Last Sunday(March 25, 2007), two articles published were worth posting in this blog. The first was the article by Michael Lim Ubac: High Birth Rate = Lack of Classrooms. Hmnnn... I hope more articles of this kind will be written... and Ruben Nepales' interview with Richard Gere... Read on...
HIGH BIRTH RATE = LACK OF CLASSROOMS
MANILA, Philippines -- As long as population growth is not reined in, government will never be able to wipe out classroom backlogs, according to Education Secretary Jesli Lapus. At the roundtable discussion with President Macapagal-Arroyo on the issues of hunger and poverty on Thursday, the education chief pointed to the relevance of population management in solving the perennial classroom shortage.
“Every minute, four babies are born. In my limited point of view on this classroom shortage, it’s like every 10 minutes, I’m short one classroom,” said Lapus. The projected population growth for 2007 is 8.7 million based on an annual growth rate of 2 percent. This places the current Philippine population at 88.7 million.
President Arroyo, however, has frowned on proposals to intensify birth control measures in the face of stiff opposition from the Catholic Church. xxx
Read the rest of the article here.
The next article was "an interview with Holywood's most famous buddhist. Richard Gere discusses the Dalai Lama, condoms, and the hoax...
Here are relevant excerpts:
How about your wife? Is she also involved in your foundation work?
Last year, my wife took time off to come to Washington with me for the first time and share the work that I've been doing there for years. She also went to India with me to do the work there. We had an incredible event in Mumbai (Bombay) with 15,000 sex workers. It was a rally to give them a sense of community and also to get them to commit to use condoms. Is this interesting to anyone? You know, I get off on these things. If, as a sex worker, I refuse to have sex with someone without a condom, there's going to be someone down the road who's going to say, 'I need the money. I'll do it without the condom.' A sense of community was needed to make them realize that it's important for them to get regular health checkups and to be a family, absolutely united in using condoms every time.
We had a rally of 15,000 people who were choreographed into these Bollywood numbers. We had Bollywood singers and dancers. They brought their kids with them and their significant others. We started chanting, 'No condoms, no sex; no condoms, no sex.' It was one of the most emotional moments I've ever had in my work in the foundation. These are people who never had a sense of community, no one cared about them whatsoever. In that moment, they cared about each other. That's a huge leap. The ripple effect from that is mammoth. That has nothing to do with me. They did it themselves.
Imagine if you had done that in the beginning of your career, chanting, "No condoms, no sex?"
But I remember a scene in the hotel in "Pretty Woman." We said we can't be doing this scene where a guy would just do it with a hooker. We've got to deal with the condom issue. (Director) Garry Marshall said, 'Let's make it funny.' He (Richard's character) has to pick the color [of the condom]. So she (Julia Roberts' character) was like, do you want a blue, pink or red? That was the first time on film someone had actually said, 'Okay, that's what you do - you are a hooker, you have a condom.'
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