The Iloilo City contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about P45,000: P20,000 for materials, P20,000 for my crew and P5,000 profit for me."
The Mindanao contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, I can do this job for P35,000: P15,000 for materials, P15,000 for my crew and P5,000 profit for me."
The Manila contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the Malacañang official and whispers, "P135,000."
The official says, that's incredulous, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"
The Manila contractor whispers back, "P50,000 for you, P50,000 for me, and we hire the guy from Mindanao for P35,000 to fix the fence."
Anonymous Author
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Federal Fol-de-rol
By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on April 28, 2008
For the Standard Today,
April 30 issue
My American Heritage Dictionary defines 'fol-de-rol' as 'foolish talk or procedure, or nonsense.' And that is what this recurring advocacy for federalism is: foolish talk and nonsense.
Senate Minority Leader Nene Pimentel is principal author of a Senate resolution calling for a debate on Charter Change (again), for a revision of the Constitution to shift from a unitary to a federal system of government. And Pimentel wants this debate to happen before the presidential elections in 2010.
The resolution was signed by eleven other senators: Senate President Manny Villar, and Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Francis Pangilinan, Edgardo Angara, Rodolfo Biazon, Pia Cayetano, Juan Ponce Enrile, Francis Escudero, Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson Jr.., and Ramon Revilla Jr.
The resolution seeks to convene both Houses of Congress into a Constitutional Assembly (ConAss) to amend the Constitution before the end of President Arroyo's term in 2010. It seeks to convert the
country into a federal union of 11 states: Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Minparom (Mindoro, Palawan, Romblon), Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, Southern Mindanao and BangsaMoro.
The motivation supposedly is "to spur economic growth." The implication is that economic growth is not possible, or is not fast enough, under a unitary state..
This is a lot of nonsense. The empirical evidence is that of the most successful countries in East and Southeast Asia, only one – Malaysia – is a federal union. The others – Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand – are all unitary states. So, contrary to what Nene Pimentel and his 11 apostles apparently believe, economic progress – even spectacular economic progress, in the cases of Japan, China and South Korea – is achievable and has been achieved under unitary states..
In fact, it can be argued that if Japan had chosen to become a federal union in the 19th century, ruled as it was by dozens of land-owning daimyos or feudal lords with their armies of samurai warriors, it would have been mired in endless civil wars, as it in fact was, between the competing daimyos, and would not have morphed into a world power.
Fortunately for the Japanese, the Tokugawa shoguns, who had been in power since 1598, were finally replaced with the restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1867. Under the unifying leadership of Emperor Mutsushito and a strong centralized unitary state, Japan became an industrialized world power.
Japan defeated a weak China in 1895, annexing Formosa (now known as Taiwan) and Korea as a result of that victory, defeated Russia in 1905, entered World War I on the side of the Allies, and then challenged those Allies in World War II. Japan remains a unitary state to this day, the second biggest economy in the world for decades, until it was overtaken in the last few years by China, another unitary state.
China itself remained a weak state even after it became a republic under Sun Yat-sen in 1912. As in medieval Japan, China – under the Mongol-based Manchu dynasty which had ruled the majority Han Chinese since 1644 – was racked by endless internal wars between competing feudal warlords. Even Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang, who came to power in 1928, were not able to unify China.
It was the strong leadership of Mao Ze-dong and the unitary state under the Chinese Communist Party that finally united the Han Chinese and gave them a sense of nationhood that was absent for centuries. And it was the re-embrace of capitalism and the profit motive, starting in 1979, by the pragmatist Deng Xiao-ping, that propelled China to its present pre-eminent status as an economic super-power.
Pimentel and his 11 apostles should also know that the empirical evidence is that archipelagic countries, of which there are only three – Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines – are unitary states, rather than federal unions, for pragmatic reasons. Being made up of islands, they would be vulnerable to centrifugal forces if they were to spin off into federal unions.
The example of Japan is cited above. Indonesia would likewise be threatened with disunity. The Indonesians have already lost predominantly Roman Catholic East Timor. It managed to keep rebellious Aceh. There are separatist movements brewing in Irian Jaya, Manado and Kalimantan, and predominantly Hindu Bali would also likely spin off, if the Indonesians were stupid enough to change to a federal union.
Pimentel and his 11 apostles ignore or are not even aware of the fact that nations keep the political system that they started out with. They just try to make it better as the decades roll along.
Can Pimentel and his 11 apostles cite even one example in the last 60 years of a country that switched from a unitary state to a federal union, or from a federal union to a unitary state? Or from the presidential to the parliamentary system, or from parliamentary to presidential? And suddenly achieved elusive prosperity as a result of that switch? They can't because there isn't any..
Even the federal union that was Yugoslavia broke up into pieces – Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the death of its founder, Marshall Tito. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in that break-up, as the majority Serbs tried to keep the federal union intact, the bloodiest genocide in Europe since WWII.
I am not aware of any country that can serve as an inspirational model for the Philippines. There were cases where the change was forced by revolution or invasion, such as the nations of Eastern Europe switching from parliamentary to a communist system after they were overrun by the Soviet Army in 1945-48, then switching back to parliamentary after their communist regimes collapsed in 1989.
The empirical evidence is that nations keep the political system that they started out with. In the 1980s, there was a move in the Indian parliament to shift to a presidential system,, but the move did not prosper. The Israelis also amended the Westminster parliamentary model by having one of their prime ministers (Binyamin Netanyahu) elected by popular vote, instead of by the majority party in parliament, but they did not shift to the presidential system.
Russia is slowly creeping from a presidential system to parliamentary. But this is just to allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power as prime minister after his non-extendable presidential term ended last March. Which, as I wrote in a column in late 2007, may be the model that President Arroyo may follow to remain in power beyond 2010'
Supposedly oppositionist Pimentel would ironically be setting the stage for this to happen by pushing for ChaCha before the presidential elections of 2010. The Gloria in excelsis Dado chorus in Congress would likely interject: "Since we are debating federalism, we might as well debate parliamentary also." Some people are so naïve..
Pimentel and his 11 apostles are no doubt motivated by patriotic reasons when they advocate a shift to a federal union "in order to spur economic growth." But economic growth is a function of economic strategies, not of political systems. Our GDP grew by 7.3% in 2007 under our unitary state, better than the growth of Malaysia under its federal union.
Of course, Malaysia has been out-performing the Philippines in previous decades. But Malaysia has also been out-performed during those decades by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all unitary
states.
The relative economic failure of the Philippines, compared to its neighbors, is examined in detail in my article Why Are We Poor? (Dec. 14, 2004):
http://www.geocities.com/dapat_tapatt/whyarewepoor.html .
In a nutshell, we are poor because a) in the late 1950s our Congress passed a Minimum Wage Law, which discouraged American firms from setting up factories here in the 1960s, preferring instead Hong Kong and Taiwan where wages, believe it or not, were lower than in Manila and where there was - and still is - no minimum wage law;
b) in the 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods, which was the basis for their industrialization. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of South Korea amounted to $326.0 billion, Singapore $283.6b; Taiwan $215.0b; the Philippines only $47.2b.
c) in the 1980s, Malaysia, Thailand and Suharto's Indonesia followed the example of the original Four Asian Tigers and also geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of Malaysia totaled $158.7b; Thailand $123.6b; Indonesia $102.3b; the Philippines only $47.2b. There is always a penalty for being late..
d) in the 1990s, most of Southeast Asia rode a tourism boom. The Philippines did not. In 1991, Indonesia and the Philippines drew one million tourists each. In 2007, Indonesia was attracting six million tourists, the Philippine barely managed three million. Vietnam, long a tourism laggard because of its war-ravaged infrastructure, drew 4.2 million tourists in 2007, overtaking the Philippines. Watch out for tiny Cambodia: it took in two million tourists last year.(Thailand
attracted 13 million tourists, Malaysia 16 million in 2007.)
e) even with its weak manufacturing sector caused by its failure to industrialize like its neighbors, the Philippines – led by President Ramos and Senator Gloria Arroyo - foolishly embraced free trade and globalization, even ahead of fully developed South Korea and Taiwan, causing many domestic producers to retrench or close shop in the face of unlimited imports, and throwing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos out of work, forcing them to look for jobs overseas.
f) even with a weak average GDP growth rate of less than 3.5% per annum from 1983 to 2003, the Philippine government, except under President Ramos, failed to take measures to control its population, which grew by an average of 2.5% during the same period, leaving very meager economic gains, especially for the poorest of the poor.
In 2006, our population growth rate has dropped to 1.91%. But look at our competitors: Malaysia 1.76, Indonesia 1.34, Vietnam 1.04, Thailand 0.66, China 0.65, Singapore 0.48, South Korea 0.39, Taiwan 0.24. (All statistics are from the 2008 World Almanac and Book of Facts).
Because of poor, even stupid, economic strategies and policies, the Philippines has lost out to its neighbors, both in the ability to earn income for its people, and in the ability to conserve and spread that meager income to a rapidly multiplying population.
That in a nutshell is the economic picture of the Philippines in the last 50 years. Any claim that this can be remedied simply by amending the Constitution to switch from a unitary state to a federal union is a lot of bull. Fol-de-rol. *****
Written on April 28, 2008
For the Standard Today,
April 30 issue
My American Heritage Dictionary defines 'fol-de-rol' as 'foolish talk or procedure, or nonsense.' And that is what this recurring advocacy for federalism is: foolish talk and nonsense.
Senate Minority Leader Nene Pimentel is principal author of a Senate resolution calling for a debate on Charter Change (again), for a revision of the Constitution to shift from a unitary to a federal system of government. And Pimentel wants this debate to happen before the presidential elections in 2010.
The resolution was signed by eleven other senators: Senate President Manny Villar, and Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Francis Pangilinan, Edgardo Angara, Rodolfo Biazon, Pia Cayetano, Juan Ponce Enrile, Francis Escudero, Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson Jr.., and Ramon Revilla Jr.
The resolution seeks to convene both Houses of Congress into a Constitutional Assembly (ConAss) to amend the Constitution before the end of President Arroyo's term in 2010. It seeks to convert the
country into a federal union of 11 states: Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Minparom (Mindoro, Palawan, Romblon), Eastern Visayas, Central Visayas, Western Visayas, Northern Mindanao, Southern Mindanao and BangsaMoro.
The motivation supposedly is "to spur economic growth." The implication is that economic growth is not possible, or is not fast enough, under a unitary state..
This is a lot of nonsense. The empirical evidence is that of the most successful countries in East and Southeast Asia, only one – Malaysia – is a federal union. The others – Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand – are all unitary states. So, contrary to what Nene Pimentel and his 11 apostles apparently believe, economic progress – even spectacular economic progress, in the cases of Japan, China and South Korea – is achievable and has been achieved under unitary states..
In fact, it can be argued that if Japan had chosen to become a federal union in the 19th century, ruled as it was by dozens of land-owning daimyos or feudal lords with their armies of samurai warriors, it would have been mired in endless civil wars, as it in fact was, between the competing daimyos, and would not have morphed into a world power.
Fortunately for the Japanese, the Tokugawa shoguns, who had been in power since 1598, were finally replaced with the restoration of the Meiji Emperor in 1867. Under the unifying leadership of Emperor Mutsushito and a strong centralized unitary state, Japan became an industrialized world power.
Japan defeated a weak China in 1895, annexing Formosa (now known as Taiwan) and Korea as a result of that victory, defeated Russia in 1905, entered World War I on the side of the Allies, and then challenged those Allies in World War II. Japan remains a unitary state to this day, the second biggest economy in the world for decades, until it was overtaken in the last few years by China, another unitary state.
China itself remained a weak state even after it became a republic under Sun Yat-sen in 1912. As in medieval Japan, China – under the Mongol-based Manchu dynasty which had ruled the majority Han Chinese since 1644 – was racked by endless internal wars between competing feudal warlords. Even Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang, who came to power in 1928, were not able to unify China.
It was the strong leadership of Mao Ze-dong and the unitary state under the Chinese Communist Party that finally united the Han Chinese and gave them a sense of nationhood that was absent for centuries. And it was the re-embrace of capitalism and the profit motive, starting in 1979, by the pragmatist Deng Xiao-ping, that propelled China to its present pre-eminent status as an economic super-power.
Pimentel and his 11 apostles should also know that the empirical evidence is that archipelagic countries, of which there are only three – Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines – are unitary states, rather than federal unions, for pragmatic reasons. Being made up of islands, they would be vulnerable to centrifugal forces if they were to spin off into federal unions.
The example of Japan is cited above. Indonesia would likewise be threatened with disunity. The Indonesians have already lost predominantly Roman Catholic East Timor. It managed to keep rebellious Aceh. There are separatist movements brewing in Irian Jaya, Manado and Kalimantan, and predominantly Hindu Bali would also likely spin off, if the Indonesians were stupid enough to change to a federal union.
Pimentel and his 11 apostles ignore or are not even aware of the fact that nations keep the political system that they started out with. They just try to make it better as the decades roll along.
Can Pimentel and his 11 apostles cite even one example in the last 60 years of a country that switched from a unitary state to a federal union, or from a federal union to a unitary state? Or from the presidential to the parliamentary system, or from parliamentary to presidential? And suddenly achieved elusive prosperity as a result of that switch? They can't because there isn't any..
Even the federal union that was Yugoslavia broke up into pieces – Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the death of its founder, Marshall Tito. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in that break-up, as the majority Serbs tried to keep the federal union intact, the bloodiest genocide in Europe since WWII.
I am not aware of any country that can serve as an inspirational model for the Philippines. There were cases where the change was forced by revolution or invasion, such as the nations of Eastern Europe switching from parliamentary to a communist system after they were overrun by the Soviet Army in 1945-48, then switching back to parliamentary after their communist regimes collapsed in 1989.
The empirical evidence is that nations keep the political system that they started out with. In the 1980s, there was a move in the Indian parliament to shift to a presidential system,, but the move did not prosper. The Israelis also amended the Westminster parliamentary model by having one of their prime ministers (Binyamin Netanyahu) elected by popular vote, instead of by the majority party in parliament, but they did not shift to the presidential system.
Russia is slowly creeping from a presidential system to parliamentary. But this is just to allow Vladimir Putin to remain in power as prime minister after his non-extendable presidential term ended last March. Which, as I wrote in a column in late 2007, may be the model that President Arroyo may follow to remain in power beyond 2010'
Supposedly oppositionist Pimentel would ironically be setting the stage for this to happen by pushing for ChaCha before the presidential elections of 2010. The Gloria in excelsis Dado chorus in Congress would likely interject: "Since we are debating federalism, we might as well debate parliamentary also." Some people are so naïve..
Pimentel and his 11 apostles are no doubt motivated by patriotic reasons when they advocate a shift to a federal union "in order to spur economic growth." But economic growth is a function of economic strategies, not of political systems. Our GDP grew by 7.3% in 2007 under our unitary state, better than the growth of Malaysia under its federal union.
Of course, Malaysia has been out-performing the Philippines in previous decades. But Malaysia has also been out-performed during those decades by South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, all unitary
states.
The relative economic failure of the Philippines, compared to its neighbors, is examined in detail in my article Why Are We Poor? (Dec. 14, 2004):
http://www.geocities.com/dapat_tapatt/whyarewepoor.html .
In a nutshell, we are poor because a) in the late 1950s our Congress passed a Minimum Wage Law, which discouraged American firms from setting up factories here in the 1960s, preferring instead Hong Kong and Taiwan where wages, believe it or not, were lower than in Manila and where there was - and still is - no minimum wage law;
b) in the 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods, which was the basis for their industrialization. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of South Korea amounted to $326.0 billion, Singapore $283.6b; Taiwan $215.0b; the Philippines only $47.2b.
c) in the 1980s, Malaysia, Thailand and Suharto's Indonesia followed the example of the original Four Asian Tigers and also geared their economies towards the export of manufactured goods. The Philippines did not. In 2006, the exports of Malaysia totaled $158.7b; Thailand $123.6b; Indonesia $102.3b; the Philippines only $47.2b. There is always a penalty for being late..
d) in the 1990s, most of Southeast Asia rode a tourism boom. The Philippines did not. In 1991, Indonesia and the Philippines drew one million tourists each. In 2007, Indonesia was attracting six million tourists, the Philippine barely managed three million. Vietnam, long a tourism laggard because of its war-ravaged infrastructure, drew 4.2 million tourists in 2007, overtaking the Philippines. Watch out for tiny Cambodia: it took in two million tourists last year.(Thailand
attracted 13 million tourists, Malaysia 16 million in 2007.)
e) even with its weak manufacturing sector caused by its failure to industrialize like its neighbors, the Philippines – led by President Ramos and Senator Gloria Arroyo - foolishly embraced free trade and globalization, even ahead of fully developed South Korea and Taiwan, causing many domestic producers to retrench or close shop in the face of unlimited imports, and throwing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos out of work, forcing them to look for jobs overseas.
f) even with a weak average GDP growth rate of less than 3.5% per annum from 1983 to 2003, the Philippine government, except under President Ramos, failed to take measures to control its population, which grew by an average of 2.5% during the same period, leaving very meager economic gains, especially for the poorest of the poor.
In 2006, our population growth rate has dropped to 1.91%. But look at our competitors: Malaysia 1.76, Indonesia 1.34, Vietnam 1.04, Thailand 0.66, China 0.65, Singapore 0.48, South Korea 0.39, Taiwan 0.24. (All statistics are from the 2008 World Almanac and Book of Facts).
Because of poor, even stupid, economic strategies and policies, the Philippines has lost out to its neighbors, both in the ability to earn income for its people, and in the ability to conserve and spread that meager income to a rapidly multiplying population.
That in a nutshell is the economic picture of the Philippines in the last 50 years. Any claim that this can be remedied simply by amending the Constitution to switch from a unitary state to a federal union is a lot of bull. Fol-de-rol. *****
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
First Fil-Am Head Coach of an NBA Basketball Team
For new Heat coach, it's full speed ahead
Erik Spoelstra has approached each NBA job along his path to becoming the Heat's head coach with devotion and focus.
BY SARAH ROTHSCHILD and MICHAEL WALLACE
Miami Herald
Forgive new Heat coach Erik Spoelstra for being naive enough to dismiss his first week on the job as just another typical few days of hard work. He doesn't know any different.
His phone didn't stop ringing. His inbox kept filling. Interview requests and media demands never ceased. Meetings with his assistants or boss Pat Riley and the Heat brass that started over breakfast often didn't end until just before dinnertime. He had a cross-country flight and got next to no sleep.
But that schedule is typical. Whether it was taking 30,000 shots in a summer to improve as a player for the Jesuit High team in Portland, Ore., or splicing together film vignettes for Riley until the wee hours, Spoelstra, 37, has devoted himself to that task.
It is just his nature -- and what many believe will make up for his lack of head coaching experience.
''He will be the lowest-paid coach per hour in the NBA. He will put in a ton of hours,'' said former Portland Trail Blazers guard Larry Steele, Spoelstra's coach at the University of Portland. ``I'm pretty safe in saying that.''
RELENTLESS
In many ways, plenty has changed about Spoelstra's life since this basketball lifer took over for Riley on Monday to become the youngest head coach in the NBA. But in many other ways, nothing has changed. He knows only one pace. Relentless.
Riley stepped aside Monday, choosing to focus on his duties as club president, and handed Spoelstra a team coming off a 15-67 season -- last-place in the NBA and tied for the worst record in franchise history. Spoelstra, who is of Filipino, Irish and Dutch descent, moves to the head coach's suite after 13 years of doing everything from video coordinator to assistant coach and scouting director.
Spoelstra began playing organized basketball in the fifth grade, but he was practically born into the NBA life. His father was an NBA executive for the Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets and New Jersey Nets, and Spoelstra was groomed by a Hall of Famer in Riley. But those who know ''Spo'' insist he's his own man.
''You hear about these Hollywood agents who worked their way up from the mail room in the William-Morris Agency to become agent to the stars,'' said Chris Wallace, who hired Spoelstra in 1995 while serving as the Heat's director of player development.
``Well, Erik came from the film rooms in the bowels of the arena, cutting tape until 3 or 4 in the morning. He'd stay up all night and then rush the film over to the airport to get them on flights to where the team was. He paid his dues. He has created a reputation for himself.''
SLEEP OPTIONAL
Spoelstra downplays his work habits, saying he is not always the first person in the office. But pressed further, he conceded that Starbucks usually is not open when he arrives for work at AmericanAirlines Arena.
He's a self-described ''early morning guy.'' But he's really an around-the-clock guy.
''That's my comfort level for better or worse,'' Spoelstra said Thursday in a phone interview from Portland, where he has been since Wednesday night visiting friends and family.
Heat guard Chris Quinn described Spoelstra as a ''workaholic,'' adding, ``I don't know how much sleep he gets during the season.''
Spoelstra, a bachelor, has been known to sleep on a cot at the office a few nights a week, a routine formed during countless hours in ''The Cave'' as the Heat's video coordinator. ''There was no promise that where he started in the film room was going to lead to anything,'' said Wallace, who is now the Memphis Grizzlies' general manager.
Only a few months after being hired in 1995, Spoelstra worried he would be out of a job. Riley had arrived from the New York Knicks and wanted to bring his own staff. Riley couldn't, so he went into '' The Cave'' and asked Spoelstra whether he could handle the job. Spoelstra said yes.
It didn't take long for Spoelstra to rise from caveman to coaching confidant to assistant coach to Riley's heir.
''I didn't know his name for three years,'' Riley said.
But Spoelstra made it impossible for Riley to ignore him.
''You could feel him, his presence and his contributions,'' Riley said. ``We put him through the test -- you do that with people who work for you. You keep giving them tasks and find out how they do it. Most importantly, you find out if they want to do it and what's their attitude like. He always got it done. Those are the guys you gravitate toward.''
FILM WIZARD
Heat owner Micky Arison did not know Spoelstra well until meeting with him last week, during a job interview of sorts. He had known Spoelstra as the guy who had ``done a lot of great Christmas videos.''
One of Spoelstra's jobs was to make 10-minute videos to liven up the team's annual holiday party. Riley described them as humorous sketches that could be seen on MADtv. They poked fun at players and staff.
''He's as qualified to be a television producer as a head coach,'' Riley said.
The more serious side of Spoelstra's job allowed him to work individually with players. Four-time All-Star guard Dwyane Wade credits Spoelstra for helping him develop a complete game, which Wade said he lacked a few years ago.
Spoelstra will push anyone. A few weeks ago before a game, he ran drills on the court with Alonzo Mourning's son, Trey, a Heat ball boy.
''He was always willing to help me,'' said Quinn, a second-year guard, who went undrafted out of Notre Dame. ``He would come early to practice, stay after and when I wasn't playing as much in games he would give me a good workout on game day.''
DIFFICULT CHOICE
Working tirelessly always has been Spoelstra's style. It's how he ended up with a Division I scholarship, even though he was hardly a prized recruit. Spoelstra started four years at point guard for Portland, was named freshman of the year in the West Coast Conference and earned all-conference awards thereafter.
Spoelstra said he realized he didn't have a long-term future playing, so after graduating from college in 1992, he went to Germany as a player and coach for a professional team. Two years later, he interviewed with the Heat and got a job offer. Spoelstra decided he needed a few days to think -- go back to Germany or work in the NBA and take a pay cut?
Jon Spoelstra told his son that whatever decision he made would be ``the right decision -- but once you make that decision, never look back.''
Spoelstra told his father he would go back to Germany. But when Spoelstra told his older sister, Monica, she set him straight.
'She said, `What, are you crazy?' '' Jon Spoelstra recalled. ' `This is an NBA job, and just because Dad works in the NBA doesn't mean it's an easy job to get.' ''
PRACTICE PAYS
Spoelstra had just wanted to continue being involved with basketball, the game his father exposed him to when he was growing up in Portland. Spoelstra attended all of the Trail Blazers' home games and went to practices and summer camps.
He was the kind of guy who would read books and watch instructional videos in the basement of his parents' home, hitting rewind over and over to study the proper technique. Said Jon Spoelstra, ``He probably wore out a couple VCRs.''
As long as the kid improved, he was happy.
Through Chris Wallace, who got his first NBA job from Jon Spoelstra with the Trail Blazers, Erik Spoelstra received an invitation to play at the Nike All-American camp when he was at Jesuit High.
The hitch?
'I remember telling Erik, `You're out in Oregon and I don't know how much you know about Alonzo Mourning, but he's supposed to be the next big thing in basketball,' '' said Wallace, who put together the teams. ``A lot of people are going to come and watch those games to see him play, so they'll see you. Don't get carried away with yourself. Just take one or two shots a game and throw the ball into Alonzo.''
Spoelstra is nine months younger than Mourning and could end up coaching Mourning again next season if he elects not to retire.
NO SURPRISES
No one predicted that reunion. But Spoelstra's hiring this week elicited little surprise in NBA circles.
''I have spent my entire life around coaches,'' said former Heat coach Stan Van Gundy, now the coach of the Orlando Magic. ``I knew Erik Spoelstra probably less than three months and I was telling my wife, my father and my brother -- this guy is going to be one [heck] of a coach. I have as much respect for him as I do for anyone in the business. He is unbelievable, and I am really happy all of his hard work got rewarded.''
Now that it has, Spoelstra believes the real work is only beginning. After his introductory news conference, Spoelstra said he planned to pick Van Gundy's brain as much as his close friend would allow this offseason. Spoelstra also isn't afraid to lean on Riley or his assistants, an experienced group that includes Ron Rothstein -- the head coach of the expansion Heat in 1988-89 who has 28 years of NBA experience -- and former NBA players Bob McAdoo, a Hall of Famer who has been an assistant for 13 years, and Keith Askins, who has eight years of coaching experience.
''He's willing to listen and see what will help him be good,'' Askins said. ``With this organization, we need some excitement and a different energy.''
Wallace said he sees Spoelstra becoming a fixture on the Heat's bench.
''I hope to wake up one day 10 years from now and see he's still the coach of the Miami Heat,'' Wallace said.
Perhaps the ironic part is that Spoelstra didn't walk around sharing his dream. Not even to his father.
''I've known people in the business world that plot their careers,'' Jon Spoelstra said. ``Erik never discussed his career that way. He's always been focused on the moment of what was necessary to get done.''
That is exactly the attitude Spoelstra has carried into his first days on the job. Has it sunk in that he landed the job he coveted?
''It hasn't been like that at all,'' Spoelstra said. ``Everyone has seen me grow. When we had a meeting, it's just all the people I work with, nothing strange or awkward. The job responsibilities have changed. but I didn't go in there acting different.''
Erik Spoelstra has approached each NBA job along his path to becoming the Heat's head coach with devotion and focus.
BY SARAH ROTHSCHILD and MICHAEL WALLACE
Miami Herald
Forgive new Heat coach Erik Spoelstra for being naive enough to dismiss his first week on the job as just another typical few days of hard work. He doesn't know any different.
His phone didn't stop ringing. His inbox kept filling. Interview requests and media demands never ceased. Meetings with his assistants or boss Pat Riley and the Heat brass that started over breakfast often didn't end until just before dinnertime. He had a cross-country flight and got next to no sleep.
But that schedule is typical. Whether it was taking 30,000 shots in a summer to improve as a player for the Jesuit High team in Portland, Ore., or splicing together film vignettes for Riley until the wee hours, Spoelstra, 37, has devoted himself to that task.
It is just his nature -- and what many believe will make up for his lack of head coaching experience.
''He will be the lowest-paid coach per hour in the NBA. He will put in a ton of hours,'' said former Portland Trail Blazers guard Larry Steele, Spoelstra's coach at the University of Portland. ``I'm pretty safe in saying that.''
RELENTLESS
In many ways, plenty has changed about Spoelstra's life since this basketball lifer took over for Riley on Monday to become the youngest head coach in the NBA. But in many other ways, nothing has changed. He knows only one pace. Relentless.
Riley stepped aside Monday, choosing to focus on his duties as club president, and handed Spoelstra a team coming off a 15-67 season -- last-place in the NBA and tied for the worst record in franchise history. Spoelstra, who is of Filipino, Irish and Dutch descent, moves to the head coach's suite after 13 years of doing everything from video coordinator to assistant coach and scouting director.
Spoelstra began playing organized basketball in the fifth grade, but he was practically born into the NBA life. His father was an NBA executive for the Portland Trail Blazers, Denver Nuggets and New Jersey Nets, and Spoelstra was groomed by a Hall of Famer in Riley. But those who know ''Spo'' insist he's his own man.
''You hear about these Hollywood agents who worked their way up from the mail room in the William-Morris Agency to become agent to the stars,'' said Chris Wallace, who hired Spoelstra in 1995 while serving as the Heat's director of player development.
``Well, Erik came from the film rooms in the bowels of the arena, cutting tape until 3 or 4 in the morning. He'd stay up all night and then rush the film over to the airport to get them on flights to where the team was. He paid his dues. He has created a reputation for himself.''
SLEEP OPTIONAL
Spoelstra downplays his work habits, saying he is not always the first person in the office. But pressed further, he conceded that Starbucks usually is not open when he arrives for work at AmericanAirlines Arena.
He's a self-described ''early morning guy.'' But he's really an around-the-clock guy.
''That's my comfort level for better or worse,'' Spoelstra said Thursday in a phone interview from Portland, where he has been since Wednesday night visiting friends and family.
Heat guard Chris Quinn described Spoelstra as a ''workaholic,'' adding, ``I don't know how much sleep he gets during the season.''
Spoelstra, a bachelor, has been known to sleep on a cot at the office a few nights a week, a routine formed during countless hours in ''The Cave'' as the Heat's video coordinator. ''There was no promise that where he started in the film room was going to lead to anything,'' said Wallace, who is now the Memphis Grizzlies' general manager.
Only a few months after being hired in 1995, Spoelstra worried he would be out of a job. Riley had arrived from the New York Knicks and wanted to bring his own staff. Riley couldn't, so he went into '' The Cave'' and asked Spoelstra whether he could handle the job. Spoelstra said yes.
It didn't take long for Spoelstra to rise from caveman to coaching confidant to assistant coach to Riley's heir.
''I didn't know his name for three years,'' Riley said.
But Spoelstra made it impossible for Riley to ignore him.
''You could feel him, his presence and his contributions,'' Riley said. ``We put him through the test -- you do that with people who work for you. You keep giving them tasks and find out how they do it. Most importantly, you find out if they want to do it and what's their attitude like. He always got it done. Those are the guys you gravitate toward.''
FILM WIZARD
Heat owner Micky Arison did not know Spoelstra well until meeting with him last week, during a job interview of sorts. He had known Spoelstra as the guy who had ``done a lot of great Christmas videos.''
One of Spoelstra's jobs was to make 10-minute videos to liven up the team's annual holiday party. Riley described them as humorous sketches that could be seen on MADtv. They poked fun at players and staff.
''He's as qualified to be a television producer as a head coach,'' Riley said.
The more serious side of Spoelstra's job allowed him to work individually with players. Four-time All-Star guard Dwyane Wade credits Spoelstra for helping him develop a complete game, which Wade said he lacked a few years ago.
Spoelstra will push anyone. A few weeks ago before a game, he ran drills on the court with Alonzo Mourning's son, Trey, a Heat ball boy.
''He was always willing to help me,'' said Quinn, a second-year guard, who went undrafted out of Notre Dame. ``He would come early to practice, stay after and when I wasn't playing as much in games he would give me a good workout on game day.''
DIFFICULT CHOICE
Working tirelessly always has been Spoelstra's style. It's how he ended up with a Division I scholarship, even though he was hardly a prized recruit. Spoelstra started four years at point guard for Portland, was named freshman of the year in the West Coast Conference and earned all-conference awards thereafter.
Spoelstra said he realized he didn't have a long-term future playing, so after graduating from college in 1992, he went to Germany as a player and coach for a professional team. Two years later, he interviewed with the Heat and got a job offer. Spoelstra decided he needed a few days to think -- go back to Germany or work in the NBA and take a pay cut?
Jon Spoelstra told his son that whatever decision he made would be ``the right decision -- but once you make that decision, never look back.''
Spoelstra told his father he would go back to Germany. But when Spoelstra told his older sister, Monica, she set him straight.
'She said, `What, are you crazy?' '' Jon Spoelstra recalled. ' `This is an NBA job, and just because Dad works in the NBA doesn't mean it's an easy job to get.' ''
PRACTICE PAYS
Spoelstra had just wanted to continue being involved with basketball, the game his father exposed him to when he was growing up in Portland. Spoelstra attended all of the Trail Blazers' home games and went to practices and summer camps.
He was the kind of guy who would read books and watch instructional videos in the basement of his parents' home, hitting rewind over and over to study the proper technique. Said Jon Spoelstra, ``He probably wore out a couple VCRs.''
As long as the kid improved, he was happy.
Through Chris Wallace, who got his first NBA job from Jon Spoelstra with the Trail Blazers, Erik Spoelstra received an invitation to play at the Nike All-American camp when he was at Jesuit High.
The hitch?
'I remember telling Erik, `You're out in Oregon and I don't know how much you know about Alonzo Mourning, but he's supposed to be the next big thing in basketball,' '' said Wallace, who put together the teams. ``A lot of people are going to come and watch those games to see him play, so they'll see you. Don't get carried away with yourself. Just take one or two shots a game and throw the ball into Alonzo.''
Spoelstra is nine months younger than Mourning and could end up coaching Mourning again next season if he elects not to retire.
NO SURPRISES
No one predicted that reunion. But Spoelstra's hiring this week elicited little surprise in NBA circles.
''I have spent my entire life around coaches,'' said former Heat coach Stan Van Gundy, now the coach of the Orlando Magic. ``I knew Erik Spoelstra probably less than three months and I was telling my wife, my father and my brother -- this guy is going to be one [heck] of a coach. I have as much respect for him as I do for anyone in the business. He is unbelievable, and I am really happy all of his hard work got rewarded.''
Now that it has, Spoelstra believes the real work is only beginning. After his introductory news conference, Spoelstra said he planned to pick Van Gundy's brain as much as his close friend would allow this offseason. Spoelstra also isn't afraid to lean on Riley or his assistants, an experienced group that includes Ron Rothstein -- the head coach of the expansion Heat in 1988-89 who has 28 years of NBA experience -- and former NBA players Bob McAdoo, a Hall of Famer who has been an assistant for 13 years, and Keith Askins, who has eight years of coaching experience.
''He's willing to listen and see what will help him be good,'' Askins said. ``With this organization, we need some excitement and a different energy.''
Wallace said he sees Spoelstra becoming a fixture on the Heat's bench.
''I hope to wake up one day 10 years from now and see he's still the coach of the Miami Heat,'' Wallace said.
Perhaps the ironic part is that Spoelstra didn't walk around sharing his dream. Not even to his father.
''I've known people in the business world that plot their careers,'' Jon Spoelstra said. ``Erik never discussed his career that way. He's always been focused on the moment of what was necessary to get done.''
That is exactly the attitude Spoelstra has carried into his first days on the job. Has it sunk in that he landed the job he coveted?
''It hasn't been like that at all,'' Spoelstra said. ``Everyone has seen me grow. When we had a meeting, it's just all the people I work with, nothing strange or awkward. The job responsibilities have changed. but I didn't go in there acting different.''
Monday, May 5, 2008
Fighting the mind rape
(Herman Tiu Laurel / Infowars / Tribune column for
4-28-2008 MON)
"Numbing the senses by monotonously repeating an assertion is a key element in utilizing mind control techniques." -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
"Oil is running out!" so says the global media repeatedly. Rarely, if ever, do the world's media feature the serious studies that pierce the "gospel truth" of "peak oil" theory. There are really many questions about it, like the Newsday report on an article, "Are Old Oil Fields Refilling?" which reports that apparently, "new oil is seeping up from deeper underground. (and).that there is simply upward movement from older, deeper oil fields.(which might be evidence to support).the controversial theory that oil originates within the molten mantle of the earth, not from the decay of organic material (which is the accepted theory)." This "oil seeping from the mantle of the earth" view is called the abiogenic or abiotic oil theory.
Such oil generation theory goes as far back as Dmitri Mendeleev, and those who studied their science in high school seriously will know that this Mendeleev is no crackpot. He is known for the creation of the Periodic Table of Elements, a fundamental subject in our understanding of physics and the universe. While the shallowest of "peak oil" demagoguery is available everywhere in mainstream media, it is not easy to find materials on the abiotic theory. But if you look hard enough, there is substantial scientific discussion on the Internet, like a Cornell University paper titled, "Can there be two independent sources of commercial hydrocarbon deposits, one derived from biological materials, the other from primordial carbon and hydrogen, incorporated into the Earth at its formation?"
There is strong evidence and a whole community of academicians, particularly those of the Russian Academy of Sciences, that subscribes to the abiotic theory of oil generation. In Russia and Ukraine, a vast majority of petroleum geologists accept the abiotic theory, but even in the West there are pioneers cited on the Internet like the late astrophysicist Thomas Gold and Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation. So why is it that even the most intelligent Filipinos know oil only as "fossil fuel," and not possibly from the molten carbon and hydrogen in the Earth's mantle? In the face of the promise of the abiotic oil theory, the persistence of the "peak oil" dogma is mass brainwashing and a scare tactic to support the astronomically speculative price manipulation.
Our topic today is really mass manipulation or brainwashing. I started today on piercing the "peak oil" dogma, but I have also to deal with Al Gore's "man-made Global Warming" scare now being put into high gear in the Philippines. Kicked off by a Shell-sponsored GMA 7 TV special entitled, "Signos," which heightens the global warming scare-mongering to the level of hysteria. It echoed the absolutely baseless and irresponsible warning I once heard WWF chief Lory Tan spew on TV about Global Warming cooking and shriveling our livers. Like the "peak oil" theory dictated by mainstream media, Al Gore's thesis in "An Inconvenient Truth" is also dictating this debate on
global climate. As brainwashing guru Joost Meerloo says, "well publicized facts are always the bane to the mind controllers," and this is what I will do.
A Guerrilla News Network item entitled, "The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat," by Richard Harris, republished from National Public Radio and subtitled, "Oceanic detectors report no recent increase in temperature" on March 19, 2008 reported: "Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years.Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming. In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters."
Another article by Phil Chapman, from The Australian entitled, "Bizarre solar activity could foretell drastic cooling" says "THE scariest photo (of the sun) I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun. There is only one tiny sunspot (solar activity indicator).the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc. in California) report that it cooled by
about 0.7C in 2007."
Man-made global warming is far from being a settled issue. I'm raising an alarm because Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and oil giant Shell's co-production with GMA 7 "Signos" will reportedly be
integrated into the Philippine school curriculum. They are not going to show the other side of the story, such as "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Gore's thesis is that human industrial activity causes global warming, and their intention is clearly to create a generation of anti- industrialization Filipinos who'll grow into adulthood thinking like that. French poet Jules Romains said, "We know now that men can be made to do exactly anything... If only we take enough trouble and go sufficiently slowly, we can make him kill his aged parents and eat them in a stew." - Sourced from a 1960 CIA study on Brainwashing.
Soon after the schools show Gore's movie en masse, we could see students mobilized against factories that provide jobs, demand a shift to solar and wind electricity a thousand times more expensive, demand an end to the use of hand tractors because it emits carbon, ad nausea. This reminds me of the anti-nuclear scare campaign and the way the students in U.P. and Catholic schools were brainwashed against it only to create the crippling electricity crisis in 1993 and allow FVR and the foreign power pirates' rape of the Philippine power sector. Despite the most expensive power in Asia today crippling the Philippine economy, in an imitation of the Stockholm syndrome, these victims of the anti-nuclear mind rape still believe in and love what they did.
(Tune in to 1098AM for "Kape't Kamulatan, Kabansa" every Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 9:00am, and "Suló ng Pilipino" every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6:00 to 7:00pm)
4-28-2008 MON)
"Numbing the senses by monotonously repeating an assertion is a key element in utilizing mind control techniques." -- Joost Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing
"Oil is running out!" so says the global media repeatedly. Rarely, if ever, do the world's media feature the serious studies that pierce the "gospel truth" of "peak oil" theory. There are really many questions about it, like the Newsday report on an article, "Are Old Oil Fields Refilling?" which reports that apparently, "new oil is seeping up from deeper underground. (and).that there is simply upward movement from older, deeper oil fields.(which might be evidence to support).the controversial theory that oil originates within the molten mantle of the earth, not from the decay of organic material (which is the accepted theory)." This "oil seeping from the mantle of the earth" view is called the abiogenic or abiotic oil theory.
Such oil generation theory goes as far back as Dmitri Mendeleev, and those who studied their science in high school seriously will know that this Mendeleev is no crackpot. He is known for the creation of the Periodic Table of Elements, a fundamental subject in our understanding of physics and the universe. While the shallowest of "peak oil" demagoguery is available everywhere in mainstream media, it is not easy to find materials on the abiotic theory. But if you look hard enough, there is substantial scientific discussion on the Internet, like a Cornell University paper titled, "Can there be two independent sources of commercial hydrocarbon deposits, one derived from biological materials, the other from primordial carbon and hydrogen, incorporated into the Earth at its formation?"
There is strong evidence and a whole community of academicians, particularly those of the Russian Academy of Sciences, that subscribes to the abiotic theory of oil generation. In Russia and Ukraine, a vast majority of petroleum geologists accept the abiotic theory, but even in the West there are pioneers cited on the Internet like the late astrophysicist Thomas Gold and Jack Kenney of Gas Resources Corporation. So why is it that even the most intelligent Filipinos know oil only as "fossil fuel," and not possibly from the molten carbon and hydrogen in the Earth's mantle? In the face of the promise of the abiotic oil theory, the persistence of the "peak oil" dogma is mass brainwashing and a scare tactic to support the astronomically speculative price manipulation.
Our topic today is really mass manipulation or brainwashing. I started today on piercing the "peak oil" dogma, but I have also to deal with Al Gore's "man-made Global Warming" scare now being put into high gear in the Philippines. Kicked off by a Shell-sponsored GMA 7 TV special entitled, "Signos," which heightens the global warming scare-mongering to the level of hysteria. It echoed the absolutely baseless and irresponsible warning I once heard WWF chief Lory Tan spew on TV about Global Warming cooking and shriveling our livers. Like the "peak oil" theory dictated by mainstream media, Al Gore's thesis in "An Inconvenient Truth" is also dictating this debate on
global climate. As brainwashing guru Joost Meerloo says, "well publicized facts are always the bane to the mind controllers," and this is what I will do.
A Guerrilla News Network item entitled, "The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat," by Richard Harris, republished from National Public Radio and subtitled, "Oceanic detectors report no recent increase in temperature" on March 19, 2008 reported: "Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years.Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming. In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters."
Another article by Phil Chapman, from The Australian entitled, "Bizarre solar activity could foretell drastic cooling" says "THE scariest photo (of the sun) I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun. There is only one tiny sunspot (solar activity indicator).the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc. in California) report that it cooled by
about 0.7C in 2007."
Man-made global warming is far from being a settled issue. I'm raising an alarm because Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and oil giant Shell's co-production with GMA 7 "Signos" will reportedly be
integrated into the Philippine school curriculum. They are not going to show the other side of the story, such as "The Great Global Warming Swindle." Gore's thesis is that human industrial activity causes global warming, and their intention is clearly to create a generation of anti- industrialization Filipinos who'll grow into adulthood thinking like that. French poet Jules Romains said, "We know now that men can be made to do exactly anything... If only we take enough trouble and go sufficiently slowly, we can make him kill his aged parents and eat them in a stew." - Sourced from a 1960 CIA study on Brainwashing.
Soon after the schools show Gore's movie en masse, we could see students mobilized against factories that provide jobs, demand a shift to solar and wind electricity a thousand times more expensive, demand an end to the use of hand tractors because it emits carbon, ad nausea. This reminds me of the anti-nuclear scare campaign and the way the students in U.P. and Catholic schools were brainwashed against it only to create the crippling electricity crisis in 1993 and allow FVR and the foreign power pirates' rape of the Philippine power sector. Despite the most expensive power in Asia today crippling the Philippine economy, in an imitation of the Stockholm syndrome, these victims of the anti-nuclear mind rape still believe in and love what they did.
(Tune in to 1098AM for "Kape't Kamulatan, Kabansa" every Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 9:00am, and "Suló ng Pilipino" every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 6:00 to 7:00pm)
Friday, May 2, 2008
Filipinos father open source electronic health record system
By Erwin Oliva
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 09:09:00 05/02/2008
SINGAPORE -- Filipinos have announced the first beta release of an open source electronic health record application that hopes to pave the way for low-cost electronic health record applications for the healthcare industry, the manager of an international open source network told INQUIRER.net on Thursday.
"This is groundbreaking for several reasons: it is free, portable, and open source that even doctors can contribute to its development," Dr. Alvin Marcelo, manager of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) Asean+3 node based in Manila, in an interview.
Dr. Marcelo said the Asean+3 node of the IOSN commissioned the Free Feathers EHR (FFEHR) project, which is an electronic health record application. The public beta was launched on April 28.
The IOSN Asean+3 is based at the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center.
"This release comes six months after the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center tasked free/open source software (F/OSS) programmer Nathaniel Jayme and Davao-based F/OSS organization DabaweGNU, Inc. to jointly develop FFEHR," the Davao-based open source organization said in its website.
Dr. Marcelo said this release would allow medical and nursing students, for instance, to start using it to understand electronic health records.
"We can graduate health professionals who are so adept with EHRs. They can't do this in developed countries because of the substantial cost of EHRs, which is mostly proprietary," he said.
Dr. Marcelo said that the public release of the open source application aims to generate more interest in lower-cost electronic health record systems.
"At the outset, an awareness that EHRs can be low-cost can generate new jobs since there will be a demand for customization. For the healthcare industry, this means better documentation and opportunity for better research on health care. We can't do this if we stick to paper-based records.
He said that EHRs in the United States are able to detect medical errors since records are now available electronically. In paper-based records, errors go unnoticed.
"Once the data are in electronic format, we can create algorithms that can detect errors and prevent them from being carried out. That's a little far off but the EHR is the first step toward that, and FFEHR gives us that first step," he said.
The Davao-based open source organization said the FFEHR is not yet ready for production use but it is expected that this initial release will rouse the interest of health care professionals and other developers.
"The increase in beta testers should enable the project to reach stability faster through the increase in bugs reported and through some contributed patches," it said.
Licensed under the GNU GPL3, FFEHR, is available for free download and use by the public including its source code. It can be downloaded from its project website at http://trac.afterfivetech.com/ffehr.
While the FFEHR was developed with the Philippine health care industry in mind, it can be customized for use in other countries.
The IOSN ASEAN+3 was established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) initiative and is based at the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center.
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 09:09:00 05/02/2008
SINGAPORE -- Filipinos have announced the first beta release of an open source electronic health record application that hopes to pave the way for low-cost electronic health record applications for the healthcare industry, the manager of an international open source network told INQUIRER.net on Thursday.
"This is groundbreaking for several reasons: it is free, portable, and open source that even doctors can contribute to its development," Dr. Alvin Marcelo, manager of the International Open Source Network (IOSN) Asean+3 node based in Manila, in an interview.
Dr. Marcelo said the Asean+3 node of the IOSN commissioned the Free Feathers EHR (FFEHR) project, which is an electronic health record application. The public beta was launched on April 28.
The IOSN Asean+3 is based at the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center.
"This release comes six months after the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center tasked free/open source software (F/OSS) programmer Nathaniel Jayme and Davao-based F/OSS organization DabaweGNU, Inc. to jointly develop FFEHR," the Davao-based open source organization said in its website.
Dr. Marcelo said this release would allow medical and nursing students, for instance, to start using it to understand electronic health records.
"We can graduate health professionals who are so adept with EHRs. They can't do this in developed countries because of the substantial cost of EHRs, which is mostly proprietary," he said.
Dr. Marcelo said that the public release of the open source application aims to generate more interest in lower-cost electronic health record systems.
"At the outset, an awareness that EHRs can be low-cost can generate new jobs since there will be a demand for customization. For the healthcare industry, this means better documentation and opportunity for better research on health care. We can't do this if we stick to paper-based records.
He said that EHRs in the United States are able to detect medical errors since records are now available electronically. In paper-based records, errors go unnoticed.
"Once the data are in electronic format, we can create algorithms that can detect errors and prevent them from being carried out. That's a little far off but the EHR is the first step toward that, and FFEHR gives us that first step," he said.
The Davao-based open source organization said the FFEHR is not yet ready for production use but it is expected that this initial release will rouse the interest of health care professionals and other developers.
"The increase in beta testers should enable the project to reach stability faster through the increase in bugs reported and through some contributed patches," it said.
Licensed under the GNU GPL3, FFEHR, is available for free download and use by the public including its source code. It can be downloaded from its project website at http://trac.afterfivetech.com/ffehr.
While the FFEHR was developed with the Philippine health care industry in mind, it can be customized for use in other countries.
The IOSN ASEAN+3 was established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP) initiative and is based at the University of the Philippines Manila-National Telehealth Center.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
SC Justice Carpio: IT need not be expensive
Jowel F. Canuday/MindaNews
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 23:38
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews) – Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio today said setting up a digital, web-based technology for effective government service doesn't have to be expensive as he commented on the country's continuing "struggle to find out the truth" about the National Broadband Network controversy.
Speaking at the 11th commencement exercises of the University of the Philippines Mindanao this morning, Carpio said that at a cost of only P300,000 the Supreme Court was able to set up an internet and electronic-based library resource that helped hasten and improve the access of judges nationwide to Supreme Court decisions within 48 hours from promulgation.
Carpio's speech, " Final Words for the Iskolar ng Bayan," wove the story on the SC's effort of setting up its low-cost E-Library around a general theme of "search for the truth."
"Recently, our nation struggled to find out the truth about the National Broadband Network Project. You may not be happy with the outcome but do not despair for the story does not end there. In the end, the truth will see the light of day," he said.
On March 25, the Supreme Court, voting 9 – 6, ruled that Commission on Higher Education Romulo Neri can invoke executive privilege and cannot be compelled to answer three question which the Senate says is crucial to its inquiry on the national broadband project.
Carpio was among the six dissenters but he concurred with the majority in ruling that the Senate gravely abused its discretion in citing Neri in contempt and in issuing the warrant for his arrest.
The aborted but controversial NBN deal between the government and China ZTE Corporation would have cost the government $329 million (P13.16 billion at P40 to US $1). A Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigation implicated First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, then Commission on Election Chair Benjamin Abalos and other officials in alleged corruption and overpricing of the deal that was supposed to have cost only $129 million (P5.16 billion).
In emphasizing that "technology does not have to be expensive," Carpio also shared that a director of another government agency once told him that his office has spent over P100 million in setting up their own E-Library. Without naming the agency and its director, Carpio said that the director's E-Library was even limited to bibliographic search and not a full text unlike the one set up by SC which is a full text search of all of its recent decisions.
"Our cost in setting up the Supreme Court E-Library was a pittance compared to that," Carpio said, referring to the P100 million peso cost in setting up an E-Library in the unnamed government agency.
Carpio said that shortly after joining the High Court in 2001, he volunteered to set up
the Supreme Court E-Library with a "simple vision" of seeing "every judge in the country" have all the SC laws and decisions "at his or her finger tips."
Carpio said the move to establish the E-Library was prompted by the problem that most judges in the country do not have access to the latest SC decisions with some receiving copies only after one or two years of promulgation
Carpio said he put up two electronic libraries, a web-based and in compact discs for judges who do not have internet access. Both versions are powered by a search engine which he had used when he was still into private practice. Carpio said that the cost of all the software, which he simply downloaded from the vendors site, was less than P300,000.
The High Court's web-based, full-text search and retrieval electronic library, which they were able to set up in only eight months, was the first among the judiciaries in Asia, according to Carpio.
The SC decisions are uploaded to the E-Library website within 48 hours from its promulgation while those in compact discs are updated twice a year. The compact discs, which costs the SC less than P12 for every copy, are sent by registered mails to all judges in the country.
He said before setting up the E-Library, the SC used to ship volumes of books to judges but today they would only send two discs.
Carpio said that a Social Weather Station survey before the E-Library showed that majority of judges in the country did not receive copies of the latest decisions of the Supreme Court. He said that a second survey after the E-Library was established showed that the "situation had turned around" as majority of the judges already received copies of the latest SC decisions.
"Right now, any judge anywhere in the country has two ways of accessing the E-Library. If the judge has an Internet connection, the judge can go, any time of the day, to the E-Library website of the Supreme Court," Carpio said.
A total of 128 students graduated this year from UP Mindanao: 48 from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, 56 from the College of Science and Mathematics and 24 from the School of Management. (Jowel F. Canuday/MindaNews)
Wednesday, 16 April 2008 23:38
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews) – Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio today said setting up a digital, web-based technology for effective government service doesn't have to be expensive as he commented on the country's continuing "struggle to find out the truth" about the National Broadband Network controversy.
Speaking at the 11th commencement exercises of the University of the Philippines Mindanao this morning, Carpio said that at a cost of only P300,000 the Supreme Court was able to set up an internet and electronic-based library resource that helped hasten and improve the access of judges nationwide to Supreme Court decisions within 48 hours from promulgation.
Carpio's speech, " Final Words for the Iskolar ng Bayan," wove the story on the SC's effort of setting up its low-cost E-Library around a general theme of "search for the truth."
"Recently, our nation struggled to find out the truth about the National Broadband Network Project. You may not be happy with the outcome but do not despair for the story does not end there. In the end, the truth will see the light of day," he said.
On March 25, the Supreme Court, voting 9 – 6, ruled that Commission on Higher Education Romulo Neri can invoke executive privilege and cannot be compelled to answer three question which the Senate says is crucial to its inquiry on the national broadband project.
Carpio was among the six dissenters but he concurred with the majority in ruling that the Senate gravely abused its discretion in citing Neri in contempt and in issuing the warrant for his arrest.
The aborted but controversial NBN deal between the government and China ZTE Corporation would have cost the government $329 million (P13.16 billion at P40 to US $1). A Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigation implicated First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, then Commission on Election Chair Benjamin Abalos and other officials in alleged corruption and overpricing of the deal that was supposed to have cost only $129 million (P5.16 billion).
In emphasizing that "technology does not have to be expensive," Carpio also shared that a director of another government agency once told him that his office has spent over P100 million in setting up their own E-Library. Without naming the agency and its director, Carpio said that the director's E-Library was even limited to bibliographic search and not a full text unlike the one set up by SC which is a full text search of all of its recent decisions.
"Our cost in setting up the Supreme Court E-Library was a pittance compared to that," Carpio said, referring to the P100 million peso cost in setting up an E-Library in the unnamed government agency.
Carpio said that shortly after joining the High Court in 2001, he volunteered to set up
the Supreme Court E-Library with a "simple vision" of seeing "every judge in the country" have all the SC laws and decisions "at his or her finger tips."
Carpio said the move to establish the E-Library was prompted by the problem that most judges in the country do not have access to the latest SC decisions with some receiving copies only after one or two years of promulgation
Carpio said he put up two electronic libraries, a web-based and in compact discs for judges who do not have internet access. Both versions are powered by a search engine which he had used when he was still into private practice. Carpio said that the cost of all the software, which he simply downloaded from the vendors site, was less than P300,000.
The High Court's web-based, full-text search and retrieval electronic library, which they were able to set up in only eight months, was the first among the judiciaries in Asia, according to Carpio.
The SC decisions are uploaded to the E-Library website within 48 hours from its promulgation while those in compact discs are updated twice a year. The compact discs, which costs the SC less than P12 for every copy, are sent by registered mails to all judges in the country.
He said before setting up the E-Library, the SC used to ship volumes of books to judges but today they would only send two discs.
Carpio said that a Social Weather Station survey before the E-Library showed that majority of judges in the country did not receive copies of the latest decisions of the Supreme Court. He said that a second survey after the E-Library was established showed that the "situation had turned around" as majority of the judges already received copies of the latest SC decisions.
"Right now, any judge anywhere in the country has two ways of accessing the E-Library. If the judge has an Internet connection, the judge can go, any time of the day, to the E-Library website of the Supreme Court," Carpio said.
A total of 128 students graduated this year from UP Mindanao: 48 from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, 56 from the College of Science and Mathematics and 24 from the School of Management. (Jowel F. Canuday/MindaNews)
Monday, April 28, 2008
Looking for Work
A Japanese doctor said, 'Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can
take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for
work in six weeks.'
A German doctor said, 'That's nothing, we can take a lung out of one person,
put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.'
A British doctor said, 'In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can
take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them
both looking for work in two weeks.'
A Filipino doctor, not to be outdone said, 'You guys are way behind.
We took a man with no brains and a little woman with no heart,
put them both, one after the other, in Malacanang Palace and now
half the country is looking for work.
-- Shared by William M. Esposo
take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for
work in six weeks.'
A German doctor said, 'That's nothing, we can take a lung out of one person,
put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.'
A British doctor said, 'In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can
take half of a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them
both looking for work in two weeks.'
A Filipino doctor, not to be outdone said, 'You guys are way behind.
We took a man with no brains and a little woman with no heart,
put them both, one after the other, in Malacanang Palace and now
half the country is looking for work.
-- Shared by William M. Esposo
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