WILB makes productive employees!

Employees who are engaged in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" (WILB) or surfing the net at work for pleasure - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total office hours - are more productive by about 9% than those who do not.

According to a study conducted in the University of Melbourne in Australia WILB increases our concentration levels. The study author Dr. Brent Coker said that "people need to zone out for a bit to get back their concentration. Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itslef, leading to a higher total net concentration for a day's work, and as a result, increased productivity."

The study which was conducted for 300 workers also found out that 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. Among the most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, reading online news sites, playing online games, and watching movies on YouTube.

One Dream Realized

The caption is taken from one of the articles run by Time magazine on the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, the U.S. of A's 44th President. The inauguration took place (January 20, 2009) a day after the annual celebration of Martin Luther King, the foremost champion of black human rights.

Obama, 47, placed his left hand on the vintage 1861 Bible of Abraham Lincoln to take the oath of office traditionally administered by the US Supreme Court chief on the steps of the US Capitol.

America is no longer color blind. Bloomberg run this story: "American democracy has always promoted a central conceit: Any child can grow up to be president. For 220 years, the reality has been different, a line of 42 white men. On Tuesday, that string was broken by a most unlikely individual, a black man born of an African father, with a slight political résumé who has described himself as a “skinny guy from the South Side of Chicago with a funny name.”

What's in a name? It may be a strange coincidence or just wishful thinking. The name Obama rhymes with America's "Enemy No. 1", Osama bin Laden. Not only that: Obama's middle name is Hussein, the family name of Iraq's executed leader Adam Hussein, the primary object of the US invasion of Iraq.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year! May the "Year of the Ox" bring us the luckiest '09. According to this web site, in the "Year of the Ox" we will feel the yoke of responsibility coming down on us. No success can be achieved without conscientious efforts. The trials and tribulations the Ox year brings will be mainly on the home front. It is a good time to settle domestic affairs and put your house in order.

Three Phil. wonders now in top 5 of the 7 Wonders of Nature

As of June 11th Wednesday, three (3) of the best natural sites in the Philippines are in the top 5 of the search for the Best 7 Wonders of the World. Tubbataha Reef east of Palawan is now Number 2 in the list, followed by the Chocolate Hills in Bohol at Number 3; while the Subterranean River National Park in Puerto Princesa, Palawan is at Number 5.

I encourage every Filipino netizen to vote for our god-given natural wonders. You can vote through this site

From texters to spammers . . .

The Philippines is the second biggest source of spam messages in the Asia Pacific Region and Japan, this according to the Internet Security Threat Report of renown anti-virus outfit Symantec.

Our consolation is that we were edged out by Uzbekistan from being number 1. The Symantec report revealed that our personal computers are hosting spam zombies that are manipulated by hackers to perform malicious attacks toward unknown users, by sending bogus messages which aim to paralyze a service or crash a network and infect it with “bot,” a search-engine supporter that digs out information in a web site for future indexing. Spams are rampant because of the growth of broadband usage, number of internet cafés, gamers online, small and medium enterprises and average computer users, the report added.

Pinoys, especially the young ones have found another way of making money the easy way by acting as accomplice of professional underground attackers. Once the quota on email sent is reached, spammers get paid.

For the unsuspecting internet users out there, take extra precaution - by installing or updating your anti-virus and anti-spyware; and be wary of unsolicited emails.

Ours is a remittance-driven economy

The assertions of our economic managers that the Philippine economy has strong economic fundamentals and that explains why GDP has grown by 7.5% as of the second quarter of 2007, is half-true. The other reason why our economy remains afloat is the dollar remittances of our 8 million strong OFWs.

These remittances estimated at about a billion dollars a month sustain the purchasing power of at least one-fourth of our population; contribute largely to our burgeoning dollar reserves; and create a huge demand for housing and subdivision development.

If we can sustain the growth attributed to our OFWs, we are on our way to rebuilding the socio-economic and political structure of our society. By economically emancipating the families of OFWs, we are in effect, building a strong middle class that cannot be coerced and intimidated by unscrupulous and power-hungry politicians.

High literacy vis-a-vis economic advancement.

We usually tend to equate a high literacy rate with economic development. Not quite in the Philippines. We have a very high basic literacy rate (94.6%) and yet a great many of Filipinos remain poor. The June 2007 self-rated survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS) reveals that 47% (estimated at 8 million) Filipinos think they are poor.

I came across a research paper by Canieso-Doronila of UP which points to the negative correlation between our high literacy rate and economic advancement. Canieso-Doronila points out that this can be "explained by the fact that literacy skills taught in schools do not extend to abilities to perform the multiple social and cognitive tasks needed to survive in society today".

So what's the root of the problem? Canieso-Doronila emphasized that "such a reported high literacy rate does not assume abilities to think critically and abstractly because, in early formal education, local knowledge and cultural practices have historically been shut out by Western-influenced education, first through a medium (English) which has very limited use in most communities and, second, amidst unequal access to quality education". These twin problems of medium of instruction and educational inequality in early schooling intensify the disparity between the elite and the masses.