Reading List

I haven't posted in a looong while so I am updating and so I will have something new to read myself :) . The reason is because I have been away from this space for a year now. I also haven't been reading fiction, science, and philosophy books lately. My list of recent books are very far from what I had been reading until last year. Nowadays, I'm consumed by something else. Here are the last books I have read, most recent first:

Bankable Business Plans - by Edward Rogoff (almost finished now)
The Soul Of The Corporation - by Bouchikhi & Kimberly
Financial Statements, A Step By Step Guide... - by Thomas Ittelson
Financial Intelligence For Entrepreneurs - by Berman & Knight
Fooled By Randomness - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Selfish Gene - by Richard Dawkins (first 3 chapters only)
Inside The Black Box - by Rishi Narang
Optimal Trading Strategies - by Kissel & Glantz
Game Theory, A Very Short Introduction - by Ken Binmore
Value Above Cost - by Donald Sexton

What I noticed is that I haven't slowed down reading - I have read all of them in the last two months - but my interest had changed significantly though I'd like to go back to reading more of the philosophy/fiction/science books. Three of the books above are about things related to my work (Narang, Binmore, Kissel & Glantz), the others except Dawkins (which I dropped for the meantime) are for general financial knowledge or related to business & branding. The Dawkins book is somewhat related to the Binmore book on game theory though they deal in different areas of knowledge. I don't have books on queue so I may finally go back to Dawkins.

Weird Day

Something unusual happened today. Two things really and that made the day unusual as a whole. Well, some things happen that are not usual but recently, nothing much out of the ordinary has been happening because my daily routine has become very predictable, with me being out of work. I got invited by one of my job agents with whom I had been communicating by phone and email a lot, to finally meet in person and have lunch together "to put a face to the name" so to speak. I went to Shibuya to meet him in front of 109. We went to this Italian restaurant since I had been to his first choice of restaurant twice before. (The Tokyo Brights used to meet there which I had attended on a few occasions.) As we were talking about life and the small things we never talk about on business calls, the order seemed to had been forgotten so we followed up with the waitress. I could tell my agent was irritated, he asked for the manager but there was no manager. The waitress was very apologetic and was really trying very hard to speak in English and offered us to take have salad bar for free. When we were paying, they refused our payment so our meal was free and the while staff floor was really very apologetic. I felt sorry for the waitress. I wasn't very hungry. I had breakfast at ten. My pasta turned out to be okay, seafood in basil sauce.

On my way home, I discovered I lost my 10,000 yen bill I put in my back pocket earlier. Something that hasn't happened to me before. I never put bills in my back pocket and I never lost any money since I've been to Tokyo more than nine years ago. I put it in my back pocket because I was in a hurry for my lunch appointment and my wallet was inside my bag. I was in Shibuya Hachiko crossing at exactly 12 noon, the appointed time (the beauty of the train system here), and met up with the agent 5 minutes later. I knew when I put it there that there would be a big chance of losing it but somehow I banished the thought. I was thinking I'd buy a good quality Japan-made, half face, motorcycle helmet with it on my way home - if I can find one within that budget. I guess buying the helmet is postponed for another day.

Wanna get rich?

In the past few months, I have encountered quite a few threads in the various forums I participate in including the two mailing lists for Pinoy Atheists and Filipino Freethinkers. These alleged financial coaches/advisers/gurus ask questions like Is a real estate property an asset or a liability? or Is buying and selling of stocks investing? As I see these financial gurus or coaches invade the various online forums making such silly questions, my SCAM meter started to move to the right. Eventually, these guys will make a pitch to find out the answer by going to another website. Or at times, they'd ask you to read Robert Kiyosaki, the inspiration guru himself. Say who? So now I am trying to get hold of one of his book which I found out has been consistently at the top of the NY Times bestseller list. What is this book about? I have heard it a few times already before this whole thing seemed to have suddenly exploded among the Pinoy. 2 million copies sold in the US alone! I checked Amazon to read the 1-star rating and most of the reviewers who gave 1-star are fairly consistent about what think the book is about. I'll write about this more as I gather more information.

Back to Work

I'm back to work at least on this sorry space - my blog needs a lot of love from me. I lost my real job last December the day before I was really supposed to take my annual year-end vacation. So while in Manila, I extended my vacation by a week. It's the busiest Pinas vacation I have had so far, ironically, but for a reason. I have been putting the foundation to my cushion catch-net. Since I came back from that vacation I haven't found a new job yet although I have had interviews. It's as if the job market here has ground to a halt. Officially, my last day on the payroll was three months later after I received my termination. I was told that it is a legal requirement in Japan and I find it very favorable to the workers. So that means, even though I lost my job in December, I really lost it in March. During this time, I have to heed the lesson of free market capitalism to re-tool but I choose to just re-sharpening my skills since I decided to stay within the same job description for my next work, whether it be here or elsewhere. I have been reading books that are mostly technical with the exception of a book on the Enlightenment (I'll write about this later) and a book on marketing. My fallback is that, if within two more months (conditional to my application for temporary visitor visa being granted) and still no job here, I'll be executing my "Exit Japan" and "Hello Laguna" plans simultaneously. The marketing book is for the "Hello Laguna" plan where I'll most likely be spending my time looking after a business I have been putting up, the reason I was always busy on my vacations. Sounds like not finding a job here is the perfect excuse to be in Laguna longer and longer if only I can afford not to have a steady income for a year or so. There is no point staying here longer than six months without a source of income as savings dwindle faster than anywhere else. The only regret I'll have if finally I have to leave is that the things I have spent years accumulating here, things I really like, I may have to throw away as the cost of shipping them to Manila is very prohibitive not to mention how our customs officials do their work. (I have first hand experience on how they can be so makapal ang mukha.) These big item things have only sentimental value for me but they cannot be sold here anymore even at a discount except for a few items and yet throwing them away also entails paying for their disposal. Looking ahead, l have to hurdle one result still pending with the immigration bureau regarding my visa extension. After that, the only remaining issue is the job itself but whether I get one or not doesn't matter much now as I have already prepared for my exit with my parachute. I hope it will work. Its success depends squarely on how much I can commit to it. Needless to say, I am determined and convinced I can make it work within a reasonable time. Let's see.

Atheism is a religion in the guise of science?

Somebody commented in the Darwin Day 2009 post about me supposedly as "really zealous in being a member of the religion called "atheism" in the guise of science" and that he would just pray that blah blah blah. Here is another example of somebody who just doesn't get it. I replied to him that "atheism is not a religion nor is science" and that "everybody, including theists appreciate science." He wants to see atheists who happens to love science as having a religion called science which is actually atheism. At first I thought he was being funny but he was not. He was just being irrational. He has deceived himself with mixing obviously different things. If he can just do an honest inquiry into this reasoning anomaly, he can surely find out what is religion and what is science and what their basic differences are. Religion oftentimes, and this is specially true to the Christian religion with which he is subscribed to, will ignore science if that is what's needed in order to keep its truths. Science on the other hand is concerned about reality and how it operates, (and if I may add just to be in context) REGARDLESS of religious truths. Scientific truths are not absolute and may one day be overturned by new discoveries. They operate quite differently when it comes to finding out the truth. For example, many truths in Christianity usually come from some near absolute if not absolute source of authority like the pope or the bible while truths in science doesn't hold such authorities to high esteem. What is important in science is that these hypotheses be testable/verifiable and falsifiable. So it may be that this indifference of science to religious truths is at the bottom of his assertion? And then there is the atheism being a religion. Well as they said, only if being bald is called a hairstyle. This so very cliche now: atheism is the lack of belief in gods. Although there are religions that are atheistic in that they don't have gods (so I heard but I myself don't know), if by religion he meant believing in something, and making this object of belief an object of worship, then atheism having no belief on gods obviously doesn't have anything to function as an object of worship. So he must be saying that instead of god, I believe in science, and am a devout believer of it to the point of worship? Now, "devout" is a religious word that has no place in science and I think this gives him away. He may be wishing that atheists in general must believe in something in place of their gods, in my case I am devout about atheism or science, only to reassure himself that we, despite of the opposing position about god, are actually in the same boat. That atheists are religionists too. No, sir. Thank you. My atheism is about being free from your religion (of Christianity). I don't wish to replace it with another crap.

Darwin Day 2009

Today we celebrate the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin. Happy birthday Charles!

Filipino Freethinkers website launched

A new website, FilipinoFreethinkers.org was launched today. It will serve as the jump-off site for the upcoming First Filipino Freethinkers' Forum to be held on February 28, 2009. For more details please visit the site or join Pinoy Atheists on Yahoo! groups.

Evolution of Thought

I have rediscovered reading when I got my first credit card, I browsed Amazon for music CDs of bands I used to listen to as a teenager. In one of the days I was browsing music, I naturally jumped to browsing books. I originally only had computer books in mind but that quickly changed to books that I would have learned had I access to them as a teenager. I'd like to read them because I wanted to learn, to understand, and to straighten things out about the things that I only had a vague idea of, but occupied my thoughts before, or simply I wanted to know more. As a child, I used to read books but I had very limited access in that the libraries in my place did not stock good books. They mostly stocked textbooks. Another reason was that in both grade school (public) and high school (Catholic), reading books was not encouraged. I'd say the teachers were close to being indifferent about reading books outside the normal class topics. I think this is because the teachers themselves were product of the same environment where indifference to books is common. When I rediscovered it much later, I felt some regrets that I didn't rediscover it much earlier that I could've. But what is past is past and here I am in another cycle of slow pace, I am reading books in a much slower pace than I did a few years ago when I used to read about two hours a day. Now I could only devote an hour if I am not so tired. My interests vary. Surveying my shelf, my books are heavy on science, specially evolutionary biology, a surprise now given that as a teenager, I thought I didn't like biology. I thought it was a boring science. As it turned out, it's because we were being taught the small picture, the leaves and twigs without giving us the unifying principle behind it, the trunk, and the roots where the concept got it's heritage. The great biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky once famously remarked that

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

If one understands biological evolution, one cannot but wholeheartedly agree. When I started reading books again, one of the first books I read was Charles Darwin's Origin Of Species. As a teen I had this partial knowledge of evolution theory. Partial because as a teenager I already had ideas about what is evolution (as obviously as it sound, I understood it then as change over time) but I was totally clueless about how organisms could change over time. (Not that I know now completely though.) I got these ideas mainly from watching television programs on archaeology, anthropology, and geology on government operated television channels. The Marcos-era government-run TV channels were a lot better than our current crop of stupid private television channels, including those run by religious corporations. I think the pre-Cory channel 9 was run by very literate people, probably going all the way up to Malacanang. Nowadays, I don't watch any Philippine TV which I now consider as contributing to the further dumbing down of the Pinoy society, but I digressed. Going back to the topic, after reading Darwin's book, sometime later I read Thomas Malthus' essay on population and now reading Adam Smith's Wealth Of Nations. Reading Smith now is for purposes of understanding his ideas and not merely being able to say Invisible Hand without knowing the ideas behind it. In the course of time, I come to read the works of Milton Friedman, F. Hayek, Ayn Rand, and other authors, even Thomas Friedman! I now think that the ideas come back in many forms and in different spheres of knowledge and don't stand on and by itself. Ideas of course have their own heritage as Newton once wrote (paraphrased) that he saw further because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. What I am talking about is that ideas have parallels in other fields while they may not be related, and that ideas also have some evolutionary characteristics though it doesn't seem Darwinian at the core. There are some form of cross-germinating other fields with novel insights in other fields that may or may not be related at all. For example, here is a short list of books that I think have parallel/overlapping ideas:

Origin of Species (Charles Darwin) - This book about biological evolution asserts that nature acts as a sieve that "favors" changes that confers very small advantages to individual organisms, change that accumulated over time produce different species. Darwin called this Natural Selection. (Approximates the best biological "designs" for a given environment.)

Structure Of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas Kuhn) - This asserts that scientific theories change over time or oftentimes completely overturned, such that what what is earlier accepted as scientifically true may at times be considered obsolete or patently false. Kuhn called these upheavals in thought as paradigm shifts and gave as textbook example the changes in the theory on gravitation from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein. (Approximates truth.)

Popper Selections - (selected essays of Karl Popper edited by David Miller) - Popper was a prominent 20th century philosopher of science. This book gathers some of his writings about "truth" and how we may approximate it. He asserts that there is Truth but it's not provable since there is no absolute authority on Truth. Instead, we have conjectures, the falsehood of them can be established, and so must be discarded, or it's truthfulness stands as long as if it survives the assaults to falsify it through critical rationalism. (Approximates truth.)

Logic (Immanuel Kant) - This small book serves as an introduction to Kant's philosophy on truth. He asserts that definitions of concepts can only be approached asymptotically, that synthetic definitions are impossible while analytic definitions are uncertain, and that only constructive synthetic definitions can both be logical and certain. (Approximates truth.)

The Wealth Of Nations (Adam Smith) - This book on economic theory asserts that an economic system where the individuals are free to do as they choose will, as a consequence advance the common good. (Approximates the common good.)

Other prominent books with similar or overlapping concepts are An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus, Anarchy, Utopia, and State by Robert Nozick, and On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. I'll write about them sometime next.

Sometimes, reading some passage in one book brings back memories of another such that I find myself cross-referencing them. This has told me somehow that I need constant re-reading of the packages of books read in the past in order to cement the concept, to make it more concrete, and less abstract.

The Church on Reproductive Method

The only approved family planning method by the Church are: billings ovulation method (BOM, sometimes called incorrectly as rhythm method) and abstinence. So if one is not to run away from the consequences - pregnancy - the drill should be like this:

a) If you are and not planning on having a baby, then it's abstinence.
b) If you are planning on having a baby, use BOM to find out when the woman is LIKELY to get pregnant and during this time have sex with her. You do this with BOM so that you have sex only when she is most LIKELY to be fertile.
c) go back to a)

I don't know if that's how the RCC really formulates it but that's the only way I see it. If the RCC say that BOM can be used in order to AVOID pregnancy, then doesn't it contradict the responsibility-with-the-consequence part?

I found this article making the same point:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-contraception_thinkjul27,0,221957\
1.story

The RCC say that the purpose of sex should be for reproduction. It means, almost like a moral duty, that you have sex only if you want to have a child, and if you know about BOM, use it to time when to have sex. That's the highest and purest way, morally speaking. Or if man/woman are ignorant about BOM, try and try until you succeed. Otherwise, if you don't want any child, it should be strictly abstinence. That is NOT natural. "Natural" is a lottery. Men cannot tell if the woman is fertile (unlike other animals e.g., dogs and chimps) so the main rule of reproduction is to have sex as many times as possible without regard to BOM. If a Catholic doesn't want to have another child, there should not be any question to the only method allowed - abstinence. Unfortunately, the RCC also says jerking off is absolutely not allowed and that if you do it, god will know and IN FACT god is keeping a book counting how many times you jerked off. This is the reason why there are no males in heaven except a few who were run over by cars right after they had their confession.

Awareness

One cannot fathom the possibility of changing the society to accept atheism if one is not known to be one in his own immediate environment - friends, family, and even neighbors. If you are not an out-of-the-closet atheist, you cannot appreciate the changes in people's perception when they are confronted with the real thing. To most Pinoys, a non-believer is an unimaginable being but here I am and I am real. And more, I belong to a growing community. They cannot dismiss us if we have a case. If we can argue well our position, we can either gain respect or get derision. Personally I'd prefer respect but I can also take derision if that's the price of being intellectually honest to myself. In the end, one ends up in one hand real friends who will respect your views despite the vast difference because they saw beyond your atheism, and on the other hand may lose superficial friends. I think religious differences, which I take to include non-religion, in matters of personal relationships should take a backseat but if the other party cannot do that, it will surely result in rough roads ahead that can also mean separating. It's gotta be painful if he/she is a very close friend or family but I wouldn't know since so far I have been in good terms with all of them.

Secularism

I just posted a small article about the path to secularism as mandated by the Philippine constitution. I have been trying to do this for some time and only now I had the motivation to actually write. You see, I write my articles very slowly because I am a bad writer. I have plenty of ideas but most of them are not concretized into a whole. I will continue to expand this thought and will continue to revisit it as I learn more about it.

Bonifacio's Death

In the last couple of days, after finishing reading Stephen Jay Gould's The Lying Stones Of Marrakech, I picked up this small book, almost like a booklet, The Tragedy Of The Revolution by Adrian Cristobal. I am a big fan of history but recently I haven't been reading Philippine history due to lack of books accessible enough to me with living outside the country. I have in my shelves here a few books I picked up in one of my visits to PowerBooks during one of my vacations. All in all there are exactly six small books comprising what I call my Filipinana section. Three of them are about Andres Bonifacio the Katipunan Supremo; the other two Bonifacio books are by Ambeth Ocampo. I quickly finished Cristobal's book and while reading it, it made me realize that I really need to go back to reading more about Philippine history since the book showed that I am grossly ignorant of a lot of the details in the most important episodes of the history of our people. I knew that Bonifacio was killed by fellow Filipinos but I never knew more than that. He was portrayed as an unfortunate casualty of the revolution, his death was brought upon by his own short temper in the Tejeros Convention. While reading Cristobal's book, I felt angry about the circumstances surrounding the hero's death. In sweeping the historical narrative into a cohesive whole historians seemed to have sanitized the past such that we forget that the people involved are individuals not without their own (good and/or evil) motives and convictions. In the second book i am reading now by Ocampo, there is the excerpt of the memoir of Gregoria De Jesus, Bonifacio's widow, narrating about her two-weeks search for the remains of her husband without getting any meaningful help from people who could have easily shown her the exact spot. According to Cristobal, Bonifacio fell victim to a conspiracy by the Magdalo faction to remove him so that the Katipunan would be under the new revolutionary government that they were to form. Cristobal provided good arguments in this view, in that it was not necessary to kill Bonifacio in order to achieve their aim. I am now going to trying to read additional documents that can shed more light into what he called the tragedy of the revolution.

Beijing Olympics

The 2008 edition of the Olympics has closed a few hours ago. I must say I truly enjoyed following the day to day events now that I am rooting for the athletes of the nation of my residence - Japan. Japan had less gold medals than it hoped to get before the games started but national pride in this nation is not tied to the performance of its athletes abroad so even though the gold medal haul is less than hoped for, it doesn't seem to matter a bit. As they say, they did their best and they are happy with what they have achieved.

Most matches by Japanese athletes and the most important matches, for example the swimming races that Michael Phelps participated in, and athletics, were broadcast live in terrestrial digital TV and in high definition and it was really a spectacle to behold. I was impressed by the camera shots and instant-replay, in slow motion, you can see the sweat and almost feel the emotion of the athletes. One big advantage of this Olympics is that the timezone is almost the same as Tokyo's so there's no waking up in early morning to catch the matches, for example, to catch Wimbledon live, I had to stay awake up to 4am at times. China has done a great job in organizing this Olympics. I hope the British can do as well in London 2012. I also hope Tokyo will bring The Games to this city in 2016. It's still far but I have been here almost nine years now and looking back it doesn't seem that long a wait. I like the festive atmosphere when something non-political but big is happening like when Manila hosted the SEA Games or when Japan co-hosted with Korea the World Cup in 2002.

hb4110.net

We are currently in the process of putting up a website to support the consolidated Reproductive Health Care Act now filed in the 14th Congress. Once it's setup, we'll let everybody know. Please keep yourself informed by reading the bill yourself first-hand and maybe you can write your congressman to express your support for this very important but still pending legislation.

Support HB4110 or Reproductive Health Care Act

We the undersigned express our support of HB 4110, The Reproductive Health Care Act.

We fully support the bill’s principles as laid out in Section 2.

We all hope for a healthy Filipino society. We believe the bill will help us build such a society where reproductive health care is available to anyone and everyone, free of discrimination on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, and religious affiliation or non-affiliation. Where policies concerning reproductive health care that affects everyone is not dictated by any particular religion or belief system. We believe in the right to choose one’s method of planning a family and spacing children, or to choose to have no children at all. The rights of the individual to choose according to his conscience don’t fall under the aegis of self-proclaimed moral authorities of the religious establishment.

The Philippines is a nation of diverse religious beliefs/non-beliefs. No single belief system represents the whole diversity of Filipino religious and non-religious thought or belief nor does any of its leaders speak for all its adherents. The continued opposition by the leaders of certain sects is a clear encroachment on the rights to free choice on reproductive health methods and services of every Filipino, and trample on the rights of those who do not adhere to their beliefs. We strongly condemn the negative campaign being waged by these leaders to mislead its adherents by misrepresenting the bill’s content, and by resorting to using dogmatic, unscientific, and outmoded beliefs to support its arguments.

We strongly support the legislation because we believe this is for the well-being our nation in particular and humanity in general as we face the future of a planet with limited resources.

Please read the bill here: http://dirp3.pids.gov.ph/population/documents/HB4110.pdf

Please sign the petition here.

FanBox, spam machine

I just visited this site because I am getting annoyed by the spam it is sending to my mailbox and one of the things that struck me was their service described: "Spam-Free Web-based Email." I marked it as spam in my account for now.

Atheism and Agnosticism

Atheism and agnosticism deal with the concept "god" in different spheres. Agnosticism is about not having knowledge about god or its existence while atheism is about not having a belief in the existence of god.

Agnosticism = lack of knowledge
Atheism = lack of belief

I think that nobody has true knowledge of the existence of god. Therefore, everybody is ultimately and technically an agnostic. A form of weak atheism is also referred to as agnostic atheism. There is a middle ground between theism and atheism in the technical sense since there are those who are "undecided" and some of them prefer to call themselves among many terms as non-theist or post-theist or what-not. Agnosticism is not a middle ground between theism and atheism since agnosticism is present in the whole set. But in practice, those who are at the atheism end of the spectrum, live in a world where gods are not part of reality.

Earthquake

A series of small earthquakes with the strongest registering a magnitude of 6.7 in the Japanese scale hit the Kanto region of the main island of Japan. The epicenter is just north of Tokyo where it was felt as M5.0 in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures. My area is lumped together with the rest of Tokyo's 23 wards, where it's reported that we just felt it as M3.0 though I'm close to Saitama prefecture which in turn lies immediately south of the two prefectures earlier mentioned. Saitama felt the quake as M4.0 strong. It's my first time to be caught in this apartment with a moderate quake and while the stronger one lasts and frankly I felt scared with the doors and tables shaking and making noises. I work up earlier around 12MN because I left the idiot box on but couldn't sleep again. It's amazing how quickly the earthquake data is gathered here. The publicly funded TV network NHK flashes the data on the TV oftentimes while it's happening! It hope it's the last for this time. I plan to go to sleep now and forget about it.

Tiebreaker

Tiebreaker. That's what Clinton called Tuesday's primaries result where she won (by the skin of her teeth) Indiana with her 51% to Obama's 49% but lost in North Carolina by double-digit margin, (42% Clinton, 56% Obama). Only somebody in denial can call that a tiebreaker since Obama widened his lead in both popular vote and pledged delegate. She also reportedly lent another $6.4M to her campaign. The wisest decision she can make as a candidate in the coming days is conceding the race to Obama. More and more Clinton is appearing to be the desperate candidate.

Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll

This site is is now officially listed in Mojoey's Atheist Blogroll.

"The Atheist Blogroll is a service provide to the Atheist and Agnostic blogging community. The blogroll currently maintains over 650 blogs. Membership is limited to Atheist and Agnostic bloggers."

If you are maintaining an atheism or an agnosticism blog, please consider joining the atheist blogroll.