I’m going to try to rewrite everything again just because I did enjoy writing it. I wonder how I’ll sound like the second time around

For those in college or Uni or have taken Philosophy in high school, do/did you guys enjoy it? Before entering college, I never knew the reason why people had to study Philosophy. I mean why ponder on life when you could be just living it. You know Carpe Diem, JUST DO IT. Don’t stop to think or smell the roses and bees (okay maybe not the bees), color ze roses or pluck the roses if you grew your own roses or found them from a place that allows people to pluck roses. Don’t think about the existence of the rose anymore or what its purpose may be or why did you suddenly have an encounter with this rose.

Or should I? The only influence that I’ve had on Philosophy is the Filipino “term” pilosopo. Actually maybe it’s only in the Philippine language when being called a philosopher is actually a bad thing. It practically means being a smart aleck or an ass or being sarcastic or something. It’s also a term for a “joker” too.

Por Examplo (it’s a bit green):

Teacher: Bobits, magbigay ka ng halimbawa ng hayup? (Bobits, give an example of an animal)
Bobits: Dog Mam!
Teacher: Very good! Give me another example.
Bobits: Another Dog mam!
Teacher: Abay pilosopo kang bata ka ah! Sige, subukan ko ang galing mo. Use “2 dogs” in a sentence. (Ay kid, you’re such a pilosopo! Okay, let’s see how smart you are.)
Bobits: mmmmmmm.. Yesterday, I saw a dog..
Teacher: O, sabi ko dalawang dog ah! (Hey I said 2 dogs!)
Bobits: E mam teka muna di pa nga tapos e. Yesterday, I saw a dog.. connected to another dog. (Eh Ma’am wait I’m not yet finished!)

AND BAM, you’re branded as a pilosopo. The person talking to a Pilosopo would usually roll his/her eyes or smack his/her head after speaking to one. But hey, this isn’t what Philosophy is about.

This isn’t the Philosophy that Socrates taught Plato at all or any of the Greek/German/French/Chinese philosophers have argued and debated for thousands of years. If you have read Heidegger’s What is Philosophy, he doesn’t exactly ANSWER the question straightforwardly (for that matter, do any philosopher?) and just goes about that philosophy is the act of philosophizing itself! The moment you question philosophy, that’s the moment that philosophy arises from. The moment you notice that a chair isn’t really a chair but simply the essence of a “true’ chair, the chairing-ness or the chair-ness of the chair, that is philosophy. Actually Philosophy is so broad, that after studying a few philosophers, I STILL DON’T HAVE A DARN ANSWER. Maybe just a form of one but it isn’t really the answer because nobody has ever answered the question yet. But philosophy deals with a way of life (though it is confused with religion because religion too is a way of life). It’s a set of beliefs I think anyway, I mean philosophy talks about ethics. The last philosopher that we talked about was Kant, and it was actually my professor whose name is Ice and looks like Jesus Christ (hey that sorta rhymes XD) who said this quote because he couldn’t take how Kant GOES ON AND ON and then says his point only at the end so you’ve got garble and hifalutin words (WHY KAN’T PHILOSOPHERS JUST SIMPLY SAY WHAT THEY WANT IN SIMPLE TERMS? Don’t they want to be heard? But I guess that’s the difficulty of language. They have to be written that way to be fully understood. It’s the reader’s problem then to interpret what it means) at the beginning and you wanna smack Kant in the face.

Kant deals with the kind of ethics where he sees that in a moral dilemma for example, a murderer walks in and demands for the location of your kids or loved ones, for Kant it is the right thing to tell him the location because YOU DON’T CONTROL THE CONSEQUENCES. YOU DON’T CONTROL OTHER PEOPLE’S ACTIONS SO YOU DID WHAT WAS MORALLY RIGHT EVEN THOUGH THE CONSEQUENCE MAY BE THE DEATH OF YOUR LOVED ONES. It’s all about the Categorical Imperative, in short if you have a maxim or a belief that can be applied TO ALL (NO EXCEPTIONS, THAT’S THE POINT OF KANT) then that is the thing you must do. HE’S CRAZY if you ask me. I mean wouldn’t you? He says that you must tell the truth ALL THE TIME. No exceptions.

I wanted to write about this because I found this nifty youtube video that explains Kant as much as possible in 3 minutes AND IT’S QUITE EFFECTIVE. Please do try to watch, it’s humorous and the drawings are also funny. You won’t get bored at all. One commenter even said that he learned more in 3 minutes than in 3 months. Haha!

This is why talking about Philosophy or reading it is important because this actually defines how we live. I mean would you follow Kant or go with Aristotle who judges people by moral character and virtue? I love my class now because my professor dares to ask the right and difficult questions and it’s a training that we must all have. We must learn how to question properly and rightfully so to help the situation for example of your country, or maybe even just your home. He questions those who don’t like Kant, who think that Kant is too idealistic or optimistic because he has a set of rules already. He’s not imposing though, he just says that a man can choose what is right for himself and doesn’t need external influences. I mean WOULD THERE BE POVERTY IF EVERYONE FOLLOWED THIS RULE of Kant? Wouldn’t everyone be all equal since you can’t lie, you can’t kill or anything like that (so yeah he doesn’t include cultural relativism so Eskimos killing their babies and old people is considered a wrong practice). But what do you think?

I suggest reading some of Plato’s works or Aristotle or Marcel (so that you’d get the Empricist side of Philosophy, based on experience and shiz) to get you started in Philosophy. Thomas Aquinas is good too for starters. I wanted to smash Heidegger when I read his paper but maybe it’s because he was discussing the difficulty of language AND BOY WAS IT DIFFICULT. Here’s one of Aristotle, quite funny really! AND I FORGOT ABOUT DESCARTES!

I guess this is long enough hahaha! By the way, I just received Krystal’s AWESOME letter last month! Doesn’t she draw well? Man thank you really so much for sending me a letter. Receiving letters is a joy of the past

Awesome isn’t it? I’d probably write more letters once school is finished

Questions:
1. What is Philosophy for you?
2. Do you agree with Kant?
P.S. Oh gosh my first academic related post in years

Imagine that, Timothy Brown after 4 years of an innovative procedure… suddenly has no more trace of AIDS in his system… this is groundbreaking news! I hope that this year, I’d be able to blog more responsibly and spread news such as this more. I do like sharing information with people, information that I care about too. Maybe this is one reason why I’ve thought of being a journalist… but it isn’t one of my top career goals. I just really like sharing information with people… is there a name for such person?

If you were able to read about my very depressing post (the one about hamsters), I dreamt a very weird dream that night and I have been dreaming and have recalled EVERY DREAM THE PAST TWO WEEKS. Is this normal? Do you dream and then remember your dream every night? I was able to do some research online and every article says that EVERYBODY dreams except you probably don’t remember it since you woke up too far from R.E.M. stage or you didn’t have an R.E.M. stage. It’s so strange that ever since I internalized and thought about death and was frightened and shocked at the possibilities because of my sickness, I’ve been dreaming EVERY night constantly and sometimes I dream more than one dream. Sometimes I feel like the dream has been going on for a LONG TIME and once I even dreamt of the dream TWICE in a row but in a different manner. And just the other night, my dream felt SO REAL, I thought I was having a lucid dream. I somehow knew in my dream that I was dreaming…. and swimming in the ocean under the bright blue sky and I thought to myself, “Wow this is so realistic” inside my dream. Usually though I have weird dark and morbid dreams (i just had my Zombie Apocalypse dream, also me getting sliced by a meat cleaver at my back, don’t worry I wasn’t frightened of these dreams since they’re so common and I probably got used to it :/) so the wonderful dream about swimming in the ocean was such a respite from the past days.

Maybe it’s my subconscious telling me that graduation is nearing…

In one month I’m about to enter the real world…

and my subconscious is saying…

Not yet.

Questions

1. Did you hear about the medical breakthrough?

2. Have you every dreamt and recalled your dreams EVERYDAY for more than 2 weeks? Just hope that I’m not alone…

****UPDATE! AS OF JANUARY 20, 2012, SOPA’s mastermind Lamar Smith POSTPONED and will review the bill once again along with the committee and various Internet entities. This is GOOD NEWS but I am sure isn’t the last act of this World War Web

It’s been so long since I made a REAL blog post and not just a filler video to keep my blog running. Priorities priorities I say! I even ran out of pre-made blog posts that I wrote before. This is how delayed I am -_-

Several serious issues have blotted the start of my 2012. In short, my too optimistic self who says that 2012 will be a better year is in for an extremely CHALLENGING YEAR. My successes will be greater but so will my failures. I’m willing to make that hundreds of TRIALS just to get that right formula or fix the light bulb and this, standing up to a great issue is one of the challenges that not only I but THE WHOLE 21ST CENTURY GENERATION will have to face.

Almost everyone on the online world must already know about the business regarding SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP) as last January 18, 2012, the world wide web witnessed the largest temporary shutdown of thousands of sites in protest to these US Bills that the US government wants to pass. Some known sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, and even simple blogs like ours joined hand in hand in this silent war against this atrocious bill. By January 19, 2012, US President Obama joined us netizens by going AGAINST SOPA and PIPA.

But what happened to this stand from Obama when just a FEW HOURS LATER, The US government and FBI sued and arrested 4 out of the 7 shareholders including the owner of file sharing sites of Megaupload and Megavideo. They took their domain and this what you see when you visit their page

I haven’t really explained SOPA or PIPA yet to you guys and maybe you think I’m just riding the bandwagon here because it’s “in” to be against them. NO! I think that everyone should be against this because of the “ripples” it creates for EVERYBODY. Do you realize that when SOPA is passed (or not, wtf did FBI just do? and HOW COME OBAMA DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS yet he claims to protest SOPA), not only is Megavideo and Megaupload targeted, but EVERY IMAGINABLE SITE (which includes ALL FILE SHARING SITES, YOUTUBE, 9GAG, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, TUMBLR, WORDPRESS HECK EVEN MY BLOG, WIKIPEDIA, AND 99% OF ALL SITES) that can host copyright materials is a potential threat and will be shutdown. The Internet as we know it will cease to exist. Think of this analogy, SOPA treats it as a cancer so if they see that for example your hand has a cancer, they not only will chop your hand off, but KILL THE WHOLE SELF AS WELL. So even though Youtube has this agreement or policy that it is not responsible for the ANYTHING that is uploaded in their site, the bill will still target Youtube once a user uploads a whole movie or used a song in his music video. Because I can’t really explain the bill well and only give you scenarios, it’s best for me to leave the explanation to the experts.

Watch UK Law Graduate and Professional Gaming Commentator “Total Biscuit” explain SOPA

For those who prefer American accents, watch David Sohn’s explanation

And of course, the ever reliable Wikipedia (don’t use this as sources in high school or university dear students! but for blogs you can

The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend conducting business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual-property laws. The Attorney General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from conducting business with websites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual-property laws, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites.
The bill also establishes a two-step process for intellectual property-rights holders to seek relief if they have been harmed by a site dedicated to infringement. The rights holder must first notify, in writing, related payment facilitators and ad networks of the identity of the website, who, in turn, must then forward that notification and suspend services to that identified website, unless that site provides a counter notification explaining how it is not in violation. The rights holder can then sue for limited injunctive relief against the site operator, if such a counter notification is provided, or if the payment or advertising services fail to suspend service in the absence of a counter notification.
The second section covers penalties for streaming video and for selling counterfeit drugs, military materials or consumer goods. The bill would expand penalties to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content and other intellectual property offenses. The bill would criminalize unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months.
The bill provides immunity from liability to the ad and payment networks that comply with this Act or that take voluntary action to cut ties to such sites. Any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement would be liable for damages.

And after everything, we can ask, “IS PIRACY THE ONLY THING THEY REALLY CARE HERE?”

NO.

They want MORE PROFIT. MORE BUCKS. MORE DOLLARS. So they eliminate competition from Indie film makers, programmers, artists and writers. They don’t want to share and instead EAT THE WHOLE PIE. So please I hope that you can include a STOP CENSORSHIP ribbon on top of your website to protest against SOPA and PIPA (well the bill has been postponed but doesn’t mean we can’t stop expressing our views and beliefs and be ready for the next battle as the American government doesn’t seem like to be waiting for the bill to pass to take action. Rapidshare could be targeted next).

Everyone must informed about this case. Everyone should be alarmed that this bill AFFECTS EVERYONE.

Questions:
1. Thoughts on this? Agree or Disagree?

Thank you to the commenters who shared their views on religion! It really cheered me up that people do think about religion critically and that people still have faith! Watch my last post if you’re interested.

I’ve been becoming depressed after the… news about this hemorrhoids business because of the uncertainty of things, whether this cream will work or not, will I live or die, will this change me from what I am now, will I be ready for both good and bad news? It was comforting to know that I wasn’t alone and that people have experienced the same things, what scares is what the people experienced after the initial “calm” finding. After watching an incredibly underrated movie called 50/50 starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt,

But afterwards, after the sobbing, the mourning and the denial, you gradually accept and become ready for anything to hit you. You look for your inspiration and you find them in the littlest things. You try to act noble and do the most honorable thing. You try to keep your act together for the sake of others and for the sake of yourself. Suddenly you had a purpose in life. Live while you can.

This weekend started with a kaleidoscopic myriad of colors, music, body movements and aroma but it all turned black and white as I again was saying goodbye to my brother for the 3rd time as he ventures off to a better land for better opportunities somewhere above the Atlantic. I cried once again as I would not hear us screaming at each other anymore for a year and laugh at how relationships work. At how you think you hate someone but after everything, you still love them to bits. I WISH HIM WELL AND ALL THE BEST! CHEERS BROTHER AND BON VOYAGE!

So yeah, the title… LOL I actually wanted to write this post because of my dream. I’ve been feeling SO GROGGY AND SLEEPY the past few days and I just want to sleep it off ALL THE TIME. I practically slept in all the car rides the past days too. Thing is I’ve been dreaming every single time and this dream stuck like a gum under a shoe. That sort of disturbing thing.

I dreamt that I had a pet hamster the SIZE of a small bean/seed/nut.

*toasts to whiskey – hoping it would cure my cough and colds -_-*

Questions:
1. What’s the first dream that you had in 2012? Or what’s the latest dream you remembered?

Check out the poem that this guy wrote about religion and Christianity. You don’t have to be a Christian or even a theist to understand this. I want to hear everyone’s opinion!

Sorry guys if I can’t blog about personal stuffs now, currently sick (with hemorrhoids ONLY hopefully so I just change my diet) and dying with Academics, so please ponder on this!

*Photo by Kisty*

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Always wanted a polaroid camera, GOOD LUCK TO ALL!!

Well I plan to change that as 2012 is my I’m-supposed-to-be-more-organized year because, I need to pick up the pace and you know, I’m gonna be in the corporate world or wherever this year. Well anyway the point is I need to lessen my weaknesses to become a better person. So I got my planner ready and now this whole, arranging posts bit. I now write a draft for every new idea I receive just so I have some posts in queue and even if I’m busy, I will still be able to post using my queued posts! hahaha!

I decided to write reviews too (i should be more bold, say my opinions more clearly and firmly because i am an insecure person ). I’ll be posting my first restaurant review soon and also add my movie/book reviews too. I talked about a book in my previous blog but haven’t really gotten reviewing it yet.

This post though will feature movies, trailers and production videos in particular. I had the fortunate opportunity to read The Hobbit in my fantasy literature class and I enjoyed it immensely! In the future, I will reach my children not only the Harry Potter series, but this as well. Actually I would read them The Hobbit first just because Tolkien’s writing is suitable for younger audiences. It’s childish in the sense that the essence of innocence is preserved and there is genuine wonder at the world of Middle Earth. Not to mention that there are many funny scenes and situations that would delight any child (and child at heart). This is a TOTAL contrast of Lord of the Rings #2-3.

So why am I blabbering about The Hobbit? BECAUSE ONE OF THE GREATEST DIRECTORS OF ALL TIME HAS DECIDED TO RETURN TO MIDDLE EARTH AND FINISH IT!

*loud applause*!!!!

The first trailer of the first half of The Hobbit] (YEAH THERE WILL BE 2 PARTS!!) has just come out and I feel like that it’ll live up to my expectations The casting is perfect and Martin is just perfect for the young Bilbo! *hums the dwarves’ songs*

But what really makes me admire Peter Jackson, is he’s freaking down-to-earth. His riches doesn’t get to his head and he knows the most important part of film-making, which is the FANDOM! Well audiences anyway so he interacts with them, talks to them, and now introduces us to production videos which are so real and so sincere, you can’t help but feel like you’re part of the team too. This is what makes a great director in my opinion. He knows his vision and he knows how to do it! Now we know how magic is made, and despite him showing almost everything of the structure, we still retain wonder and mystery whenever we watch his films and I’m sure this will be the same for The Hobbit.

Currently there are 5 production videos (vlogs if you want to call it) and I’ll be updating this post every time he uploads a new one. It’s amazing though, how movies are made?

SO DECEMBER 21, 2012 ISN’T THE END YET COZ WE NEED TO WATCH THE HOBBIT

Production Video #1

Production Video #2

Production Video #3 – one of my favorites!

Production Video #4

Production Video #5 – THE BEST YET!

Hey guys! Just want to feature a rising Pinoy band that is composed of my fellow Atenean batchmates! Their music is actually quite different from the local Pinoy artists and it has a really good alternative so I’d suggest this to fellow 80s or 90s fans Check it out!

From their YouTube page:

Never the Strangers, after all, as the band members explained their name, comes from their love for music, how it is a common thread that brings people—even strangers—together. This unabashed idealism shows the age of its members, who are all still in college at Ateneo de Manila University.

Meet NEVER THE STRANGERS ACE Libre—lead vocals and keyboards, PJ LaViña—drums and percussion, FRANCIS Victa—bassist and JP del Mundo—guitars.

Never the Strangers is a band formerly known as Leonecast—the band Ace and JP carried over from high school to college. When they realized that they are already a different band from when they had started—half of the members are new, even the band’s sound has evolved—they decided to change the name to Never the Strangers.

When asked how they define their music, each member throws in: “New Wave synth rock,” also “keyboard-driven rock,” but they have songs that are guitar driven too—but they all agree that rock music is their main foundation, influenced by New Wave, alternative and synth.

I got a story to tell though! Something happened right before the start of 2012. Remember my last post when I talked about the alien conspiracy theories and how people think that another reason why the Mayans predicted that December 21, 2012 is the end of the world is because the Mayans MET the aliens. Actually not only the Mayans but including ancient civilizations such as the Greeks (EVEN PLATO THOUGHT THERE WERE ALIENS, well the Earth is a made of grids and this is related to aliens coming here) and Egyptians (how were they able to build the pyramids with no pulleys and other forms of equipment in just a few years?) were visited by them too. Well the creepy thing is that at around 3am in our room, I saw two small dwarf-like creatures that had alien shapes with blinking eyes(????) were kinda moving at the 2 corners of the room beside the air-conditioner and on top of my cabinet. I WAS SERIOUSLY FREAKED OUT BUT I KINDA SUPPRESSED MY SCREAMS. I ran and opened the light but nothing was there O_O I decided not to look at the corners again and just sleep well. Oh gosh that was creepy and I think I hallucinated it because I haven’t been sleeping early the past nights and my brother has been bugging me with all this alien talk so maybe that’s it….

That has to be it right?

Oh and we kinda mistook a flying lantern on New Year’s eve as a U.F.O. Oh flying lanterns are the craze now! The Philippines by the way is always fun on New Year’s Eve since people LOVE to make a lot of noise and lights. Our family was treated to a free fireworks show as usual because our neighbors were kinda competing against each other on who had the best show. Well all of them were awesome! Here are some photos I took

Shower of Lights

Little Piper Boy and the Fountain of Youth

Scarlet Fever

Well back to the alien part… I’m not gonna deny that there might be other beings in the INFINITE universe. Maybe there’s an alternate reality or something and we might never know. But I am still a Catholic Christian at heart (though the Church is another matter, oh gosh) and just wanna share this amazing book by C.S. Lewis called Till We Have Faces. Religion is all about creating a way of life and this is how I choose to be and in Lewis’ book, which he claims to be his masterpiece, he tackles it in such a profound way by retelling the myth of Psyche and Cupid in the point of view of Psyche’s sister. It’s such a beautiful philosophical and theological book but requires a bit of deep reading (need to read it again! don’t worry it’s not too deep as reading Ricoeur or other German/French philosophers. Still enjoyable!). Like what a reviewer said, tt basically tackles the psychological honesty about the human sense of injustice by the gods. Who has not been tempted to say to God, “It’s not fair”?

The ending is one of the best endings I’ve read. I teared up just because of the honesty and revelation of it. It’s quite an experience reading it, nothing like I’ve felt before. LOL this is turning to be a love story by the way I’m talking about it. But seriously I loved it.

Just some favorite quotes

“I have seen something like it happen in battle. A man was coming at me, I at him, to kill. Then came a sudden great gust of wind that wrapped out cloaks over our swords and almost over our eyes, so that we could do nothing to one another but must fight the wind itself. And that ridiculous contention, so foreign to the business we were on, set us both laughing, face to face – friends for a moment – and then at once enemies again and forever.”

“I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

I have this in PDF (I thought that it would be boring so I didn’t bother buying it, now I NEED to get a paperback copy!) and am willing to email it to those who want it.

Now I’m going to end this post with something light. All Asian girls have to relate to this video in some way or another. THIS IS FREAKING HILARIOUS! Been playing this every night before I go to sleep just to make me smile again What made this funny for me was the guy in the video dressing up as a girl and everyone keeping a straight face about it And the way he played the girl was kind of funny too. I’m not saying all asians girl do this but it’s funny how some do (like me! I do the starting today no fast food bit and break that promise after a few days or something XD) and how it’s portrayed her. Hope nobody takes offense (I’m asian and a girl too btw)

and I GOT THE SLATE PLANNER! (My other post talked about my planner dilemma but I solved it!) Am liking it so far especially the art, quotes, and there’s even a space for a Bucket list! I have my own list in my blog but I think I’ll make a list of things to do in 2012 (sort of a new year’s resolution, but nah, no deadlines or constraints for me Check out their site to order or you can go to any Fullybooked branch near you.

Toodles peepz!

Questions
1. What’s the first thing you did after you woke up on January 1, 2012?
2. Do you think you’ll read this book? What’s the most thought-provoking book you’ve read? If you don’t really like to read, what’s the most thought-provoking thing that happened to you last?
3. LOL Do you do any of the things that Asian girls do? (Doesn’t have to be Asian really, most girls do those too!)