Pinoy Blog Machine (Beta)

De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde is once again offering Filipino Sign Language Classes to the public. Quoted below is an excerpt from Withnews.org article.

De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB) is offering Filipino Sign Language (FSL) Classes. FSL classes are open to all interested Deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing people from within and outside of the DLS-CSB campus. These classes help its students gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the Deaf’s unique language and culture.

Classes are held three hours a week and will be conducted by Deaf teachers. Available class schedule are: Monday/Friday, Tuesday/Thursday, Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Friday or Sat.

Course fee is php 2,400.00 (plus php 535 for those who not have a DLS-CSB for generic ID).

Please contact the Filipino Sign Language Learning Program (FSLLP) office of the School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (SDEAS) at 526-7441 local 131, email: salazarab@dls-csb.edu.ph

Discounts are available for DLS-CSB faculty through CLCIR and also other DLS-CSB staff upon approval of concerned heads.

Registration Starts from August 26 up to September 13, 2008 while the Filipino Sign Language Orientation Seminar will start on the last day of registration.

The Visual Gestural Communication Workshop part 1 will also start on September 13 and part 2 on September 20, 1-4pm.

Sign Language Class starts on September 15.

Read more »

I agree with the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) when it blamed the media for overblowing the “Lipstick on a Pig” controversy. The quality of how we conduct elections and choose our leaders , whether in the US or in our sorry country of ours, depends on the discourse of campaign and political issues.

Notes From The Pig Sty
In which we all get dirty
By Megan Garber
CJR
Sept. 10, 2008

What (audiences) recognize, rather, is the press’s framing of those accusations, the media’s treatment of the controversies. And the fact that LipstickOnAPigGate is a controversy—indeed, the fact that it’s a narrative in the first place—is the fault of the media…. The media, in allowing themselves to be so easily hijacked by campaign spin…are not only implying their own irrelevance in this whole campaign. They’re fostering it.

Read more here.

Another useful post here. Additional readings from Slate on the US election campaign: an unsolicited advice for Democrat vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden to beat Sarah Barracuda; how umbrage has become the most widely-used tactic in the campaign; and the hottest rhetorical device of the 2008 campaign–the antimetabole.

Here’s a statement of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) on the Supreme Court affirmation of its March 25 decision favoring executive privilege. The ruling, CMFR said in the statement, does not only affect the public’s right to know and the role of press in society but also the vitality and future of democracy in the Philippines.

Statement of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility
Assault on the Public’s Right to Know
Source: Freedom Watch
Sept. 11, 2008

The Supreme Court’s affirmation of its March 25 decision in favor of executive privilege undermines the public interest function of the press to provide information to a citizenry that has a right to it on matters of public concern. Even more dangerously it also erodes the democratic imperative of transparency in governance.

By expanding the coverage of executive privilege to include communications authored or solicited and received by a presidential advisor, in this case then National Economic and Development Authority Director General Romulo Neri, the Court has legitimized government secrecy to an extent yet to be established by practice.

Read more here.