The deadline for Biometric voter registration in the Philippines is coming up in the next few days. As the COMELEC's campaign slogan goes, No Bio...No Boto...This just emphasizes the importance of this process to ensuring our voice as citizens are heard. In general the process was smooth except for the volume of people that were queuing up for registration. The process goes in 4 steps are shown in the infographic below. I've also put a short video to take you through the Registration Process.
I realize that a lot of people out there may be struggling with Physics as a subject. So I decided to start solving the problems of my favorite Physics text, Physics by Halliday, Resnick and Walker. I am working with the 8th edition.
I solved the 1st 4 problems of Chapter 1 dealing with problems on Density. Problem 1 is about getting the density of the standard kg cylinder. The 2nd problem is about calculating the density of Saturn. Problems 3 and 4 are about solving for the mass of a spherical copper shell.
I was 19 when I started Ballet decades ago. Coming from other dance genres, I had to cope with how the Ballet discipline took stretching seriously. I remember doing an improper stretch at led to a slight injury to my inner thigh that made it difficult to give my best during an intensive class.
Ballet requires body preparation appropriate for it's movement vocabulary. It is very demanding in terms of technical precision and physical abilities. As such, a young dancer needs to go through a routine to properly mobilize his/her joints and stretch muscles to be engaged. Proper stretching needs to gradual according to the level of blood circulation occuring in your muscles. Serious stretching is done on warm muscles.
In my Ballet classes for kids ages 4-8, I start with a gentle stretch to open the hip socket and stretch the Sartorius muscles. The children cross their legs like a pretzel and then try to touch the floor with their heads. They do this for about 2 mins and repeat with switched legs.
After doing exercises to ensure proper blood circulation throughout the leg, I let my students do a series of straddle stretches on the floor, to enable the most efficient rotation of the legs towards the body. The series starts with one leg extended to the side and the body pressing sideways over it. Care should be done so that the legs are straight, the little toes are on the floor and the pelvic bone presses over the leg. This is repeated with the other leg and eventually with both legs extended. Proper carriage of the arms and alignment of the spine are also key to the correct execution of this step.
The next stretch focuses on stretching the Hip Flexors and the Quadriceps which are more often than not the antagonist muscles in Ballet exercises. By having the dancer reach back to touch her toes with the head, she not only works her Erector Spinae muscles, she also presses down and stretches here Hip Flexors and Quads.
The final stretch done in my beginners class is a stretch to the side
with the leg extended off the floor. This starts with one leg stretched
at a time and ends with both legs stretched together. Gravity gives
additional tension during the stretch of the leg enabling good tension
behind the dancer's knees. A balance with both legs extended develops
abdominal control necessary for standing balances.
As the dancer continuously does these stretches, she will be able to do harder stretches like standing stretches and splits. Once we get stretches out of the way, the dancers are now ready to do Barre and Center exercises which require a higher degree of control and precision than floor exercises.
If you wish to observe my classes, you may do so at the following locations:
I have been truly blessed to have learned about the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). It has helped me throughout my career spanning various positions in Eng'g, Advocacy, Education and the Performing Arts. Here's a presentation by my mentor Richard Platt outlining our experience in getting TRIZ off the ground at Intel.
Technology in a lot of ways is not unlike biological systems. For one, the technological marvels of today will become obsolete in the next few years. Just ask kids what a typewriter is and you'll know what I'm talking about. A lot of the have not even heard of an 8 track cassette or a vinyl record! Technology does change with time.
If technology is time dependent are we at its mercy such that we find ourselves one morning left behind? Of course not! Aside from the fact that it takes a while for people to adapt to new technology, it is also a fact that its evolution follows definite trends. In general, a technical system will continue improving towards increasing ideality. This means the quality of useful functions is improved while reducing harmful functions and cost. As an exanple remember the big clutch bag cellphones we had 20yrs ago? These later became the bowling pin phones followed by the fat shampoo bottle types. With the transition to gsm and 3g, phones became smaller and thinner. You see this similar trend with transportation, video, computing, etc.
The danger in using technological trends is when we take it as a linear, dogmatic timeline. I recently used an analysis of technology trends in the context of learning as part of social innovation. When we deal with learning technologies and systems, the trend if to go from a cognitive towards a more experiential mode, from an abstract to a concrete, transformational experience. It will be easy for us to take the normal trend of classroom learning -> tours -> immersion -> independent project as Gospel truth when you can create as system that jumps straight to exploration was what is normally done in the performing arts. Following an exploratory approach makes the learner responsible for his learning. This also implies that a lot of courses taught in schools and universities are actually inefficient and ineffective.
As innovators and technical professionals, it is to our best interest to determine the maturity of the technology we work with. This way we will be able to maximize the innovation that can be done with these. By predicting technology trends we will be able to take leadership of the great industries of tomorrow
.png)