The "war" between the Mangudadatu and Ampatuan clans that led to the massacre of at least 57 people in Ampatuan town left me speechless.

Early reports had the convoy of the Mangudadatu women, wife and relatives of Buluan town mayor Toto, accompanied by female lawyers and followed by the cars of journalists were stopped at Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

The convoy was reportedly "kidnapped" by about 100 armed men. Then other reports filtered in about how the "kidnapped victims" were raped, beheaded, killed, then dumped into a pit in a remote village.

When the people in the convoy were found later, buried in a newly dug hole by the mountainside of Sitio Masalay, Barangay Saman, Ampatuan town, investigators excavated about 60 bodies. Included in the count were 30 journalists who accompanied the Mangudadatu party on their way to file the certificate of candidacy of Toto Mangudadatu for the gubernatorial position.

Other victims of the massacre included passengers in two vehicles that were not part of the convoy.

All the victims were brutally murdered and then buried, allegedly some were still alive, in a pit earlier dug up -- indicating that the execution had been planned.

The brutality of these crimes left me wondering if the Philippines was caught in a time warp and was back in the days when warlords ruled with impunity. And when the gruesome details of how the victims were killed began to filter in, I couldn't imagine how the individual among those armed group could have committed such crimes. Was it mob rule, or were they all hardened killers following the specific orders of their leader, or were they a pack of Himmlers?

Steven Pinker talks about violence in his Ted.com talk on "The Myth of Violence":
While Pinker provides a rather controversial take on the decrease of violence through time, what is interesting for me is how he proposes -- and at the end of his talk when he answers a question raised by the host -- how a more globalized information network allow human beings to imagine how the Other lives.

It is apparently in this ability to imagine the Other that allows each one of us -- to one degree or another -- to demystify the Other and to realize how the Other is really like us. And in this imagining, we are able to rise above our "barbaric" behavior and to live harmoniously with our neighbors.

As Pinker points out, throughout the centuries our standards for "civilized" life has outstripped our anarchic behavior. And that explains how we are appalled at the savagery that every now and then assaults us in the news.
 
 
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Can you imagine that? Plugging yourself into the pure energy of the universe?

That is what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor talked about in her Ted.com presentation. She told her story of suffering from a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain, and how that rendered her "like an infant in a grown woman's body."

Dr. Taylor described what that condition meant by showing the audience a real brain, demonstrating how the left and right hemispheres of the brain functions. Apparently the left hemisphere accounts for the rational, the logical, and the linguistic capability of the human brain. It categorizes, it names, it organizes what data the right hemisphere receives as pure sensations.

But losing the function of her brain's left hemisphere--her ability to function as a "normal" human being--opened up a new vista of "pure euphoria, nirvana." The comments posted in the Ted.com site compares her experience to an "acid trip." And the way she described that experience really seemed like it.

Just before the doctors went into surgery, she gave up "like a balloon losing its air, its soul," and said goodbye to her life. But then the realization that she was still alive and blessed with this "insight" into what the brain's right hemisphere could tap into, convinced her to fight for her life just so she could "spread the idea."

What was this insight that Dr. Taylor tapped into? It was this idea that half of our brain is connected to the energies of the universe, that it allowed us to be literally one with the cosmos.

Of course, like an acid trip, it can be the soaring experience that Dr. Taylor described or it could be a rapid descent into paranoia. But then, the way she told her story, it seemed that tapping into that pure energy can only bring that expansive feeling of love and peace. (Perhaps it is when we are pulled back into our rational selves that we feel paranoid.)

And so Dr. Taylor--neuralanatomist and intellectual--is spreading the idea of human beings tapping into the right brain to re-connect ourselves into the pure energies of the universe. Perhaps, she says, when we do that we will be able to project the peace and love that this universal energy emits.

 
 
Okay, that may sound flaky to some of you. But that is what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuralanatomist and intellectual, discussed in her talk at Ted.com.

Speaking about the left and right brain, she distinguishes between the work of the two sides of our brain, and how the two are really different personalities.

She then illustrates what will happen to us if, just like what she experienced after a hemorrhage, her left brain stopped functioning.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You should listen to her talk first:
And so, wouldn't it be wonderful indeed to devote more of our time processing our right hemispheres, and as a result project the peace and love and kindness that makes up the energies around us? Now that sounds really flaky. Or is it just my left brain acting as censor and comptroller of my life?
 
 
That's how Amy Tan describes how she creates her story. By imagining herself in the story she is writing, believing in the belief system of the place and people she writes about, being in the story, she is able to come to what she says are "particles of truth" that allows for some understanding of things.

Here's Amy Tan's talk on Ted.com:
 
 
Not just about their art but also about making a change in this world. That's exactly how Isabel Allende was in her talk on Ted.com, as she told tales of passion. And the operative definition for passion here is from its etymology -- the Latin for "suffering." Here's Allende:

 
 
The tricky part indeed is the morning after when the dancer wakes up to find himself the mortal being with weak knees.

I like the notion of giving the idea of genius back to its supernatural source only because having it reside in the artist is quite a burden for the latter. Especially the morning after.

Because come to think of it, the artist already has a lot to worry about mastering the craft -- especially for moments when "divine inspiration" takes the day off, leaving the artist to earn a living.
 
 
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S-M-C-R, with Noise in the middle
How do you dance communication models?

Apparently it came so easy for my Intro to Comm Theories students. After showing them a sample communication model, I asked them to either draw or perform the communication process using the communication acts they observed.

Of course almost all of them chose to perform their "models" or "abstractions," trying to outdo each other in portraying the different elements in the communication transmission process.

While all used variations of Berlo's or Osgood and Schramm's communication models as they applied it to particular situations, they became creative in personifying the mechanical elements of Message, Channel, Noise, and Feedback.

I don't think next session's lecture will be boring at all.

 
Bibliomania 11/16/2009
 
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Why do I always get pulled into bookstores?

I was supposed to buy new shirts at the mall when I passed by a bookstore. Next thing I knew, there I was browsing through the titles. Had to stop myself and magicked my two feet to march out the bookstore.

I succeeded in not buying a book, but failed to buy new shirts in my hurry to get back home.

But then, this is nothing new. As a kid, my parents would often scold me for burying my nose in a book rather than doing my chores. They thought I was slacking off. They were right, of course. Reading has always been my escape.

In all the houses or apartments I've stayed in through the years, the clutter of books and magazines would define how the place would be "Home." In the apartment I rent now, one side of my bedroom is filled from floor to ceiling with shelves overflowing with books. Cabinets are stuffed with books and mags that won't fit into the shelves.

Even this blog isn't spared, what with the Amazon Wish List and Shelfari widgets on the sidebar.

Now you know where to look for me at the mall.
 
 
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Because some would say it's not. And so they require something more from creative writers.

This is the question I ask myself while preparing for the first consultation sessions in CW 200b Creative Writing Thesis.

On one hand some would say that creative writing is research. One of the advocates is the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) in UK. In their Creative Writing Subject/Research Benchmark Statement, published in September 2008, they make the following arguments:
  • Creative works are imaginative interpretations of the world
  • Creative writing research is creative practice, or "practice-led research"
  • Creative writing research "explore[s], articulate[s] and investigate[s]" a "broad range of subjects, emotions and ideals prevalent in the world" (11)
  • Creative writing research is done by creating, and creative works are research output
  • Creative writing research is creating with "critical understanding" (11)
  • Creative writing research contributes original knowledge, and that new knowledge advances the field of creativity
  • Creative writing research may include critical or reflective discourses that supplement the creative work
But defining creative writing research is different from its acceptance in the academe, where scholarly work is dominated and governed by positivist dogma.

And so in our Creative Writing Thesis class, we require our senior students to submit a collection of creative works accompanied with a critical preface.

The critical preface functions as a supplementary discourse that allows students to articulate their creative writing process and practice. It serves to document students' technical and critical acumen. As one Creative Writing teacher puts it, in the final report of the University of London's English Subject Center's Mini Project on "Supplementary Discourses in Creative Writing Teaching at Higher Education Level," published in March 2003:

"The supplementary discourses give students ways of discussing and understanding contemporary poetry and art -- and ways of developing their own practice as a result." (8)

This is as close as Creative Writing can go -- without crossing over into Literary Studies -- in terms of the demands of "measurable" scholarly work. As another Creative Writing teacher says, as quoted in the English Subject Center's report:

"supplementary discourses are the only way of persuading colleagues hostile to creative writing that it has some 'academic probity.'" (10)

So is creative writing research? What do you think?
 
Sex Pistols 11/14/2009
 
Imagine this: nerdy academics in a conference hall singing along to a YouTube video of Sex Pistol's "No Fun."

That must have been a sight to see, what C witnessed at the Digital Labor conference on "The Internet as Playground and Factory" at the Eugene Lang College, New School, this Nov. 12-14, 2009. 

Here's a YouTube video of the Sex Pistols, perhaps you'll be singing along too.