The Frankenstein Mindster

07 Wars of the World.

2008-05-20T21:50:00.001+08:00

The worst of times, the best of times

By Frankenstein

2008, Battle for the Stomach. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines and Director General Robert Zeigler of the International Rice Research Institute did not talk about the wars of the world on Friday, May 2 at the IRRI main campus in Los Baños, Laguna in the Philippines; they talked about the war for the stomach of the Filipinos, which are hungry for rice. The Warrior Queen by genes, the Warrior King by environment.

Did they talk about this paradox: That the Philippines is the world’s biggest importer of rice and, based in the

Philippines

, IRRI is the world’s biggest researcher on rice? No. And no, she didn’t beg for more rice from IRRI; and no, IRRI did not turn his back on his mother country. They talked about the worst of soils and the best of soils.

My shot shows the sign in the ricefield beyond and between them saying, ‘IDSA 77: TOLERANT’ – very suggestive, very educational. IDSA suggests EDSA, Epifanio de Los Santos Avenue, synonymous to People Power to the Filipinos and the world (EDSA Revolution); tolerant means able to put up with, withstand notwithstanding

GMA has so far tolerated an infinite number (77 times, Matthew 18: 21-22, New American Bible) of EDSA attempts to oust her from power. Will she be able to weather this food crisis? Wrong question!

She is my President, if you have to know. No, there is no food crisis in the

Philippines

– there is a food price crisis. And that’s true all over the world. The difference is gross: Food goes to the stomach, price goes to the pocket.

The use of food crops for biofuels has triggered the rises in the prices of foods. The United States and

China

are guilty in using corn to produce bioethanol – corn is a food crop, food to people and feed to animals.

Brazil

is guilty in using sugarcane to produce the same – sugarcane is sugar to everyone, confectionery and syrup and juice to millions. You can’t have our food and we eat it too!

The price crisis is a supply crisis. And it is triggered by 2 kinds of hunger: on one hand, peoples’ hunger for green & gold; on the other hand, other peoples’ hunger for food.

In fact, it’s not simply a crisis; it’s a war. In fact, it’s not simply a war; it’s 2 wars. In fact, it’s not simply 2 wars; it’s 3 wars.

2020, the Third World War. Which alien species brought the plague called climate change to the human inhabitants of the Earth? Homo sapiens. This species was alien to the idea that if you allow Politics to blend with Science to blend with Private Interests and leave out much of the Public long enough, there is a Climate Change where the Icebergs of Indifference melt and the Temperatures of Neglect rise and the Storms of Protests visit with fury. I’m imagining the 3rd War of the World, the very last. 100% success.

Leading to that 3rd War of the World, I'm imagining a failed 1st War of the World and a failed 2nd War of the World. Failed wars? I’m imagining wars different from your World War I and World War II. Those wars are nothing compared to what I am about to describe. Because they are largely unseen, and they seem to be unreal. And that makes each one of them deadlier than the physical thing. And yes, they are occurring simultaneously, in parallel worlds.

The First War of the World

The 1st War of the World is the War on the Poverty of the Spirit. Between those who empty their hearts and those who refuse to empty themselves of their baggages. I’m referring not only to Roman Catholics and Protestants of all denominations.

Why do we have a food price crisis in the

Philippines

? Despite the efforts of the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and IRRI in increasing rice production, farmers suffer because of hoarders, private warehouses and private houses, big and small stashers of food, human squirrels who think nothing but of themselves. In one conference outside Manila, an official of a government agency confessed that some of his staff were buying ‘one sack of rice every day’ (see my ‘The Drylanders’). It’s easy to be selfish, to be self-indulgent – you don’t need practice.

The cause is the same as the political crisis in the

Philippines

: unlimited human wants. This is the take-off point, The Grand Assumption for the Science of Economics. That is to say, here is one Science that assumes gluttony as a necessary beginning for the acts of Man. So, why are we surprised that politicians have insatiable desires for power and privilege?

The destructive forces in the 1st War of the World emanate from unlimited desires; the Wealth of Nations is the Wealth of Some, not the Wealth of All. An unwinnable war?

The Second War of the World

The 2nd War of the World is the War on the Poverty of the Mind. Between those who are ignorant and those who think they know better.

US Battle Stations #1

Take the advocacy of the

Philippines

in research for development (R4D) in agriculture. Last Friday, Agriculture Secretary Arthur C Yap and IRRI Director Robert Zeigler signed in between IRRI ricefields in the presence of GMA a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) on ‘Accelerating Rice Production in the

Philippines

.’ Good for 5 years, in brief, the MOA calls for IRRI to ‘enhance’ – IRRI Deputy Director William Padolina’s term – the capabilities of the DA to improve advocacy and assistance to Filipino rice farmers from seed to drying of grains, and the capacity of the farmers to produce more rice, particularly in areas with either lack or excess of water supply. According to the MOA, the collaboration calls for, among other things, provision of high-yielding rice varieties, training, extension, use of modern information & communication technologies, including assessment of potentials of current and candidate rice-growing areas with the use of geographic information systems, remote sensing, crop & climate modeling. The farm technologies include site-specific nutrient management, integrated pest management, controlled irrigation, as well as better postharvest handling of produce to reduce losses. I say the farmers don’t have to be fed these hard-to-digest terms to benefit from them.

In his brief talk, Zeigler was very generous in his praise of Filipino IRRI staff and very emphatic in his promise of assistance by IRRI. Zeigler said:

I would like to make special mention of the extremely high quality of nationally recruited staff that makes us the envy of the agricultural research world. Their high quality work and dedication are the foundation of the success and contributions that IRRI has made to the

Philippines

and to the world. Madam President, I can assure you that as other international centers recruit our national staff to go work for them, we also contribute to (or suffer from) the excellent reputation of the Filipino Overseas Workers.

If IRRI’s so smart, why are Filipinos rice poor? It is neither technology nor mathematics, my dear Aunt Sally. The Filipino farmer, Zeigler said, produces much more per hectare than the Thai farmer. This is ‘testament to the ingenuity, hard work and effectiveness of the DA – farmer partnership.’ And oh, no, Zeigler said, ‘

Thailand

doesn’t even have to deal with typhoons!’

Madame President, I and my colleagues both in IRRI and in the Department of Agriculture are honored to have you witness the signing by me and Secretary Yap of a new Memorandum of Agreement between IRRI and DA that will allow us to work together to quickly move Philippine rice production forward towards self-sufficiency.

I liked the sound of that.

In his short message, among other things, I heard Yap talk about a ‘new management approach’ to rice production with the use of ‘compact cluster areas’ of 40-100 hectares, especially but not solely in agrarian reform communities. I understand that to mean the communities must learn to be communities.

I liked the sound of that too.

But I was expecting more. But I was expecting too much: The MOA was only for meeting the need to increase the rice supply up to the need to handle the harvest to decrease losses, not for meeting the needs to act to bring about advantageous marketing arrangements and react to adverse market developments.

Still, another thing I would expect is the DA convincing GMA on the need to pay serious attention to the drylands (the unirrigated as well as the uplands). For starters, the setting up of a Philippine Drylands Institute has been recommended as a result of a national conference on the drylands held at the Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga last April 17-18. (For more details, see my ‘The Drylanders’).

The drylands can contribute much. With 1 million hectares of the drylands adding say, a modest 10 cavans more per hectare, that’s 10 M cavans of added rice in 100 days. The drylands are also good for planting other cash crops that the farmers need, such as sweet sorghum, a drought-tolerant species used as food, feed, forage, fuel, fertilizer. (For more details, see my ‘Grey-to-Green Revolution.’)

Who are those who think they know better? The politicians in the

Philippines

, especially the opposition. And the noisy minority in and out of media who cannot see anything good that GMA does or says.

US Battle Stations #2

Take the advocacy of the United States in R4D for the developing countries of Asia, Africa,

America

: Instead of slosh, there’s slash. According to Science, the magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), ‘Researchers charge that the US Government is moving to slash funding for international agricultural research’ (Dennis Normile, April 18, sciencemag.org). Fionna Douglas, speaking for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), said that the CGIAR has been told that ‘the 2008 USAID budget includes extensive earmarks requiring funding to be directed primarily to health issues, leaving little for agriculture.’

The 2008 USAID budget is like 75% for health, 25% for food. That is to say, for every dollar, 75 cents for AIDS and cancer and stem cells and the like, and 25 cents for cereals of the tropics. That is to say, the illnesses of the First World are more important than the hunger of the Third World. That is to say, the peoples of the developed countries first before the peoples of the underdeveloped.

So I understand when Zeigler says, ‘This is the worst of times.’ Certainly for IRRI, which is one of 15 CGIAR centers that depend on outside funding for their science, certainly for all of us in the tropics: ‘Part of the reason we’re having this deterioration of the global agricultural situation is that there has been a steady erosion of support for research.’ Zeigler means the global food crisis is in part explained by dearth of funds for research to improve the lives of poor farmers. So, the poor farmers we shall always have with us?

In the meantime, David Dickson reports that a 'global agriculture study calls for increased research’ (April 16, scidev.net). ‘An international study of global agriculture has concluded that significant investment in agricultural research is needed for the world to feed its growing population in an economically and environmentally sustainable way.’ Rather than investing in war, the

United States of America

should be investing in peace.

To be fair, for the last 50 years, with US aids, science in agriculture has been concentrating on increasing yields of crops, for example, rice and corn for the Third World. And they have succeeded quite well, thank you very much. Did you know that, for instance, the

Philippines

increased its rice production from 5.3 M tons in 1970 to 16.2 M tons in 2007, that is, by more than 300%? Tell that to the Thais!

In the meantime, businesses have been concentrating on increasing their income from crops, that is to say, from the sweat of the producers of those crops.

Who are those who think they know better? Those who have ignored the marketing needs of farmers. Those who do not know that the Wars of the World are not between the Haves and Have-Nots; they are between the Grow Mores and the Gain Mores in the member countries of the United Nations.

In my mind, IRRI and DA, through PhilRice (and the Philippine Drylands Institute when established), can collaborate and together work with local government units, civil society and private interests to bring about not only a rice self-sufficient Philippines as soon as 2010 but also help create a social system that ensures an equitable distribution of the benefits from the growing of more rice.

If we can talk about that, then we can talk about fighting the Third World War. Is winning this war an impossible dream? No, but winning over our insatiable desires may be.

Endnote: This is Chapter 7 of my book, Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. This essay is an example of packaging your story, from the small picture (rice crisis, marketing needs) to the Big Picture (food crisis, national distribution of benefits, climate change). We are all in this together.

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 03

2008-05-12T14:15:00.001+08:00

As of February 24, 2008, I had already written, aside from the Introduction, 3 chapters of the book:

(1) My Law Of Graffiti. Graffiti as a metaphor for brainstorming.
(2) PC Fools. The PC as a tool for creativity.
(3) Serendipity X. The Muse is on-call.

By April 22, I had written 2 more chapters:

(4) A Thinker’s Faith. How to start writing anytime.
(5) Lesson Of The Water Cycle. Looking at the Big Picture.
(6) The Neutral Visits. Taking sides actually.

And the number of chapters had increased to 13.

By April 27, Chapter 13 had been written. Not only was it easier to write because I didn’t have to do research except write on what I know, I thought that it would be a good idea to break my own monotony of writing the book chapters in sequence. After all, as I said in an earlier chapter, Chapter 03, this is where you should begin, not Chapter 01.
(13) My Digital World.

By April 30, I had written chapter 10:
(10) Language Of Change. ‘If you don’t want to revise, you don’t want to be good’ said my note.

On May 01, I decided to make the book part of a series under the main title of Serendipity X, so that I could have
Serendipity X: A Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies
Serendipity X: A Creative Editor’s Guide For Non-Dummies
Serendipity X: A Creative Publisher’s Guide for Non-Dummies

Also on May 01, I had written Chapter 08:
(08) Readability Check. How to acquire vocabulary easily.

On May 04, I had written Chapter 07:
(07) Wars Of The World. Packaging your story.

On May 08, I had written Chapter 11:
(11) The Osims Years. Looking at the village.

Also on May 08 later in the day, I decided to have only 12 chapters and wrote Chapter 09 to finish the book:
(09) Virtual Thinking. Blogging for creative thinking.

So I had to renumber Chapter 13 to become Chapter 12.

Technorati Tags: graffiti as metaphor for brainstorming,pc as tool for creativity,creativity on call,how to start writing anytime,looking at the big picture,taking sides actually,if you don't want to revise don't write,a creative writer's guide for non-dummies,how to acquire a vocabulary easily,packaging your story,looking at the village,blogging for creative thinking

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 02

2008-05-12T13:34:00.001+08:00

On February 15, I had written ‘My Crazy Dozen. The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies’ – The number had changed to 12 chapters. This was intended as the Introduction to the book.

These were the suggestive ideas for the new 12 chapters of the book:

(1) If you want to begin right, don’t begin right.
(2) If you want to create order, don’t create order.
(3) If you want to write well, don’t write.
(4) If you want to be read, don’t read yourself.
(5) If you want to listen to advice, don’t give the advice.
(6) If you want to attract readers, don’t give your vocabulary.
(7) If you want to improve, don’t just improve.
(8) If you want to get more ideas, look where there are none!
(9) If you want to have a good sequence, make a bad one.
(10) If you want to write objectively, you’re a journalist.
(11) If you want to know everything, you’re an encyclopedia.
(12) If you want to give up, you’re a mad genius!

How I Wrote The Frankenstein Mindster 01

2008-05-12T13:29:00.001+08:00

On January 10, 2008, I created the Word 2003 file ‘The Rebel Writer’s Club.’ Inside, the file was titled: ‘The Rebel Writer’s Club. Proclaiming The 13 Commandments Of Writing For Non-Dummies.’ Here in simulated Word 2003 collapsed outline form, the original file containing text beneath the level 2 heads, the content was this:

The Rebel Writer says,

(1) Law Of Graffiti. The Rebel Writer Writes, And Having Writ, Moves On
(2) The Rebel Writer says, ‘The computer is right minus wrong.’
(3) Frank’s Chaos Theory of Writing. The Rebel Writer says, ‘Create disorder after disorder.’
(4) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Talk to me.’
(5) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Throw your vocabulary out your windows.’
(6) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Listen To Music, Listen To Others.’
(7) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Do tomorrow what you can do today.’
(8) The Rebel Writer says, ‘If you don’t want to revise, you don’t want to be good.’
(9) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Negatives attract positives.’
(10) The Rebel Writer says, ‘To get the sequence right, make it wrong.’
(11) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Your Objective Is To Be Subjective.’
(12) The Rebel Writer says, ‘Know more, not no more.’
(13) The Rebel Writer says, ‘About Being Better Before Being Good ...’

Note the number of chapters: 13. This will change over the months.

Frankenstein's Rules of Virtual Writing

2008-05-09T05:23:00.001+08:00

1. Welcome Yourself. Learn to live with yourself. Learn to accept your inadequacies, to admit your failings. Then you can be a better absorber of ideas, information, insights; then you can be a better, more creative writer.

2. Write On! The only way to learn to write is to write – and again and again. It has always been true since the first time it was said, even if it wasn’t said of writing: ‘Practice makes perfect.’

3. Begin Anywhere. You have to tolerate sloppy writing. Begin anywhere but begin. Begin with the title, begin with the beginning, begin with the middle, or begin with the end. Then you will release more of your creative juice. Then you will never have Writer’s Block.

4. Know More. The only way to say more is to learn more. Read on the subject; ask questions; listen, watch. Then you’ll become more interested to read on the subject; then you’ll become more interesting to read.

5. Write Less. Write more about less. Limit your subject matter to something you can handle at one time. For instance, don’t write about ‘His good work habits made him prolific as a writer’; instead, write about ‘His forcing himself to write a quota of words everyday helped him to become prolific.’

6. Relax. Learn to stop, look & listen – to something else. Don’t force yourself to finish. Doing something else unrelated to the article will – surprise – refresh your mind.

7. Rewrite. There’s always room for improvement. The best way to write is to rewrite. Win some, lose some – that too is the essence of rewriting.

8. Connect. See the Big Picture. You must look hard and long at your topic or subject matter, and try to arrive at a perspective of how it fits into the overall scheme of something bigger than it is. Nothing is unconnected; you must see the connection – that is your privilege as a creative writer.

9. Write Onscreen. The computer is a capitalist tool, so capitalize on it. You hesitate. If you are young, do you think the best (PC) is yet to come? If you’re no longer young, do you think you’re too old to learn? I was 45 when I started teaching myself. Now I can teach you Windows and Word with my eyes closed. Including Word 2003.

10. Write Big. If you want to be a great writer, believe in something bigger than yourself. Believe in and write for the individual, family, village, town, country – always in the context of the world. Whether your religion is Reason, Mysticism, Science, Islam or Christianity. To write, as well as to believe, is to relate. It’s a great feeling!

11 The Osims Years.

2008-05-08T21:49:00.002+08:00

A campus grows in Magalang, Pampanga

By Frankenstein

The name ‘Aglibut Sweet’ evokes the history of a campus that grew from School to College – now grown up to be University – the story of seeds that grew into trees, as well as the story of three generations of men from the North who helped make it happen. My photograph shows the 30-year-old original scion grove of the sweet tree and the 2nd-generation scion of the man who planted the seeds. It’s early morning; everything’s looking up.

And I’m looking up to comparing this College in Central Luzon with the premier University of agriculture in Southern Tagalog in the Philippines. I should find the story compelling, if long.

A story grows

The old man, Andres P Aglibut, Ilocano, from the North, was a retired Agricultural Engineering professor of the University of the Philippines Los Baños; he brought seeds of sweet tamarind and gave some to his protege, Fortunato Battad, also from the North, who spoke Ilocano, and who planted them and saw that they were good.

I am Ilocano, so I know ‘Aglibut’ means in Ilocano ‘to go around’ – the good professor had been traveling. ‘Fortunato’ is Spanish for ‘fortunate.’ The Pampanga Agricultural College (PAC) was fortunate to have him as President. The family name ‘Battad’ came from ‘Batad,’ the name of the place where the Battads came from, up there in Northern Philippines. Batad is known for its spectacular, breath-taking ‘amphitheater-like terraces rising to the mountaintops’ (Robert Gardner, aenet.org). The Battads are pure Ifugaos, native Filipinos known around the world for their age-old engineering feat, the rice terraces, water coming from the watershed above, a most delightful way to irrigate the field. The Ifugaos know how to engineer their way to a world wonder. In 2006, I wrote about the ‘World-renowned Ifugao rice terraces’ and reported that the Unesco declared them a World Heritage Site (actually 9 towns). They are 10 times longer than the Great Wall of China. We should call them The Great Banaue Rice Terraces.

Personally, I have always had high respects for the Ifugaos, people from the boondocks. About 30 years ago, I was the Chief Information Officer of the Forest Research Institute (FORI) and Editor in Chief of Habitat, a full-color magazine I founded for FORI and which I patterned after the US National Geographic. Sharon Codamon, pure Ifugao, an intelligent, intense young woman social scientist of FORI, submitted a manuscript based on her visit to the natives of one of the mountains off Luzon and, with a little rewriting into the Habitat style by me, I approved it for publication. The content was meaty, the photographs were good. Excellent.

Then, the prejudice of lowlanders against uplanders reared her ugly head, and one lady raised a howl – the lady did protest too much – that the manuscript was not good enough for such a high-quality magazine. Ahem! She was telling everybody I was a dunce of an Editor. I didn’t mind it, because I knew I wasn’t – if I were, why would I deny it? But there arose a big editorial fight. She was a member of the Editorial Board, and she called for a Board decision, and the Board decided against publishing it. The lady didn’t realize she was fighting City Hall. I knew the Director of FORI, Filiberto S Pollisco, had always supported me in my decisions; I had the Chairman of the Board of Editors behind me – Ulysses M Lustria was a good friend – and I had the power of the Editor in Chief. I published the story. End of story. Some lowlanders aren’t as smart as some uplanders. They have to grow up.

A school grows

The Pampanga Agricultural College campus is found some 15 kilometers east of Angeles City, at the heart of the town of Magalang in the province of Pampanga. The College was founded in 1885 as an agricultural experiment station; it became the Pampanga National Agricultural School in 1938, and a Chartered State College in 1974.

Pure Ifugao Fortunato Battad became the second President of the PAC, 1976 to 1984. Sturdy as mountaineers are, intense and intelligent, instead of literally carving out a bustling College out of the sides of Mount Arayat, he built on what he had found there. That was how the PAC campus grew into an orchard unto itself, a mid-sized academic institution nestled on the foot of the western slope of a legendary mountain amid a forest-like environment. It takes a man not to conquer a mountain but instead grow on it.

I visited the campus last April 18 and slept there overnight courtesy of Zosimo ‘Osims’ Battad, the scion you see in the photograph. Personally, I can appreciate the growth of the dense vegetation and the development of the school into a College. I practice-taught here, when it was still the Pampanga National Agricultural School (PNAS), around 1962. I remember the place as a wind-swept sugarcane field with hardly a tree growing, even up to the top of Mount Arayat. It was a forlorn-looking mountain to a forlorn-looking stranger that was I. Now PNAS is PAC; it’s fresh air and trees and flowers and shadows. And the birds tell you it’s a happy place for them too, among them cinnamon bitterns, barred rail, red turtle doves, zebra doves, coucals, blue-tailed bee-eaters, pied fantails, black-naped monarchs, long-tailed shrike, munias, Eurasian tree sparrows (Linda Gocon, birdwatch.ph). This campus is for the birds, and that’s how a campus should be.

The College’s vision is: An improved quality of higher education in particular, and quality of life in general.

Thanks to the forest of trees and a forest of installations of desktop computers, the campus is a mild, wired country. The College is in touch with the rest of the world via modern information and communication technologies (mb.com.ph). The father Battad used to call it ‘a school within an orchard’ exactly as he had planned it. Today, with the Internet connections, we can call PAC ‘a world within a school within an orchard.’ The harvests on this campus are not only made of flesh in the fruits but also gray matter in the heads.

To pursue this vision, the College is sustaining a clear and steady focus on four major areas of its mandate, namely Instruction, Research and Development, Extension and Training, and Production.

Production. We then go back to the Aglibut Sweet tamarind, planting materials sold as grafts done on-campus to help raise funds for the College. For one, PAC has been aggressively marketing Aglibut Sweet as a fruit tree worthy of those who have orchards or backyards and who wish to enjoy the sweet pods or the sweet smell of honest money earned. True to its name, Aglibut Sweet has gone around the Philippines, now planted as far south in the Philippines as Mindanao.

PAC offers a total of 13 undergraduate courses (allied and non-allied), 2-year computer courses, 2-year course in agricultural technology. It maintains a laboratory high school, runs a science high school, and operates a graduate school for 3 masteral and 3 doctoral degrees. The College has a state-of-the-art Audio-Visual Center, sports facilities, a VetMed Hospital, in-campus dormitories, a Farmers’ Training Center, tissue culture and feed laboratories. As of 2006, 12 out of 14 academic programs of the College, including the Graduate School, have been accredited by the Accrediting Agency of Chartered Colleges and Universities in the Philippines (AACCUP).

I have just described a College that deserves to become a University. And now I shall tell you of its recent history, all the more to support my theory. Absorbing, I say, if educational.

The Osims Years

Many of the recent accomplishments of the College can be traced back to the scion, the son, Zosimo ‘Osims’ Battad, who was President of the College from 1999 to 2007, the Osims Years. From the PAC in 1984, the older Battad transformed the Mountain State Agricultural College into the Benguet State University and became its first President, proving, if further proof were needed, that he was an institution-builder. Like father, like son.

Osims led the rebuilding of the image of PAC and made it one of the leading institutions in Central Luzon in agriculture and allied sciences. He greatly inspired the staff and students in cultivating the values of excellence, discipline, hard work and positive attitude in every undertaking; this has redounded to overall outstanding performances of PAC students in academic, socio-cultural as well as athletic competitions. For instance, early April this year, the PAC girls won the archery championship in the Philippine Olympic Festival held in Subic, Olongapo City (sunstar.com.ph). Hard work pays like that.

During those years, new graduate and undergraduate courses began to be offered. Graduate: PhD in Management, MBM, MA in Education. Undergraduate: BS Information Technology, BS Math, BS Bio, Computer Secretarial, Computer Programming, Vet Nursing, Development Communication (DevCom). The College was also granted by CHEd to administer equivalency programs such as in Agriculture, Ag Econ, Ag Eng. Equivalency favors those who now want to continue their interrupted schooling, to go after a job.

Good image

With the overall high-quality image gained during the Osims Years, the College became a favorite of local and international visitors (entrepreneurs, professionals, students), retreat destinations for religious organizations, training and conference venues for government and private offices, for its first-rate products and services. Those years also saw a downpour of donations valued at P32 M, the items including 100+ computers and servers, a tractor and 450 scholarships a year for poor students. Computers attract minds; scholarships attract the best.

Those years also saw the establishment of the first community radio station (FM) in Magalang based at the College campus. It is now being used for broadcasts on technologies from the College as well as for training of DevCom students. Recently, the Chair of the Communication Committee of the Unesco National Commission for the Philippines Florangel Rosario Braid said, in her opening address at a national convention on community radio in the Philippines, ‘Radio cannot be replaced as the main media tool for development’ (portal.unesco.org). Personally, I favor the print media, but so far their vocabulary does not derive from development but the politics of opposition.

In 2001, the College was chosen as a Luntiang Pilipinas (Green Philippines) site, an honor and a recognition of the forest-like surroundings on campus, which has its own lake nourished by natural springs. The lake’s abundant and unending water stream means the watershed is alive and well on Mount Arayat and on the campus of the PAC. There are thousands of fruit-bearing mangoes and mahogany trees, among others; it is now regarded as the cleanest and greenest campus among the state colleges and universities in Central Luzon. Greenest. On campus, I saw one tree in bloom so profuse that at first glance it looked to me a golden shower. (It was a narra, Pterocarpus indicus.) Beauty always distracts me pleasantly.

R&D

The term research and development (R&D) has always bothered me because I keep noticing that people don’t really define it and don’t clearly delineate which is which. So I love it that Osims differentiates the two. In his report on the Osims Years, research is research, while development projects include commercialization of Aglibut Sweet, tissue-cultured bananas, bamboo, Jatropha (for biodiesel), organic vegetables and organic fertilizer production. Based on my own theorizing, organic farming was something I began to preach in 1967 when I began teaching at UP Los Baños. 41 years ago. The years have a way of catching up with you.

Academic & scholastic achievements

In the Osims Years, the College became one of the premier educational institutions in Region 3. The college produced topnotchers in board exams in teacher education, veterinary medicine, agricultural engineering. The College’s VetMed program became #2 nationwide while its teacher education program became #1 in Central Luzon. The UP Los Baños College of VetMed should be jealous.

Wired

The College acquired a Computer Center with at least 100 working computers at any time. Because of its computer literacy and readiness, the wired Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture project selected the College as its node for Region 3; it is referred to as OpAPA-Pampanga. At the close of 2007, OpAPA-Pampanga was running at 512 MBps performing fairly well on 3 major components: database and network connectivity, advocacy and social mobilization, and content development. The College now has its computer network and its own website (instanet.com.ph/pac or pac.edu.ph). It now offers the public the world of knowledge through an Internet Café. UP Los Baños should be so inclined.

Business assistance & partnership

The College is 1 of 7 institutions selected by the Development Bank of the

Philippines

to set up a Business Assistance Center (BAC) to encourage local entrepreneurs, with access to market information, technology, credit and technical assistance. Osims registered Aglibut Sweet and it became the first sweet tamarind variety approved for commercial production by the National Seed Industry Council (NSIC). This NSIC variety rivals the Bangkok variety, renowned internationally for its sugary taste. In 2006, the College commercialized the variety in Zambales Province with support from former Senator Ramon Magsaysay Jr and funding from the Bureau of Agricultural Research headed by Director Nicomedes P Eleazar. Thousands of grafted seedlings were provided and planted in farms and backyards in the province. The College trained and provided technical assistance to interested growers. Loans payable in 1 year in 3 installments were also made available. I don’t see such entrepreneurship at UP Los Baños.

The Osims Years also saw the College partnering with the Central Luzon Drug Rehabilitation Center in initiating the training in agriculture and computer skills for more than 2,600 rehabilitated patients in 5 years. Business partnerships were also established with 12 private entities, including Philippine Mission Organic Vegetable Co of South Korea, USETECH Co for organic banaba production, ACE Institute of Computer Education, F4 Company for bamboo production, and Concun group for agro-ecotourism. Business partnership is a lesson UP Los Baños has yet to learn. We visited the Technology Demonstration & Training Center set up by the Farm Foundation Inc and the College within the campus, and I saw colorful fishes being raised in 2 ponds for aquarium buyers. I was looking at the color of growth.

International collaborations

During those years, the College established more than 30 international academic and research collaborations with universities and other institutions in Europe, Israel, South Korea, the United States, China, the Netherlands,

United Kingdom

and Asean countries. To date, the College has a partnership with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) for research to enhance cropping in rainfed areas. The College has also a stake in the proposed Philippine Drylands Institute, another advocacy of ICRISAT (for details, see my ‘The Drylanders’).

Science & service facilities

In those Osims Years, 20 science & service facilities were created, directly addressing the needs of students, farmers, fishermen, rural women and youth. In connection with this, in 2006, Osims was nominated by the CHED for the 2006 Lingkod Bayan (Public Service) Award for outstanding work performance. A well-rounded personality, Osims has received more than 50 citations-awards and recognitions in his research, administration, socio-cultural and sports involvements. As the man has grown, the College has grown.

The staff

Osims did not forget the staff. He institutionalized the granting of professional enhancement allowance at P10 K plus rice allowance worth P6 K each year. This is not to mention the health insurance subsidy and an incentives & awards system approved by the Civil Service Commission in 2000. He further improved housing, security services, provision of safe water, IGP system, and the grievance & discipline mechanism. No stone left unturned.

All in all

Let me point out that components of the Pampanga Agricultural College did not grow in isolation with the rest, or at the expense of the others. Osims is an illustrious son of an illustrious father, Fortunato. The father cultivated the trees; being President of the College from 1999 to 2007, the son cultivated the arts, the sports, the technologies, the partnerships, the bodies and minds of both College staff and students. Outstandingly. When I say Outstandingly, I mean exceptionally well, and on his own initiative and entrepreneurship. He would develop the whole College and not simply the components of the College where his field is, animal-veterinary science. And the whole College would help develop the whole town where it has grown.

A town grows, a college too?

There is a huge market potential for sweet tamarind as the country continuously imports this fruit to meet local demand. On the 13th of December 2007, the municipal council declared Magalang as ‘The Sweet Tamarind Capital of the Philippines’ (instanet.com.ph), mainly due to the Aglibut Sweet as the elite tree and the PAC as its privileged advocate. For all it’s worth, the College is the Science Capital of Pampanga.

The town of Magalang has benefited directly much more from the PAC, visibly in increased yields in crop and animal production. The town today teems with piggeries and fishponds. Pond owners in Pampanga source their tilapia fingerlings from producers in this town. Magalang is well-known for its confectioneries (sweets) for their unique taste arising from the quality of the milk from the water buffalo (carabao) that feed on green grass growing on pasturelands in the town. And lately, for sweet tamarind. And for businesses and enterprises connected directly and indirectly with the College. It is not only the PAC that has grown from Magalang; the town has also grown from the PAC. (And with the Aglibut Sweet, Zambales as a Province is growing into being Sweet Tamarind Country.)

Just as the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture created a University Town (Los Baños) and became a University, Magalang, Pampanga deserves to be officially recognized as a University Town and the PAC declared by law a State University of the

Philippines

. Already, the PAC envisions itself to be a regional center of excellence for research and development in agriculture, science and industrial technology, and for the provision of world-class comprehensive education and training.

On April 26, 2004, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo certified as urgent to Congress the bill for the conversion of the College into a University. No word. The House Bill titled ‘An Act declaring Pampanga Agricultural College as a State University’ sponsored by Pampanga Representative Carmelo F Lazatin, co-authored by Representatives Juan Miguel ‘Mikey’ Macapagal-Arroyo and Anna York P Bondoc, was filed July 30, 2007. No news. PAC deserves to graduate to a higher level of educational attainment, so isn’t it wrong that the honorable Representatives of Pampanga are not pushing hard for the College to attain University status and bring themselves honor as well? Well, Congressmen can be wrong sometimes, you know; they are not always bright.

This is Chapter 11 of my book, Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. It illustrates how to stop looking at successful individuals or individual families; rather, it should be successful villages – a campus is also a village. If you have that perspective, you’ll never run out of stories – and enthusiasm – even with a boring subject like R&D.

09 Virtual Thinking

2008-05-08T21:43:00.000+08:00

The day I reinvented the blog

By Frankenstein

To which half do you belong? Seeing my photograph, half of the lookers will notice the closed gate of iron bars, and half of the lookers will notice what lies beyond the closed gate of iron bars. The first lookers sense what cannot be and the second lookers sense what can be. The iron bars are my metaphor for critical thinking; what lies beyond the iron bars is my metaphor for creative thinking. Why do you mind the closed gate of reason when you can always open the windows of your free mind?

I suppose half of the bloggers in the world do it while looking at the imperial gate of reason. They don’t want to be unreasonable. They’d rather be logical – and so they end up being boring. You see, being unreasonable is the only way to travel the road of creative thinking. I’d rather be stimulating!

With this essay, I introduce virtual thinking as a new form of creative thinking that is distinct from the popular form of thinking, which is vertical thinking (also known as logical thinking, critical thinking, that is, sequential, hierarchical, linear, mathematical), distinct from Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking (horizontal thinking, as opposed to vertical thinking), from Ray Bradbury’s word association (every which way), and from Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way (journaling regularly at an easy, personal time) (check it out at artistswayatwork.com).

(I hasten to add, though, that creative thinking neither negates nor opposes critical thinking. Rather, these two types of thinking complement each other. It’s just that if you want to engage in creative thinking, first you suspend critical thinking so that you can go to ridiculous places and come back with wonderful ideas. In the end of course, the creativity you reach must somehow be reasonable or acceptable. It's just that creative thinking is more equal than critical thinking. If you believe the modern Filipino 'truth crusader' Jun Lozada, then it's the other way around.)

I just thought of the term virtual thinking today, May 8, 2008 Manila time, at about 1800 hours, excitedly upon which I created immediately the blog ‘The Virtual Thinker’ without a single post to upload, as I wanted to register the date and time in virtual history (thevirtualthinker.blogspot.com).

It is only once in a million blue moons that an idea like this comes to mind. In fact, I have been searching for such a name actively since 2005. I said ‘name’ and not ‘concept’ because I have had this concept since I first read about Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking in his book Mechanism of Mine in 1975 when my good friend Orli Ochosa gifted me a copy, and I juxtaposed lateral thinking with my earlier experience with Rudolf Flesch’s Readability Formula (in his book How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively), that which if you applied puts you right in the universe of creative thinking leading to creative writing. You don't have to call it creative thinking to be creative thinking.

How did the idea of virtual thinking come to me? It was a long time coming; it happened this way:

We go back to 40 years ago when I realized that it was almost impossible to get published by the local papers. However can you become a good writer if you are never published? You are never published because nobody wants to publish you, that’s all, no explanations given, no explanations necessary. Even today, the papers don’t even acknowledge email submissions. Writers are at the mercy of publishers (and editors) of newspapers and magazines and publishing houses. But not quite as doleful as before with the invention of the blog.

Now, a week ago, May 01, 2008 Manila time, it suddenly occurred to me that a beginning or not-yet-mature writer can have lots of practice at his own pace and still be assured that each piece he writes is published, I guarantee it! It’s all very simple, now that I have been inspired to look at something I have been doing in a different light:

To practice writing everyday, blog everyday. You’re practicing and at the same time you’re publishing yourself. The power to publish is in your hands. This is the ultimate freedom of the press!

And even that’s not enough. So, I had this idea of mind-blogging; I was happy with that, as you can see if you note that I have written many posts after the first one on May 6 as you can see if you visit ‘Mind-boggling or mind-blogging?’ (themindbloggers.blogspot.com).

I was thinking: Mind-blogging is creative blogging, creative writing using the blog as medium. It gives me almost complete control, assures me that what I’m going to write, whatever it is, will be published – I am the publisher of my blog. A blog is wholly, totally personal. Just like an insult.

Then today, May 08 Manila time, I came to comparing vertical thinking and lateral thinking with mind-blogging. Thinking of vertical lines, I thought mind-blogging is more than vertical thinking; thinking of horizontal lines, I thought mind-blogging is more than lateral thinking. And it is more than just a combination of the two, a burst of arrows of energy from one source into all directions in the universe of thought. I needed a new term.

Mind-blogging did suggest thinking (mind) and virtual (blogging, as you cannot blog except in the virtual world). But that’s not how today the term virtual thinking came to me – it just popped out of the blue, not as a pun but as an insight that which appeared out of nowhere, of course, otherwise it was not insight.

Test your insight: Look at my photograph again, and tell me what you see that I haven’t told you. Email me at frankahilario@gmail.com and I will write an essay about the first 10 of you who submit an insight or two.

Now then, how do you do virtual thinking so that it really is creative thinking?

For the virtual part, you need to start with a blog. Always with a blog, otherwise it’s not virtual. For the thinking part, you need to accept any & all thoughts that intrude into your mind, to allow them to process themselves in and out and not to interfere, to be only a virtual receiver and not a reviewer, to concede and not to contend. Let the Muse of Serendipity tempt you with her wiles. That is to say, be inspired!

Half of the time you don’t blog like that; well, it’s time you do it all the time if you want to learn creative thinking in the most pleasant way.

While I have just invented the term today, I in fact have been virtual-thinking officially, you might say, since February 11, 2006, when I submitted my very first essay to American Chronicle (‘Fuzzy logic and the avian flu’) and, inspired by the immediate and warm acceptance of the article, I at once wrote another and submitted it and it was published in the same day (‘Google is Genius’). My logic was clear, my genius showed up.

Blogging has become second-nature to me, like typing has become play, as you see that I can’t seem to be able to write short pieces. After some 124 weeks, I have written as many long essays, that is to say, I have authored an average of 1 essay a week for the last 28 months. I have always been prolific, even in the number of my children from 1 mother: Would you believe 12?

Can you use a mantra for virtual thinking? Try mine, that which I call ‘PS,’ (without the quotes) (click here for details on PS, as mantra).

Open your own blog today, a different or a new one, for learning virtual thinking as a new skill. A blog a day keeps the blues away. If you’re not so sure of your own writing yet, treat your blog as a daily journal for the reading pleasure of your friends and no more. You will gain confidence as you write-publish, write-publish, write-publish from day to day, week to week. This is full freedom of the press, full power of the press, and you're wielding it.

The beauty of a blog as a plan for practice in creative writing is that:

(1) It’s free.
(2) It’s relaxing.
(3) It’s exhilarating.
(4) There is no killjoy Editor or Publisher – you are on your own. (You can have one KJ later if you like.)

In the meantime, enjoy blogging for your friends. Like I said in December of 2005, blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer’ (‘The 5th: Freedom of blog,’ creativeleaps.blogspot.com).

If you are religious in your creative blogging, it’s for your own good – you learn to write creatively better, faster. The only way to learn to write is not to write – it’s to write seven times seven times. If you don't have passion, you'll pass out.

While doing your virtual thinking / virtual writing, learn at least one little lesson in creativity everyday. And where do you get those lessons? Read (or reread) any of my essays and I’m sure you’ll learn something, or be inspired by something, and then go ahead and write what you have in mind. (Visit my blogs: ‘The Virtual Thinker’ and ‘Excellence, Manila!’ and revisit this one, ‘Serendipity X.’)

In the world outside the Internet, editors and publishers are the lords and masters, not necessarily respectively. Either or both dictate whom to publish, no matter what quality of writing or thinking has gone into a manuscript. I should know. I have been sending articles to the Manila Chronicle and Daily Express of old, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Manila Bulletin, Today of today. Their silences have been disquieting.

Not only that. If you are persistent, you will earn for all your blogging from Google AdSense. How’s that for incentive? From those newspapers, you don’t even get an A for Attempt.

To help you in your virtual thinking, you can always refer to the online copy of my book (you’re on the right site right now), or you can order the print from me later (I’m going to press within the month). At any rate, possessing the book is not important or necessary; processing the thoughts in the book is.

In fact, I meant that book to be my sourcebook when I conduct creative writing workshops. I’m finishing that book with this chapter you are reading now.

Flashback: On May 03, 2008 Manila time, I was still 4 chapters short of the 12 I had planned for that book, but at the rate I was writing, I was going to finish before the month ended. So I was already thinking of how to conduct my creative writing workshop using the book. I didn’t write the book for me; I wrote the book for you. (If you’re reading this elsewhere, you may use my book free as far as that goes; visit ‘Serendipity X,’ theserendipityman.blogspot.com).

So, how was I going to transform non-writers into writers, or poor writers into better writers in, say, 7 days? Creative writing is not simply writing; you don’t pluck creativity from a tree – you pluck it from the air, and that needs technique, even a mantra (see my ‘PS,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com). PS, is a mantra, for creative thinking, yes, but you still need to write creatively. The two don’t necessarily go together.

Then I looked at the act and the fact of blogging. What has blogging done to me, the art and the science of it? That’s when I had the insight: Blogging is not an act; it’s a process. In other words, the process is more important than the act. That’s when I connected blogging with creative thinking. So I had invented creative blogging.

Of course, you probably have connected blogging with creative thinking. Let’s examine that assumption. How do you make sure that when you’re blogging, you’re thinking creatively? (Never mind the grammar and the typos.) And how do you think much, much more? That’s the 64-M dollar question. Half the billion blogs in the world are only half-critically thinking, not to mention half-creatively.

I have been blogging since 2005. On the American Chronicle alone, I have published more than a hundred long essays. As of today, I probably have 70 blogs comprising hundreds of essays, and not the little, disorganized ones you see half of the time, and none of them a rehash of another – so I speak from deep experience. If you want half of the world to respect you as a Blogger, blog well. (The other half of the world isn’t paying attention.)

To write well, what you need is good practice. So, practice well. The only way to learn to write is to write. No, let me reinvent that too. The best way to learn to write is to blog. Blog. And the only way to learn to blog is to blog. The only way to learn to blog well is, well, to learn from the master.

Now then, to learn creative writing, you must learn creative blogging. Virtual thinking. You say: But I don’t feel creative half the time when I’m blogging. Ah, that’s where the guru comes in. For your virtual thinking sessions, apply Frank’s Rules of Virtual Writing (thevirtualthinker.blogspot.com) – it’s free, on me. Print it out and follow each one of them as much as you can. I guarantee you pleasant results.

And yes, in your blogletting, remember these as my advices:

Blog with all your heart & soul.
As you practice blogging, practice your humanity,
Writing is personal.
Make love, not war.
Say thank you.
Have fun!
Do theater when you can.
The Reader is more important than the Blogger.
Tell stories.
Show.
Excellence is in the details.
Open your eyes, not the gate.
You don’t have to be right all the time.
Enjoy the journey - the journey is the reward.
Separate the biodegradable from the non-biodegradable.

As of course I myself have been following Frank’s Rules for decades, even if I had not written them down before, I have found my rhythm. I now have ease of thought flow: 90% inspiration, 10% perspiration. That’s my genius. I have it all the time, on call. What about you who are yet struggling to write or struggling to be a better writer? With virtual thinking, your genius awaits you.

When Ray Bradbury was that high, he met Mr Electrico and, in a magical hour, the magician enchanted the boy, wish-shouting at the believer, ‘Live forever!’ (raybradbury.com). If you write well, you will live forever.

I have proven to myself in the last 33 years that Frank’s Rules work like magic – you just have to believe, believe me. Believe forever!

Endnote: This is Chapter 9th of my book, Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. Virtual thinking is a practical way of flogging the mind so that it doesn’t flag down when you’re trying to think creatively. Since it’s a new invention of mine, I’m still in the process of fine-tuning it. Theory must transform itself into practice; practice will confirm or confront theory. Also, if I tried to explain it fully here, where would the fun be if you attended my creative writing workshop?

Federalism or Parliamentarism?

2008-05-06T21:58:00.000+08:00

I used to go for a parliamentary form of government for the Philippines. On TV tonight was Senator Aquilino Pimentel who says he has always been for federalization of the Philippines,, because it was advantageous to his mother island, Mindanao.

Now I like the idea of federalizing the Philippines, even if still don’t like the politics of Pimentel, who is anti-GMA, whom I like. The Philippines – plural – because we are so many large islands, not just one contiguous territory. Archipelagic, not continental.

And Manila imperialism has always been the dictator of change, or status quo. With federalism, at the very least we can have 3 states: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, including Jolo-Sulu. Each state will then have its own executive, legislative, judicial branches of government. And they will each manage their finances.

Mindanao will no longer be the last priority for development. And there will be no one to impose only one national language. I don’t like one national language no matter what you call it. I like English as the national language. The Filipinos are very good in this language, so why not this tongue? We will be more competitive globally.

10 Language of Change.

2008-05-04T21:59:00.000+08:00

THE GREAT Microsoft ESCAPE

By Frankenstein

These are the times for great changes. For Political Change, Barack Obama recommends himself. For Iraq and

Afghanistan

and other wars, Pope Benedict XVI recommends peace. To all of us, the Dalai Lama recommends love. And I recommend you my ‘Neutral Visits.’

In fact, for Climate Change, I have already prescribed Primate Change (‘Primate Change? Or Climate Change?’). For a climate crop (biofuel crop), instead of corn or sugarcane, I have already recommended sweet sorghum (‘The Smart Revolution’). Today, for Microsoft, to make Word 2007 attractive to millions of users like me, I recommend more than a great Microsoft scrape. Word 2007 speaks the language of change; I recommend a change in that language.

Last February 18, I bought an HP Compaq Presario C700 Notebook PC, Dual Core T2330 at 1.60 GHz, 1 GB RAM, preloaded with Windows Vista Basic, legit, and Microsoft Office 2007, a 60-day trial version. It was my 3rd meeting with this gorgeous lady, and I was still smitten with her looks. I first met her January 2007, online. Remember, I was still enamored with the lady before her. Eagerly if gingerly working with my new laptop, now I had to decide: Should I switch from Office 2003 to Office 2007? The Lady in Blue or the Lady in Yellow Orange? (Guess whom I’m with right now.)

The language of change in a software lies in the user interface, the medium of communication between software and user. It’s the menu. ‘The user interface is one of the most important parts of any program because it determines how easily you can make the program do what you want’ – ANN, author not named (webopedia.com). Or how difficult.

Now, Word 2003 to Word 2007 was a great change. Was the language of change great? Here are 3 pros on Word 2007: ‘For most users, the big question isn’t whether to upgrade but when. Experts, beginners, and corporate users all get major benefits from the upgrade’ – Edward Mendelson (pcmag.com). ‘The ribbonized user interface offers very real productivity enhancements to beginners and seasoned Office veterans alike, and that’s something worth cheering’ – Paul Thurrot (winsupersite.com). ‘It’s a welcome change’ – ANN, author not named (pcadvisor.co.uk), also referring to the Ribbon.

And here are 2 antis on Word 2007: ‘Stick with Office 2003’ – Jack Kapica (theglobeandmail.com). Changes are good for business users, not consumers – not the rest of us. ‘Drastic design changes demand a steep learning curve’ – ANN, ZDNet (zdnet.com).

Jack and ANN of ZDNet, thanks for the sage advice. Edward and Paul and ANN of PC Advisor, thanks, but no thanks. I have firsthand experience myself. Thrice I made advances to the lady; thrice I rejected her. She speaks a foreign language, if it be English. So I know Office 2007 is good for beginners, whether corporate users or home users, who must learn a new language anyway – but not for power users. Why, beginners have to begin from zero anyway, nothing to lose.

I have invested many man-years in a language, and suddenly you snatch my knowledge away from me. The language of change from Word 2003 to Word 2007 is like that. Why, power users like me are literally dumbfounded! With Office 2007, the menu commands have gone to hell in a handbasket. Edward, if you call that a major benefit, it’s like saying a power user like me is a dummy because I can’t find the menu commands I’m looking for in Word 2007 that my fingers have already memorized in Word 2003. That’s what is known as a steep learning curve. Now, Paul, if you say a steep learning curve is something worth cheering, then I know that you yourself have a steep learning curve to go through and you’ll really need some cheering.

Considering all that, I say Microsoft Office 2007 will have to be saved from reviewers who cannot differentiate a benefit from a learning curve, and from Microsoft himself who listens to reviewers with their handbasket of logic full of holes.

But wait a minute. Kevin Fogarty makes a good case of the bad user interface, the Ribbon Menu of Word 2007 (of Office 2007 in fact), and he thanks the heavens there are from elsewhere ‘add-ons that take Office 2007 back in time by allowing users to see all the old familiar menus instead of the badly organized new ones’ (April 24, 2008, midmarket.eweek.com). I can almost hear Kevin sigh, ‘What a relief!’

Kevin knows relief is not enough. I myself have been using Microsoft Word since 1987, since Version 1, the one with the Alpha key. I became happiest with Word 2003; I still am. The first time I saw Word 2007 early last year, I despaired. She was beautiful but so unreachable; she was desirable but so conceited; I was a stranger, and she didn’t take me in. Since then, my private joke is this: ‘Word 2007? She’s a stranger, and I don’t talk to strangers.’ (See also my ‘Blog me this,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com).

Kevin says the ‘Microsoft Word 2007 ribbon made work slower and more annoying for millions.’ I like Kevin’s background explanation enough to quote it:

There’s a tenet in martial arts that speed and power (said by some to be the same thing) come from neither speed nor strength, but from technique – muscle contraction and torque and weight shifts coordinated to within nanoseconds for an impact that is a combination of all three. ¶ The US military has a similar rule of thumb: ‘Slow is smooth; smooth is fast.’ ¶ In both cases, the key is practice – doing something in a specific way over and over and over until every micro-movement is automatic and every gap and glitch between movements is eliminated, leaving only the perfection of apparently effortless movement. ¶ Organizational efficiency experts discovered the same thing: eliminate unnecessary motions in manufacturing or other manual work and you eliminate a lot of the time it takes to complete a task.

The ‘Microsoft Word 2007 ribbon made work slower and more annoying for millions.’ (The menu was very good-looking and unpalatable.) Well, Kevin, apparently Bill Gates was studying neither Eastern martial arts nor Western military science; nor was he interested in efficiency. He was only interested in theory. I guess the theory is that if you are losing the game, to win you have to change the game. Microsoft Office was losing to OpenOffice, which had similar menus, so Microsoft stopped fighting in that front and waged another battle in another front: radically different user interfaces. Marketing strategy. Microsoft was hoping loyal Office users will come around to it when they will, when they will.

Personally, I think that Office 2007, especially Word 2007, is a disaster area. Microsoft should declare it a calamity zone and do what must be done, and implement the 3 Rs: Raise hopes. Restore services. Repair the damages quick!

Add-ons are not the answer; like patches, they are only Band-Aids. To save Word 2007 (along with the rest of Office 2007) from itself, Microsoft must create on The Ribbon a Customizer as powerful and accessible as that of Word 2003 so that any power user can create his own menu. The OpenOffice answer to Word 2003, OpenOffice Writer 2.4, has a Customize menu but I have yet to decipher it; that user interface is not power-user friendly either. In contrast, Word 2003 Customize is as familiar to me as ABC and 123.

Borrowing from Neil Postman, the language of change must be ‘lucid, responsible, and tremendously enriching’ (wwwnorton.com). Barack Obama’s ‘Change we can believe in’ is neither lucid enough nor tremendously enriching. Word 2007 is change I can’t believe; it’s all art and not much science. I can’t stand to watch it floundering.

So, I shall now proceed to illustrate what Word 2003 Customize can do that Word 2007 cannot – and Word 2007 is supposed to be Beauty & The Best. Now then, I present my very own menu meant to be on The Ribbon of Word 2007, with the terms that I, User, understand – another user should be able to create his own menu. My user interface for Saving Chairman Bill spells it all out (see image):

THE GREAT Microsoft ESCAPE

T, Tools
H, Help
E, Editor

G, Gallery
R, Replace
E, Entity
A, Appearance
T, Table

Microsoft, Home

E, Examine
S, Save
C, Changer
A, Autotext
P, Page
E, Endnote

I have chosen the words for the menu advisedly, to reflect my own knowledge of Word 2003, as well as what I think are the more important commands to put up front. After all, my power user interface is for me. Tools Help Editor Gallery Replace Entity Appearance Table Microsoft Examine Save Changer Autotext Page Endnote. Compared to the ancient menu line that says File Edit View Insert Format Tools Table Window Help, my modern user interface is definitely intimating, not intimidating. I know because I myself put them there:

Tools has Letters, Research, Language, Grammar & Spell Check.
Help has Levels: Basic, Advanced, Professional, Expert, Guru. (new!)
Editor has User’s Choice: Outline-Organize, Track Changes. (new!)

Gallery has the Stylesheet I love.
Replace has Search & Replace for fonts & formats.
Entity has images, photos, illustrations, objects to embed.
Appearance has formats, alignments, spacings.
Table has tables of contents, index, bookmarks.

Microsoft is Home and has everything.

Examine has zooms & layout views.
Save has autosave, backup save, files & folders.
Changer makes changes we can all believe in. (new!)
Autotext has autocorrect & autoformat.
Page has page setup & print.
Endnote has footnote.

Now, do you see that, I, User can change the menu, that is to say, I can rename those commands in the user interface into words I more easily appreciate, if not fully understand? A user interface should be as enjoyable as Frank A Hilario’s!

Microsoft has for years been listening to many power users and experts. The differences between a power user and an expert are level of usage and level of knowledge. The power user uses much and therefore knows much; the expert knows much but not uses much. The power user is much theory and much practice; the expert is much theory and little practice.

Word 2007 must be user-friendly, especially power-user friendly. If Bill Gates is listening to others than himself, if Microsoft listens to power users and not merely experts, what I have just proposed to be done – or a parallel user interface enterprise – has all the potentials of becoming The Greatest Escape in Software History.

Unless of course OpenOffice Writer learns the lesson of the language of change from Word 2007 first before Word 2007 does.

Endnote: This is Chapter 10 of my book, The Rebel Thinker Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. It illustrates dramatically the need to change, to revise in order to improve. You must always think of your Reader, in Microsoft’s case the target Word 2007 User, especially the Power User, who happens to be happy right now with Word 2003.

03 Serendipity X.

2008-05-02T22:11:00.000+08:00

The Rebel Writer Writes, ‘To X Or Not To X’

By Frankenstein

Disorder out of disorder? Yes. That’s the way I know creative thinking begins, with something that is seemingly un-pregnant with the promise of a brainchild. Once you accept that, your days as an un-creative writer are over. Then you will be the father of a brainchild one after another. Prolific. Terrific!

Welcome Serendipity X, the Serendipity Muse on call. Let x equals the unknown equals chaos equals creativity. I write this time about creativity 24/7, x’ing unlimited. Unknown becoming quantity first, then quietly transforming into quality. Structure giving birth to substance. X’ing is creative thinking like you’ve never known before. Serendipity eXtreme. To x or not to x, that is the (creative) question!

We begin with chaos. I am the Author of Chaos. In creating the universe as we know it, didn’t God the Great Creative start with chaos?

And the waters of chaos were upon the face of the depth, and God hovered upon the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, and the waters were illuminated. And God saw that it was good.

God didn’t like chaos, but to be creative He had to start with it. We mere creatures must go do likewise. So we have to create chaos. The thieves create chaos in order to steal, the politicians in order to divide and conquer, the mathematicians in order to be able to plot order, and our enemies in order to weaken our defenses. So why not writers and thinkers to create chaos and master it for their own purposes?

According to Englishman Horace Walpole, who invented the word in 1754, Serendipity is ‘accidental sagacity’ (Richard Boyle, 2000, livingheritage.org), that is, making a discovery when you’re not out making any discovery. So I say Serendipity is unconscious creativity, accidental genius, finding something wonderful when you’re not out looking for something wonderful. Great! Serendipitously, I have come up with my own; I say Serendipity X is conscious creativity, deliberate genius, actively searching for bright ideas by way of controlled chaos. As I shall show you in this essay, chaos is the raw material for creativity. With Serendipity X, bits and pieces of the confusion become the sparks of genius.

In fact, ‘Serendipity X’ is merely a new name for what I have been doing for the last 20 years or so, fooling around with ideas in what I happen to be writing, editing or reviewing (see my ‘PC Fools,’ frankahilario.com). So I know that Serendipity X is more creative than Edward De Bono’s Lateral Thinking, that which I have studied myself, and more promising than Tony Buzan’s Mind Mapping, that which I have seen at work. Indeed, it is more exciting than Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and less exhausting, as there is no daily journaling required at the self-appointed time, and any time you’re at it, Serendipity X gives you creative, quality time.

In Serendipity X, handled with an impossible mix of credulity and incredulity, chaos becomes creative chaos. You don’t have to be crazy, but it works!

So now, let me illustrate to you what I mean by that using a true-to-life example. I happen to have just finished my first draft of an annual report for the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB); it had taken me 7 days, from Valentine’s Day, to gather notes, create an outline, improve on that, and improve on that some more, and more, to arrive at my first complete draft. And on the 9^th day, today, February 22, as I write these lines, I come up with the name ‘Serendipity X’ to put a short & sweet tag to everything that I’ve been doing. Yes, it just so happens that Serendipity X is born on the same day People Power was born, both events major and minor reflecting a coming to terms, liberation from the shackles of thinking like slaves, thinking inside the box. People Power liberated a country from a dictatorship of the elite with the formula of government; Serendipity X liberates the writer from a dictatorship of any formula of writing.

And yes, my coming up with its name shows that Serendipity X works like a charm. My previous drafts of this essay had the brief titles of first, ‘Creator Of Chaos,’ then ‘Author Of Chaos,’ and nothing mentioned about Serendipity.

So, we begin with my chaotic notes for that annual report (excerpts only):

MY FIRST CHAOS

Biotech
People. PhD 23, MS 26, BS 50, undergraduate 38
Awards 8
Publications. 29 poster papers, 3 papers in scientific conference, 1 ISI journal paper, 1 refereed journal paper, 1 paper in proceedings
Commercially available biotech products: Bio-N, Mykovam, Mycogroe, Mycobead, Nitroplus, Bio-Green, Cocogroe, Brown Magic, mycorrhizal root inoculant
Animal probiotics
Virgin coconut oil
Plant diagnostic Kit
Ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis membranes from nata de coco

Programs
1. agriculture and forestry
Microbial-based fertilizers
Discovery/development of microorganisms that enhance use of water, carbon dioxide, nutrient uptake and mobilization, soil aggregate formation and under stress conditions
2. food, feeds and specialty products
Animal feed ingredients and additives
Enzymes for different applications
3. industrial and environmental biotechnology
Waste treatment, eg, decolorization of effluents from distilleries
Bioethanol – strains tolerant to high alcohol and temperature
Biodiesel
4. bioinformatics and drug discovery
Exploration of new metabolites of therapeutic value
Isolation of lead antimicrobial compounds from microorganisms
5. communication and technology commercialization
Houses activities related to technology transfer / commercialization and exchange of information between researchers and target users or beneficiaries
Improves structure of information service

College of Agriculture
Gearing for the UP centennial
Publication of CA Almanac (coffee-table book) deferred to give way to Dr Bernardo’s twin history books
A permanent CA home by 2008. The CA Building Fund Raising Project has raised P183,300 and $600, with pledges to P1.5 million and $400.
Hibiscus. Released in 2007: Hibiscus rosa-sinensis ‘Nelia T Gonzalez,’ ‘Emerlinda R Roman’ and ‘Estrella F Alabastro.’ Mussaenda ‘Emerlinda R Roman.’

Strengthening the pillars of distinctive excellence. 1. People
1. Retooling of CA REPS/Faculty in support of recognized CA themes / programs. Shelved in deference to the external review of CA reorganization
2. empowering CA REPS/Faculty to publish (thru systematic mentoring program)
3. institutionalize award system and build-up endowment fund to recognize outstanding performance of faculty, REPS, administrative staff and students – [ ]

Excerpts. How do you like that! My initial notes for the annual report came up to 36 pages single-spaced, more than 9000 words (almost 3 times longer than this essay), everything typed by me – and that was not complete. I had to read the individual reports and jot down notes some more.

Why do I use my own hands to type my own notes? They go to my head. And when they do, I can digest them. That’s using my head using my hands, two necessary steps toward creativity, using the memory of the eyes and the memory of the mind. If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good typist; if you want to be a better writer, you have to learn word processing (worping). With worping, the software becomes your second mind, with which you can graduate to creative chaos.

CHAOS AND MORE CHAOS

So, how do I write the report based on that chaotic mass of notes? First, while gathering those notes, I was actually also creating an outline (the lines in bold are headings):

Biotech
Programs

College of Agriculture
Gearing for the UP centennial
Strengthening the pillars of distinctive excellence. 1. People
Strengthening the pillars of distinctive excellence. 2. Resources
3. Environment
DE contributions to nation-building

College of Arts & Sciences
Centennial
People
Resources
Environment
Nation building
College DE (1M fund)
Other programs / projects

College of Development Communication
Centennial
People
Resources
Environment
Nation building
College of Engineering and Agricultural Technology
Centennial

College of Economics & Management
Centennial
People
Environment
College DE program (1M) – no remarks

College of Forestry and Natural Resources
Gearing up for the Centennial
People
Resources
Nation building
College DE Program (1M Fund)
Other programs / projects

College of Human Ecology
People
Environment
DE Program
Other programs

CPAf
Centennial
People
Environment
Nation building
Other programs

CVM
Centennial
People
Resource
Environment
Nation building
DE Program (1M)
Other programs /projects

OAR
Centennial

OIL
Resources

OUR 2
Resources

OVCCA
Resources
Environment

OVCI
Environment

OVCRE, Biotech, OICA
People

SESAM
Centennial
People
Resources
Environment
Nation building
DE Program
Other programs / projects [ ]

That’s the first complete outline of my notes for the annual report. So far, so good? You’re getting the hang of chaos. Actually, it’s not as chaotic as many of the entries are repetitive of each other, suggesting how they can be reorganized.

If you can now get an idea how to write the report at this stage, congratulate yourself. But you’ve hardly begun.

Now, I knew my outline above was not final but it was necessary to start with something, anything, to help the ideas flowing in my head out of the information I was trying to absorb. In other words, I had had to read my notes and digest all those bits and pieces of knowledge coming from the different units of the University, tagging them to find out later all their similarities and differences.

With that, the creative work had barely begun.

FROM CHAOS TO SOME ORDER

Now, I will show you what I came up with in my first attempt to create a new outline using the old outline (above):

Introduction
The UPLB 3-Year Plan (2005-2008)
Our vision
Our core value
Our niches

Contributing to the UP Centennial Celebration
Nurturing People
Developing Resources
Enhancing The Environment
Exhorting Partnerships
Core Fields/Areas
Agriculture
Biotechnology
Environment
Looking Into The Future [ ]

Much shorter and completely different from the previous outline. Now, where on earth did I get such an outline? Traveling the road of Serendipity X, the active pursuit of insight. I gained insights as I read my notes again and again and tried to squeeze the essence of all those disparate parts, even as I kept tagging and retagging and reviewing and revising my outline and kept doing other things in between. I also had to relax. That took about 3 days.

And then that outline would disappear, as you will see shortly. That’s the fate of all outlines in any creative process, but especially in Serendipity X.

THE BEGINNING OF A MANUSCRIPT

Then I had the real beginning of a full-pledged manuscript with this new and different outline:

Keeping An Eye On The Vision, Teamworking For The Mission

UPLB Contributing To The UP Centennial Celebration

Distinctive Excellence (College Level)

Strengthening The Pillars Of Distinctive Excellence
1. Nurturing People – staff
2. Developing Resources – structures and systems
3. Enhancing The Academic Environment – students
4. Exhorting Partnerships
5. Cultivating Entrepreneurship – UPLB CTTE
6. Contributing To Nation Building – incl publications
7. Cultivating Core Fields/Areas
Agriculture
Biotechnology
Environment

Looking Into The Future [ ]

While writing, I viewed that outline again and again and it went through many reincarnations, and it had changed much when I had completed my first draft.

MY FIRST DRAFT (OUTLINE)

(Title)
UP Los Baños 2007
Celebrating UP Centennial
Cerebrating Distinctive Excellence

(Introduction)
Keeping An Eye On The Vision, Teamworking For The Mission

(A) UPLB Contributing To The UP Centennial Celebration

(B) Strengthening The Pillars Of Distinctive Excellence

B1. Nurturing People
Faculty
REPS
Administrative Staff
Tenure

B2. Developing Resources
Income generation
Structural improvement
Systems & resources enhancement
Repair & maintenance

B3. Enhancing The Academic Environment
Courses & classes
Scholarship & thesis support
Recruitment & admission
Reviews & tutorials
Student welfare

(C) Nurturing Minds & Cultivating Relationships

C1. Enriching Knowledge, Improving Skills
Publications
Websites
Intellectual property rights
Basic research
Non-degree training program
Ugnayan ng Pahinungod
Conferences / forums / symposia

C2. Fostering Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship & intellectual property

C3. Contributing To Nation Building
Management of natural resources
Biofuels & forest products
Science & Technology Park
Gender
Culture and the arts

C4. Exploring & Enhancing Partnerships
Pursuing active linkages
Technical assistance & training
Alternative energy

(D) Looking Forward

D1. Reviewing Today

D2. Looking To Tomorrow
Grand reunions
Structural & systemic growth
Plans
Proposals
The Future [ ]

If you ask me, it’s not yet perfect but it’s looking much better now. You have just seen the miracle of Serendipity X. Now, don’t forget that my creative outlining had much to do with my writing from chaos to first draft.

MY OUTLINING, YOUR OUTLINING

Since about 20 years ago, outlining using software has been the open secret to my productivity for other people and my creativity for myself. I have been using Word in all its incarnations – except Word 2007, by which Bill Gates’ Microsoft unfortunately has turned me into a total dummy, what with all its strangely new, Out-Of-This-Word command module. Well, nobody’s perfect, including Bill Gates. That’s why I’m not on speaking terms with this strange species (see my ‘Call Me User,’ frankahilario.com).

Notwithstanding, I have found that Word 2003 is the perfect word processor (worp) for the writer in me, so now I am more than willing to freely share with you a few little Word commands for outline-organizing your own way to a higher level of creativity.

Now, can you be creative without learning Word’s outline-organize feature? Of course. But with Word as your worp, you can be x times more creative. With Serendipity X, outline-organizing is actually fooling around with ideas, and I have already written that you have to become one of my ‘PC Fools’ to become really creative (frankahilario.com).

Ready with your Word 2003?

Open a new file (blank screen). Click the AA icon beside the Normal box on the menu; it should say ‘Styles and Formatting.’ (If not, click ‘Getting Started’ and then ‘Styles and Formatting.’) You will then see these entries in the style sheet on the right side of the screen:

Clear formatting
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
Normal

For your exercise, type the following:

The Fox & The Boys, The Donuts & The Mascot

(1) The Quick Brown Fox
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Did you see that?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. I told you, didn’t I?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Now I’ve seen everything.

(2) Five Puzzled Boys
Five puzzled boys watched six quiet girls kiss just me, Frank. Was I fantasizing?
Five puzzled boys watched six quiet girls kiss just me, Frank. That was yesterday.
Five puzzled boys watched six quiet girls kiss just me, Frank. It was fun while it lasted.

(3) Donuts

Please buy me a boxful of donuts, the sweet, sticky kinds. It’s been half a year since I smelled a Dunkin’ and I’m famished!

(4) Mascot

That teddy bear is for a new store selling encyclopedia-size PCs. For quality, they’re very cheap, but I’ll pass. Keyboard too small for a big touch typist like me.

Position your cursor anywhere on the title ‘The Fox & The Boys, The Donuts & The Mascot’ and click on the style sheet on your right to format as Heading 1 (first-level heading).

Go to the line ‘(1) The Quick Brown Fox’ and this time click on Heading 2. Then go to the line ‘(2) Five Puzzled Boys’ and also click Heading 2. Do the same for ‘(3) Donuts’ and ‘(4) Mascot.’ (If you make a mistake, click ‘Clear formatting.’)

Now click View, Outline.

Next, position your cursor on ‘(1) Five puzzled boys’ (Heading 2) and click the icon negative (–) to hide the text. Then position your cursor on ‘(2) Five Puzzled Boys’ and click the same. Repeat for ‘(3) Donuts’ and ‘(4) Mascot.’

Congratulations! You have just made and seen your first outline using Word 2003.

Now all you see is this:

(1) The Quick Brown Fox
(2) Five Puzzled Boys
(3) Donuts
(4) Mascot.

So, can you be a creative writer and combine all 4 topics and write 1 charming little essay? Probably not.

Now, for the magic of outline-organizing: Select the whole line (3) and drag it up so that it follows (1); so now it reads like this:

(1) The Quick Brown Fox
(3) Donuts
(2) Five Puzzled Boys
(4) Mascot.

To un-hide text, click the icon positive (+), or click View, Normal, and you will see that the accompanying texts have also moved.

Click View, Outline again. Just looking at those 4 lines should now give you ideas. My ideas are these: You can feed donuts to the quick brown fox and the lazy dog. And actually, the mascot (teddy bear) was called ‘Frank’ and that was the one the six quiet girls were kissing. Creativity, Sir, is the name of the game.

In short, with a little knowledge of outlining and a little fooling around, Serendipity X makes you very creative like never before.

BEING YOUR OWN AUTHOR OF CHAOS

In Serendipity writing, what you need to do first is to create disorder: you take notes, you jot down thoughts here and there, tagging them as you jot them. Disorder will trigger your mind to create order. Make sure you research your topic well. Apart from other sources, you must search the Internet. Be sure to include in your search indirectly related topics, as merely scanning them will surely increase your understanding of your topic at hand.

Tagging your little notes will give you more ideas. The title you assign Heading 1; the tags you assign Heading 2. And then to create a great deal more disorder: you gather some more notes, jot down some more thoughts. Try assigning Heading 3 to some tags. Click View, Outline, then hide the texts and see if you can move around some of the headings together with the texts underneath them. Surely ideas will come to you how to organize what you’re writing.

As my book The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies will show, if you can’t create great disorder, you can’t create great order. (In sequential order, you have been reading from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3. If you want to be a creative writer, I recommend that you start with Chapter 3, which is this one.)

Remember this: You are your own creative god. Creator of Chaos – that’s what you should first become, what each writer should first become if he wants to be creative, or to be more so.

You must cultivate that chaos habit. When being the author of chaos becomes second-nature, Creativity becomes second-nature to you. You’ve grown accustomed to her face, to her wiles, to her blessings.

To mix metaphors: When you’re creative, wherever you go, sometimes you bring a closed flash drive and always an open mind; you have perhaps 4 gigabytes in your hands but certainly infinite, enigmatic bytes in your head.

Since February 6, with my new HP Compaq Presario C737TU laptop (notebook) with a pair of Intel Dual Core processors both running at 1.6 GHz Microsoft’s Vista Home in 1 GB RAM in a wide creativity expanse of a 120-GB hard disk, my mind is open to work/play 24/7. When you like work, work’s like play. Before February 6 this year, 9 Hilarios had to take turns on the desktop Powerlogic (the name on the tower case) with an LCD from LG and Intel Core 2 Duo running Windows XP in 2 GB RAM. Branded and unbranded, each of these machines is Beauty & The Beast. On top of all that, when you’re creative, your mind is a mean machine. Now, with my HP notebook on my lap, or on the table (or in my carrying case) and not having to share the machine with 8 PC-active children, Word 2003 is a most delightful tool for my writing waiting for me all the time.

If you’re a writer and you don’t know outline-organize as according to the Word 2003 paradigm, you don’t know what you’re missing. Try it sometime! Drag your headings and subheadings every which way – along with the corresponding text of course – and see instantly if this sequence makes better sense or that sequence makes much better sense, or this tag & text will have to go, or this text will have to be the beginning or that text will have to be the ending, or this statement is the first thing to say to attract attention or that statement is the last thing to say that leaves a better aftertaste.

Now then, you might say Serendipity X is outline-organizing (OO) plus the unknown (X) equals OOX, license to thrill. With Serendipity X, outline-organizing becomes one of the most powerful tools for creativity that I have ever seen, and I thank Microsoft Word for that.

In Serendipity X, or creative chaos, the journey itself is many journeys; you are always making a new first step, never the last, until you’re happy with the end results. Going the way of Serendipity X is an adventure into the unknown, creating chaos in mind as a foundation for creating essay on paper. Sounds crazy it just might work!

To x is for me to take notes and add more and tag and retag them and create and recreate my outline using my favorite worp. With Serendipity X, Word’s outline-organize is the best thing that ever happened to my writing. With this feature not found in any other word processing software that I know of, it’s a Wonderful Word out there for creative writers who want to be the best they can be. I wish them only the best.

08 Readability Check.

2008-05-01T21:58:00.000+08:00

Frank’s 7 Don’ts of Vocabulary - and don’t memorize!

By Frankenstein

If you are a teacher, speaker, lecturer, scriptwriter, book author, proposal writer, copywriter, journalist, science writer, professor, ghostwriter, publicist, spokesman, debater, preacher, leader of a prayer meeting – have you ever wondered that if this is the Age of Instant Information, how come we don’t have any models for instant gratification in terms of acquiring a good, mass-appeal vocabulary? My answer: Because we go after our mass appeal, not our vocabulary’s.

Another answer: Because building an excellent vocabulary usually takes life out of your years. Not anymore. I’m here to show you that you can learn to enjoy every moment of it, playing the roles of tracker, transformer, tester, teacher, tracer, typist, tooler. Any or all of the above. Male or female. Sooner, not later.

I laughed when, serendipitously, I found the perfect example to use for this lesson in vocabulary and readability. In all my 33 years of professional writing on and off, not to mention editing and ghostwriting, and in my very wide reading, I have never come across a very funny case of a technical paper masquerading as a popular article! Until late the other month, March, when I found one right at home, and in a glossy magazine yet. (No, I didn’t write it. And no, I’m not going to tell you who, what, where, when, which sex. I have the name, but no, I’m not familiar with the author. Also, in this case, I presume the innocent author is guilty until proven otherwise.)

Was this article a last-minute can’t-help-it filler that the Editor or Editorial Assistant decided to risk? Very funny, because the articles in that magazine were supposed to be written in the genre of those appearing in Time or Reader’s Digest, but this one page I saw, complete in itself, was too good to be true as a popular article – it was clearly too technical, a patch of ground in a field of green. This was one accidental discovery of mine for others to discover.

This misplaced article of less than 500 words had about 1 out of 5 difficult or long words, happily violating one of the most important rules in readability (following the tenets of Rudolf Flesch), which in my own words is this: Long words make long faces. Here is a list of 29 that I selected out of the many challenging words and phrases in that one-page incongruous magazine article:

(1) exponential population growth
(2) millennium development goals
(3) sustainable strategies
(4) foundation of development
(5) affordable supplies
(6) economically
(7) alleviate hunger
(8) new stagnation
(9) collaboration
(10) food security
(11) environmental degradation
(12) conservation
(13) midwife of the Revolution
(14) degradation
(15) ecologically
(16) population explosion
(17) technologies
(18) established
(19) strategies
(20) indispensable
(21) predecessors
(22) inequality
(23) prototype
(24) integrated
(25) mobilizing science
(26) postharvest
(27) development
(28) public goods
(29) sabotaging the prospects

How can you ingest weighty words like those and not suffer from information indigestion? And, considering other heavy words and terms I did not include – because they give too many clues as to the publication and author – if you read that short article at all, how can you not be burdened with information overload? From my short list alone, you can see that it’s certainly what they call a difficult read – which, as a matter of fact, is an easy write: Just don’t pay attention to your readers.

Conceivably, you could use all those words in one short article and still make that article readable and understandable, but not in as short an essay as 500 words, or 1.5 pages of Word 2003 at 11 pt Times New Roman, singlespace, one Enter between paragraphs. A heavy, arduous vocabulary like that in one little article and you’re a fish out of the water and in the frying pan.

Vocabulary. That reminds me: Many Filipinos are outstanding users of the English language. You know why many other Filipinos cannot be as good as the best, especially the youth of today? They cultivate a bastardized vocabulary when they’re discussing in the classroom or discussing in media, not to mention blogging. Worse, their professors and deans teach them not to be serious about learning better English – something to do with nationalism, you know, love of country. Sure, if you say so. One look at the House and the Senate and you know just how nationalistic the Filipinos are! (Not to mention the newspaper columnists and media personalities.)

On one hand, as to those militant politicians and other parliamentarians of the streets, as well as on TV, their vocabulary is easy: Easy to ignore. On the other hand, if you’re not paying attention to your difficult vocabulary, why is it difficult for you to realize that you cannot expect people to be paying attention to you?

As far back as I can remember (first year high school, 1953), the Reader’s Digest has always had its hit 2-page column (the questions on that page were answered in another page), ‘It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,’ and I believed in the many causes of the Reader’s Digest: learning to write, learning to cope, learning to be family, unlearning to smoke. I don’t remember, though, that I memorized those chosen words, and that they necessarily enriched my stock of the English language. When you simply memorize meanings, you don’t learn until you use those words, and use them again and again. Well, the Reader’s Digest is not perfect. Rather, I credit my encyclopedic vocabulary to, among others, my voracious perusing since high school of most any reading matter that had come to my attention, from Romeo and Juliet to Playboy (they do publish intelligent, intriguing authors, believe me), from Time to Kislap Graphic (Manila magazine), from the Bible to the Manila Times, from the classics to the comics (like Pilipino Komiks). I even read the fish wrapper!

When I was in high school, I vowed to become the best writer (I can be). So I cultivated my talent, including my vocabulary. Aside from the Reader’s Digest, long ago Dale Carnegie used to be my textbook advocate when it came to building a vocabulary. He said somewhere in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, if I remember right, that successful people always give credit to their good vocabulary. What I can assure you is that you cannot be a good writer if you don’t have a good vocabulary, whether you are writing about the arts or about the sciences. A wide vocabulary opens wide doors – and windows – of ideas.

If you had a collection of my essays, you could easily see that I am an affluent person – when it comes to vocabulary. You shouldn’t be surprised: I have been putting together that vocabulary for the last 55 years! I cannot give you vocabulary years but I can give you some techniques that if you apply them I wouldn’t be surprised if you construct a superb vocabulary within 55 days, not years.

So, here is an original, powerful set of seven vocabulary builders – and no memorizing!

FRANK’S 7 DON’TS OF VOCABULARY

(1) Don’t ask people – ask the dictionary, sense the context.

The Reader’s Digest taught me that while reading, I should have a dictionary at hand so that if I find a difficult word, I can look it up and learn a meaning or two of that word. Not enough: When you check the dictionary while you’re reading, be sure to get to appreciate the meaning in context. Get a good dictionary and read the other meanings. (Mine is the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.) You don’t learn your vocabulary word out of context. If you want to memorize, you have to memorize even the context of how the word is used. My advice: Don't memorize!

(2) Don’t plagiarize – transform.

Most people who try to write based on other people’s writings rewrite a little what they read and think they have gotten away with murder. Yes, they have – they have gotten away with the murder of their own writing. You don’t learn vocabulary that way, and you don’t learn to write either. To help you develop your own vocabulary and style, which is not only words but also idioms and ways to string words together, first, transform the words you read literally by using the dictionary, even if the words are simple enough.

I will now illustrate how powerful literal transformation is. Consider this most popular, most mundane, most-taken-for-granted sentence of only 3 words: I love you.

Can you transform that? I can. And can you transform that and enrich your vocabulary at the same time? I can.

Here’s how. First, ignore the word I because it’s too self-centered. Ignore also the last word because you should know better! What about the word love? Look into the dictionary and you see these definitions (American Heritage Dictionary):

1. a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. 2. a feeling of intense desire and attraction. 3a. sexual passion. 3b. sexual intercourse. 3c. a love affair. 4. an intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object. 5. a person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment. 6. an expression of one’s affection: Send him my love. 7a. a strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language. 7b. the object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love. 8. mythology: Eros or Cupid. 9. Theology: Charity. 10. Christian Science: God. 11. Sports: a zero score in tennis.

Do you see how much you have learned? And you thought there was nothing else to learn about the very common word love. Love has at least 11 senses! So, after literally transforming the word, you can now use any of the transformations in your writing. Did you realize now that that’s brainstorming using the dictionary?

(3) Don’t take a test – make the test yourself.

That is why teachers know more than their students. Go back to the dictionary and pick out words you want to learn the meanings of. In fashioning out your multiple choices of meanings, you learn the meanings of those words yourself – before anybody else. You can try it on your spouse or child, neighbor or officemate – they will enjoy the game too.

(4) Don’t learn - teach.

I trained to be a high school teacher, but I learned outside of school myself that the best way to learn is to teach. If you teach vocabulary, it must be beyond simply multiple choices from possible meanings. You have to teach the words in context. If you teach the dictionary meanings only, you are teaching out of context, the worst way to teach. To make it interesting, you can teach a vocabulary word by making up a short paragraph – or a story around it, probably better if absurd, as the lesson becomes more enjoyable and therefore memorable. In that way, what you teach also enriches you, the teacher.

(5) Don’t mind the word – mind the associated words.

We go back to the word love. What does love remind you of? Many things, such as: Lover, the one who loves. Lovely, beautiful, pretty. Loveable, capable of being loved. Lovebirds, 2 people in love. Loveless, someone who is without someone who cares. Loveseat, a sofa for two people. Lovesick, someone to whom we can’t do anything even if we were doctors. Unlovable, something which we easily make other people. While you’re enjoying the process, your mind is enriched by such word association.

(6) Don’t memorize – type.

When I did this list of ‘Don’ts’ you are reading now, how do you think I created it? I myself typed the definitions of love and the words associated with it. What happens when you type is that your fingers remember the shapes, your eyes remember the words, and your brain remembers the meanings. Thus, you see typing is in fact 3 simultaneous, synergistic ways of learning. Note: You must type by sentences, at least phrases; not word for word, not letter by letter. You get the meaning in phrases or sentences, not otherwise. (And, for goodness sake! Learn to Zoom in on the words, say 200%, just as I’m doing right now using Word 2003.)

(7) Don’t mind what I said – mind your software.

And of course I saved the best for last: The fastest way to gain vocabulary is by the software in your PC. Software is a tool, so use it! In 2000 or thereabouts, I acquired an electronic copy of Microsoft Bookshelf 2000, a 1-CD version created by Microsoft basically out of American Heritage Dictionary. Aside from definitions, it has some concise encyclopedic entries on some words or names. The excellent tool for a writer who is at a loss for words is Bookshelf’s Synonyms. So, if we look up the synonyms for the word love, we find a pirate’s chest full of treasures:

Affection, friendship, charity. Eros. Agape, brotherly love, sisterly love, Christian love, true love, real thing. Natural affection, parental affection, paternal affection, maternal affection, mother-love, protective love, protectiveness, disinterestedness. Possessive love, possessiveness, jealousy. Conjugal love, uxoriousness. Closeness, intimacy. Sentiment, feeling. Kindness, tenderness, benevolence. Platonic love, friendship. Two hearts that beat as one, mutual love, mutual affection, mutual attraction, compatibility, sympathy, fellow feeling, understand. Fondness, liking, predilection, inclination, tendency. Preference, choice. Fancy, caprice. Attachment, sentimental attachment, firm attachment. Devotion, loyal devotion, patriotism, loyalty. Courtly love, gallantry. Sentimentality, susceptibility, amorousness, moral sensibility. Power of love, fascination, enchantment, bewitchment, sorcery. Lovesickness, Cupid’s sting, yearning, longing, desire. Amativeness, amorism, eroticism, lust, libido, regard, respect. Admiration, hero-worship, worship from afar, wonder. Dawn of love, first love, calf love, puppy love, young love. Crush, infatuation. Worship, idolatry. Romantic love, love at first sight, coup de foudre, passion, tender passion, fire of love, flames of love, enthusiasm, rapture, ecstasy, transport, transports of love, excitable state. Erotomania, abnormal affection, abnormality. Love psychology, narcissism, Oedipus complex, Electra complex. Love-hate, odi et amo.

So many! (Did you know that, poor up-to-date Encarta Thesaurus 2008 lists only a handful of love synonyms, 20 maybe? Encarta, if you didn’t know, is published by Microsoft Corp. So, here is my unsolicited advice to Bill Gates, and that applies to his own unsolicited advice called creative capitalism: Learn more about love!) Do you see that simply by reading the long list, you get ideas about the different senses of love? That’s the beginning of adding more words to your vocabulary – instantly too.

(For dictionary and thesaurus practice, you can use my word list at the beginning of this essay.)

And I haven’t told you about the idiomatic expressions containing the word love. Go find them yourselves. There are at least 100, and the list includes love of money, love and marriage, love of one’s country, and loving-kindness. Every now and then, I find idiomatic expressions very useful in my writing. Like, in the US, ‘Love is a many-splintered thing.’

Finally, have you heard of hands-on training? One final vocabulary lesson: I cannot give you my vocabulary, even if you had a million dollars to buy it; hands-on is priceless, and that is: If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself! In other words, when it comes to vocabulary, help yourself – nobody else will.

What is important is that you learn how someone has used the word, the context, and how somebody else has used the same word in another context, so that you can use it yourself, and later perhaps discover another context for it.

Still, and I realize it only now, it is not really the vocabulary word that is important – it is the sentence or sentences that you should study, not simply your study word. In other words, it is the language you should learn, not simply the ‘difficult’ word. The best way to learn a word is to learn how it is actually used by people. And the more actual examples, the deeper the learning. Study also the common words, and you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. Been there, done that.

And in doing that, you have to learn the grammar of its use along with the target word. Grammar, did I say? Yes. The dreaded word. Applicable to grammar, Filipinos have a good running joke, and it runs like this: ‘Kailangan pa bang i-memorize yan?!’ Do we really need to memorize that!? You don’t have to worry about grammar nowadays. Don’t forget that your software (my favorite is Word 2003) has a Grammar & Spell Checker. Is that the best way to check on your grammar and readability anywhere, anytime? The shortest answer: See your Editor. The smartest answer: See somebody else, in the Internet.

In the meantime, while you’re building your vocabulary of words, I’m building my vocabulary of pictures. For the image above, my vocabulary word is: Reflective. And bucolic. And decrepit. And evocative.

Endnote: This is Chapter 8 of my book, Creative Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. Mathematically and mentally, it illustrates how vocabulary gets in the way of science writing, that your vocabulary must become plainer if you want to be read – and understood – by most readers, not a select few. To be a good writer, you can do away with the number of years necessary to acquire a treasure chest of vocabulary, meaning, you can build vocabulary quickly, but you can never do away with a good vocabulary. Don't forget to enjoy your discovering words and their meanings.

12 My Digital World.

2008-04-30T22:01:00.000+08:00

The best is yet to come?

By Frankenstein

He wants to live forever! Excellent. Ray Bradbury, a writer I most admire, lives in a magical world, but wants nothing to do with the digital – he rides a bicycle, inspires himself to creativity by word association, writes with a typewriter. Not excellent. Not me. I inspire myself via Serendipity X, write using this language:

01010110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110101 01101110 01101110 01111001 00101100 00100000 01000110 01110010 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01000001 00100000 01001000 01101001 01101100 01100001 01110010 01101001 01101111 00100001

That is machine language and it means: ‘Very funny, Frank A Hilario!’ The machine is not joking; I am. (Thanks for the binary code, theproblemsite.com!)

Seriously, I write using Word 2003 on my own computer, an HP Compaq Presario C700 Dual Core Notebook PC loaded with Windows Vista Basic. I bought that PC last February 18, 2008. It’s a long way from when I first learned to use a PC somebody else owned on December 29, 1985. Things change; sometimes we do.

01000001, capital A. You are looking at binary, two components only, the digits one and zero, the only language the computer understands, so I leave my PC to his own devices. Digital. If you look at the switch of your automatic voltage regulator (AVR), you will see 1 & O, On & Off. Exactly as the AVR understands, my PC knows only On & Off. Digital language is mechanical language. The computer works only mechanically. Is the computer intelligent? No, the programmer is. The PC has only lines of code, not cells of gray matter. Mechanical, robotic. A robot cannot be intelligent; only the robot master can be.

The Internet is digital from beginning to infinity. I, Writer thank JCR Licklider and God for the Internet, and someone for inventing blogging. From the day the modern printing press was invented in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg, even to this day, when it comes to the print medium, the Dictatorship of the Publisher is the prevailing work ethic, not talent, not a new way to say something old, or something new to say. With publishing online, I, Writer have overcome the bourgeois Publisher. When I finally realized almost 3 years ago and wrote so in one of my early blogs in 2005 that ‘blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer’ (creativeleaps.blogspot.com), I was ecstatic. Vengeance is mine.

Before that, no one wished to publish me and leave me to my creativity. With blogging, anyone can publish himself at almost no cost. It means: Writing has never been this good! It also means: Today, if you want to be the best writer you can be, you must be a savvy citizen of the digital world. The thing is that in the virtual world, you have to learn your software, not to mention your hardware, in order to make it your robot, and not allow your robot to become your master, dummy.

How did I become this good at what I’m doing? Let me give you some background of my digital life as a writer, editor, critic, reviser, ghost writer, desktop publisher, blogger. We begin with what I began with, the very first commercial word processor: WordStar.

Learning WordStar

So, why are most people intimidated by the personal computer, a bad-looking, glamorized robot? The PC scared me to death too, the first time, 22 years ago. I first learned to use the personal computer (PC) on the 29th of December 1985, after I had ignored one at the Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI) of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UP Los Baños) in Laguna, about 65 km south of Manila. I had just finished labor-of-loving a book, Small Farmers, which I typed myself on an IBM Selectric (if you remember), for the FSSRI. I edited the papers from a coconut farming systems conference and typed and retyped the manuscript, some 500 pages in all, at the office for days (and nights), and proofread each page exactly 9 times (I was counting) word for word. Then I went to press and they had it typeset and I proofread the printout again exactly 9 times (I wanted to be perfect). After that, I congratulated me and told myself, ‘Never again! There must be a better way to do this!’

So I asked Elpidio ‘Pids’ Rosario, who was FSSRI Director at that time, to ask the computer girl to teach me. And he did. And she did. She was from Calamba, not a City then; the PC was from IBM (I’m not sure; I don’t remember), with a Winchester disk drive (I’m sure – I remember reading the specs), and with a recording disk as big as a 78 RPM record with a small storage capacity of 64 KB.

She taught me with authority WordStar, Version 1, the only one available at that time; she taught me with a grudge. She told me, ‘You should be so lucky! I'm teaching you free, while I had to pay to learn!’ That made me feel bad, but I had to ignore the remark; I wanted to learn badly.

That girl, whose name I have mercifully forgotten, was my proverbial mentor and tormentor. Whenever I made a mistake, pressed the wrong keys, a sound would be heard from the machine, a menacing sound. Whump! Immediately and seriously she would say, ‘Yo, you have broken down the computer!’ Being a digital greenhorn, at that time I could hardly distinguish Esc from Enter, I believed her. My heart would skip a beat and my stomach would squirm. That happened several times and, when you’re as naïve as I was, a boy from the boondocks, you would be scared to death.

Then one day this naïve boy had one little bright idea. What I did was to borrow the manual (20 pages or so), typed the whole thing, and returned the copy. I typed it right there in the office, with her looking. Thank you, very much. From then on, I taught myself WordStar, working from an open book, my own copy, I’m proud to say. She was probably glad I did; I hardly bothered her again. From then on, to me word processing became 90% inspiration and only 10% perspiration. Those were my WordStar Digital days. Digital had become my world. I have never looked back since then.

And then I learned something else.

Learning Microsoft Word

I first learned to use Microsoft Word in 1987 or thereabouts. Before that, WordStar 4 had already been released, a beautiful reincarnation of WordStar. WordStar 1, WordStar 2, WordStar 3; with version 4, a qualitative jump, a reprogramming, this word processor had never been this good, this easy to use. And it had its own macro language with which to create your own shortcuts, if you had the mind to do it, and I had. I was happy. WordStar was the best ever!

One day, when I was working as a consultant under Jeremias A Canonizado (JAC), we had a long heated discussion in his car from Los Baños to Visayas Ave in Quezon City, where the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) was and still is. Among other things, he was adamant that I switch to Microsoft Word.

JAC: You are very intelligent, you should learn more software.
Me: Duh.
JAC: You should learn Microsoft Word.
Me: But WordStar 4 is the best!
JAC: How do you know it’s the best, you know only one software!

Point well-taken. But nobody ever did like to switch, right? I didn’t. Your wish is not my command. Not even that I knew JAC cared for me and he was in fact the one who took me in as assistant or something at the DENR. Not even that I admired JAC as a computer whiz himself, knowing word processing, spreadsheet (Lotus 1,2,3 – which he was happy to use also for word processing), electronic statistical analysis, the works.

It took one lady to persuade me to switch. She was very polite about it. ‘Frank, please try this software,’ she said. ‘They tell me it’s good.’ She implied that I was the one good enough to be good at it. A left-handed compliment, I took it, if it only occurred in my mind. Bernardita ‘Bernie’ Quimpo is the name, a publisher at that time. She gave me a 1.4 MB floppy (remember the floppy disk?) and Xeroxed pages of the Microsoft Word manual. Charge only to experience.

Try I did and, surprised, I liked it! Microsoft Word then had the Alpha key; you had to press it before you can issue any command. Alpha-Format, Alpha-Insert, Alpha-Edit, Alpha-Transfer – that was the time when you had to press Transfer-Save to save a file. It had its own macro language. I liked most of all its feature called the stylesheet (now called template; I still like the name ‘stylesheet’ better). It was really just another macro language. The stylesheet was my command center, literally, for automatic changes in fonts (names, sizes, types), spacings, indents, headlines, subheads, running heads, page numbers, page margins etc. Not only that; that early in the history of word processing, with Word I could already Search & Replace almost all those character and line and division formats. Word processing, that is, digital writing, editing, and typesetting (formatting) had entered my old world and was never to leave.

Slowly, I was drifting toward desktop publishing, and I didn’t know it.

Learning photography

Today, I use (almost) all the time my own photographs in my writing, blogging. Up to 2 years ago, I was depending mostly on Flickr; I knew how to take photographs, but I didn’t have a camera of my own.

I first learned photography in 1968, when my brother Emilio visited our firstborn Cristina and gifted me with a Canon SLX. I was a substitute Instructor at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture (UPCA) in Los Baños at that time. I could afford to buy some film so I was an eager beaver reading the Owner’s Manual. (Now, everybody calls it the User’s Manual.) Then, in that same year, having become persona non grata at Los Baños because I was too much of an activist, I applied to teach at the Xavier University College of Agriculture (XUCA) in Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao and Fr Masterson accepted me: Did this Xavier Jesuit know something the UP academics didn’t?

At XUCA, I taught Floriculture, Olericulture, Agronomy, Ornamental Horticulture, and Scientific Reporting. I developed my own syllabus for each of those courses. It was easy – I had the mind and eagerness to do it, and the library of XUCA was second only to that of UPCA in quantity and quality of reading materials. And they probably never had an avid reader before. And of course, at the main library of Xavier, which was equally well-stocked, I ransacked the shelves and read about painting and photography, privately learning from the masters who revealed themselves to whoever cared to read.

I couldn’t do much with my Canon SLX, but I kept on studying photography if only in books. I returned to Manila in 1968 and I had the privilege of writing the script for the slide presentation and exhibit of the National Science Development Board (NSDB). I learned more photography from Pat Laforteza, a world-class photographer – he studied in Germany for that purpose, and he knew everything that I didn’t know. I didn’t mind asking questions, and he didn’t mind answering them. A gentle soul. We were working for NSDB at Bicutan in Taguig, Rizal when Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972: Some people say he was a good President; I say I was a good boy.

Some 3 years later, in 1975, I was accepted as a writer and later became the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the Forest Research Institute (FORI); I worked there until 1981. As CIO, I had the happy privilege of founding and editing and writing – and photographing for all FORI publications – Canopy, a monthly newsletter; Sylvatrop, a quarterly technical journal in tropical forestry; and Habitat, a quarterly color magazine that I admiringly and admittingly patterned after the American sensation, National Geographic. I and a photographer or two went around the Philippines documenting FORI projects with their cameras and my notebook. I made sure I asked questions in photography in the field and in the office, and that’s how I chanced on and learned from Mao Chanco, The Writer and Editor anybody who was somebody knew at that time, with whom I had mutual interests, including those of his Earthman Society. A photography lesson from Mao that I shall never forget was for insurance shots: ‘Same scene, different angles.’ Why didn’t we think of that! We knew only to change aperture, to change speed. You learn if you listen.

After that gift of a Canon SLX in the late 1960s and the occasional use of Asahi Pentax and Nikon cameras of the NSDB and of FORI in the 1970s, with their telephoto, zoom and macro lenses, and polarizing filters and such that I specified (after asking questions from the experts), the next time I practiced my photography was 25 years later, in 2005, when the extended family of my wife, Amparo Medina Reynoso, had a reunion at one of the resorts in Calamba City, at Villa Letty. I used the digital camera of my daughter, Teresa, who was married to Toto Ilowa, and who was pregnant at that time with her daughter Samantha. The camera was a Sony Cybershot DSC-S60, 4.1 megapixels.

Digital. From my first brush with the analog camera, it had taken me almost 35 years to my first brush with the digital camera. Nonetheless, while my pocket was not ready for a purchase, I was ready and eager to make my masterful shots. By that time, I already had 35 years to learn much photography. You learn if you want to.

Last year, for my birthday, my children bought me a Canon PowerShot A540, 6 megapixels. It was worth the almost 40-year wait. And now I have my selection of good-better-best shots at 6 GB, and counting.

Learning desktop publishing on my own

Writing, editing, photography – I need to master all those to become very good at what I’m doing. Doing what? Since February 11, 2006, when my first American Chronicle essay was published, ‘Fuzzy logic & the avian flu. Or, Murder most fowl! A study in the language of science’ (americanchronicle.com), I have been combining faith and reason, religion and science, in every essay I write, a revolutionary departure from those who would touch either religion or science only with a 10-foot pole. I call it the Franciscan essay.

Whether working on my Franciscan essays or desktop publishing a journal, what I do has (almost) nothing to do with software like PageMaker (by Adobe) QuarkXPress (Quark), Ventura (Corel), Publisher (Microsoft). They are all primarily page layout programs, and calling any of them desktop publisher distorts the whole creative process people have mistakenly made them synonymous of: desktop publishing.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines desktop publishing as ‘the design and production of publications using personal computers with graphics capability.’ Without meaning or setting out to do it, over the years I have redefined the process of desktop publishing, so that to me, today:

Desktop publishing is the writing, editing, critiquing, correcting, revising, designing and producing publications using the personal computer.

In other words, with ‘high-end’ word processing software like Word 2003 (even as Word 2007 to me remains a nodding acquaintance), the concept of word processing has evolved into desktop publishing so that there is now no distinction; they are now one and the same. And about time too. In word processing, you work with texts, images, pages anyway. Now, only the business labels remain.

So, my story of desktop publishing is very different from anybody else; that’s why I want to call it neo-desktop publishing. This Franciscan essay is how it came about.

In 1993, I was already using Word 5.5, not bad-looking herself (whereas WordPerfect 5.5 was very good looking and most desirable), but I was happy with Word because, like a beautiful creature, WordPerfect was difficult to tame. I had flirted with WordPerfect briefly, 3 months to be exact, and then abandoned her for being recalcitrant – she didn’t follow my wish; I had to follow her commands. Not the love-in arrangement I liked; I have to be in control. With Microsoft Word, I was the Lord and Master.

The years rolled by. I lived with Microsoft Word 5.5 even with the coming of Word 6 (1995), even with the coming of Word 7 (1996). Then Word 97 came along and she was a beauty above all the others. I was very happy with her. I clung to her even with the coming of Word 2000. Some things you can’t let go.

But when Word XP came about, in 2002, I saw the power of that software for desktop publishing, even if nobody else did – nobody was talking. More particularly, with the textbox and the drawing canvas, I could now insert tables and images anywhere and everywhere, even drag them across the page or across pages and at the same time part a Red Sea of text with each of them. With Word XP, I had flowing text, and since the software is interactive and what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG), it was to me many times more powerful than the best PageMaker you could find. To be sure, I used it to produce the April 2001 issue of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science (PJCS), my first as its Editor in Chief – the image you see is a screen capture of my first editorial; I titled the image 'Man Stepping in Time.' Today, 7 years of issues later, I am using Word 2003, which is even better than Word XP as a WYSIWYG software for my desktop publishing and blogging.

In the world of technical publications, the Good Housekeeping seal is called ISI, which stands for the Information Science Institute (see ‘ISI Web of Knowledge’) of Thomson Reuters based in Pennsylvania, USA. ‘You are ISI!’ means you are included in the list of international journals accepted on the bases of quality of editing and quality of content, as well as quality time (being up-to-date). It’s not easy to get ISI accreditation. As if to prove that I made the right choice with Word XP / Word 2003 as my neo-desktop publisher, last year the PJCS achieved ISI status. For many are called but few are chosen.

Learning the best is yet to come!

Oh yes, the best software is yet to come to help writers and bloggers like me. And yes, for all my writing for the American Chronicle, for all my blogging, I need all those best software to be my best. Because I want to be my best, with a little help from my best friends.

Notwithstanding all that, being the best in the digital world is not a guarantee that you will become the best writer you can be. For all your talent, the digital world cannot teach you the best lesson in becoming a very creative writer, and I have discovered, certainly serendipitously, that it is this:

Becoming the best person you can be.

I said becoming and not being. This is my faith: It is not success that is important but the attempt, the repeated, unending, unfailing, unyielding attempt to become a good person, to share, to give people the benefit of the doubt, to turn the other cheek, to respond to criticism with creativity, to cultivate the best in you as much as you cultivate the best in others. To not stop.

Trying to be the best person I can be has given me enough inner tranquility to be even more creative at 68 than I was at 58, than at 48, even than at 38. I have learned that an open heart is the door to an open mind, which is the door to creativity. The more open your heart is to the world, the more open your mind, and the more open creativity to you.

I have published 2 books (see My American Book). Whenever I autograph a copy for a friend, acquaintance or nobody I know, my message is exactly the same: ‘The best is yet to come!’ Now, that unoriginal line has my original 3 meanings:

(1) The best in life for you is yet to come. That is my wish.
(2) The best in life for me is yet to come. That is my desire.
(3) The best book I shall write is yet to come. That is my aim.

The best in life and the best book to write are yet to come for me because I have yet to fully be a loving person to all. Nobody’s perfect, yet. I will open all the closed chambers of my heart if it’s the last thing I’ll do!

Endnote: This is the 12th & last chapter of my book The Rebel Thinker Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. It illustrates how in writing as in life, if you want to be good, first you have to be better.

06 The Neutral Visits.

2008-04-29T22:03:00.000+08:00

Take a hint, Hillary Clinton!

By Frankenstein

What changes is the place, the face, or the phrase; the message does not. There is nothing new to be said about the Dalai Lama. There is nothing new to be said about the Pope. Their message is one and the same and unchanging. If you didn’t catch it, you haven’t changed a bit.

The Dalai Lama came on a neutral visit? He did, and he didn’t. The Pope came on a neutral visit? He did, and he didn’t. They came in peace, they came for peace. Peace is neutral and not neutral. The Yankees needed it; we all need it. With his slogan ‘Change we can believe in,’ Barack Obama will bring Pace to America, but not Peace. Take a hint, Hillary Clinton!

Too late for George W Bush.

So, finally they met, at Andrews Air Force Base. Pope Benedict XVI was the first head of state that US President George W Bush ever met on the tarmac – usually, the head of state visiting is the one who pays respect. That was according to plan. Earlier, Raymond Arroyo of EWTN asked why would Bush do it with Pope Benedict? (11 April, ewtn.com), and Bush replied:

Because he is a really important figure in a lot of ways. One, he speaks for millions. Two, he doesn’t come as a politician; he comes as a man of faith. And, three, that I so subscribe to his notion that there are – there’s right and wrong in life, that moral relativism has a danger of undermining the capacity to have more hopeful and free societies, that I want to honor his convictions, as well.

Never too late, Mr President!

Benedict; Latin bene, well; dicere, to speak. To speak well of another, to bless someone. I imagine Benedict said to Bush, ‘Peace be with you!’ and Bush said to Benedict, ‘And also with you!’

The difference lies in Peace. What is your Peace? You define your Peace. In War, we cry: ‘Peace, where is thy sting?’ In Peace, we cry: ‘Peace, where is thy victory?’ The world is fair neither in War nor in Peace. In any case, I prefer Peace.

When it comes to Peace, I might say Pope Benedict XVI was the shepherd in sheep’s clothing; US President George Bush II was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. When Benedict says of the US-made wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘Peace!’ he means in terms of all the peoples of the world, Catholics and non-Catholics, civilized and uncivilized. Peace Without Measure. When Bush says ‘Peace!’ he means in terms of the peoples of the United States of America. A Measured Peace.

Peace Without Measure. Almost 100 years ago, Pope Benedict XV was strictly neutral during World War I (encyclopedia.com). If you don’t believe that Pope Benedict XVI is strictly neutral about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then you don’t understand the position of neutrality. Neutrality is taking the side of all, for peace. You don’t understand that there is no way to peace but peace.

How do you bring Peace? The Dalai Lama, who came earlier and is still in the US, told his audience at the University of Michigan (Gregg Krupa, April 21, detnews.com):

From individual well-being up to global problems, individual affection is important. If we don’t want negative consequences, we have to take care of our daily actions, and our daily actions should be based on affection. The ultimate end, nirvana or heaven, is too far. We have to do good acts, here, now.

Do good acts to friends and enemies, alike. Didn’t the greatest teacher tell us? ‘Love your enemies!’

In all religions, there is a basic sort of theme, that is, to bring happiness and peace to our minds. So, they all carry the same message of love, compassion, affection, forgiveness, tolerance and contentment.

On Sunday, the Dalai Lama said in his lecture at the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as head of the Buddhist Church, that those ‘in wealthy countries need to downscale their lifestyles and try to focus more on inner contentment’ (Tina Lam, April 20, chron.com). For instance, Western lifestyles consume huge amounts of water and electricity; the world cannot afford such external lifestyles because resources are limited. Since internal lifestyles are unlimited, ‘it’s better to seek (inner) contentment and peace.’ And, ‘Many sufferings are the result of cherishing one’s self interest. You must cherish others in the same way you cherish your own body.’

‘You must cherish others.’ One US visitor echoes the other. In his message at the United Nations (ANN, author not named, April 18, zenit.org), the Pope said:

Through the United Nations, states have established universal objectives which, even if they do not coincide with the total common good of the human family, undoubtedly represent a fundamental part of that good. ¶ The founding principles of the organization – the desire for peace, the quest for justice, respect for the dignity of the person, humanitarian cooperation and assistance – express the just aspirations of the human spirit, and constitute the ideals which should underpin international relations.

Up to now, the Dalai Lama is on a tour of the United States, especially the university campuses, after attending the Seeds of Compassion Conference in Seattle, Washington, even appearing with African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, another Nobel laureate, ‘talking about inspiring compassion in youth’ (ANN, AP, khqa.com). You can’t stop inspiring people.

The Pope was on an April 15-20 visit to the United States on his third year as Pope to ‘address himself to the people of the United States and the whole Catholic Church’ (Archbishop Pietro Sambi, quoted by ANN, November 12, 2007, AP, msnbc.msn.com). When Benedict visited Ground Zero, where the proud World Trade Center had once stood, and which Al Qaeda mightily struck down with the bodies of two US airliners and the bodies of their passengers of peoples of the world, he prayed, ‘God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred’ (Victor L Simpson, April 20, ap.google.com). Love must be always vibrant, never violent.

‘Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.’ The statement refers not only to all those who fight violence with violence, but even to those who respond to a non-violent act with violence, such as to respond to getting pregnant with an abortion.

Why did the Pope visit the

United States

anyway? Because the

United States

is the mightiest country in the world today, and the haughtiest. It needs to be reminded of humility in a powerful way. Rome wasn’t built in a day; it wasn’t destroyed in a day either.

The Pope wanted to encourage the 65 million Catholics in the

(Simpson, cited). That would be about the same as the number of Catholics in the Philippines. ‘It was great for the young, it was great for the old,’ Judith Halsey said. ‘It was an uplifting time for the entire Catholic religion. Everyone needed this.’ Everyone needed a message of hope.

At the White House, he celebrated his birthday, April 16, greeted by more than 9,000 singing ‘Happy Birthday’ (ANN, AP, qctimes.com). Queen Elizabeth also sent her greetings. At the Yankee Stadium, on April 20, with a Mass they celebrated the 200th birthdays of the archdioceses of New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Louisville (Kentucky), and the birthday of Baltimore as an archdiocese. In his homily at the Stadium, the Pope’s last words were (Carol Zimmermann, April 20, catholicnews.com):

Jesus is the way that leads to eternal happiness … and the life who brings ever new joy and hope, to us and to the world.

Hope. The Pope inspired them towards ‘rejecting a false dichotomy between faith and political life’ along with ‘never losing sight of that great hope which gives meaning and value to all other hopes which inspire our lives.’ And Mary Miller, from Staten Island, was moved to say: ‘He’s all about hope – he’s the Pope of hope, and this is all about healing’ (Oliver Burkeman, April 21, guardian.co.uk).

And healing. The Pope wanted to confront the cantankerous issue of sexual abuse of minors by US Catholic clergy face-to-face. He acknowledged the harm done to the Church itself and asked all Catholics to help those who have been hurt (John Tavis, April 17, catholicnews.com). He told about 300 US bishops gathered April 16 in the crypt church at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington that the abuse ‘causes deep shame,’ that it is ‘evil,’ that it is one of the ‘countersigns to the Gospel of Life’ in the US (Julie Asher, April 17, catholicnews.com). Still, the Pope said the problem of sexual abuse must also be seen in the wider context of what prevails in society today: pornography, violence and ‘the crude manipulation of sexuality.’ America, are you listening?

The Pope wanted to remind Catholics of what I shall refer to here as the Indestructible Pyramid of Catholic Belief, founded on the three cornerstones of the Magisterium, Scriptures, Tradition. ‘Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.’ The gentle reminder came from the mouth of the Pope, but the message came from the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church, whom the Pope represents. When you invite the Pope, you are inviting in effect all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. The Magisterium interprets Holy Tradition along with the Holy Bible for us. The Present applies itself even as it interprets Revelation in the light of the Past. The Holy Father + Holy Tradition + Holy Scriptures (Bible) = the Roman Catholic Church. Not Sola Scriptura (your version of the Bible), not Sola Tradizione (your view of the wisdom of the past), not Sola Papa (the view of your church leader). Your teaching authority must jibe with the Scriptures and Tradition. (See also my ‘Tradition, Bible & Church’ and ‘Your Metaphors Man,’ both at frankahilario.blogspot.com.)

The Pope wanted to encourage the United Nations. In his address to the General Assembly, Pope Benedict said (ANN, AP, April 18, foxnews.com):

In the internal debates of the United Nations, increasing emphasis is being placed on the responsibility to protect. Indeed this is coming to be recognized as the moral basis for a government’s claim to authority. It is also a feature that naturally appertains to a family, in which stronger members take care of weaker ones.

The way I see it, if you want the message of Pope Benedict XVI to the whole world expressed in only one word, it’s family. Is your Sola Scriptura for the family? Is your fundamentalism for the family? Is your faith for the family? Is your art for the family? Is your science for the family? Is your family planning for the family? (See also my ‘The Family Planner,’ frankahilario.blogspot.com.)

Carol Zimmermann reports that the Pope urged his audience to ‘move forward’ in faith (April 20, catholicnews.com). He also appealed to the youth, whom he referred to as ‘the future of the Church’ thus: ‘Young men and women of America, I urge you: Open your hearts to the Lord’s call to follow him in the priesthood and religious life.’ To that which Trish Bailey was moved to say, ‘He believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.’

On the campus of the Catholic University of America, the Pope challenged Catholic educators of the youth not simply to teach knowledge but to teach understanding of the faith ‘which in turn nurtures the soul of a nation (Carol Zimmermann, April 17, catholicnews.com). But, ‘Not just our own ecclesial communities but society in general has high expectations for Catholic educators,’ which gives them ‘a responsibility and offers an opportunity.’ Among other things, he urged the youth to take up the religious life.

During the Mass at the Nationals Park, a Washington baseball stadium, on April 17, the prayer of the faithful was read in English, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, Igbo and Spanish (John Tavis, catholicnews.com). It was an opportunity to speak to the whole world as one. In Seattle, during the Seeds of Compassion Youth Day, the Dalai Lama talked to the youth and told them about ‘everyone’s interconnectedness,’ about how ‘strangers are connected like family’ (Diane Huber, April 15, phayul.com).

So I see the opportunity and responsibility to think of the family as you think of the youth. If you cannot think of family, you cannot think of villages; if you cannot think of villages, you cannot think of country; if you cannot think of country, you cannot think of Peace.

I have long admired Hillary Rodham, who is not perfect, but she has done right with her husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea. Family is the change the Yankees can believe in; Peace is the change the Yankees can live in, and the rest of the world.

Endnote: This is Chapter 6 of my book The Rebel Thinker Writer’s Guide for Non-Dummies. This one is to show that good writing calls for taking sides, after remembering to first look at the Big Picture. Thus, this one shows that speaking for peace is not neutral; you are taking the side of those who cannot speak for themselves. Do you have to take sides in as mammoth an issue as this? No, but try taking the side of applying less fertilizer for growing more crops and you’ll see.

13 The Frankenstein Mindster.

2008-04-27T21:04:00.000+08:00

Or, The Revolt Of The Unpublished Writers

By Frankenstein

After the power of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, I’m interested in the power of an inconvenient troth – the revolution of the heart – to combat Climate Change, which now has a life of its own, The Frankenstein Monster that unmindful men and women have created on Earth. If you were wondering if we Roman Catholics were right about Hell, stop.

Now complete with this chapter, my new book, The Frankenstein Mindster, signals The Revolt of the Unpublished Writers in the arts or in the sciences. Writers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your can’ts!

I have been thinking of Primate Change since March 03, 2007. This time, May 13, 2008, I’m thinking of the darling buds of May, thinking of what is fresh and new (phrases.org.uk), which Mother Nature will deny us with unequivocal finality if we primates don’t change soon enough. That is why I’m calling for The Revolt of the Intellectuals – the opposite of the withdrawal of the intellectuals in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (amazon.com).

I said something about it before myself in November last year; see now my ‘Atlas Blogged!.’ So, all the blogging world is a stage, and all the men and women are not now merely players. Blogging is your revenge as an unpublished writer. I’m advocating creative writing in science in general, theory and practice; with more thinkers and writers creatively blogging in science, we have a revolt.

Let me tell you that you have everything to gain in press freedom if you blog, that is, publish yourself and not worry about the rejection by publishers or the discouragement by editors or offline critics, the real noisy minority. And you have much to gain in press creativity if you learn from those who know better. If you open the Internet, type “creative writing” and click Search, you can get much free guidance right now.

‘I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn’ – Robert Frost (quoted by Amindra, koti.lmbnet.fi). Frost, my favorite poet, is talking about creative writing, of course. What I, Teacher, have found out myself is that the best way to learn is to teach. And so I teach you.

Right now, if you open your mind, you can get free and online advice from me, no strings attached; you can read my new book in its entirety if you visit my new blog, frankensteinmindster.blogspot.com), these last pages having just been written today, May 13, 2008 Manila time; you can read all pages of the book charged to experience. And why am I doing this? Because I like to teach. Because I like to be different. Because I like to do what others don’t want to do.

Now, with my Frankenstein book, where do you begin?

I said ‘if you open your mind’ – fair warning. My book is my own revolt. The chapters of my book are arranged this way:

Chapter 13 (Backword: The Frankenstein Mindster)
Chapter 00 (Foreword: My Crazy Dozen)
Chapter 03 (Serendipity X)
Chapter 01 (My Law Of Graffiti)
Chapter 02 (PC Fools)
Chapter 04 (A Thinker’s Faith)
Chapter 05 (Lesson Of The Water Cycle)
Chapter 06 (The Neutral Visits)
Chapter 12 (My Digital World)
Chapter 10 (Language Of Change)
Chapter 08 (Readability Check)
Chapter 07 (Wars Of The World?)
Chapter 11 (The Osims Years)
Chapter 09 (Virtual Thinking).

There must be some mistake! Yes, I made that mistake deliberately. You say: Preposterous! Absurd! Ridiculous! Unbelievable! Crazy! You better believe it. This is the most anarchistic book you have ever seen – and so have I. But instead of ‘anarchistic,’ I would use either ‘free-for-all’ or ‘chaotic’ or ‘defiance of authority’ or ‘reign of error’ or ‘thumbing one’s nose’ or ‘every man for himself’ or ‘revolt of the unpublished writer’ – actually, this book is all of the above.

I didn’t write it with this design in mind but, along the way, when the idea came to me, I welcomed it. It’s insane! I know. So why did I do it? The #1 reason I had the chapters topsy-turvy, mixed up, chaotic is to teach you immediately and by example one of the most power lessons in creative thinking leading to creative writing: Begin anywhere but begin. I learned that myself from Rudolf Flesch, if I remember right; I read his book and learned much from it, How To Write, Speak And Think More Effectively, more than 40 years ago. Thank God for memories.

My Frankenstein book is unique in 3 ways:

One, about creative thinking and creative writing, this book illustrates itself lesson for lesson, guide for guide, advice for advice. The whole book itself is the best example of what happens when you follow the creative advices in the book itself.

Two, this book guides you in creative thinking and creative writing in science, not only about science, not only with examples from science.

Three, it’s the only book of its kind in the world that I know currently published. How do I know that? My HP Compaq Presario C700 Notebook PC is always linked to the Internet at home through our wireless SmartBro connection; I surf as I write, and I have just come from the Internet after a Google Search using these as entries (not in italics of course):
science “creative writing” book -news –“science fiction” -school -computer -language -workshops -course -reports
which gave me 8,870 English pages after such filtering: the “” for the exact phrase, the - sign for excluding. I browsed and exhausted the whole Google list and it actually presented me with only 892 English pages – and zero book on teaching creative writing in science.

The Frankenstein chapters in brief

My book is entirely original and one of (if not) the most revolutionary writer’s book on creative writing ever written. Here are glimpses of the chapters as I have arranged (rearranged) them:

Chapter 03,
‘Serendipity X. The Rebel Writer Writes, To X Or Not To X.’
Chaos is the best state when you’re beginning to think, to write. When God created the world, He started with what? Chaos. ‘Let there be light!’ He shouted. I think that meant, ‘Let there be order out of the disorder!’ And God saw that it was good.

Chapter 01,
‘My Law Of Graffiti. The Rebel Writer Writes, And Having Writ, Moves On.’
Graffiti is a good model for brainstorming. Graffiti is unplanned, undesigned, unrestricted, uncensored – free as a bird. And nobody says no (nobody is looking behind your back).

Chapter 02,
‘PC Fools. The Rebel Writer Writes Of Slaves & Masters.’
The PC is the best handtool for creative writing. I’m using Word 2003, very flexible – it is wonderful for outlining, organizing, reorganizing; it has many shortcuts for correcting, cutting & pasting, revising, reviewing.

Chapter 04,
‘A Thinker’s Faith. Rebel Thinker Writes, ‘PS, I love you.’
You can use a mantra for creative thinking. My mantra is ‘PS,’ – excluding the single quotes – to get rid of Writer's Block. Edward De Bono’s ‘Po’ – minus the single quotes – is also a mantra, to get rid of negative thoughts.

Chapter 05,
‘Lesson Of The Water Cycle. And don’t make hay while the sun shines!’
Even in creative writing, ‘sleep on it’ is good advice. In this essay, I am able to revise a slogan to include much more ideas. I use the metaphor of the water cycle also to signify that in the final analysis, it is man who is the ultimate cause of change welcome and unwelcome in the world and, therefore, it is man who must change for the better.

Chapter 06,
‘The Neutral Visits. Take a hint, Hillary Clinton!’
You have to take sides. There are no neutral persons; there is no such thing as objectivity even in journalism – everyone takes sides. If you don’t take sides, you are a non-person – and I don’t know how a non-person can think, much less write, creatively.

Chapter 12,
‘My Digital World. The best is yet to come?’
You have to change. I changed from typewriter to personal computer when WordStar came around in 1985, to Word in 1987, to desktop publishing with Word XP in 2002, to publishing online in 2006 with American Chronicle, to my own photography last year. But the most fundamental change I have made has nothing to do with digital devices – it has something to do with me and my God. I know I’m a better person, and I have found that I have become an even better writer.

Chapter 10,
‘Language Of Change. THE GREAT Microsoft ESCAPE.’
You have to revise. My favorite whipping boy is Microsoft, which changed Word 2003 to Word 2007 so drastically that it is a new word processing program and has nothing to do with good old Word 2003. This is not revising – this is too much. I hope Microsoft will soon make the user interface of Word 2007 as good and as friendly as that of Word 2003. In Microsoft’s case, the creator is always right, not the customer. In my case, I have always found that I need to revise my essays at least 4 times in the course of 24 hours, as I’m doing with Chapter 13.

Chapter 08,
‘Readability Check. Frank’s 7 Don’ts of Vocabulary – and don’t memorize!’ Vocabulary is a double-edged sword. I find that the men in science are the most guilty when it comes to the use of vocabulary that only they can understand. Technical language is not one of the greatest inventions of man.

Chapter 07,
‘Wars Of The World. The worst of times, the best of times’
You have to package your story. In my example, I package 3 stories distinctly: One for the diminishing supply of rice, another one for the diminishing supply of collaborative projects locally, and one for diminishing supply of funds for agricultural research internationally. The international research centers like IRRI and ICRISAT under the CGIAR need advocacy help in convincing donors and funders that more research is necessary and more development is imperative. The wars of the world are on poverty of the body, mind and spirit.

Chapter 11,
‘The Osims Years. A campus grows in Magalang, Pampanga.’
Tell stories. In this essay, I tell two stories. One is the story of the town that grew, and the school that grew up, the Pampanga Agricultural College. I put in also 2 personal anecdotes that nicely fit into the overall story. If you don’t have a personal story to connect to another, look for somebody else’s. No matter how little, a story always makes interesting reading, especially in subject like science.

Chapter 09,
‘Virtual Thinking. The day I reinvented the blog.’
I say blogging is the best mindtool for creative writing. Journaling is excellent, such as that of the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Virtual thinking, which is what I have in mind, is perfect. I also call it creative blogging; it is both for beginning writers and professionals who need to write well anyway – lecturers, speakers, presentors, preachers, biographers, autobiographers, proposal makers and so on. To learn virtual thinking, Dr Frankenstein prescribes ‘Frankenstein’s 10 Rules of Virtual Writing.’ Once you get the hang of virtual thinking, I guarantee you don’t have to find the time – the time will find you.

The Journey is the Reward

Do I guarantee that you become a master after reading this book and following much of my advice? No, but I guarantee you will enjoy even just browsing the book. Remember: No one can teach you how to write – you have to teach yourself. The Frankenstein Mindster is only your inspirational literature, your intellectual guide, your non-compulsory everyday reading matter. At the very least, your pleasant reading companion.

May 12, 2008. As I begin to write this Backword, I already have the book in one electronic file, in the format I think looks nice and useful. In Word 2003, I have mirror margins: wide margins left and right for images and your notes; in your print copy, I encourage you to make marginal notes as you read.

Looking forward, looking up. Why did I write this book and offer it free to the world? It’s the Franciscan ethic, if I may call it that, from the precepts of St Francis. I’m a Roman Catholic, you see. There is already so much negativism around the world I don’t have to contribute to it. How about if I spread where there is hatred, love? Where there is injury, pardon? Where there is doubt, faith? Where there is despair, hope? How about if I do not so much seek to be consoled as to console, not so much seek to be loved as to love? How about if I live not so much to receive but to give, not so much to seek pardon but to serve it?

Much of the materials used and referred to in my Frankenstein book are in science. But it does not mean that my kind of creative writing, or mind-blogging, or creative blogging, or creative thinking in this book is limited to science. As a matter of fact, every now and then, whenever I can, I connect reason to faith, science to religion, logic to belief – such as in the paragraph above. Very consciously. I do not think they are opposites; I do not believe that they contradict each other or cancel each other out. What I believe is that they complement each other, strengthen each other – but you have to discover that for yourself.

I want to inspire writers, young or old, to write not only of Truth but along with it Beauty and Goodness. Life is a journey; the journey is its own reward – why make it miserable for yourself? Creative writing is a process; the journey is the reward; you deserve the reward.

Actually, no one can teach you how to write; only you can teach yourself. Frankenstein can only show you the way. You have to travel the road yourself. And of course, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Your step. And if you’re with me, any step.

05 Lesson of The Water Cycle.

2008-04-20T22:04:00.000+08:00

And don’t make hay while the sun shines!

By Frankenstein

Quiz: If you really know The Water Cycle, tell me whose role is more important than that of the Water – and of the Sun? Answer: You’ll never guess who, and I’m not telling you right away. Actually, I have already given you a clue.

Water, water everywhere, but not enough to drink! April is the driest month in the Philippines, and even if I looked up at the sky imploringly and prayed fervently, I know I’m no pious Roman Catholic Rain Man. So today, April 5 Manila time, wanting to summon the rain, I do the next best thing and look at the next best place instead – the Internet. The World Wide Web is the place where if you dare look, there’s no drought in any search; type a word or two, click ‘Search’ and you are deluged with more than what you’ve been looking for. Noah in his Ark couldn’t have been more surprised.

Noah’s was biblical reality; what Google gives you is virtual reality. Today, the Internet is where I will search for the visual reality of the water cycle, where of course rain is a necessary part of. Is rain the most important part? Sometimes a vague notion … I summon the rain today because I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll find some precipitate of an idea there, some condensation of thought. And the Internet does not disappoint. I watch the old water cycle run its course again and again:

-->The Sun evaporates the Water from the Sea --> The vapors form Clouds denser and denser --> The Winds push the clouds toward land and in a little while some clouds burst, dropping Rain --> The Earth absorbs the rain, the Roots drink it --> The Leaves transpire while the Streams run to the Sea --> And The Water Cycle goes on and on.

And then I go on and read, read and absorb and gain an insight, which is this:

We don’t understand the water cycle at all.

What is the essence of the water cycle? No, the British BBC doesn’t distill it; the American NASA doesn’t fathom it; and the Canadian University of Victoria doesn’t catch the drift of it. I shall explain it in a little while after I present to you what my three world-renowned sources have in their water knowledge tank.

Airing now, the BBC has an animated 2-minute color ‘show’ on The Water Cycle that you can play over and over, with the sound of water washing on itself or breaking against the riverbank (bbc.co.uk). Play it again, John. In the wild blue yonder, NASA has a game for kids, ‘Droplet and The Water Cycle’ (kids.earth.nasa.gov). Play it again, Sam. More down-to-earth, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has an EEK! corner (Environmental Education for Kids!) with color representation and the title ‘Round & round it goes! The Water Cycle’ (dnr.state.wi.us). EEK! Except that the water cycle doesn’t play itself – you have to use your imagination. Click on the next image and the next, if you wish.

It is ANN (author not named) of the University of Victoria that summarizes for me what the BBC, NASA and Wisconsin essentially know, and it is this (educ.uvic.ca):

The water cycle is the only way that Earth can be continually supplied with fresh water. The heat from the Sun is the most important part of renewing our water supply.

And now I’m compelled to say I agree with Victorian ANN’s first assertion while I disagree with the second.

On one hand, the first Victorian assertion is in fact a law of nature no one can quarrel with; it may help to call it ‘The Fresh Water Cycle’ instead. (It is so much unlike evolution, which is not a law of nature but only a theory of one fallible human being called Charles Darwin. Evolution trumpeted, nay assumed as truth, is the arrogance of half of the scientists and liberal thinkers of the world.)

On the other hand, the second Victorian assertion is only half-correct. By definition, the heat of the sun is important because it strongly affects the course of events or the nature of things (borrowing from American Heritage Dictionary). In fact, without that heat, we die. Yet, the heat of the sun is not an overriding consideration in the water cycle because the sun is there whether we like it or not. What is important is not there; what we do is important to the water cycle; in fact today, with global warming, what we do next is the most important of all.

‘More crop per drop’ is what CGIAR proposes that we do next.

I understand that ‘More crop per drop’ is a decade-old concept of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of the 15 centers under the aegis of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR); the notion was a brainchild of the IWMI under the leadership of Director General David Seckler (1996-2000), focusing on water productivity (iwmi.cgiar.org). However, under the next Director General, Frank Rijsberman (2000-2007), with ‘More crop per drop’ focused on water productivity, the Institute saw it as inadequate and expanded its mission to ‘Improve the management of land and water resources for food, livelihoods and nature.’ Now, with global warming, the whole CGIAR wants ‘More crop per drop.’ I congratulate the CGIAR. Those must be the most creative 4 words in the history of world agriculture.

In parallel with IWMI twice thinking out of the box, I hereby expand ‘More crop per drop’ out of the box:

(1) more crops from drops of water
(2) more crops from drops of fertilizer
(3) more crops from drops of new seeds
(4) more crops from drops of new grains of management
(5) more crops from drops of kernels of knowledge.

And since I know more about the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) – it also happens that I have been inspired while reading their in-house newsletter ICRISAT Happenings issue of March 21 (#1302), a copy of which was sent me by Director General & Team Captain William Dar – I’m going to explain all those drops by way of the work of Team ICRISAT based in Patancheru, India.

Drops of water. According to the newsletter, one of the new operational research emphases of ICRISAT is on water scarcity in the semi-arid tropics. Team ICRISAT is helping in ‘capacity-building on productivity enhancement initiatives in watersheds’ for watershed officials from the Kadapa District of India, the country where ICRISAT is based. That tells me they are teaching people to teach people about watersheds (see also my ‘Indian Rainmakers’). India has approved an ICRISAT proposal to screen against the bollworm modern varieties of chickpea and pigeonpea grown in dry soils in that country. Aside those 2 crops, ICRISAT is advocating the planting of sweet sorghum, groundnut, pearl millet varieties that are drought-tolerant. Crops are precious, water is gold.

Drops of fertilizer. Team ICRISAT, in collaboration with the District Watershed Management Agency and Department of Agriculture, Kadapa, India, organized a field day on March 10 at Kadapa to demonstrate the benefits of small-dose fertilizing (they call it ‘microdosing’). ICRISAT says (icrisat.org): ‘Less can have more impact if appropriate fertilizer is applied to crops at the right time, in the right quantity, at the right spot.’ A pinch of fertilizer is enough. Small is beautiful.

Drops of new seeds. Team ICRISAT launched the Center of Excellence in Genomics March 17 at the ICRISAT Patancheru global campus, the facility being a joint project of ICRISAT and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) of India. The CEG received a grant of US$1 M as financial assistance from the DBT. The CEG is now fully operational. ICRISAT Governing Board Chair Simon Best, GB Vice Chair Mangala Rai and Director General William Dar unveiled a plaque for the occasion. The CEG will create biotech seeds of crops for the drylands of Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. New seeds, new hopes.

Drops of new grains of management. The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and ICRISAT, both centers under the wings of the CGIAR, have submitted a concept proposal to the Science Council of CGIAR to co-manage a collective research program called Oasis as a Challenge Program, the hypothesis to prove being that (cgiar.org): ‘Better land care and livelihoods can both be simultaneously realized by protecting, rather than degrading the land.’ Use it, don’t abuse it. The Science Council has in turned challenged Oasis to show added value in terms of innovation to differentiate itself from being simply a compilation of ecology-based projects. (Perhaps they can come up with 1 or 2 measures or standards or indicators of land care and livelihoods that can be used in other places?) Research for the people, not research for the scientist.

Drops of new kernels of knowledge. ICRISAT has just surprised me today, April 15 – I wasn’t paying attention before – with this part of their strategy up to 2015, particularly in knowledge management, having recognized that (icrisat.org):

More importantly, new collaborative opportunities in knowledge creation and sharing, as exemplified by the global Wikipedia’ (www.wikipedia.org) have emerged. Web-based content distribution technologies such as ‘Blogs’ have created unprecedented advantages for experts engaged in knowledge creation. All these technologies now enable ‘capture’ of both formal as well as tacit knowledge of an individual expert to make it available to a larger community that can take suitable advantage. Our goal is to make an expert’s knowledge available to any needy partner or stakeholder anytime, anywhere, through virtualising presence.

That was in 2006 yet! There are two things I’m interested in there. One, Team ICRISAT already recognizes the value added by Wikipedia to the world of knowledge management. It may be the first institution in the world to virtually, formally and openly affirm Wikipedia, and I may be the first on record to notice it outside of ICRISAT. Two, ICRISAT acknowledges the role that blogging does in creating and sharing information and insights.

Blogging – now, you’re talking my language. To borrow from Juliet talking to her Romeo (William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2): Blogging is such sweet sorrow / that I shall say goodnight, till it be morrow. I already said somewhere that blogging is the revenge of the unpublished writer (see my 2005 ‘The 5th: Freedom of Blog’). I think now that blogging is the silliest as well as the most intelligent form of publishing ever invented. If you are silly, your blogging is silly; if you are bright, your blogging is bright; if you’re creative, your blogging is not always right but is always fresh, always new, always interesting.

Now then, blogging with a bird’s-eye view, I see a different water cycle. My view goes like this – it is all water

Wasted by people.
Assimilated by vegetation.
Transpired by vegetation.
Extracted from soil.
Retained by soil after harvest.

Wasted – How much water do we waste at home, in the office? For instance, how many government offices in Manila right now have faucets leaking day-in and day-out even while they are not in use? Waste not whatnot.

Assimilated – Even while water is in good use, as in rice farming, the field is flooded for weeks. How much water can the rice plant appropriate unto itself to grow and multiply? Wetland agriculture is a great waste of water, and we don’t acknowledge it. Bad habits die hard.

Transpired – I have no quarrel with leaves giving off water vapors. Thank God plants transpire and shoot water up into the air to become clouds that become rain! I also give thanks that where vegetation is dense or where every spot of ground is covered with green living matter, the temperature is lower, the transpiration too.

Extracted – When we harvest our crop, that’s so much water extracted from the soil. If we don’t return the crop refuse to the soil right after harvest, that’s so much water robbed from the soil. Because every year millions upon millions of farmers don’t do that, water robbery is the farmers’ crime of this millennium – and of the other.

Retained – How much water is retained by the soil after a crop harvest? If the soil is bare – or plowed and purposely laid bare for days, as Filipino farmers are wont to do – you are evaporating the water from the ground as fast as convection can carry the vapors up.

And so, all over The Water Cycle, no matter how you define it, I see Man as The Water Cycler – that is to say, Man is the one who is crucial in all the stages. Man is the water waster at home, in the office, in the farm, in the field. Man refuses to heed the call of the soil for cover. Mother Nature teaches multiple cropping but Man is not paying attention. Man does not see the wisdom of returning to the soil what he gets from it; he does not throw back the crop refuse to return much of the water and nutrients his crop harvested from that soil. Man in fact exposes the land to the terrible heat of the sun, without a green canopy for protection. If you’re looking for a hedonist, you don’t have to look far.

Because he affects the water cycle and in many ways badly, for all intents and purposes Man is The Water Cycler. Victorian ANN is wrong about the Sun; Man plays the most important role in renewing our fresh water supply, and his performance is terrible.

According to ANN of Ohio (units.muohio.edu), ‘The water cycle is the way the Earth uses and recycles water. It’s controlled by the Sun.’ ANN of Ohio is also wrong about the Sun; it’s controlled by Man.

Every intelligent farmer knows one technique to return to the Earth what his crop has extracted from it: green manuring. Edward H Faulkner knows a different way, and I think he knows better; the Faulknerian method is like this, in my own words:

Don’t make hay while the sun shines. Instead, make a surface trash mulch by rotavating the soil, cut-mixing it with the grass, weed, crop refuse. And no moldboard-plowing, please!

Faulkner calls it ‘trash farming’ or ‘trash mulch culture’ (David Kupfer, ‘The Organic Farming Movement,’ organicanews.com). This is not your usual green manuring because any vegetation can be used, along with the weeds, not only legumes, and it is turned into a mulch, not turned under the soil. Legumes don’t have a monopoly of the truth about enriching the soil.

I learned the lesson of the mulch more than 40 years ago from a book I chanced upon in the library of the College of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines – Plowman’s Folly – I had been browsing the titles in the library shelves myself, and this title had caught my fancy. I taught my cousin Enso back in my hometown and he has been doing Faulkner’s trash farming for 40 years and he has been getting much higher yields than his neighbors who have been copying everything he does but don’t know this one. You don’t return hay to the soil when it’s dry – it’s too late. (It doesn’t do much good to the animals either.)

In Faulkner’s trash farming, no water is wasted – the mulch keeps it there on top of the soil even as it becomes organic matter and enriches the soil. The water extracted by the crop is given back; the soil retains its moisture. Trash farming is a great way of harvesting water (see also my ‘Indian Rainmakers’).

Is the DNA the origin of life? That’s the theory of evolution; I don’t subscribe to it. Pope Benedict the Sixth is visiting the United States today, April 16 in Manila; my Roman Catholic mind is convinced it’s water. Don’t you remember? ‘In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters’ (Genesis 1-2, New American Bible). The religious view. Here’s the logical view: You can have DNA but not water; if you have water, you have DNA. You can have water without DNA (distilled); you cannot have live DNA without water. Water is life, even it nearly killed me when I was a little boy and my Uncle Tino accidentally dropped me into the flood waters of Chico River of Asingan in Pangasinan.

Man causes droughts and flash floods because he abuses the water and the soil. ‘Water is the most studied material on Earth but it is remarkable to find that its behavior and function are so poorly understood (or even ignored), not only by people in general, but also by scientists working with it everyday’ (Martin Chaplin, London South Bank University, 2008, lsbu.ac.uk). I can see that. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) looks at water as an economic good and says it needs ‘careful management’ and ‘a participatory approach’ to conserve it (2006, adb.org). The scientists are beginning to see that. ‘Nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with water’ (Environment Canada, ec.gc.ca). I don’t see that, and I don’t have to. ANN of Canada, it’s not the amount of water that’s the problem – it’s where the water is in The Water Cycle, and it depends on Man, The Water Cycler.

Once Man learns The Lesson of The Water Cycle,
this is what Man will do next:
‘More crops, more drops.’
Excellent!

Endnote: This is Chapter 5 of my book The Rebel Thinker Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. It is meant to show you that you need to sleep on a manuscript. It is also meant to show you how to turn a dry topic like The Water Cycle into a liquid that looks fresh and inviting enough to quaff. How did I do it? I looked at the Big Picture, which is bigger than The Water Cycle as seen by everybody else, including the knowledge experts – database experts, dictionary compilers and encyclopedia authors. The technique I call Serendipity X (in Chapter 3) will do that for you.

04 A Thinker's Faith

2008-03-22T22:06:00.000+08:00

Rebel Thinker Writes, ‘PS, I Love You’

By Frankenstein

This is Chapter 4 of my book Rebel Thinker Writer's Guide For Non-Dummies (Chapter 3 is ‘Serendipity X,’ which you can read at frankahilario.com). This new chapter is about how I can teach you to start writing with a great idea when you have no idea to begin with in the first place!

I want the best for you. And how am I going to give you that? Today, I shall give you a mantra, the likes of which you’ve never seen before – and neither have I, since I just invented it today – the magic of which you don’t have to imagine after this. I was creative without the mantra, but now that it’s here, I might as well employ it to enjoy it more myself.

A mantra is a word, a chant, an incantation, or a magic spell. So, let me create some atmosphere, as in a circus. I imagine great writing is a great circus act where there is always magic.

We’re into science, but since I’m writing about creative writing, we can learn from being creative even from those in the arts. ‘The Artist’s Way’ is the million-dollar technique that Julia Cameron teaches in her book of that same title; Julia’s way to creativity is for you to write in your journal at your ‘best’ time of day, and to be religious about the habit. The book is a million-copy bestseller (artistswayatwork.com). The lesson? Creative writing is yours if you want it.

What’s in a name? That which we call blogging by any other name would be journaling. Journaling by itself is getting to be a habit in religion, with Ms Luann Budd, Professor of the San Jose State University in California encouraging the youth to write their own spiritual journals, coming out with her book Journal Keeping: Writing For Spiritual Growth (Karen Anne C Liquete, Manila Bulletin, March 19, 2008, E-1; read more of it here in journalkeeping.org). With Luann, learning to write has just become essentially learning to grow in the Holy Spirit – a most creative way. The lesson? Creative writing is as spiritual as you make it.

Luann says:

If we write about our problems, we may come up with solutions that never occurred to us until we wrote about (them). I think that our brains are a little like computers and problems can fill up our RAM and keep us from being able to process information. When we write about our problems, we are freeing up RAM. We can think more clearly about our problems.

I like Luann’s metaphor of the RAM (random access memory) for the brain, because if your computer’s RAM fills up, your Windows freezes and you can’t do anything until you stop everything and start all over again – Reboot!

I must say, with serendipity, Luann Budd has discovered a new entry point to writing in a manner creative, and that is spirituality, in which traveling the road is re-creative.

The most important thing is to just start writing … (we’ll) figure out what (we) need to write about as (we) go. It’s funny how once we start keeping a journal, ideas for what we want to write about will come to mind as we are doing other things – like taking a shower or doing the dishes. The best way to start is to just begin – once we see the benefit it brings to us, we’ll want to continue the practice.

That book was published in 2002. I just surfed and found in amazon.com that there are other journaling-for-spiritual-growth books out there. This one targets the youth, since Luann has a Youth Ministry for New Life Covenant Church in San Jose, California. I can see that before this decade ends, any number of journaling young readers will come out with their own books that will surprise the world.

Me, I’m 68 and anyway I’m too lazy to keep a journal going, even if I can easily type everything on my laptop computer – I’ve been typing for half a century now, starting with my laptop typewriter, and I’m a touch-typist and the fastest I’ve seen. You don’t need the computer to come out with a great idea. (To come out with a great essay? That’s a different story.) I know because I’ve never run out of ideas since high school just a little more than 50 years ago; I know I’m crazily, happily creative – so I’d like to share with you my technique for generating one after another ideas for the beginning of a great article (even if it’s only a tentative title, or theme, or topic, or theory, or assumption, or subject, or focus). That is to say, what I always do is this: To generate ideas, I make one paradigm shift after another.

And how do I do that? The process I’ve already called ‘Serendipity X,’ my fooling around with ideas to come up creative. I play with my mind like my mind plays tricks on me when I’m sleeping: I’m flying, I’m dying, I’m having a wet dream, I’m doing this or that which I do not do when I’m awake – and most of the time I enjoy my dreams. Your mind is creative when you allow it to be. If you have doubts that my Serendipity X works, my creation of the mantra itself should be proof enough.

Serendipity is accidental creativity; how exactly do I make Serendipity X, or incidental creativity, work for me? What’s my device? How do I summon my X Muse? What’s my technique?

First, let me tell you about Ray Bradbury, who prompts his creative instincts using word association, working with unrelated words that don’t make sense being simply listed one after the other, and then he makes sense of it all by linking the words in a story out of the blue, even out of this world. Like listing the words crocodile blue cause road trick mat shine like that and making up a story going like, ‘It was a blue crocodile that caused a road to sag and a trick to run, that is, to make the mat shine’ – you’re beginning to get a hang of it.

I admire him for his imagination and his language; I can’t forget his ‘Live forever!’

I had been to see Mr Electrico the night before. When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, ‘Live forever!’ (raybradbury.com)

Come to think of it, although I have given it neither a name nor described it as a teachable, workable method till now, my creativity technique is the exact opposite of Ray Bradbury’s word association – I shall describe it here as word dissociation, where with a group of related words (ideas for the article), I change perspective and the thought that comes out is (ultimately) sensible but has been neither directly suggested nor made obvious by any of the earlier ideas. You don’t get it? Don’t worry; I have many examples, below.

Thinking more, writing better, how to make writing about technology a little more creative, popularizing science: I am enthralled and enthused by it all. It is not only the science, not only the sense, but more so that seduction, that attraction, and in the proper atmosphere even that fecal attraction – and that’s not bullshit. You can make excellent compost using horse manure, or fish feed out of poultry manure. And I can teach you how to make an excellent essay out of unattractive information that others would rather pass by. Your feat is my faith.

In the title, I did write, ‘PS, I love you.’ It happens that that is one of the most likeable songs of the Beatles, and I like the Beatles; they did not originate the quotable quote, but, according to IanMotha:

It’s been said that ‘PS, I Love You’ was the greatest Beatles song, because in this song (is) everything the Beatles (used): their span, 7ths, minors, half steps and the Great vocal harmony between Lennon (and) McCartney.

I don’t understand music, but I understand that song. And that just happens to be the mantra I promised you: ‘PS, I love you.’ You see, this title of a song is also an acronym. It means, ‘Paradigm shift, I look over you, the obvious.’ Paradigm shift because to move from a critical to a creative mode, you have to change your point of view – already, the comedians do that, each joke being a fillip of the mind. I look over the obvious (that is, the logical) because that brings you back to the need to suspend your belief in the workings of the logical mind (critical spirit) and anchor your faith in the creative spirit. You have to believe!

That brings us to Edward de Bono’s device for creative thinking, the ‘Po’ (see also my ‘To All The Dummies In The World. Or, De Bono Debugged,’ frankahilario.com). In a brainstorming session, with others or with you alone, you say ‘Po’ and change the mood so that everyone accepts even outlandish, crazy ideas to help you come up with a brilliant one. I first read about ‘Po,’ thanks to my good friend Orli Ochosa’s gift to me of de Bono’s book The Mechanism Of Mind, in 1975. I thought it was one man’s great contribution to the art of creative thinking.

Some 33 years later, I’m going to make my own contribution to creative thinking, beginning with science writing. Today, March 21, Good Friday, marks a death, the end of the earthly existence of a Great Mind Above All Others, that of Jesus Christ, which set off a paradigm shift from death to life. I’m glad to announce that today marks a birth, that of a humble sound, ‘PS’ (derived from ‘PS, I love you’), which I hope will at will start a paradigm shift from a despaired mood of thinking called critical to an inspired mood of thinking called creative, from life to more life. The difference is like this: If you call for truth, you are critical; if you call for fruit, you are creative. Beyond truth, PS is beyond Po; it is also much simpler – almost, yes, literal.

PS is my new theory; PS is your new practice.

I look at science writing as fulfilling a need, but not simply filling a real or imagined lack of knowledge. Remembering that, for your PS practice, I give you now quite a number of examples of thinking with a mantra, each numbered paragraph being of two major parts, each one being a paradigm shift. The first part is your possible topic, or theme, or theory, or assumption, or subject, or focus transformed as a lack of (‘Lo’) – that’s the first PS. The second part is made up of questions and/or assertions that further change your point of view and should give you more ideas how and what to write about – that’s the second PS. That is to say, ‘PS’ is the device and ‘Lo’ is the trigger for the PS to happen. I guarantee it.

Remember, you are writing for the poor. You are a popularizer of science or technology in a specific society; you are going to write about the theory & practice of informational, or political, or economic, or social, or environmental, or natural science in that particular society such as about the lack of (Lo):

(1) Lo family planning. PS: Don’t look at me – I have 12 children, 1 wife, zero extra-marital affairs. We have a very small house, about 100 square meters floor space; that’s not overpopulation, is it? Look at the US and Japan; they have millions of poor, don’t they, and they are not overpopulated, are they? It’s a poor writer who blames poverty to the numbers, not the system. Rather, think about how the system can be changed and write about that. And where does change begin? With the one who wants change to begin.

(2) Lo access to media. PS: What about Lo appeal to media? Have you in fact written about your science (hardware or software) as a package that is as attractive to media as it can be? If the media are not paying attention to you, you are not paying attention to them. How about Lo appeal to the poor who are your target readers? To make the poor pay attention to you, pay attention to them first.

(3) Lo retention in memory. PS: Are you teaching them simply to memorize, or are you teaching them to learn how to do it themselves (hands-on), to learn how to think for themselves (heads-on)? Teach a man how to memorize, and he’ll have a word for a day; teach a man how to learn, and he’ll have knowledge for a lifetime.

(4) Lo books. PS: Is the need really for more books or is it for more people to want to know more? Is the problem lack of reading materials or the lack of a reading culture? Do you build a bigger library of books or a bigger library of CDs and more PCs connected to the Internet? The need for books is nothing compared to the need for learning.

(5) Lo credibility of the village leader. PS: What do you mean by credibility? Can you differentiate credibility from integrity? Is low credibility the problem at all? You’re assuming that those who question the credibility of the leader have credibility themselves, have integrity. It takes a village to know a leader.

(6) Lo ambition among the people. PS: When did low ambition of poor people get in the way of village growth or, for that matter, high ambition of rich people? It does not necessarily mean that the poor have low ambition in life. Everything is relative; so is ambition.

(7) Lo knowledge of the technology. PS: You are assuming that the people would wish to use your technology if they knew more about it. Write if you can about a technology that was adopted by more people after they learned more about it. Can you compare the new with the old? Is the technology coming from above, or from a need? If you cannot relate to the need, you cannot relate to the people.

(8) Lo capital. PS: Big businessman or small farmer, the problem may be lack of access to credit. How can the poor farmer have access to credit without collateral? Change the problem: Let the village be his collateral – in the person of a credit union or a cooperative. Is capital the problem or the entrepreneur himself? I know of someone back home holding 100 titles of land himself and cannot raise capital.

(9) Lo education. PS: Lack of education is a convenient excuse for failure to market science in a village. Failing to convince them of the value of your technology, you may have been talking to them in the wrong language – talking above their head, or not having understood their need at all. It takes a villager to know a village.

(10) Lo supply of affordable fertilizer. PS: Why not make your own organic fertilizer? Do you need to fertilize the soil at all? What about raising crops that do not need those fancy and expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides? You cannot equate your expensive taste with that of poor farmers.

(11) Lo feeds for poultry or livestock. PS: What about substitute ingredients in the feeds? What about not growing those imported species and instead raising native chickens and pigs? In business, they would call that reducing risk.

(12) Lo poultry manure for composting into organic fertilizer. PS: Do you need composting at all? Why not practice green manuring, that is to say, mix the soil and vegetation on top of the earth so that it makes an on-the-spot organic fertilizer? No additional expenses. For those who have the entrepreneurial spirit, they can market the green-manured soil as a different kind of fertilizer. Or a different kind of soil.

(13) Lo quality of produce. PS: Is the use of science-recommended planting materials the solution? What about postharvest handling? What about looking for a market for low-quality produce – such as transforming it into a consumer product where quality can be added? If you cannot solve a problem, change the problem.

(14) Lo rate of passing. PS: Are the teachers to blame for teaching poorly or the students for learning badly? Why insist on teaching in the national language when English is the universal, intellectual, commercial language? Unless of course you don’t want the people to learn more than they already know.

(15) Lo germination percentage. PS: Is there an economic advantage where 95 seeds germinate out of 100 and where only 75 germinate? Is the seed the best way to plant the crop at all? This adage is not true: ‘Kung ano ang puno ay siya ang bunga.’ ‘The fruit is what the tree is.’ False. From seeds of sweet mango, you can get sour mango. That’s genetics and it’s not debatable.

(16) Lo high yield. PS: Why is it that plant breeders insist that farmers plant the highest-yielding varieties of all? If with a high yield the farmer becomes rich, why are there so few rich farmers? The problem with economists is that they are always after the maximum and expect that to be sustainable!

(17) Lo communication between science and clientele. PS: Are the communicators talking the language of the farmers and yet are not communicating at all? Do the communicators expect that after one article, one brochure and one visit, the farmer will wholeheartedly embrace the new technology? Communicator, remember that you are not talking to the farmer alone – you are talking to him and his family. Are you listening?

(18) Lo good moral character of farmer creditors. PS: Many farmers have so far refused to repay their loans. Are you sure it’s not the negative attitude toward borrowed money or toward borrowing from the government? If you make borrowing easy, you make paying difficult.

(19) Lo number of Internet searches about farming. PS: What about people’s knowledge of technical terms? What about the store of knowledge being difficult to understand even by other scientists, much less by the farmers themselves? Communication is too serious a matter to be left to scientists alone.

(20) Lo vocabulary. PS: If you want to be a good writer, the popular advice is that you should build a good vocabulary. They say that goes with public speaking, teaching. Not anymore, if you are computer literate, what with the dictionary and the thesaurus available online. Nowadays, I’m never off the desk using my new HP Compaq Presario notebook clicking on the shortcut icon for American Heritage (Microsoft Bookshelf 2000), which is a dictionary, and Encarta 2007 (Microsoft 2007), which has a thesaurus. You use the dictionary to find the meaning of a word; you use the thesaurus to find a synonym of a word; more importantly, to look for a related word in a particular field such as hammer & nail in carpentry and stock & scion in horticulture (see the Roget’s Thesaurus near you). As a writer, your vocabulary is not a problem if already it includes curiosity.

(21) Lo technology. PS: What do you mean by technology anyway? Do you know if the technology currently used has no competitive advantage at all? Do you know where it is different, where it is deficient? What does it mean for the user to shuck the old in favor of the new? What does the technology mean to the village where it is being introduced? Borrowing from Marshall McLuhan, remember that the technology is the message.

(22) Lo reading materials in the village. PS: If some people brought in more, will the villagers read more and the students learn more science? You cannot learn science in a vacuum – if people are not relating to your science, you are not relating to the people.

(23) Lo one-stop reference online. If you cause to be created the My Milky Way website, will farmers flock to the Internet and learn to raise goats for milk to drink or sell? Is My Milky Way using the language of the target villagers or that which technical people use to talk to each other? If the people are not relating to the website, the website is not relating to them.

(24) Lo interest of youth in technical courses. PS: Is the problem that of certain youth or that of the society itself because society looks down on graduates of vocational courses as belonging to a class lower than that of a secretary in an air-conditioned office? We get the youth that we deserve.

(25) Lo computers. PS: It’s lack of access, not lack of PCs. If people in villages lack access to computers, I attribute it to lack of imagination. And why is that? Some people don’t know how to package a proposal so that their village center or school will be computerized in almost no time at all and with very little expense and effort on their part. There are many local and international donors and funding agencies. All you have to do is learn how to ask.

(26) Lo mass media cooperation. PS: Are the media people educated on your art or science? Have they heard from your office or project at all? Have you related your product or service to them? Ask the eternal question: ‘What’s in it for you?’ Translation: ‘What’s in it for them?’ Remember, the media people have to be taught too.

(27) Lo people power to improve their own lives. PS: Are you sure empowerment is the answer? Using Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you must then first help satisfy the people’s physiological needs, then satisfy their safety needs, then satisfy their needs of love, affection and belongingness, then satisfy their needs for esteem, and then and only then satisfy their need for ‘self-actualization.’ Otherwise, you’re simply irrelevant.

(28) Lo competence in implementing a project. PS: In the first place, what are your criteria for measuring competence? Has the project been initiated by the people or by the experts, then merely handed over to the people, expecting a miracle in management? If the student has not learned, the teacher has not taught.

(29) Lo confidence of villagers in themselves. PS: Lack of confidence comes from either ignorance or bullying. How to fight ignorance? Education. PS: How to fight the bullying, the prejudice? Good question! Remember also: Bullying sometimes come from the experts in an atmosphere called consultancy.

(30) Lo intelligence of readers. PS: That depends on how you look at intelligence – single intelligence (measured as intelligence quotient or IQ, as propounded by Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman), or multiple intelligences (measured as linguistic, spatial, musical, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, naturalist, existential, as propounded by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner). If you look at intelligence only one way, then intelligence is not one of your virtues.

‘PS, I love you’ is all about thinking creatively, not simply thinking critically. In your writing, always think to be productive, not counter-productive. Think to be constructive, not destructive. At the very least, think to be inventive, but not invective.

In the arts or sciences, working in any mass medium, your greatest contribution to society is your thinking, which is ultimately reflected in your essay, editorial, commentary, column, blog. The writer’s fate is writing; this writer’s faith is writing the best.

02 PC Fools.

2008-02-14T22:08:00.000+08:00

The Rebel Writer Writes Of Slaves & Masters

By Frankenstein

The great science fiction author Ray Bradbury says, ‘A computer is a typewriter. I have two typewriters, I don’t need another one’ (James Hibberd, 2001 August 29, archive.salon.com). So, one of my favorite writers is one of my PC Fools. Having written 107 essays in the last 105 weeks in the American Chronicle alone, edited and desktop-published my own book (read ‘My American Book,’ frankahilario.com), I know that in creative writing, if you don’t fool around with the PC, you’re a fool.

For the last 2 decades, I’ve been saying that the typewriter is for critical thinking, the personal computer is for creative thinking. If you got it right, you’re a creative journalist. Otherwise, you’re just one of many mechanical-thinking reporters.

And then I have just found another Luddite, another refuser of the computer. Even as he is ‘America’s leading political satirist’ (GA, groveatlantic.com), PJ O'Rourke is ‘the biggest Luddite in the western hemisphere’ (Christopher Koch, 2007 January 30, advice.cio.com). That makes two of the world’s biggest PC Fools. The personal computer is nowhere in Bradbury’s and O’Rourke’s past, present, future. If they can’t learn from the modern world, why should they teach the modern world anything? Well, we can learn from their mistakes.

You see, PC Fools, there are three of those kinds:

Fool #1, the one who rejects the PC and feels good about it; he is the master of his own inferiority. He is a fool; he discards what he has not even tried. Shun him.

Fool #2, the one who accepts the PC yet he treats it like a typewriter; he is the slave of his own mediocrity. He is a fool; he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Teach him.

Fool #3, the one who embraces the PC and treats it as a device for creativity; he is the master of his own superiority. He is a fool; he fools around with the PC because in that way, the machine becomes his slave; and he knows that fooling around is a most delightful way to be creative; in fact, it is the only way. Follow him.

I know which fool am I; do you know which fool are you?

After working with the PC for 22 years and applying what I learned from Rudolf Flesch, that is, readability and ‘creative math’ (see ‘Jatropha Math,’ frankahilario.com), and from Edward de Bono, that is, lateral thinking (see ‘To All The Dummies In The World,’ frankahilario.com), I can teach you this:

Fool is the way to go. Foolishness is the secret of creativity. I just remembered a parallel line by Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’ Logical and rules-bound is not the way for creative writers. Oh men of little faith!

That is to say: Creativity is fooling around; a lot of creativity is a lot of fooling around. That’s what I meant when I wrote earlier, ‘Genius is 10% perspiration and 90% inspiration’ (‘My Law Of Graffiti,’ January 22, frankahilario.com). As much as you can play the fool, as much as you can be creative. (I’ll tell you more of this in the forthcoming Chapter 3 of my book The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies. You are reading Chapter 2.)

But before you can fool around with the PC, you have to be the master of the software, that is, the word processor and the operating system.

Actually, many people decline to use the PC because they are awed by it, or think they are too old or too stupid to learn, or don’t realize how they can improve productivity tremendously. This is not to mention that quite a number don’t want to improve their productivity at all – they only work for the money. Certainly, I say to you, already they have their reward.

Here, I will assume that you are none of those rejecters of the PC, and that you know that you will write better if you knew more about your software. ‘I can’t be bothered’ and ‘That’s the work of my secretary’ and ‘I can afford to pay somebody’ are each a lazy man’s excuse, or that of a writer who doesn’t want to be good at what he’s doing. So, what do you want? Me, I want to be the best!

For the last 33 years, I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of a wide variety of writing, and on most subjects from abaca to zealots, from birds to youth, from computers to women, from dearth to violence, from entrepreneurship to understanding, from fatherhood to theory, from growth to science – public and private, technical and popular, paid for and unpaid for. I started using a word processor (worp) 21 years ago. Been there, done that. So I know it’s best that you use a worp in each of what I call the 5 Rs of writing, whether it’s popular or technical writing, creative or critical, and these are:

Researching – Whether from the original material or a copy of the source, it is best that you collect data & information using your word processor, since your electronic files are so much easier to work with: reading, searching, highlighting, tagging, annotating, copying, summarizing, reviewing again and again.

Recording – Typing and correcting. Making, reviewing and revising your drafts, from the first to the last, your worp is best suited for these tasks, what with the eminently practical flash drive for backup copies. The worp wasn’t much before the flash drive, when the eminently affordable storage material was the floppy 1.4MB disk that could easily catch a mold.

Reviewing – It’s best that you engage someone more knowledgeable than you are in reviewing or sample-reading your own work. I hope you find a mentor, not a critic: a mentor coaches, a critic curses. This is most appropriately done within an electronic workgroup. You have to learn to listen to others, even if you don’t follow all their advice.

Revising – Always remember that your word processor is not simply recording your words: it is in fact recording your thoughts, your ideas. These are what you work with when you revise. Why should you revise? Because you want to improve what you have written, the way you have said what you wanted to say. Now, should you want to improve? I say you should because, believe me, the first writing is never good; the second writing is never good enough. Only the third writing is good; the fourth writing is very good; the fifth writing is excellent. That is, if you know what you’re doing. (We’ll come to that in Chapter 8.)

Refining – This is the very last act of revising, when you feel you can now offer it to the world, when you add just a little where another inspiration hits you, or delete where you think it doesn’t hurt to remove, or when you just change a word or two. With experience, you’ll get to be very good at this yourself.

Yes, your best ally in writing is the word processor. And why not? The worp takes care of the routines of writing (like typing with tentative sentences, revising without retyping, doing the spelling check) while you take care of the creative (like tagging, moving pages about instantly using outline-organize and viewing the results). That is, if you want to be the best you can be as a writer.

Now then, let me tell you I have had 2 decades of immersion in the intensive use of worps: WordStar, WordPerfect, Word (from Version 1 to 2003). Last year, I tried Word 2007 but this worp made me look like a fool as I didn’t know any single command of it, me, a 21-year veteran of Microsoft Word! So I went back to the one I love. For my creative writing, which I have started to call ‘graffiti writing’ (see ‘My Law of Graffiti,’ frankahilario.com), I love Word 2003 because of its easy-to-use, productive outline-organize feature which, if my memory serves me right, was there right at the start, with Word 1, the one with the Alpha key, and which I began to master then, as I saw it early on as a powerful device for creative writing. (More on outlining-organizing in Chapter 3.)

In Chapter 2, which is this one, I want you to learn just 13 commands of Word 2003 with which to fool around with ideas out of the box in your creative moments.

First Writer’s Commands For Word 2003

(1) Undo & Undelete: Press Ctrl+Z immediately when you realize you have just made a mistake. Press Ctrl+Z many times and many things you did will be undone. Undelete is simply undoing a Delete. Works also within Word.

(2) File Search in Word: File, File Search, type your search word(s), click Go. Advice: If you want faster searching, click File, File Search, Search Options and enable Fast searching.

(3) File Save: Ctrl+S. Remember: You can use a long, descriptive file name to remind you later what this specific file is all about.

(4) File Save As: File, Save As, Save. You can change the filename if you like before you click Save. (Some people use this command to copy a file to other than the hard disk – I don’t recommend it – it’s bad file management. For file copy, see Commands for Windows XP below.)

(5) File Print: If you want all pages printed: Ctrl+P, then make sure the printer’s name is visible or correct, click OK. Better if you learn how to set up a printer. File Print Pages: If you want a page or selected pages printed: Ctrl+P, then type the page numbers you want in Page Range, Pages like this: 3-7, 11, 25 (hyphen indicates range).

(6) File New: Ctrl+N. Then, type a few descriptive words, which become the file name when you press Ctrl+S to save.

(7) Select text: Press F8 2x to select a word, press F8 3x to select a sentence, press F8 4x to select a paragraph. Ctrl+A selects a whole file. You can also select text using the mouse: Position cursor, press left button and drag the pointer.

(8) Repeat command: F4. This applies to any command, or series of commands (ending when you press either Enter or Esc).

(9) Find: Ctrl+F. You can use it to search for a character, word or their combinations. To repeat search: Shift+F4.

(10) Grammar & Spell Check: F7. A very simple command but very powerful, and yet people forget to use it or ignore it completely. You just follow the instructions after F7.

(11) Move cursor word by word: Ctrl+Arrow Right for next word, Ctrl + Arrow Left for previous word. Great for moving around, proofreading, editing, revising.

(12) Move cursor paragraph by paragraph: Ctrl+Arrow Up for previous paragraph, Ctrl+Arrow Down for next paragraph. Great for reviewing.

(13) View Print Layout: View, Print Layout. What you see is what will print more or less. The more accurate view is File, Print Preview. View Normal: View, Normal. I use this view when I want to Zoom in and make the words appear very large onscreen, say 200% Zoom. Great for viewing.

And I’m giving you a few Windows commands that will make your life a hundred times easier day by day as a creative writer:

First Writer’s Commands For Windows XP

(14) Your Own Desktop: Click Start, Control Panel, User Accounts, Create a new account, type your nickname, Create account. Then remember to always log on into your own desktop, so that everything you do there does not disturb any other user of the same PC you are using. Smart. On the Frank A Hilario’s PC, desktop or laptop, I have quite a number of desktop owners: Antonia, Bonafe, Daphne, Edwin, Frank, Jinny, Jomar, July, Paul. So, on Frank’s desktop, I have Maria Sharapova as my desktop background, the one with this caption: ‘I am not the next anyone. I am the first Maria Sharapova.’ Smart!

(15) File Search: On your desktop, click My Computer, Search, click on your kind of Search, type a word or two, click Search. This needs some mastery; once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it very practical.

(16) Backup copy: Click on My Computer, click Drive C or Drive D or other, right-click filename, click Copy, go to target folder, right-click to show menu, click Paste. Done. Or simply drag file from one folder to another.

(17) Make folder: Your PC’s main desktop is really a folder that everyone uses, so the files get mixed up (if you don’t have your own personalized desktop). Desktop or not, make your own folder! Occasional user or not, you need to create your own document folder for convenience. Click on My Computer; if you have a drive D – in our desktop PC, Frank’s files are in drive F and the rest of the Hilarios’ are in drive H on the 120 GB hard disk – click on that; right-click below the list of files you see, click New, Folder, assign it your name, and save your files there.

(18) My Documents: Don’t settle for the default location of your Documents. So that Windows will know where you want to save your files, right-click on My Documents, Properties, then type on the Target box, say F:Frank’s, OK.

(19) Briefcase: Right-click anywhere on the desktop, click New, Briefcase, then rename it as you wish, like Frank’s Briefcase.

(20) Flash drive: Insert into the proper USB slot and you can copy any number of files to it or from it. I create many folders in my flash drive (TwinMos 4GB), then copy one file at a time to the appropriate Briefcase. I open the file in the Briefcase, and when I quit Word, I go back to for instance, Frank’s Briefcase, I click Update all items – and I have an automatic copy of my file, the latest version, in the right folder in my TwinMos. That’s ultimate convenience. Flash drives and Briefcases are a perfect match. Thank you, Fujio Masuoka and Bill Gates!

That’s enough for you for today.

Today, Thursday, 14 February, Valentine’s Day, I’m finalizing this essay on my new, 7-day old HP Compaq Notebook with Intel Pentium Dual Core (CPU T2330) both clocked at 1.6 GHz, 15.4” display, 1 GB SDRAM, 120 GB hard disk. This Black Beauty comes with a free Bluetooth installation, legitimate copy of Windows Vista (Home Basic) and a 60-day trial copy of Office 2007. And you know what? I’ve been giving Word 2007 another chance for the last several days (I tried it early last year when it first came out and didn’t get to like it) – and I’ve junked it again. Since I use Word 2003 to write, edit and desktop-publish, I have to learn more than my 13 first-writer’s commands. And Word 2007 isn’t much of a help here. Right now, I’m using Word 2003 because I find it more writer friendly for the following reasons:

(1) Word 2003 builds on my habits of Word 1997, Word 2000, Word 2002 (Word XP). Word 2007 forces me to change my way of word processing (worping) and therefore my writing entirely. Word 2007 is the master, I am the slave. The worp has changed commands that the worper does not understand.

(2) Word 2003 is happy with even our lower-end 3-year old Intel Celeron desktop PC (I bought this dream HP notebook for interviewing people for a book I’m writing for UPLB Vanguards Class 58 and Class 83); my master Word 2007 requires that I buy more expensive equipment. No, Bill, your Word is not my command.

(3) Word 2003 is my slave while Word 2007 overwhelms me with its mix-match of icons and texts in a broad band it calls ‘The Ribbon’ – even if I minimize the Ribbon, it’s still confusing; it presents to me Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View, Add-Ins. For the love of Bill Gates, I can’t see the logic in that grouping. It’s a programmer’s program, not that of a program user (prouser), certainly not that of a writer user (wrouser).

(4) Word 2003 is a gift to me as a prouser while Word 2007 is a tyrant, a punishment to me as a wrouser loyal to Bill’s Word. To change metaphor, it’s a divorce declared unilaterally by the husband despite the loyalty of the wife. A Filipino living in the Philippines, I have never believed in divorce.

Divorce is for people who want to fool around. I fool around too, but only with ideas. I mean creative writing is a lot of fooling around. You can’t fool around if you’re the slave, if you’re not the master of what you’re doing, of what you’re using.

I heard she has been writing essays. I wouldn't be surprised if Maria Sharapova turns out to be a very creative writer one of these days. Already, she is master of her own game.

‘There are no tyrants where there are no slaves,’ wrote my hero, the Philippines’ National Hero Jose Rizal more than 100 years ago. No more slave. Master is better.

01 My Law of Graffiti

2008-01-22T22:10:00.000+08:00

The Rebel Writer Writes, And Having Writ, Moves On

By Frankenstein

I am not a scientist, thank God. I believe science is too serious a matter to be left to scientists alone. This time I’m going to write about theory and practice of science writing – I theorize, you practice.

Based on his deduction, Isaac Newton comes up with his Law of Gravity in 1687; based on his assumption, Albert Einstein revises Newton’s Law with his Theory of Special Relativity in 1915; based on my intuition, I have just revised both geniuses with my Law of Graffiti, 2008. The British mathematician is revised by the German physicist; both are revised by the Filipino writer. It all goes to show that insight knows no color, creed, credential, or genius. It also goes to show that the sciences of mathematics and physics are no match to the art of creative thinking. See, there are no dull sciences, only dull scientists – or dull science writers.

Let me tell you how the idea of the Law of Graffiti has come about to me. Thinking of the next chapter of my new book, this time on creative science writing, on January 17 (Manila time), I googled for “how to start” writing (including the double quotes) and got 846 English pages with Safesearch; I googled for begin OR start writing and got 11,000,000 English pages with Safesearch. Quality is in the numbers? Quality is in the Scan, not in the Search; quality is in the Googler, not in Google – Google cannot think for you; you have to think for yourself.

Scanning my Search Results and speed-reading the webpages of the ones that looked promising, I noted that in ‘Get Writing,’ BBC advises (bbc.co.uk):

In order to let your ideas flow freely and your confidence to rise, you do need to write regularly. Invest in a notebook and use it to make jottings and observations at a time to suit you.

That’s good advice for writing from a broadcaster – the BBC geniuses know you have to be good first at writing to be good at broadcasting. Such advice I have found helpful myself in all my 50 years of getting to write – not necessarily getting to be published. There are far too few geniuses in the publishing business here and abroad. (I have also lost many manuscripts to moldy 1.4 MB diskettes, if you remember them.)

After BBC, after scanning and skipping a great many webpages, I came across award-winning six-novel author Randy Ingermanson’s website, advancefictionwriting.com, where he says:

Before you start writing, you need to get organized. You need to put all those wonderful ideas down on paper in a form you can use. ... You need a design document. And you need to produce it using a process that doesn’t kill your desire to actually write the story.

He billed himself ‘America’s Mad Professor of Fiction Writing’ (he doesn’t scare me, I’m afraid), but I thought twice about his advice on getting organized, but then again, Randy’s device? His metaphor of a snowflake struck me – you build your story in the form of a virtual snowflake, starting with a triangle. I’m not into fiction, but that’s the idea. Snowflake, hmm. From Randy’s metaphor, I thought, why not my own metaphor for creative thinking leading to creative writing? After all, I look at creative thinking differently from Randy. Also, I live in the tropics and I have never seen a snowflake, but I have seen a brainstorm – here is one coming right now.

Then I got the metaphor of the graffiti. Almost instantly my mind reworked it into American Graffiti? No, The Law of Graffiti. That’s the Reader’s Digest in me; in my copywriting days at Pacifica Publicity Bureau in Manila, my good friend Orli Ochosa remembers our Creative Director Nonoy Gallardo calling me Mr Punster. If you enjoy what you’re doing, it’s not work: it’s play.

You are reading Chapter 1 of my new book, The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies (I have already come out with the Introduction; see ‘My Crazy Dozen. The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies,’ 2008 January 7, americanchronicle.com). The whole book is on creative thinking for authors, including science writers. I'm publishing it here chapter by chapter for free, my way of sharing my gift. This chapter is all about Writer’s Block, brainstorming, starting to create, beginning to write; this is all about the Search for the Holy Grail of Serendipity, for which you need freedom.

I’m presenting my Law of Graffiti as a new paradigm in the active pursuit of creative thinking, in contradistinction to Tony Buzan’s art of the Mind Map and to Edward de Bono’s art of Lateral Thinking. I say Frank Hilario’s Law of Graffiti elevates Ray Bradbury’s art of Word Association and Rudolf Flesch’s art of the Creative Math (my term) (see my ‘Jatropha Math? Science Serves The People When Media Create Content, Not Discontent,’ 2007 December 3, americanchronicle.com); it's more intriguing and more engaging than Sarah Jensen's art of Diving Deeper (see source below). Serendipity is not about beginning right; rather, it is about beginning bright.

In one of my old favorites, his book How To Write, Speak & Think More Effectively (1963), I remember Rudolf Flesch saying, ‘Begin anywhere but begin!’ But I don’t remember him telling me how to continue. Either he forgot, or I did. (I’m 67 going on 68, and I’ve lost my copy.)

Sandra Jensen writes (2007 May 5, ‘Diving Deeper: A Writing Workshop’ – pods.gaia.com): ‘The blank page (has) been called the greatest challenge to (a writer)’ (the words in parentheses are mine). It’s otherwise called ‘Writer’s Block,’ an epidemic if I may say so myself. My Google Search for “Writer’s Block” gave me 3,060,000 English pages with Safesearch.

Paul Graham writes (2005 March, paulgraham.com), ‘Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can.’ Reviewing my essay January 21 and being inspired further, I come out with the 1st Law of Graffiti Thinking, and it is this, borrowing from genius: E = mc² (E equals m times c squared), where E is Enlightenment (inspiration or insight), m is mass of materials, and c is the speed of write.

On hindsight, because I have been obeying the 1st Law of Graffiti Thinking for the last 43 years at least, I have never had Writer’s Block, starting with my encounter with Flesch’s book (see also my ‘Jatropha Math? Science Serves The People When Media Create Content, Not Discontent,’ December 3, americanchronicle.com). Then, about 20 years ago, I began thinking about how I could teach creative writing without Writer’s Block getting in the way, using the personal computer and a word processing software. (Mission Impossible. About 15 years ago, I offered to teach it in two colleges of the University of the Philippines (my alma mater), but they both rejected my proposal on exactly the same grounds: that I didn’t have a Masters degree and I wasn’t a new graduate. Some people equate the ability to teach creative writing with the PC with graduate courses and youth. I was about 53. So much for geniuses.) The long years of my search for a device or trick to bring out the creativity in each and every aspiring writer has at last led me to the ubiquitous and (un)obtrusive graffiti. Many a brainchild is born as the germ of an idea; this one took 20 years to become a seed. Better late than never.

Graffiti, thy name is man (embracing woman) in search of a publisher, or audience. Scratches and scribbles and scrawls and doodles and drawings and images and icons and words and whatnots that you are, private media on the wall in public places, you have inspired me to reach the heights of frivolity and fertility, of quantity and quality, of madness and meaning, of coming across and coming to terms. I am glad at last I found you, you who have been in full view all the time. You are the metaphor of the unwritten, of the unborn, the visible chaos of genius in the artist hidden in man. I now baptize you The Broadcast Antennae of the Creative Race. May the Force be with you always!

The Immanent Genius in Graffiti, I can say, on hindsight: Because creativity is born of chaos; because graffiti is chaos; because it’s always loose; because it’s sometimes humorous and therefore relaxing; because it happens at different times without sequence and at different places without direction; because it’s amateurish; because anything goes; because helter-skelter; because come what may; because no rules no borders no limits no excuses; because the graffiti artist is Lord and Master – for of such is the Kingdom of Serendipity, where there is no order and law.

What you need in creative writing is freedom, release from the law. That brings us back to Newton and Einstein with their Laws, with me trying to help you move the immovable object called Writer’s Block by looking for the irresistible force, which in the case of the artist is the intense impulse, the creative motive.

Newton’s Law states that what comes up must come down; Einstein’s Theory states that you cannot bend the laws of physics wherever you are – my theory is that in creative thinking, obeying the dictates of the Law of Gravity doesn’t work to the artist’s advantage and, in fact, an artist cannot be creative unless he bends the laws of physics whenever he tries to create.

Metaphors actually.

Having published 104 essays in science in the American Chronicle in the last 104 weeks (almost), I have come to realize that when writing about science, it is best to be thinking about masses coming up but not coming down, and laws being bent – I’m thinking of masses of data and information, and the laws of logic. When you begin the process of creative writing on science, you should be in another world other than that of science. This chapter is designed to lead you there. Not take you, mind; you have to take yourself.

How do you go about creative thinking? I say: Do the graffiti with me!

Here, let me teach you. But first, get yourself to relax; you can not be creative unless you can relax. So, to help you feel at ease, first let’s talk about the laws of physics that I know you have to break to get creative. Here are some pleasant thoughts:

‘The Law of Inertia.’ Nothing will happen to you (and your writing) if you prefer to preserve your inertia – to break the law, do something, anything - move!

‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place.’ If you are creative, lightning will strike not only twice in the same place but many times, that is to say, flashes of genius will occur quite so often you’ll have a pleasant time not counting them. You will be energized. Yes, I think each of us has the capacity for genius. It makes me feel uneasy thinking I’m the only genius around here.

‘Work equals energy over distance.’ When you use my Law of Graffiti for brainstorming, trying to get rid of Writer’s Block or just simply beginning another piece of writing, you will get more even if you do less work and not spend so much energy. If you haven’t known about it, I have completely upended the Law of Genius according to Thomas Alva Edison; according to Frank Hilario, ‘Genius is 10% perspiration and 90% inspiration’ (see my ‘The Smart Revolution,’ americanchronicle.com). I have been inspired as much.

‘The speed of light in a vacuum is constant.’ You have to break this law. In creative thinking, you don’t want the speed of brilliance to be constant, and you don’t want to work in a vacuum!

Let us now turn to and violate Newton’s Three Laws of Motion; I’m reading Andrew Zimmerman Jones’ write-up (physics.about.com); I note:

Newton’s First Law of Motion states that ‘Every body continues in the state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.’ I’m impressing upon you that you have to break this law too. You don’t want to continue in a state of rest; that would be counter-productive. And neither do you want to move with a one-track mind; that would make your writing monotonous and tiresome.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that ‘The acceleration produced by a particular force acting on a body is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body.’ That means the speed of an object depends upon the force applied to it and the object itself. To break this law, turn it the other way around. Thus, in creative thinking, to increase the speed of inspiration, don’t force it. Like, if you are having a brainstorming session with a coach who keeps arguing against all kinds of ideas, your creativity speed is zero. (My advice: Since he cannot set the fire in you, fire him!) Reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen telling Alice in Wonderland about running and getting nowhere:

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run twice as fast as that!

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that ‘To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.’ That is to say, action meets reaction. How do you break this physical law and become creative? In creative thinking, if you do something and what happens depends on what you did, that’s not creative. The reaction should be of a different nature. And how do you do that? You make a paradigm shift.

Even if you and I didn’t know it as such, there is a famous example of a paradigm shift that dramatizes how creative thinking should go: Untying The Gordian Knot. I learned that in high school 50 years ago. While the tale is mythical, what happens is material as it is ingenious, inspired as creative thinking is. The story is from John Hagan (geocities.com); the words are mine:

Riding his wagon to the temple of Zeus, father of the gods, innocently Gordius fulfils an oracle, and the people make him their King. In homage, Gordius dedicates his wagon to Zeus, tying the yoke to the pole at the temple using a complex knot of cornel bark so intricate it defies unraveling. Fit for the gods. Out of the Gordian Knot, as it comes to be called, comes another oracle: ‘Whoever succeeds in untying the knot will be conqueror of all Asia.’ Every man worth his maleness tries and each one fails. Here comes Alexander the Great. He unties the Gordian Knot by cutting the whole thing with his sharp sword. With his sharp mind actually. And he goes on to conquer all of what is known as Asia. Genius knows no rules, no borders, no limits, no knots.

Now, about Alexander the Great’s paradigm shift, John Hagan views it differently: ‘Then, as everybody knows, he cheated on the oracle by cutting the knot with his sword instead of untying it.’ John, Alexander is using his head. Alexander merely changes his way of looking at the problem by what I call ‘changing the problem’ – from untying the knot to loosening it. Those other geniuses fail as they can’t cut it. In a flash of brilliance, my genius sees that the oracle does not say you can’t cut it. So Alexander the Great goes on to disprove those who say he can’t cut it.

Today, Sunday, January 20 (Manila), as I continue revising this essay, I can’t demonstrate on this page exactly how Frank’s Law of Graffiti works, but I can make another paradigm shift and give you another metaphor: The Phoenix Rising. This is from Narrate Conferences (thephoenixrises.org):

Upon the completion of its life cycle, the famed firebird builds its funeral pyre. After setting itself alight, it burns until nothing but ash remains and from that ash and flame, The Phoenix Rises.

In graffiti thinking, a term which I invented just now, which refers to creative thinking following my Law of Graffiti, when you cut & paste & delete & add to your notes and set your mind on fire, it is Your Own Phoenix Rising.

The Phoenix Rising describes graffiti thinking quite well. Consider this quote by Lady Gryphon from the Feng Shui Handbook of Master Lam Kam Chuen (mythicalrealm.com):

A mythical bird that never dies, the Phoenix flies far ahead to the front, always scanning the landscape and distant space. It represents our capacity for vision, for collecting sensory information about our environment and the events unfolding within it. The Phoenix, with its great beauty, creates intense excitement and deathless inspiration.

From the ashes of your graffiti notes rises the Phoenix of your creativity.

The Brooklyn Museum says graffiti is ‘a form of subversive public communication (that) has become legitimate’ (brooklynmuseum.org); borrowing from that, I say graffiti thinking is a subversive form of creative thinking that is legitimate all at once. Some people call graffiti ‘tasteless vandalism’ (wikiHow); graffiti thinking makes graffiti a form of creative vandalism – you destroy your old materials and create something new out of them. Your Phoenix Rising.

In creative writing, from out of the ashes of graffiti thinking, you and I need something like the Phoenix to rise and inspire us. Otherwise, we expire even as we respire.

Now, how do you go about graffiti thinking? Observe Frank’s Law of Graffiti:

Every scribble, scratch, scrawl, doodle, drawing, image, icon, word, whatnot is inspiration waiting to be discovered.

Been there, done that. That’s how I have been able to write 100 full essays in 100 full weeks (see my ‘100 in 100. Celebrating Centennials & Counting,’ americanchronicle.com). Graffiti thinking for inspiration, for insight; graffiti for instant gratification. (For another uplifting kind of graffiti thinking, visit Cassidy Curtis' 'Graffiti Archaelogy' at otherthings.com/grafarc.) So, open your mind and heart and go discover yours!

To help you in your journey of discovery every time you write, here are my 5 steps to your graffiti thinking:

(1) Get an idea. You don’t have an idea what you want to write about? Go read a book, or open a magazine or journal. Listen to people. Go to the library. If you are not in the United States, not in England and not in Australia, read imported books or magazines – not local publications, and certainly not the local newspapers or their Sunday magazines: they’re depressing, not inspiring. Watch ‘CSI’ and how the plot thickens; watch ‘Dr House’ and how the clot thickens. You want to write in English – get ideas from the best! And don’t forget: While you’re reading, at all times, take notes, jot down your thoughts. In writing, jotting maketh an exact man.

(2) Go surfing and get more ideas. Surf the Internet and search well and long. Again, remember to take down notes and thoughts. Reading and surfing, speed-read if you like, but take notes. That should take you at least one morning, one afternoon, one evening, or one day. It will be time well-spent. The beauty of the Internet is that it is beauty always waiting to be discovered, and as an artist you should always be excited to explore both form and substance.

(3) Read those notes. Read them leisurely, but read! I said take notes twice, the first to get an idea, the second to get more ideas. Now you read what you have gathered along with your own thoughts jotted down. You are deliberately loading up your brain cells with ideas and information. Nothing comes out of an empty and closed mind; with your open mind, many possibilities pop up when you read and read again, and when you take notes and make notes in your own sweet time. This is the Age of the Information Superhighway, so go out and drive and enjoy the view, smell the flowers.

After all that, now your mind and your notebook or scratch paper should be full of whatever. The more you collect, the better for you. When you feel you have too much already, that’s the time to stop. For this essay, as I write at this point, I have 20 pages of notes singlespace, onscreen, in Word 2003, my favorite. The notes are your masses that now you work on, knowing that the Law of Graffiti works with those massive bodies of information.

But remember, those masses do not attract each other. Believe me, they disobey Isaac Newton’s Law of Gravity – but they will follow Frank Hilario’s Law of Graffiti. And you will prove it to yourself.

(4) Assign keywords. Un-Newton-like, you yourself will have to make those masses of graffiti attract each other. What do you do? Read them again, one by one. And add notes of what comes to your mind. While you’re reading all those notes and jottings, write a keyword or two (as category, tag, or for reference) above each mass of text you see that are more or less related. You should now be getting the hang of it – absorbing little by little the essences of those bodies of text. (Don’t ignore the images. An image is worth a thousand words, so try to capture some of the powerful words in there.)

(5) Begin writing. So, are you now ready to begin writing? Here is a surprise from a technically minded expert, Julie Miller (2002, vt.essortment.com), who says:

The first step in writing a research paper is not to write at all but to absorb ideas, thoughts, and material. With your research topic in mind, a good place to start is traditionally the library, or more recently, the Internet for information. At the library, search for books, magazine articles, academic journals, and reference materials pertaining to your subject. Spend time wandering not only the aisles of books covering your subject, but widen your search to secondary sources that may contain useful research. On the Internet, use several search engines to get access to the most useful research. Follow the recommended listservs and websites to broaden your scope of information. In other words, have fun with the research process by absorbing new ideas, thoughts, and information. To recap, try not to even think about writing the research paper, but enjoy learning for learning’s sake.

She is writing for students; she is writing for you. I shall call that graffiti research, which is necessary for graffiti thinking. What Julie Miller says applies both to science writing for scientists and science writing for the rest of us. Both are creative acts.

Observe: Julie Miller is telling us that the right way to start writing is not to start writing right away. Assuming you have done your graffiti research, I will add to that and say that the right way to start writing is to follow the genius of Paul Graham: ‘Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can.’ Or follow Frank/Einstein's genius: E = mc². And so I leave you to the beginning of your creative writing. Remember: The journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with the first step - it begins with the first thought. May the Force of Graffiti be with you always!

00 My Crazy Dozen.

2008-01-07T23:20:00.000+08:00

The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies

By Frankenstein

Who am I talking to this time? They would be public speakers, lecturers, PowerPoint presentors, resource persons, debaters, reviewers, essayists, biographers, autobiographers, authors, ghostwriters, columnists, journalists, consultants, managers, even proposal packagers in science. And why is that? All of them must be good writers first before they can be good at what they’re supposed to be doing. Those who can afford can hire good writers, so I’m not writing for those dummies.

Why am I not writing instead A Writer’s Guide For Dummies? Because there are too many of them already. The non-dummy reason I will not write a dummies’ book for writers is that you can’t write if you’re a dummy. A dummy is thick-headed, dull-witted, dense, unintelligent, boring.

It’s my New Year’s Resolution. Actually, I was inspired to write for non-dummies because I have seen too many books ostensibly written for dummies but when I look into them, their language is not anywhere near for novices. ‘For Dummies’ means it’s written for beginners, greenhorns, the uninitiated, those who are just starting, who are not aware of anything about the subject – but are neither unintelligent nor dull-witted. A dummy is certainly not educated on the subject – but why educate him on the history, comparison and technical details of Windows when all he wants to know and do is run Windows to write a letter and send it via email?

I have a different idea of what makes a good writer (not to mention a good Windows). I’m writing for non-dummies because I want to warn people about books for dummies. How many dummies am I talking about here? To give you an idea, Dan Brown reports that his book Da Vinci Code has sold 70 million copies worldwide (danbrown.com); multiply that by 2 readers a copy and you have 140 million dummies worldwide.

To balance that a bit, Time reports that JK Rowling’s 7 Harry Potter books have sold 400 million copies worldwide. Multiply that number by 2.5 readers a copy and you have 1 billion dummies. Count me in. I’m unique; I’m a one-in-a-billion dummy.

Actually, I’m one of the Harry Potter dummies 7 times over. I have read all 7 books word for word. JK Rowling writes so well that every chapter ends urging you to read on to the next and the next. Of course it’s all fantasy, but the magic of it all is told page after page, not simply described. (That’s how science should be told, like magic – science is magic.) I am 68 this year, a science writer, Roman Catholic and a dummy for JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. She is a rebel writer herself. Here’s a short list of rebel writers and I like all of them: William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Ernest Hemingway, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Scott Hahn. (I did not say I read all of them.)

Dummies are a dime a dozen; if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a dozen million of them.

I googled “for dummies” books (double quotes included) and the Netscape Google search gave me 1,280,000 English pages with Strict Filtering (no sex-explicit texts or images for dummies). I noted some of the books: Blackberry Pearl For Dummies, iPhone For Dummies, Puppies For Dummies, Writing Children’s Books For Dummies, Scuba Diving & Snorkeling For Dummies, Electronic Discovery For Dummies. This world has gone to the dummies!

There’s Poker For Dummies – it’s for gamblers, and I don’t like to gamble. I gamble my opinion – The Attorney General has determined that gambling is bad for your health.

Suffer the little dummies to come to me, for of such is the kingdom. A dummies’ book is recalled because it may be hazardous to your health – John Wiley & Sons announces recall of Candle And Soap Making For Dummies because ‘the instructions in the book for making lye combine sodium hydroxide and water in an incorrect order’ and ‘could cause the mixture to bubble over, posing a burn hazard to consumers’ (cpsc.gov). It could be a little Hell on a little Earth.

From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a dummy if you buy a book for dummies – they’re for professionals, who I would believe are no dummies.

Like WordPress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson; Chapter 1 is ‘What WordPress Can Do For You’ (amazon.com). The excerpt says: ‘In this chapter: >Understanding the benefits of WordPress and >Getting acquainted with the basic features of WordPress.’ Here’s the first paragraph:

If you believe that your ideas are important enough to publish on the World Wide Web for the entire world to see, then you, my friendly reader, are the perfect blogger, and WordPress is your perfect tool! How else can you get your message out with the potential of reaching a vast audience of millions worldwide for the cost of exactly nothing? There might be no free lunch in this world, but ... there are free blogs to be had.

There’s no such thing as ‘a perfect blogger’ – I’m an inveterate blogger and I’m not always perfect. I ‘moved’ from blogger.com (Google’s) to wordpress.com (WordPress’), and if you ask me, WordPress is excellent! But is WordPress my perfect tool? Read my lips: NO. I’m not a novice; I started blogging in 2002, earnestly in 2005, and I have more than 50 blogsites / websites (18 in WordPress alone) all created by me, all photos uploaded by me, all links made by me, learning along the way. In my own domain, frankahilario.com, where I have uploaded 133 full essays, not simply rambling thoughts, WordPress keeps bugging me: ‘A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now’ – and when I click ‘Please update now’ (try it yourself, click the link I’ve made), it doesn’t help me at all – I have to download a file and then I’m left hanging what to do with that file. I ask my son Jomar and he says, ‘It’s complicated.’ If WordPress update is for dummies really, I need but click on ‘Please update now’ and it will do the rest for me, including backup my files. WordPress is not that smart, and I’m not that dummy. Also, blogging is not free: It costs WordPress and it costs me time, information, money, effort. There is no such thing as a free lunch – only a free hunch.

In other words, ‘for dummies’ is all hype, and you’re a dog if you dig it, you’re a zombie if you yearn for it, you’re a fool if you pine for it, you’re a puppy if you lap it all up.

Here’s one that is not for dummies. Chapter 1 is titled ‘Writing Copy: Capturing Hearts, Minds, And Money’ (amazon.com). The first two sentences are:

Picture me at the summer barbecue, my bare pale legs reflecting blazing beams of sunlight, my loud Hawaiian shirt howling with color. As I pass cold beers and overcooked hot dogs to my neighbors, someone I haven’t met before may politely initiate conversation by asking me what I do for a living.

Excellent copy! I know an excellent copy when I see one – I worked for one of the top ad agencies in the Philippines, Pacifica Publicity Bureau, and I learned a lot from the professionals like Nonoy Gallardo (husband of popular singer Celeste Legaspi) and Telly Bernardo. Jonathan Kranz’s book is for non-dummies like you and me. The author is smart, but a dummy for titling his book Writing Copy For Dummies.

Even so, Jonathan Kranz is one in a million. There’s a book Currency Trading For Dummies by Mark Galant & Brian Dolan (fxstreet.com). Can’t be. The concept ‘currency’ by itself is not for dummies, how much more ‘trading?’

I would say the ultimate insult is the book Hacking For Dummies. I will not insult by naming the author, but you can go visit Tony Bradley for his book review if you click the link there. Hacking is for crazy whiz kids or insane virtuosos, not dummies like you and me. In this case, I like being a dummy.

Chuck Frey tells me the book MindManager For Dummies authored by Hugh Cameron & Roger Voight PhD is a ‘terrific reference guide’ (innovationtools.com). That it is a ‘reference guide’ sounds interesting. Chapter 1 is titled ‘Getting Organized – Visually’ (amazon.com’ and in the chapter you will find how-tos: ‘Beginning to get organized. Seeing the depths of MindManager. Dealing with complexity. Linking to the outside. Sharing with other programs. Managing perceptions.’

That it is terrific? Terrible. That does it! MindManager has scared me into stopping my surfing for dummies’ books. My train of thought stopped when I read MindManager’s ‘Getting Organized – Visually’ as the first chapter (not to mention that the entry ‘PhD’ after a name puts me off). You don’t start with dummies getting organized – they’re not ready for it – and visually yet!

MindManager is ‘a mind-mapping program’ or ‘visual diagramming application’ (Chuck Frey). The assumption is that ‘You just had an idea! It was a solution to your latest dilemma at work’ (first sentence, Part 1 of the book) (amazon.com). So, MindManager assumes that you already have a brainstorm before you use it. That’s theory; in practice, The idea of a brainstorm is that you have absolutely no idea!

So, don’t blame me if I’m thinking of writing a book on creative writing for NON-dummies.

Now, instead of revising my own 12-year-old ‘The Unforgettable Ten Commandments Of Writing’ or coming out with a new copycat title ‘Writing For Dummies’ I shall write: ‘My Crazy Twelve Commandments Of Writing For Non-Dummies.’

Let me make it clear: I don’t write for dummies, because they wouldn’t understand me. I’ve written about them, yes; consider my ‘To All The Dummies In The World. Or, De Bono Debugged’ (americanchronicle.com). Naturally, my new book will be different, and it will look crazy (be warned: looks deceive), because I will have the following chapter titles (or something similar):

(1) If you want to begin right, don’t begin right.
(2) If you want to create order, create disorder.
(3) If you want to write well, don’t write.
(4) If you want to be read, don’t read yourself.
(5) If you want to listen to advice, don’t give the advice.
(6) If you want to attract readers, don’t give your vocabulary.
(7) If you want to improve, don’t just improve.
(8) If you want to get more ideas, look where there are none!
(9) If you want to have a good sequence, make a bad one.
(10) If you want to write objectively, you’re a journalist.
(11) If you want to know everything, you’re an encyclopedia.
(12) If you want to give up, you’re a mad genius!

At the back of my mind, I have had my own The Unbelievable Ten Commandments Of Writing (adiosfarewellgoodbye.blogspot.com).

Let me explain my Crazy 12 briefly.

(1) If you want to begin right, don’t begin right.

If I remember right, from Rudolf Flesch, the guru of readability, comes this sparkling gem of an advice for creative writers: ‘Begin anywhere, but begin!’ Following that advice, among other things, I have so far written 102 complete essays for American Chronicle (click this link if you want to check it out), and published a book out of 22 of them (see my ‘My American Book. Embracing Science Embracing Faith,’ americanchronicle.com) – and I can assure you all those 102 were begun every which way, sometimes beginning at the Beginning (simply because I liked the title already, like the very first one, ‘Fuzzy Logic & The Avian Flu’), sometimes beginning at the End (like I already had in mind ‘Sweetheart, sugarcane is sweet, but sweet sorghum is sweeter’ before I even wrote one sentence of my 22nd American Chronicle essay ‘The Yankee Dawdle’), sometimes beginning in the Middle (about the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT); the word VASAT is in the title but I discuss it only beginning in the middle in the essay ‘The Telugu Paradigm. Understanding VASAT, The Illiterate’s Internet’). If you insist on beginning beautifully right away, you’ll never get anywhere because your Writer’s Block will stop you. If you are a blockhead, I know you are the irresistible force but you must remember Writer’s Block is the immovable object.

(2) If you want to create order, create disorder.

I preach to you the Chaos Theory of Writing: In writing, if you want to create harmony, first you have to create madness. So I surf the Web and type everything I like into the blank screen, I quote from a book, I relate from memory – and mix them all in confusion, haphazardly. You should see my ‘drafts’ – they don’t make sense. (Later, from out of the chaos, I can hear myself say, ‘Let there be life!’ And there is like. And it is enough.)

I practice what I preach, which you can’t say of so many people. As a visible example of chaos, look at my photograph again – you’re looking at my desktop and personal computer setup. In the italicized lines below, you will find the very first entries of this essay in its first incarnation (you can tell that I’ve been surfing the Web) (I numbered the lines here just for convenience):

Beginning:
(1) You have a dummies.com, dummies.
(2) “for dummies” books gave me 1,280,000 English pages with Strict Filtering (no sex-explicit text, no sex-explicit images).
(3) Books: Blackberry Pearl For Dummies, iPhone For Dummies, Puppies For Dummies, Writing Children’s Books For Dummies, Scuba Diving & Snokeling For Dummies, Electronic Discovery For Dummies. (Yes, Snokeling is misspelled, but this is an illustration – I typed it incorrectly the first time.)
(4) Podcasting For Dummies – if dummies could do it, I could do it – I can’t. I’m not a dummy.
(5) Poker For Dummies – it’s for gamblers, dummy. I gamble my opinion – The Attorney General has determined that gambling is bad for your health.
(6) I will not write a dummies-book for writers or would-be writers – you can’t write if you’re a dummy.

Middle:
(7) From what I’ve read, you’re a dummy if you buy a book for dummies – they’re for professionals, and they’re no dummies.

End:
(8) In writing,
(9) If you believe that
(10) Apple TV for dummies

In this final version, I have deleted sentences #1, #4 and phrases #8, #9, #10. And I have a new Beginning, Middle, End.

The ideas and information I got from the Internet challenged me, set me in other directions, and otherwise helped me think some more and come up with my own order of thoughts. It wasn’t easy, but then again I’ve had years and years of practice so much so that the pressure has become pleasure. You should be so pleased!

(3) If you want to write well, don’t write.

Don’t write; instead, key in. I advice you to learn to use the personal computer, and well. One of my favorite writers, Ray Bradbury, does not want to use the PC for writing, and so he misses on two of the great advantages of word processing: spell-checking and grammar-checking. I’m a perfectionist; I remember typing the manuscript of a book on an IBM Selectric in the late 1980s and proofreading word for word 9 times. Today, using Word 2003, I need to proofread my essays only 2 times, once by software and once by me – the software is not perfect, and neither am I, but together, we’re a perfect combination. (I rewrite countless times, but that’s not proofreading.) Leave to the PC the routines like proofreading, correcting common typos, correcting grammar, and suddenly you’re a genius writing. (If you knew a little more, you can create a dictionary of technical terms and scientific names against which new typings will be corrected automatically.)

(4) If you want to be read, don’t read yourself.

Ask someone else to read your manuscript to find out its appeal. Rudolf Flesch’s advice is to write like you talk – but not when you talk jargon and you expect your unwary readers to understand specialist language. Don’t write like this:

Microsoft Office 2000 contains a word processor (for writing), a spreadsheet (for manipulating numbers), a presentation graphics program (for creating slide shows and charts, a personal information organizer (for storing names, addresses, e-mail, and phone numbers), a database (for storing information for mailing lists or tracking inventories), a desktop publisher (for designing and laying-out pages), a Web page creator (for designing your own Web pages), and a graphics editor (for editing images such as digitized photographs).

That’s from the ‘Number One best-selling book’ in the dummies series, according to Roger C Parker, who originated the Microsoft Office For Windows For Dummies (newentrepreneur.com). That first paragraph is information overload, too much even for a professional reader. It reads like an ad copy written by Bill Gates himself. Bill Gates is great in marketing, not in copy.

(5) If you want to listen to advice, don’t give the advice.

You may be a genius, but you’re a dull genius if you listen only to yourself, if you don’t listen to other people, if you don’t read what others have to say, don’t ask questions about what you don’t know, don’t discover what is unknown to you. If you believe you have all the wisdom, you’re not real; you don’t exist. End of story.

(6) If you want to attract readers, don’t give your vocabulary.

Contrary to what Dale Carnegie may have said, vocabulary scares people. For example, there’s Digital Art Photography For Dummies by Matthew Bamberg (amazon.com). Chapter 1 is titled ‘Digital Art Photography 101’. The first paragraph reads:

Art is the product of human creativity: a medium to create pleasure as well as express the conditions of life and feelings. Art also records history: who we are’ what’s around us; and how we interpret life, feelings, and interpersonal interactions.

That’s for dummies? That’s ‘starting from square one’ in digital photography? Consider: ‘human creativity’ and ‘medium’ and ‘create pleasure’ and ‘express the conditions of life and feelings’ and ‘records history’ and ‘how we interpret life, feelings’ and ‘interpersonal interactions’ – the two first sentences are not about a digital camera loaded with a huge memory card but a book overloaded with heavy words and phrases. Give me the loaded camera anytime! But a manuscript loaded with technical words? That’s why I say science writing is too important a subject to be left to scientists alone.

Again, a lesson from the readability guru Rudolf Flesch: Use plain words. If you avoid using long words and terms like the above, you’ll be amazed at how clear and interesting you become. From now on, remember: The Rebel Writer has determined that a wide vocabulary is bad for your health.

(7) If you want to improve, don’t just improve.

If you want to improve your writing, don’t just improve: Change it. You have to revise. Even if you think it’s already perfect. Let me show you by revising the one from Lisa (quoted above) like this:

If you believe that your ideas are important enough to publish on the World Wide Web for the entire world to see, then you, my friendly reader, are perfect for blogging, and WordPress may be perfect for you! Blogging gets your message out to a potential audience of millions at the expense of WordPress, at your pleasure, also because WordPress is easier to use and a much more beautiful sight to behold. (Beauty is in the eye of the beholden.)

WordPress is not the only blog pusher in the world, so Lisa’s ‘how else can you get your message out’ is misleading if not insincere.

I always have to revise, and heavily. This essay will have undergone at least 7 revisions before I let it go. It’s always like that with my Franciscan essays. How do I know when to stop? As I read again, I feel that now I’m beginning to like what I’ve written and in a little while I tell myself it’s done. (That needs some practice.)

The idea for this essay started with my old ‘The Unbelievable Ten Commandments Of Writing’ published in 1996 by IQ, a newsletter of New Day Publishers (Quezon City); I was the Editor. This time, I wanted to be different – don’t I always! The title for this one started with ‘My Dirty Dozen. A Practical Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies.’ After several revisions, after 3 days, it has become what you see: ‘My Crazy Dozen. The Rebel Writer’s Guide For Non-Dummies.’ For me, it’s a perfect fit. The phrase ‘The Rebel Writer’ must be Heaven-sent, my just reward; I was a barbarian knocking at the gates for more ideas. Heaven knows I don’t have to be a barbarian but it helps.

(8) If you want to get more ideas, look where there are none!

Look inside your head! Learn to brainstorm with yourself, alone. A Filipino lawyer does that, with outstanding results. Antonio Oposa Jr (the lawyer son of an outstanding surgeon friend of mine, Antonio Oposa Sr from Cebu City in the middle of the Philippines), has written a powerful, highly original book on and for the conservation of the environment, The Laws Of Nature And Other Stories. I don’t have a copy but I read that book in the author’s own house the same day last year when he went to Cavite to attend a meeting of leaders and volunteers for the popular movement Batas Kalikasan (Law of Nature). He invited me. On our way by car, Tony was brainstorming with himself and scribbling, and when I noticed, I said ‘That’s mind-mapping, Tony Buzan,’ but I didn’t see the names registering recognition. Well, Tony Buzan isn’t the only creative mind hereabouts.

Ray Bradbury has another way of brainstorming by his lonesome; he calls it word association: Come up with random words, then string them along with a memory you have or an idea you didn’t have before. Edward de Bono has his Po device for a committee, which can be applied for a committee of one: Say ‘Po’ and accept all suggestions, no matter how crazy they are; consider each an ore in which a gem may be extracted.

(9) If you want to have a good sequence, make a bad one.

I learned this also from Rudolf Flesch 42 years ago (1965): If you are trying to convince people, arrange your arguments or points in a non-sequential manner. So, by weight, don’t arrange your exposition consecutively: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. Instead, present #1 first, then #2 next, then #5 next, then #4 next, then #3 last. This way, you begin with the strongest point, supported by your next strongest; and towards the end, your discussion gets stronger again. Impressions are important: Impressions first, impressions last.

In case you got lost, I have a list of 12 here – how did I arrange them? I followed Flesch’s advice. My #1 was an obvious choice; my #2 and #3 are also strong because they’re so negative. Because they’re written deliberately suddenly differently, my #10, #11, #12 help me end with a bang, bang, bang!

(10) If you want to write objectively, you’re a journalist.

When in Rome, don’t write like the Romans do. Unless I’m sadly mistaken, all journalists try to write objectively – and that explains why they are boring to read. (That’s true, I’m sad to say, for science journalists writing for the Sunday magazines (and feature sections) of the 3 major dailies in my country: The Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star, Manila Bulletin. But not those in Time and Newsweek and The New York Times.) If you’re true to yourself and to your readers, you can’t be objective. You have your own biases. So? So, write about them; write with them in mind; write to acknowledge them – that will make you human in the eyes of your reader, and they will love you for it. Your readers are not objective themselves – they root for people, sides, causes. No, you’re a double dummy if you try to write for all kinds of people – you can only write for your kind of dummies, dummy.

(11) If you want to know everything, you’re an encyclopedia.

I suppose most people don’t want to write about something because they don’t know most things about it. In fact, you don’t have to know anything to write about anything. Not knowing is a perfect reason for knowing more! You don’t have to be a walking encyclopaedia to write about a topic (although I assure you it helps) – you can always search the Internet (and I assure you it helps much more). If you want to become the expert and know everything, like an encyclopedia, you’re dull, as in uninteresting. The idea is that you want to find out more so that you are able to understand what’s going on so that you can describe it to your readers. I surf the Web from opinion to opinion, news to news, tripping lightly and, delightfully; that’s how I get some insights of my own.

(12) If you want to give up, you’re a mad genius!

Today, being a writer is easy – talent or no talent, you create a blog and in a minute or two, you’re a published writer. But learning to be a good writer is as difficult as earning a PhD in college, perhaps even more so. You may think you don’t need to learn more because your blog is popular as it is. You may think that you don’t need to be a better writer than you already are. Or you have tried and given up on it. It’s so hard to be good.

I thought like you before; fortunately, I came to the point when I gave up my high regard for myself and replaced it with the urge to improve myself. That’s what I want you to give up: your high regard for yourself, or your ambition, or both.

You’d be mad to give up a high regard for yourself, or your ambition – but you’d be a genius as a writer. After at least 30 years of popularizing science, after along the way giving up becoming rich and famous (yes, it was a choice; no, it wasn’t easy), and realizing that I have become a much better writer than before, I can share with you that the more you are at peace with the world, the better you become as a writer, not to mention as a human being. I thank God for all that.

Why now do I write? I want to share my experiences and insights in living and hope to encourage others. Why now do I write for writers? I want to share my experiences and insights in writing and hope to encourage writers to encourage others. There is so much negative in the Philippines today that to encourage the positive requires that you invest on heroism that of course is a huge risk since it borders on stupidity.

The Philippines needs more geniuses who are foolish enough to give up their comfort zones in favor of their country, to give up their ambitions for themselves. I’m hoping that more such insane geniuses will rise among Filipinos, especially writers young and old – the old, for their own legacy; the young, for own their future. Give up and be recognized! (As for me, I’ve given up on UP, the University of the Philippines, my alma mater; I’ve given up on the fervent UP nationalist geniuses. These are the times for globalization; now, nationalism is local, internationalism is global and the irresistible force.)

Age doesn’t matter; you can be a genius at 8, 18, 38, 68, 78, 88, 98? A silly genius for the environment. A crazy genius for God and country. A hero. To be a hero, I suppose you shouldn’t have to be ridiculous but it should help.