The government's cocked it up, the government should carry the can.
(Oh,and on Wednesday I discovered yet another power pie participant, Mera -- the Mindanao Electric Power Alliance. Any more out there?)
On Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning we all learnt about the results of the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) mock poll and here was a university spokesperson saying that we shouldn't read too much into the results because it was such a small percentage of the voting population polled.
Point taken, AdDU canvassed around 2000 individuals but wait a minute -- the much revered Social Weather Station regularly only polls 1200 people and yet puts out results which we all lap up as gospel. Why do we place so much faith in SWS ? We should instead be asking AdDU to produce more polls simply because they canvas a greater (Though not typical) percentage of the population.
Neil Honeyman now, fellow scribbler, commenting in general on ?The ignored man of Asia? (Us) and in particular on how "Properly priced computers, coupled with the necessary ongoing support, should revolutionize our educational system."
Don't agree there Neil. Computers and access to the web thingy do have a place in schools but shouldn't be treated as the be all and end all.
For a start I was amazed to find out how many pages are rip-offs of other pages. Word for word plagiarism without a credit in sight. And who's to say the original is right?
At one time I thought about writing a serious article about Magellan's first landfall in the Philippines from the mariner's point of view. I started digging away in reference books about the exploration of the Pacific Ocean, the explorers and Magellan himself. Inevitably I fired up the beast and asked Google.
Try yourself -- Google will come up with several million pages to look at and yet every one of them is ultimately sourced on only three publications contemporary to Magellan and none of them an original.
The second point is that computers kill curiosity. Students don't have to physically find out any more, one click and there's the answer to the most arcane of questions. What happens when that student goes out into the world and has to use his or her initiative? I'd say the answer is all around us.