Bag-iw - a blast from the 1990s

Back in the 1990’s Bag-iw, a Baguio-based ethno-rock band produced some really cool songs by fusing ethnic musical implements with electric instruments. The combination is a fresh sound that gives you a head-bobbing tune with the nostalgia of highland gongs - an awesome combination!

Back in college I used to listen to their songs and was fortunate to be good friends with their bass guitarist -JB. Unfortunately the members of the band have gone their separate ways - some have become community leaders and advocates but most have remained artists.

Here is one song that was taped back in 1993

I don’t know the title but the cut rocks!

JB, basol mo!

 

Even experts get it wrong and it takes a kid to tell ‘em or not

Are the kids getting brighter? Is it the school? The diet? Or what?

All Things Considered, April 3, 2008 · Kenton Stufflebeam, a fifth-grader from Allegan, Mich., pointed out in December that the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s Tower of Time referred to “the Precambrian” as an “era” when it really is a “supereon.” This week, the museum corrected the 27-year-old mistake.

But they’re much smarter now because they can run circles around the “experts”. When a German school boy told NASA that their math was wrong about an asteroid hitting the earth on 2029 and offered his own figures.

BERLIN (AFP) — A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA’s estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated. (Read more)

But they NASA stated that they were never wrong and that they had their figures right.  According to the Register,”A small boy did do these calculations, but he made a mistake… NASA’s figures are correct.”

There’s another point here - The gullible media.

It would appear that the intial article in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten, which says that NASA and the ESA endorsed Nico Marquardt’s calculations, was incorrect. The story was picked up by German tabloids and the AFP news wire, and is now all over the internet.

 

If the jungle’s this fun I’d sleep there tonight

I remember the Magnanimous Five when I hear this. They were a quintet from back home. Have fun! I know I did.

 

APHORISMS

APHORISM: A SHORT, POINTED SENTENCE EXPRESSING A WISE OR CLEVER OBSERVATION OR A GENERAL TRUTH; ADAGE

1. The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow.

2. Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail.

3. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you probably don’t have any sense at all.

4. Seat belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.

5. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.

6. How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night.

7. Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

8. Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?

9. Scratch a cat and you will have a permanent job.

10. No one has more driving ambition than the boy who wants to buy a car.

11. There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.

12. There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 AM.. Like this: It could be a right number.

13. No one ever says ‘It’s only a game.’ when their team is winning.

14. I’ve reached the age where the happy hour is a nap.

15. Be careful reading the fine print. There’s no way you’re going to like it.

16. The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.

17. Do you realize that in about 40 years, we’ll have thousands of old ladies running around with tattoos? (And rap music will be the Golden Oldies ! )

18. Money can’t buy happiness — but somehow it’s more comfortable to cry in a Corvette than in a Hyundai.

19. After 50, if you don’t wake up aching in every joint, you are probably dead!!

20. Always be yourself. Because the people that matter, don’t mind. And the one’s that mind, don’t matter.

 

The Lost Generation

Brilliant! An ad by the AARP.

 

Burnham Park has WiFi - Yey!

I guess they’re catching up. The city of Baguio has announced that the famous park has launched its own WiFi connection. This is to boosts the tourism potential of the city as a hub for technology. Here’s the story from Ernie Olson of Sun.Star Baguio.

 

History - Pinoys help organize UFW

Although Cesar Chavez was known to have championed farm workers in America and later became the founder of the United Farm Workers it is also fitting to remember that a number of Filipinos were instrumental in the creation of the most important labor movement in American history.

Here’s an interesting story told by one of the first Filipinos to join the 1965 strike. He was a Filipino farmer who helped organize and unify latino and filipino farm workers into a formidable union.

To name these labor union pioneers and leaders is also to honor their contributions and their legacy. I only named a few, those that I can find in public records, surely there are many more out there.

1. Ben Gines
2. Pete Manuel
3. Larry Itliong
4. Andy Imutan
5. Pete Velasco

 

The philosophy of relationship

For the past two days major news networks here in the US were reporting that the secret to a happy relationship is for a woman to marry an ugly mate or a homely husband. Good for the men because they get to marry attractive women and be happy about it.

FoxNews.com reports that:

The best marriages are those where women marry men who are less attractive than themselves, research has found. Read more.

More than a decade ago this was seen by Andrew E. He wrote a rap about this and it became a hit in the Philippines. The Filipinos already knew that it was plausible and even possible that a relationship is based on looks. To review that philosophical revelation here is his thesis:

Kaya’t para lumigaya ang iyong buhay
Humanap ka ng pangit at ibigin mong tunay
At kung hindi, sige ka puso mo’y mabibiyak
Mahiwalay man ang pangit hindi ka iiyak ‘di ba ?

It has a catchy beat, too. Here’s the rest of the lyrics.

 

Oil and society

The cartoons and illustrations say it all.

 

 

Communication Arts, Linguistics and Butsekik

[For Pinoy's Use Also]

I studied Linguistics (it’s a graduate school thing) and was briefly drawn to it for its sheer complexity. Unfortunately, my simple mind could not keep up plus na-brain freeze ako sa kalagitnaan ng pag-iintindi sa mga konsepto. Buti nga walang nose bleeding, eh.

Questions

1. Can anyone tell me what are the underlying universals in this linguistic form?
2. How does all the fields of linguistic come to play in this song?
3. What theoretical occurrence can be predicted from this as derived from an emerging framework?

Related Literature

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It endeavours to answer the question–what is language and how is represented in the mind? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language (ie., do not split infinitives).

The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to discover the universals concerning language. That is, what are the common elements of all languages. The linguist then tries to place these elements in a theoretical framework that will describe all languages and also predict what can not occur in a language.