The RH Bill is Not a Cure-All

The RH bill debate has been raging for years now, but only in the last couple of years has it gained traction in Congress. It is THE single most explosive issue in the country today, inviting unbridled emotions from advocates on both sides of the debate. 

I've seen and heard a lot of arguments from those sides. It's impossible to avoid those arguments on Facebook and Twitter. I firmly believe that the RH bill should be approved as soon as possible for the benefit of the poorest families in the Philippines. 

An oft-repeated argument is that this bill will lead to more promiscuous behavior. Now, as a Christian, I do not condone promiscuity. People should not go around sleeping with anyone they find desirable. My belief is that sexual behavior should be solely within the confines of marriage. 

However, it is a sad fact that promiscuous behavior DOES happen. Women get pregnant, and many times either the man who got them pregnant isn't man enough to provide for the child or there simply isn't enough money to take care of that child. In that case, it's the child who suffers the most from the wrong choices of his parents. 'Wag na nating idamay ang bata.

Should that child be made to suffer the brunt of those wrong choices? I don't think so. That child doesn't even have a fighting chance of getting all his needs met. Many times, this happens in the poorest communities. 

Another line of reasoning I've heard is that the more people there are, the bigger the chances of jobs, as companies will be lining up to hire Filipinos. I've even heard it said that poor families need more children because THOSE children can help feed the family. PLEASE. 

I'd like to hear THAT told to the mother who needs to feed 12 children. I'd like to hear THAT told to the millions of people wallowing in poverty. 

I don't pretend to know how much these people earn, but for the sake of argument, let's try some logical conjecture here, shall we? 

The minimum wage for full-time work is about 400 pesos, depending on the industry. That means that the monthly salary for someone who earns that much is roughly 8,000 to 10,000 pesos. 

For those who give birth, the cost of normal delivery hovers around 20,000 to 30,000 pesos. If you are so unfortunate as to need a C-section, the cost shoots up to around 50,000 to 100,000 pesos. 

Then there's the cost of taking care of a baby adequately. The cost of 900 grams of S26 Gold is more than 1,000 pesos (not sure how long that will feed a baby). Of course, breastfeeding is best, but a woman can only breastfeed for so long. 

Then there are the other costs of raising a child -- education and health being most important. There are no free lunches, and at some point everyone pays for these things, even though the government provides for lower costs at government hospitals and public schools. 

The victims here aren't the parents who have children. They're adults who make a choice. If they are married, they are well within their rights to have sexual relations. 

The victims here are the children who have to live with subpar parenting and inadequate provisions because the parents aren't prepared for parenthood. 

The RH bill is not a panacea, but it's certainly one of the ways to avoid this situation. The medicines are legally available ANYWAY. What the bill does is make the same medicines available to people with means available to those who need these medicines the most. 

Is the Linux Desktop Dead?

Last week, one of the founders of GNOME, formerly one of the most popular Linux desktop environments, came out and pronounced the Linux desktop dead. Such a bold pronouncement indeed, and one bound to guarantee a lot of enemies. Linus Torvalds rejected this notion outright. 

I have to agree with Linus here. The continued development of Linux on the desktop is certainly cause for optimism. I don't think that it will ever be as big as Microsoft or Apple, but Linux desktops have been at the forefront of innovation for personal computers in the past decade. 

The Linux desktop is thriving.
(image courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu)

Consider, for instance, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It's vastly different from Windows or OS X, but nonetheless it is of high quality. I mean, it has to be if Google uses it, right? I've been using it for a year and a half now, and I have to say that it gets better with each release. Because 12.04 is a long-term support release (hence the abbreviation "LTS"), I don't have to reinstall a new version for the next five years, as opposed to the 18-month shelf life of a regular release. 

Perhaps the reason many people say the Linux desktop is dead is because those people are focusing only on Europe and the US. Indeed, the desktop may be dying in those places because of the popularity of mobile devices and the cloud. I get that. 

In Asia, though, desktop computers are more affordable than laptop computers. It's possible to buy a desktop for as low as $500. Laptops, on the other hand, may cost you $900 or more. 

Add to that the free nature of many Linux distributions, and you can see that desktop Linux in Asia (and probably in other parts of the world) is far from dead. In fact, I think it offers us a quality alternative to Windows software, which is quite expensive for many people here. Most people, of course, would not spend a single dime on software if they knew they could get an alternative one for free. 

Hopefully, development on the Linux desktop continues. It truly offers people a chance to use quality software. Like I said, I've been using it for quite some time, and I only use Windows at work because I don't have a choice. Linux doesn't have to compete with Windows. It only needs to be a great alternative OS -- which it already is. 

The Apple-Samsung Debacle

With the weekend came the news that Apple had won its case against Samsung. An American jury found that the South Korean company had violated several of its patents. As a Samsung Galaxy user, I find that ruling extremely distasteful. 

Only a fool would mistake the Samsung Galaxy for an iPhone. While there are some similarities, I would say that some of Apple's arguments are pretty dumb. I mean, suing over the shape of the phone is really pushing the envelope here. 

This ruling limits consumer choices. Although it really doesn't affect what's happening here in Asia, it may in the future, seeing how some courts copy rulings in the United States. Apple is dictatorial in the sense that it is trying to ram their iPhone down our collective throat. If they wanted to sell more of their products, they ought to do it by lowering their prices, NOT by limiting consumers. 

The real loser here is the consumer, the person who wants a smartphone but cannot pay the PhP 38,000 a new iPhone costs. The real loser is the person who simply does not want to idolize Apple products, but doesn't want Windows Phones or Blackberry handsets either. 

I will never purchase an Apple product, even if I end up having enough money to do so.  

Salamat san sa gabos, Secretary Robredo

I first heard of Secretary Jesse Robredo in college. He was one of the people our orientors said was a Lasallian we could be proud of. I never really was aware of his achievements, though, until they came to light this week. 

courtesy of TheLaSallian (www.facebook.com/thelasallian)

It's funny how people whom you never met can have an impact on your life, and Mr. Robredo certainly had that positive impact on me after I heard his story. A devoted family man, he went straight from an official function to be with his daughter, who had just won a swimming competition. To the very end, he showed his love for his family. Admirable. 

It's a moment of infinite loss. I will always remember where I was when I first heard that his plane crashed: at my girlfriend's house, about to eat out. It was a breaking news flash on ABS-CBN. I thought to myself, "It's going to be alright. It will work out just fine." I was wrong. 

For three days, the nation was focused on the search for Robredo, in the vain hope that he was still alive. After all, stranger things had happened. Maybe the secretary had by some miracle escaped and was in fact on an isolated island. Maybe he was floating on the sea, barely clinging to life. 

All those hopes were dashed with the discovery of his body. And I felt a moment of loss. How could someone so good at what he does be taken away? How could the positive future of this country's politics have died? Questions, questions, questions. With no answers.

The truth is, I can think of hundreds of politicians who should have been on that plane instead of Robredo. It seemed like he was one of those people who was not corrupted by power and money, who still led a simple life with his family and friends. His final act says a lot about that. 

If there's anything to be learned here, I daresay that Mr. Robredo's dedication allows us to hope that there's a better future for Philippine politics. It opened up the fact that not all politicians are dirty crooks. Some of them are just like the rest of us, trying to get by, loving our families, dreaming of a bright future, working as hard as humanly possible. 

Some of them are just like Jesse Robredo. 

Ubuntu, Linux, and Free Software

After months of trying out Linux Mint (and after more than a year of using Ubuntu), I buckled and reinstalled Ubuntu on my PC again yesterday. I'm no techie, of course, so don't go judging me here. I simply went by my consumerist instincts and went for what I felt was the best product. 

Linux Mint is a great OS. It provides out-of-the-box functionality for most everything you need to do. You get Flash and different audio and video codecs. I get that. However, as I evaluated it for a few months, I decided that Ubuntu has the best support system.

First of all, Ubuntu is backed by Canonical, which also offers the OS plus support-for-a-fee to companies worldwide. The OS on its own, however, is free, as are most Linux-based operating systems. That's great for me because I don't want to spend a dime on Microsoft software. And THAT really is expensive. 

Both Linux Mint and Ubuntu are great. They provide non-techie users like myself a way to get work done quickly and to browse the web safely. I ultimately chose Ubuntu, though, because of the possibility of more software and greater support. It is, after all, the most popular Linux distribution. 

That's what's so great about free software. You get to choose the OS you want. It's "free" in the sense that you don't have to pay anything for most distros, and in fact you can create multiple copies of these distros to share with friends. You really can't do that with other operating systems, now, can you? 

However, in the free software community, "free" also refers to freedom from restrictive software licenses. That means people who want to modify free software can do so without fear of litigation. 

The possibility of openly modifying software benefits all of us, I believe. It leads to more innovation and more possibilities. For us end users, it gives us more choices in software. That way, we are not chained to Microsoft or Apple, which really don't give us much of a choice. 

This is why I would encourage everyone to use Linux software and operating systems. Frankly, I don't care whether you use Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, or Linux Mint (or a host of others). If you are not dependent on Microsoft or if you want to move away from it, I suggest you use Linux. There's a slight learning curve, of course, but generally these distributions work quite well. 

Home Along Da Riber

Even the roads in front of SM were flooded.

Last week's monsoon rains in the Philippines were terribly tragic. To date, about 80 people have died, either as a direct result of the flooding that followed (drowning, electrocution from walking in areas with exposed electrical wires) or as an indirect result (diseases like leptospirosis). 

And that wasn't even a storm. 

Can you imagine what a storm like 2007's Milenyo would have done? I'll tell you what would have happened: thousands of shanties would have been obliterated, swept away by raging waters. Hundreds if not thousands of people would be dead right now. 

What happened here? There was a time when Metro Manila rarely got flooded. I remember such a time, and that was certainly a cleaner time. Now, however, it seems that we Filipinos have been trapped by our greed. 

Two weeks ago, I watched a very interesting take on this from journalist Ted Failon. There isn't a single entity to be blamed for the recent flooding, or for all the floods in the recent past for that matter. Rather, it seems that it's a confluence of actions that is causing billions in damage. 

Real estate developers are certainly one of the groups that should be blamed here. Many buildings are built on what used to be esteros, which were great drainage systems. So I guess the price of expansion includes the lives of thousands of Filipinos. Many of these developers aren't interested in filling a need. They're interested in lining their pockets. 

Squatters are another group that should be blamed. Many of these people live near or at drainage systems. Their waste and trash contributes a lot to clogging. Why can't the national government do something about them? They should be relocated to another place. And they should be taught that living on land that isn't theirs (and insisting on their so-called "rights" to that land) is really land theft, even though some namby-pamby politicians try to say otherwise. 

Factories are also at fault. The tons of waste that are dumped into rivers are a surefire way of making those same rivers overflow. That waste should be disposed of in a responsible way, and dumping them into rivers and other bodies of water is grossly irresponsible and should be treated as a major crime. Perhaps if some big shot factory owner goes to jail for something like that, these factories would stop doing that cold turkey. 

As much as I hate to say it, though, I'm afraid WE ALL are at fault. Yes, we the citizenry. WE fail to keep our eyes on the state of the environment. WE sometimes (or many times) throw our trash anywhere we please. WE allow real estate developers, squatters, and factories to do whatever they want to do. In other words, WE are our biggest problem. 

Enough is enough. 

NBA power play?

This is something I've been wanting to get off my chest for quite some time. 

Since before the Olympics began, NBA Commissioner David Stern and some of his cohorts have been planning to create a "World Cup of Basketball" (whatever the heck THAT means). They say the Olympic basketball tournament should be for those under 23 years old, and in fact want to engineer just that. 

To me, that's just a dumb play. 

First off, a disclaimer: I have absolutely no stake in the drama. Filipino ball players haven't played a single game in the Olympics since 1972. That's 40 years of Olympic basketball absence! Seriously, we really should get our act together. But I digress. 

This plan by the NBA is about money, there's no getting around that fact. And that's why they want to create a basketball world cup -- with all or at least most of the proceeds going directly to the NBA. If they want to do that, fine, be my guest, and good riddance. 

Photo courtesy of my name is dan on flickr.com

We all love the NBA. 

We just don't want it dictating the rules of the Olympic basketball games.

But to make Olympic basketball for those below 23 years old? You have got to be kidding me! As a fan, I want to watch the absolute best that the world has to offer when I watch the Olympics. I don't want to see a bunch of virtually young boys playing. I want to see THE BEST. 

Believe it or not, the world has caught up to the US men's basketball team. They can no longer be called the Dream Team (which beat their opponents by about 40 points every single game). They can still win, no doubt about that. But Spain and Argentina have become more competitive. The final game was no nailbiter, but it was a fairly good game. 

And Stern wants to take away all that? 

If the IOC actually approves this proposal (no updates on that just yet), it will ruin the whole concept of the Olympics. Who wants to watch a bunch of kids play college-level (or even high school level) ball when there are professionals who play SO MUCH BETTER. It's not like NBA players are asking for this, either. 

There ought to be a bigger uproar over this, and already some European countries are grumbling. No one's protesting yet, because this isn't a formal proposal just yet. But hopefully there will be, because the NBA should not be allowed to flex its muscles at the expense of all the other Olympic basketball teams. 

Yes, this reeks of expansionism of a different kind.