Of Lacrosse and Machine-readable Passports

The American-Indians have been known in modern media to have a strong sense of community and have often been depicted protecting their "lands", even in less-than-diplomatic ways. This time, however, a news article I've read may have placed them under a different light: a victim of discrimination.

The Iroquois are an association of several tribes of indigenous people of North America, particularly found in the United States and Canada. They helped invent the game, lacrosse. From July 15-24, 2010, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship was held in Manchester, UK. But unfortunately, the Iroquois Nationals team was not able (allowed?) to participate in the event.

The UK has denied them entry into its territory for not having machine-readable, US- or Canada-issued passports. Not considering themselves to be citizens of the US nor Canada, the Iroquois lacrosee team, though eligible to get the passports, refused to acquire the said documents saying that doing so will be a "strike on their identity" as Iroquois people. After days of negotiating for their entry into the UK, the Iroquois Nationals decided to just forfeit their participation in the World Championships.

While some people may say that it is an "odd" and stupid decision to forfeit rather than just accept the papers, (One comment, read "Your people were conquered a very long time ago, get over it. Most of them are half white anyway") I admire the Iroquois for choosing what is more important to them. I admire them for letting go of a chance to win at a championship, and showing the world that they are champions of their own ideals.


May the Filipinos have the pride and the guts to do the same.

Of Japanese Animation and International Relations.

I was quite a "fact-and-trivia-addict" when I was kid. I've tried to learn (memorize?) all sorts of stuff from Greek mythology, to the then 151 Pokemon. When a category of facts piques my interest, I try to come up with a list of all things related to that category and start memorizing them. That was the time I started to get interested with world geography and Japanese anime.

As I grew older, I found out that animes are more than just cartoons intended for kids. They, more often than not, tell some pretty serious stories, that kids will most likely ignore (since they will be pretty busy looking at the colorful moving pictures).

One common theme that Japanese animators like to explore is international relations. An example is the Gundam series which, although set in a futuristic and sci-fi Earth and space, greatly deal with how our world's leaders make mistakes, which often lead to "misunderstandings" of global proportions. (I even recommended this series to a friend who teaches the subject). Other known titles which has recurring themes related to international relations include Naruto, Code Geass and Fushigi Yuugi.

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(In this picture, from top left clockwise: England, Russia, France, China, and America. Click Picture for Source)

One day, as I was searching for something to make me laugh, I came across "Hetalia: Axis Powers" (later in renamed as "Hetalia: World Powers"). The anime comically presents world history and current events through characters which personify the countries of the world. While it is basically a comedy, Hetalia (and double checking over the net) helped me discover pretty surprising facts, such as the existence of a self-proclaimed independent mircronation called "Sealand".

I recommend this title to anyone who wants to take a break and just laugh at how the world was and is. (I end this post with a link to a Hetalia episode about Russia and his sisters, Ukraine and Belarus)

No such thing as a free lunch

Google's PageRank algorithm works on the principle of citation analysis. Essentially, the search engine ranks the relevance of a particular website to your search according to the number of websites that link to it. This method results in more accurate, more relevant search results and is the foundation of Google's tremendous success. This means, however, that anyone who does research via a search engine (and, honestly, who doesn't?) will necessarily generate results which are influenced by the ranking system.

PageRank-style rankings favor commercial sites which pay other websites to advertise and link to them. So if you're looking for free information, there is a tendency that you will be frustrated by the top results. At the other end of the spectrum, the most authoritative sources of information on the web are often poorly linked or are not available for indexing by search engines. Academic output is usually of little interest outside of small groups. In the absence of commercial interest, authoritative information generally forms part of what is known as the Deep Web, which is the term used to refer to data which is not indexable by search engines. This means that the correct information you seek may appear very far down your list of search results, or may not appear at all.

If I can't trust Google, what about Wikipedia, you say? Wikipedia refers to itself as an "open-content, collaborative encyclopedia", meaning that "anyone with an Internet connection" may alter its content. Frequent users should take note that Wikipedia expressly states that it "cannot guarantee the validity of the information" and that there is no "formal peer review" and therefore no implied warranty of fitness "for any purpose or use whatsoever".

The point of all this is that, however noble the cause of free information may be in theory, money still makes the world wide web go round. Information is a resource, with significant extraction and processing costs: writing, editing, fact-checking, reviewing and so forth. Barring major changes in the structure of society, we can only continue to expect that free information is worth exactly what you pay for it.

SCpedia

In Republic v. Cagandahan (G.R. No. 116676, Sept. 12, 2008) the Supreme Court granted the Petition for Correction of Entries in Birth Certificate of the private respondent who allegedly is suffering from Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH). Aside from addressing an issue that stemmed from novel facts, what makes the decision blog-worthy is the Highest Tribunal’s (mis)use of Wikipedia.

I just can't believe the Supreme Court quoted Wikipedia the way it did! While a lot of us have experienced the convenience of looking up stuff in Wikipedia, I think that it should not be used as an authoritative source. The Supreme Court researchers who drafted this decision are plain lazy. I mean no offense to them but I think that such use of an unedited resource of language is unjustified.