A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

A backgrounder on the story of The Wheel of Time.

The Robert Jordan Story

A short Bio on my favorite author, Robert Jordan.  A Memory of Light is the last book of his series, to be published this 2013, which is 5 years after his death.  The series is rich with allegories of politics, philosophy, and mysticism.

"There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the wheel of time." - Robert Jordan

Prelim Online Exam for Labor Negotiations

Using grammatically correct and legible sentences, answer the following statements sensibly and objectively (20 pts each = 5 pts sentence construction, 5 pts creativity/insight, 5 pts objective assessment/recall of the topic concepts, 5 pts evaluative discussion).

Deadline of posts is December 23, 2012, 10:00 a.m.

1.  Differentiate a “Tell” from a “Hotspot” by pointing out similarities and significant differences between the two.

2.  If you were an employer, what is the best way to prevent your company employees from forming a union?  Explain.

3.  Unions are made to protect the rights of employees.  Are there any instances wherein the union becomes the source of unfair practice?  Explain one situation of unfair practice by the union towards the employer, and one situation of unfair practice by the union towards other employees.

Prelim Online Exam for Labor Law

Using grammatically correct and legible sentences, answer the following statements sensibly and objectively (20 pts each = 5 pts sentence construction, 5 pts creativity/insight, 5 pts objective assessment/recall of the topic concepts, 5 pts evaluative discussion).

Deadline of posts is December 23, 2012, 10:00 a.m.

1.  Explain the significance of nominal voting in the legislative body by relating it to the essence of democracy.

2.  Differentiate a Presidential Decree from a Republic Act.  Explain their significant difference.  Why are there still Presidential Decrees in effect in the Philippines?

3.  How can a bill that has been vetoed by the president be made into a law?  Provide the proper sequence and give a justification why this is possible.

Geography and Natural Resources Report URL's

These will be the URL and topics for the ff. GEOGRAPHY AND NATURAL RESOURCES students as per assigned grading period:

MIDTERM

Kristine (Geography Perspective for Educators)

geoperspective.4shared.com


Aitch and Patrick (National Geographic Handbook)

geohandbook.4shared.com


FINALS

Maribel and Patricia (Political Geography and International Management of Natural Resources)

geopoliticalandnatural

Labor Negotiations: Psychology of Body Language

Human behavior in negotiations require the intellectual finesse of understanding body language.  As per our multimedia presentation.  Students of Labor Negotiations are expected to post their notes on this part of the blog.  Notes must be explanatory on the body language and psychology concepts.

Fight Science

Welcome Phys HS class.

This is where you are to post your notes for Fight Science.

Notes should be complete, comprehensible, and informative relating Physics with the Biology of Fight Science.

Geography and Natural Resources of the Philippines

Welcome Geography and Natural Resources Class, did you enjoy the video presentation?  We will finish the last scenes this Thursday then proceed to class discussions.  Pls. post your assignments on the comments space below.

Labor Negotiations

Welcome to Labor Negotiations which is where you learn not just simple concepts but actual interpersonal skills in dealing with people in terms of work relations: These include employee-employer situations, employer-union situations, and employee-union situations.  These situations are possible scenarious that you will be dealing with in the future as you get involved in the industry.

For your initial reading, download the pdf in the link below.  Its a guide for labor negotiations in once of the U.S. states which can be a useful guide for you in the practice of labor negotiations. 




http://www.mml.org/pdf/lr/book.pdf

Labor Law and Legislation

Welcome to Labor Law and Legislation 2nd Sem 2012-2013.

Here you will come to know the various laws that affect businesses in the Philippines in terms of the workforce.

Labor law also called employment law is defined by the Business Dictionary (2012) as a body of rulings enforced by the government pertaining to working people and their organizations.  The same lexicon describes labor law as having two categories:

1. Collective - concerned with the relationship among the emplyer, the employee, and the union.
2. Individual - concerned with the relationship between the emplyer and the employee, emphasizing emplyee's rights in the workplace.

In the Philippines, the power to create laws rests primarily in the hands of the Legislative Branch also known as Congress.  Congress is composed of two houses:

1. Upper House = Senate - Composed of Senators whose duty in the act of making laws is to represent the ideals of the entire Philippines as one nation.
2. Lower House = House of Representatives - District Representatives (Congressmen) whose duty in the act of making laws is to represent the ideals of the area/district that they represent.
• The Lower House also has Party List members.  They are also Congressmen, but their duty is to represent sectors in the society (e.g. the poor, teachers, businessmen, drivers, and other marginalized groups).

It is Congress which makes the statutes (laws) that guide the conduct of citizens.  These laws start as proposed laws (Bills) which when finally approved become Republic Acts (R.A.).

The branch of the Philippine government which is in charge of implementing the laws passed by Congress is the Executive Branch, headed by the President.  It is under this branch which the Department of Labor and Employment Operates.

For your assignment, research the different kinds of executive issuances, and be ready to recite next meeting.

Social Dimensions of Education: Finals Activities

Hello Soc Dim students.

All of these Final period requirements to be submitted on Oct. 12, 2012.

I. Graded Recitation:

  A. Prepare to recite: Rights of the child.

  B. Be ready to explain one random RIGHT to be drawn after reciting.

II. Social Research:

  A. Prepare an analysis and recommendation on an interview that you will personally conduct with 2 grade school teachers. (1 public, 1 private).

  B. Focus your questions on their experiences w/

     1. Changing cultures of the students based on subsequent generations.

     2. Cultures/personal chaacteristics of students based on:

          a. Economic background.

          b. Family status background.

          c. Gender orientation background,

Supplement these with your own follow up questions about, when did the changes occur? Do these personal characteristics help or cause classroom problems.

Your objective here is to learn about current grade schooler cultures, analyze issues and situations that come from these cultures, and propose recommendations that you and other teachers can use.

  C. Output must be printed in 3-6 pages. Short bond paper, Times New Roman, font size 12, 1 inch margin on all sides, double spaced, justified.

ALL OUTPUTS TO BE DONE INDIVIDUALLY BUT TO BE SUBMITTED AS ONE, COLLATED IN ONE CLEAR BOOK, SORTED ALPHABETICALLY.

  D. Output content must be sequenced with the following headings:

     INTERVIEW

     ANALYSIS

     RECOMMENDATION

  E. Interview part will simply be the transcription of your conversation

Sample:

Mr. Jimenez - what changes have you observed in the culture among your students as the batches change?

Teacher - (place answer here)

  F. Analysis part will be your interpratation of the interview. Base this on any of the chapters used in the lessons.

  G. Recommendation will be your analyzed way of dealing with situations that you have analyzed in the interview.

 F. You will be graded 1-5 pts each on the following.

     1. Formal output.

     2. Creativity of output.

     3. Creativity of ideas.

     4. Quality interview.

     5. Quality analysis based on lessons.

Total of 25 pts.

... a vestige of the vox populi. (Multimedia Political Review on V for Vendetta)

The Media

“My father was a writer… he used to say, ‘artists used lies to tell the truth while politicians used them [lies] to cover the truth up.” – Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta (Bittner-Rosser, 2005)

Adapted from a comic book series, V for Vendetta is a literary piece portraying political thought not just through print but also in film.  Fictional as it may be; with a fictional hero, and set in a fictional England, the gems of truth embedded within are useful four dimensional representations of political science concepts.

                In this article, I for one will highlight the following political phenomena as can be gleaned from the film’s plot: a) state-society relations, b) political institutions, and c) political culture.  For these are all embedded within the story behind a masked vigilante, along with the violence of armed civil conflict, the horrors of political incarceration and torture, plus the intrigue of a complex plan to topple the government.

The Review

State-Society Relations and the Strong State

In the film “V”, the masked vigilante tells Evey Hammond that, “People should not be afraid of their governments.  Governments should be afraid of their people (Bittner-Rosser, 2005).”  It succinctly expresses a theme within the story that has been continually emphasized in various scenes.  In the dichotomy of state-society relations comes the question how strong should the state become?  A strong state as defined by Rotberg (2003) as having 1) full dominion over all its’ territory and 2) it provides both high quantity and high quality political goods to every citizen within its dominion.

For someone who has not read the graphic novel, the film portrays its fictional English government as one which satisfies the first part of the definition.  However, the second part is somewhat suspect.  Mindful that suspect and lacking are two different situations.  It is suspect since the film displays a social environment that seems to flourish, but observing deeper, one notices certain scars on society’s seemingly healthy exterior.  There are strict curfews at night, abusive government “goons”, “black-baggers” who make enemies of the state “disappear”, and there were also surveillance of private communications even within the homes of citizens.  Moreover, a scene worth noting is the conversation between “V” and Evey over breakfast.  Evey tastes real butter in her toast.  A small thing, but their conversation leads to the knowledge that Evey hasn’t tasted real butter since she was a little girl.  For at that present time, “V” had to steal such a small economic good from a supply train meant only for the Chief Executive of their land – High Chancellor Sutler.  This implies the government enjoying high quality goods over their people.  Thus was that fictional England really strong? or is it in truth fragile?

Misuse of Political Institutions

                This paper’s opening quote differentiated the artist from the politician.  In the Ivory Tower of academia, Political Science’s goal is not to train politicians, for the very essence of Political Science is to study state and government – thus to build the state.  The practice of politics however, is not just to wield power; rather it is to wield power in a limited manner. 

Movie Still 1 - A crowd of citizens mobilized against one of the misused institutions in the form of "Fingermen"  (From the movie “V for Vendetta”, 2005)

                In the film, the fictional government used its’ institutions as a means of abusive power over it’s’ citizens.  These include the media (which has reports the lies concocted by the government), a variety of uses of force (police, fingermen, “black-baggers”, the military), and even the medical institutions which were used to create biological weapons (to be used not just against foreign enemies but also over the citizens).

A Sleeping Political Culture

Movie Still 2 - Citizens take up mask and costume of "V" in a mimick of people power (from the movie “V for vendetta”, 2005)

                When they first met, “V” answers Evey’s query of who “V” was by quite a long alliteration of self-descriptions which include “a vestige of the vox populi [trans. From latin ‘voice of the people’.”  For the people’s voices have already been stilled either out of fear of the government or of simple acceptance of their current situations – that they cannot fight nor change the government anymore.  This is an example of one of the political cultures studied by Almond and Verba (1989).  Both political scientists studied five nations and discovered three basic political cultures – subject, parochial, and civic.  Whereas civic cultures have knowledge of their government and believe that they can influence it; the subject culture on the other hand have little knowledge of their government and simply consent to be herded by it.  The parochial culture interacts only with their immediate local government and seldom has knowledge of and interactions with the national government.

Conclusions

                Using the fiction of literature and film, V for Vendetta was able to help exemplify that strength isn’t true strength in a fragile state.  It is a structure with the potential for tension, and eventual entropy from within.  More so, using a values approach, one observes that sources of tension can come from abuses by the government, and that at times, a corrupt government can retain power with the appropriate set of corrupt institutions.  The solution to this, I caution though, is not simply violence.  For insight points out that such a situation can easily be solved, if the people shifts from a parochial or subject culture into a civic culture – which interacts bravely with their state in order to champion rights, justice and freedom.

Works Cited

Almond, G., & Verba, S. (1989). The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. London: Sage Publications.

Bittner-Rosser, M. (Director). (2005). V for Vendetta [Motion Picture].

Rotberg, R. I. (2003). Nation-State Failure¨A Recurring Phenomenon? Montgomery, Alabama: United States Air Force, Air University.