ADAMSONIAN

The quake that hit Taiwan last Tuesday wasn’t fun at all. Aside from giving us a strong, offensive reminder of what happened around this time in December 2004, it also exposed the simple fact of the whole planet relying too much on these submarine fiber-optic strands for all our state-of-the-fart global communication.

The thing is, fiber optics is one cool technology. If you’ve seen one of those Discovery Channel episodes [I think you can still watch it here] where unsmiling British people very seriously and painstakingly create a meter or so of that cable, you’ll realize creating this kind of cable feels like assembling a microchip. You don’t simply melt and tease into strands a chunk of copper ore or any of those metals you kick around everyday; you use glass.
But despite all its “high-techness,” we simply lay these cables on the ocean floor mostly unprotected. There’s this report from Rand Corp in which some sharks thought that electromagnetic pulses the cables emitted would make a good lunch, and so they feasted on it. Even ship anchors or fish nets can damage it.

Last Tuesday’s quake drove it home so sharply, mostly because half a dozen or so big-shot countries suddenly lost voice and data transmission capabilities. One moment, you’re downloading The Host, the next moment, everything’s dead. The connection, I mean.

One alternative, say some smart people, would be satellites. Or, if you really want to hark back 150 years ago, use carrier pigeons. Seriously, it’s annoying. And perhaps it’s going to happen again real soon; laying parallel fiber-optic paths will use up tons of money — money that is not easy to source. But maybe we can all start by hunting down that smart guy who had the wisdom to lay the cables around Taiwan and Japan — two countries earthquakes really love — and have the old ladies tickle him to death.

JB has blogged 101 posts

Hi guys, just met yesterday a plant manager for an edible oil company based in UAE.  He has a requirement for 2 boiler operators, 4 refinery operators and a chemist.  He is looking for people with 3 - 5 years experience in edible oil company or at a minimum, knows how to perform the job.  If interested,  please send CV to angelrenski@yahoo.com  

Rad has blogged 1 posts

I’m not sure if there are many Adamsonians who know Carl Sagan, but for those who do, they’ll understand me as I say that I deeply share the sentiments of many who just sort of reminisced the past 10 years without him; he died on Dec. 20, 1996.

Aside from being the author of the book that later became the film Contact (starring Jodie Foster), Carl Sagan was one of the very few guys who’ve inspired me to think — even worry — about the future.

Recently, the British science magazine New Scientist celebrated its 50th anniversary — and its celebratory issue contained selected scientific pieces from the 1950s to the present (the invention of the birth control pill, Gagarin in space, the first time scientists realized they were right about rocket trajectories, the first time the transistor “wowed” everybody) and perhaps more importantly, how the leading thinkers of our day look ahead 50 years in the future. There’s even a write-up on human consciousness that felt right and on target — the one where Paul Broks so beautifully describes the disconcerting nature of human identity (”human nature stinks,” so goes an old song from De-Phazz).

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Tags: Carl Sagan

JB has blogged 101 posts

It’s the time to be merry, the time to give, the time to come to together and prepare for the challenges the New Year has for us. We’ve stood strong amidst the difficulties and united in all our victories. As another year comes to a close, let us learn from the lessons and be grateful for the blessings 2006 has brought in for all of us.

To the Kapamilyas in the Philippines and in all parts of the world the whole of ABS-CBN and ABS-CBN Interactive wishes you a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Thank you for all your undying support. We look forward to another exciting year of great entertainment with you in 2007.

Source: ABS-CBN Website

* Wishing all you guys all the blessings and the best of Christmas and Year 2007!

sir Kramic has blogged 18 posts

(This is something I wrote a couple of years after I left the university. I’m just posting it here now because I think this might be relevant. The Philippine Star published this in July 2001).

The Jai Alai building has finally kissed its art deco gutters. Maan’s still (somewhat) reigns supreme. And my girlfriend’s octogenarian former landlady is either dead or missing—abducted by green-eyed aliens that came down through a shaft of light, neighbors say.

It is always nice to be welcomed back by these strange news.

Coming home to your alma mater and finding all these changes is like dunking your head in a tub of warm water. The changes all feel strange, even surreal: Is that pile of rubble really the old Sky Room? Has Adamson finally decided to hitch its star on the wave of the New Economy? Or am I the only one warped by time, trapped forever in notions that have gone extinct without notifying me? These days, it seems inevitable to somehow find more reassurance and “truth” in strange stuff like Borges’s and Kafka’s verbal nightmares, or even Jessica Zafra’s intellectual masturbations that border on the, well, twisted.

Maybe because I haven’t really left the university long enough for fragments of my memory to squabble among themselves and argue over which is about reality or not. It has only been a measly two years, half of that spent working for an Internet start-up that had its office within the university’s five-kilometer radius. Two years—yet now, I seem to have that certain air of superiority, the kind those old sages, with glazed eyes, tell the young ones, “There, there. It won’t really hurt. Imagine it’s just an ant biting you.”

After two years, I am now walking on the old Falcon Walkway with this freshman, a T-square on his shoulder, and I find myself stifling a compelling urge to tell him how it was seven, eight years ago—how we were in those distant, halcyon days. And quite pretentiously, because I’ve been through it all, I already am confident to “know” how we would be in the future. I wanted telling him that in the real world, as Laurence Fishburne would have said in The Matrix, people don’t use T-squares, buddy.

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JB has blogged 101 posts

It took us a mere five days for search engines (primarily Google) to crawl this site. Now, if you’d search for “adamsonian” on the search engine, this site is among the first search returns you’ll see — and in many cases, we even come ahead of Adamson University’s own website. Cool, isn’t it?

It means from now on, whenever some “lost” students or alumni try google-searching for “adamsonians” (maybe to look for their own batchmates or just trying to make sense of where they really belong) they won’t find random forum threads, or email groups, or some disjointed comments on YouTube.

What they will find is this site. It’s nice to know that things are starting to work.

Tags: Youtube, Google

JB has blogged 101 posts

We’ve recently introduced the Jobs Forum to help students and other folks quickly and safely find the jobs they need.

So to our accomplished alumni who are reading this, please post job openings in your company that you feel might be able to help the others who are just starting out.

Just visit the Forum and begin posting under the Classified Ads category.

JB has blogged 101 posts

Mahigit limang taon na ang nakalipas ng grumadweyt ako sa unibersidad. Maraming alaala, kaibigan, galit, paghihirap, pagtitiis ang aking naranasan. Ngunit mahigit sa lahat ng mga ito ay aking ipinagpapasalamat at nais balik-balikan.

Mga Kaibigan - marami sila at hindi mabibilang. Mga kaibigang alam mo ang pangalan pero di mo maalala kung saan mo na-meet. Mga kaibigang alam mo ang mukha ngunit hindi mo alam ang pangalan. Mga kaibigang napanaginipan mo.

Mga Kaaway - mga professors na nakaaway at kinagalitan, kinainisan at pinagtaguan, nakasagutan sa classroom, etc.

Adamson Chronicle - ito ang naging family ko sa Adamson. Naging kapamilya ako ng tatlong taon (puno ng puyat, galit, inis, outing, saya, pagkain, etc.) Maraming tao ang nagturo sa akin upang maging masaya ang stay sa school. Kuya Joebert, Kuya Alvin, Jeff, Caloy, Diane, Maui, Jenson, Aldrin, Socsy, Ate Rose, Ate Cel at marami pang ibang myembro ng institusyon. Really, iba ang pakiramdam pag kasama mo ang mga ‘kapamilya’ mo. Kanya-kanyang opinyon, kanya-kanyang yabang. Higit sa lahat…

Ang sarap ng presswork! Papasok ka ng walang ligo, puyat, bangag, walang kain minsan (or chips ang lunch o delayed). Hehe! Ang sarap balikan ng mga pangyayari at mg naging kasama.

Nasaan man sila ngayon ay alam kong nasa puso nila ang pagiging isang Chronicler. Sarado man ang publikasyon subalit mananatiling bukas ang damdaming pinag-alab ng pagmamahal sa isa’t-isa…pagmamahal sa Adamson Chronicle.

TO SIN BY SILENCE WHEN WE SHOULD PROTEST MAKES COWARDS OUT OF MEN.

p.s. di na ito poetic, hehe!

VS has blogged 1 posts

I’ve been receiving quite a few emails about inserting photos/images in a blog post, so I’ve decided to make this easy-to-learn, completely non-tech-savvy-friendly How-to list, using an image we all could relate with: the fried chicken.

So here’s the list. Just click on each image to enlarge.

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Tags: Wordpress

JB has blogged 101 posts

I missed the Pacquaio-Morales match. I didn’t see those killer punches that made Morales land on his rear-end and bade his boxing career Adios! I did not witness Manny’s triumphant moment when his shining fist was raised up in the air. But it was just fine, I had expected that the boy will clinch it. Manny is a living proof that the little brown guy can dance (to the tune of “Eye of the Tiger”).

But I would never want to miss the Nicole-Lance Corporal Daniel Smith bout dubbed as “The Subic Bay Rape Case.”

The wayward white boy, Lnce Crprl Daniel Smith got the upperhand over the little brown b*tch, Nicole, when the latter was dumped on one of Subic’s streets; pants missing, with a used condom and vivid accounts of how it all happened.

Needless to say, Nicole regained her composure, odds being reversed and the next thing we see, is a triumphant verdict of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, in favor of Nicole.

The process must have been long and arduous for Nicole, but her fight is just beginning. Good(?) ‘Ole Uncle Sam will definitely interfere and pull the necessary (puppet) strings to change the direction of the case. As I am tapping on my keyboard, GMA’s minions are expressing their support to the U.S.’s suggestion(?) of transferring Smith to a U.S. facility, while the case is still being elevated to the Court of Appeals.

Moreso, Nicole was not only seeking justice for this crime committed against her but she was also resisting the pull to conform to centuries-old inferiority complex and lack of national pride.Nobody knows when her fight will end, maybe until all of her hope and strength are consumed.

The simple truth is that rape is a crime. It was committed against the poor girl and the verdict was simply to dispense justice. But since Smith is an American serviceman, protected by the provisions of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), he can just be shipped back to his country, singing “Star-spangled Banner” and get on with his life. He might even choose to order a Filipina bride online. This is the sad truth that will set Smith free. Nicole’s case will then be just another statistic.

Mikaela has blogged 2 posts

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