Side-response: Fully-Rocked & Doctors

Let me make the following statements before I tackle the "doctors cannot judge other doctors" issue:

1. If you had been more polite, you might not have been banned.
2. If you had read posts more carefully, you might not have lost your temper.
3. If you had attempted to explain yourself more completely, you might not have been so thoroughly ridiculed.

Now, you've been polite in the comments so I will respond. Hopefully you will read this response carefully and if you choose to respond, please explain yourself clearly in either English or Tagalog. Clarity is important, or we may go off on some tangent.

Your statement that "doctors cannot judge other doctors" on another blog is simplistic and consequently wrong.

You state that

If a patient was misdiagnosed by Dr. Cruz, I cannot tell the patient that Dr. Cruz is a lousy docotr. BUT I can tell my friends and colleagues. Again I CANNOT announce this to the press, an audience, blog that Dr. Cruz is a lousy doctor who can't even write a good prescription.


First off, this argument is a bit clearer than your broad initial statement, but it does raise moral issues. According to this example, if Dr. Cruz had horribly misdiagnosed his / her patient, you wouldn't tell the patient, but you would alert your friends and colleagues? I certainly hope that includes the medical board who should stop that doctor from practicing. Otherwise, the poor patient who has been misdiagnosed and may end up dying. And if you could've done something to prevent that, isn't it still your moral responsibility to do so?

Second, it is fine in certain professions not to announce to the press, to an audience, on a blog that so-and-so is a lousy doctor. It does NOT apply to the entertainment industry however, where EVERYONE is allowed to express their opinions as readers with all sorts of biases. Professional and Amateur Reviewers and Critics abound in the U.S. and the Philippines and there is no ethical question about printing your opinion about someone else's work, especially work that has been released to the public. The ethics of the medical industry do not directly translate to other industries, and certainly not to the entertainment / literary industry.

Third, doctors DO judge other doctors under very specific circumstances. There is some peer review (doctors being evaluated and rated by other doctors)among physicians, which is usually done by the medical societies themselves (thus the importance of consulting only with accredited fellows of medical societies). In the US, there is Healthgrades, which rates doctors and hospitals based on their track record. (This, however, has a negative effect. Doctors and hospitals, to raise their success rating, will refuse to treat complex/difficult/dying patients.)

Finally, your logic does not apply to the evaluation of contestants in a writing contest. If it were in a medical arena, and various doctors were competing for a prize, you would not select judges who were from unrelated fields. You would select doctors who are qualified to judge the merit of the work of the competing doctors and most definitely these judges should be specialists in the specific field being tackled. Why put someone specializing in pediatrics or neuro-surgery when the competition concerns the future of gene therapy?

This was the concern of Dean in that none of the three judges (with the exception of Greg Brilliantes) struck him as writers of works that are "primarily speculative fiction in nature (as in short stories - not plays or films or poetry)."

Before you get angry again, please read the next few words that followed that comment: "unless Tony Perez and Peque Gallaga have collections of short fiction that are fantasy, scifi, horror, etc. that I am unaware of (and if so, then apologies again, that's plain and simple ignorance on my part)." (italics mine)

I certainly hope this makes things clearer for you, and I hope you continue to remain polite and attempt to express yourself more clearly.
Genres

When I go searching for a book to read, I naturally gravitate towards the Science Fiction / Fantasy sections. Or perhaps the Young Adult section. These books get lost sometimes, you know?

Hunting down stuff in that genre section increases the chances that I'll find something I'm looking for: interesting scientific extrapolation, a space opera or cosmic science fiction story, perhaps an epic fantasy novel that breaks out of the mold of Tolkien, and so on.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), these days there is a thinning of the walls between genres. Stories that could be considered fantasy or horror or science fiction tend to crop up in the general fiction section these days. Novels like The Club Dumas, Practical Magic, The Historian, and the like.

It may make it harder to find these things, but one is hopeful that it also means more (good?) writers are writing material that can be considered mainstream, that science fiction and fantasy elements are becoming accepted as part of that mainstream, and the memories of an imagination-starved trip to the bookstore will become a thing of the past.
Philippine Speculative Fiction (or Phabulism)

I've been thinking about the nature of local fiction, especially concerning the possibility of a Philippine Science Fiction or Fantasy genre of books. One of the questions is - does anything in it necessarily have to be Pinoy in nature?

Is a Philippine writer obliged to insert aspects of the culture, language, or history into fiction? Is it really, as my friend Dean says, a bit of guilt that spurs us to do so as Philippine writers?

I can't speak for everyone, but I do feel that guilt. I feel that there are few representations of Filipinos in international media, so if I'm writing something that has a chance of hitting the international stage, I'd like some remnant some small sliver of pinoyness to make it as well.

Yes, I am one of those people who was tickled to discover that Johnny Rico, the main character in the Starship Troopers novel, was actually Filipino (we find this out in the last few pages). I love seeing Filipino comic artists sneak in the Philippine flag on a shirt or a Jollibee store in the background of a comic.

On the other hand, if writers from the U.S. can write about far away places and about us in particular, why can't we do the same? Why can't we write about strange alien races located beyond the reach of our solar systems? Why can't we write about magical realms with little basis in our world or history? Why can't we write about world-sweeping disasters that affect everyone on the planet?

We can.

It's just that we tend to stop ourselves from doing so.
Dragonlance - The Movie!

Well, check out the list of alleged cast members of the Dragonlance animated movie and see if their actors match your imagined voices for each of these characters:

Tanis Half-Elven
Michael Rosenbaum

Raistlin Majere
Kiefer Sutherland

Goldmoon
Lucy Lawless

Flint Fireforge / Fewmaster Toede
Fred Tatasciore

Tika Waylen
Michelle Trachtenberg
Greetings All!

Sorry I've been away for so long!

Renewed interest in blogging? Perhaps. It's more of getting back into the discipline of typing and putting ideas down into words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs.

The subject matter of this blog will probably shift a wee bit. I'll be focused on my hobbies and other interests, less on the details of my personal life. I'll be shifting those stories and opinions elsewhere.

The promotion of Speculative Fiction (I'd argue for Phabulism! The Ph is for the Philippines, and the Fabulism is for the genre of writing!) is one of the primary goals of my friend Dean Alfar, and so I'll be talking a bit about my readings in that genre and perhaps some of the difficulties I'm encountering in making my own contributions to that body of work.

Comic books are another interest of mine, though I've begun focusing on collecting the TPBs rather than on the one-off issues so this may be rather rare.

Movies may be reviewed here as well, Role-playing games (settings & systems) along with musings on the industries that surround each one of these hobbies of mine will appear in this blog in the future.

Stay tuned, fearless readers!
Silent Laser, Deadly Laser

I once got into a conversation regarding lasers as an assassin's weapon in a science fiction game world. I remember arguing then that lasers aren't silent weapons. The reason is that the ionization of air causes a loud crack (think an electrical arc or a lightning bolt).

I was reminded of this when an almost-argument took place on a message board I frequent. Here's the post:

Oh dear. It appears that I must dispel someone of the illusion that weapons-grade lasers are silent. Trust me, they're not. Once a laser hits the multi-kilojoule range they are in fact very loud. I used to work as a signmaker and one of the tools we used was an etching laser. If used on a human being it would have caused nasty burns, but would not be lethal in of itself. A friend of mine worked for the Dept. of Main Roads and used an industrial laser (which after it interpretted fire for 2 seconds at 20% power while traversing 9cm left as rotate 90 degrees left and fire at 100% power, they refuse to operate it under Windows) that even at the lower settings was quite loud.

You see, when a laser of that intensity burns a path through air (or anything else for that matter), it flash vaporises that path and ionizes it, creating a loud *CRACK* that can be heard for quite a distance. The lasers that most people are familiar with are millijoule range, from television remotes to laser target designators.


Here's a corroborating statement by someone else:

Yup. I once witnessed a CO2 laser punch a hole through a two-inch-thick block of seasoned oak. It was only a split second firing of the laser, resulting in a very neat hole drilled right through the oak, along with a very loud, very sharp BANG!. Not the same "bang" as the firing of a standard powder-propelled ballistic weapon, but very audible and very distinctive all the same.
Pinoy Power

While going through some webcomics this morning I chanced upon this particular Multiplex strip. I do like the humor in the strip over all, and while only a few might get the humor in this particular strip, I'm posting it because I like seeing Filipino visibility in U.S. media.
Mazingkaiser Toy Line Commercial?

I'm not sure what this is... but it sure is cool. Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger, God Mazinger, Getta Robo, Grandizer, etc.